It was reported several months back that iconic actor William Shatner was in talks to return to Star Trek in some capacity. This would have been his first return to the role of James T. Kirk since 1994’s Star Trek: Generations, in which his character died. But no one ever learned what that potential project was, until now. And it would have been very different from what anyone was expecting. According to a Polygon interview with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman, they tried multiple times to get Shatner to return in an episode serving as a sequel to the original series’ most beloved episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever.”
Both Kurtzman and Goldsman said they tried every season to make this episode happen, and even wrote several scripts. But for unknown reasons, it never saw the light of day. And with production now wrapped on Strange New Worlds, it seems even more unlikely to ever happen. In their pitch, Shatner would have played an alternate version of Captain Kirk, who stayed in the 1930s after time-traveling there to be with his great love, Edith Keeler (Joan Collins). The original episode aired in 1967, and is widely considered the best Star Trek episode of all time.
In “The City on the Edge of Forever,” Captain Kirk and Spock travel to Depression-era New York through an entity called the Guardian of Forever. Kirk meets and falls in love with a soup kitchen worker named Edith Keeler, played by Joan Collins. Spock informs him that she will start a pro-peace movement that will keep America out of World War II, allowing the Nazis to win, thus erasing their utopian future. Unless she dies in a car accident a few days later, as history intended. Kirk must agonizingly allow his love to die, to save his future. But in this potential episode, we would have met a version of Kirk who made a different choice.
We don’t know any other details about the potential episode, but Joan Collins could have starred in it. She is 93 years old, but still acting, as recently as American Horror Story: Apocalypse. This would have likely been a better send-off to Shatner than his role in Generations. His ending there left the Star Trek fandom largely unhappy. Had the potential Strange New Worlds spin-off series Star Trek: Year One happened, we might have seen this story there. But it feels like that ship has sailed. Perhaps this story will become a novel or comic book, but for now, it remains a tantalizing “what if?” scenario.