Star Trek: Enterprise ran for four seasons and was set in the 22nd century, a hundred years before the events of Star Trek The Original Series. The show followed the adventures of the Enterprise, Earth's first starship capable of travelling at warp five, as it explored the galaxy and encountered various alien species.
Showrunner Manny Coto took charge of the show during its final year on television and has now revealed scrapped plans for William Shatner to return as Captain James T. Kirk.
Killed a decade earlier in 1994's Star Trek Generations, Shatner - along with writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens - figured they could resurrect a villainous version of Kirk to do battle with Captain Jonathan Archer and the NX-01 Enterprise's crew.
How would that have worked? Coto explains all in the newly released oral history, The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek by Peter Holmstrom.
"The idea was it was a Mirror Universe-themed episode. In the original 'Mirror, Mirror,' the evil Kirk had a device that was called the Tantalus field, which you press a button and his enemies would vanish. Now, it was implied in there, in that episode, that they just kind of died, but what the Reeves-Stevenes were saying [was], 'What if what this field did was transport everyone who was opposed to him into this pocket universe?'"
"So, they were all on this planet surviving. At the end of that episode, it’s implied that the good Kirk had convinced the evil Spock to take command from the evil Kirk. And Kirk told him about the Tantalus field. So you would have surmised that at the end, the evil Spock would have sent Kirk to the Tantalus field [and taken] command of the Enterprise."
"So now you have this pocket universe with the evil type we were calling Tiberius Kirk kind of stranded with other people who evil Spock has banished. But they’ve forged this kind of community in basically a prison. The idea was what if Archer and the Enterprise stumbled into this pocket universe and evil Tiberius Kirk was now an older man, but still formidable, and wanted to take control of the Enterprise and escape. It was a prison escape.
"So it would have been evil Kirk, William Shatner, Tiberius, trying to take over the Enterprise with other minions who had been trapped there."
This would have been awesome, even if Kirk's original send-off was perfect. Ultimately, it was Paramount that decided against bringing Shatner back because the legendary actor was asking for more money than the studio was willing to pay.
In the book, producer Rick Berman claims the sum was unaffordable, though Coto remains convinced that "[Paramount] wanted [Enterprise] to die" and that the studio didn't bring Shatner back "not because he was too expensive, but because they might've saved the series."
Would you have liked to see Kirk return as a villain in Star Trek: Enterprise?