Captain Kirk Was Originally Going to Fight Jesus in STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE
Gene Roddenberry was the genius behind Star Trek, but for the franchise to thrive he had to step away. There are tons of stories out there about how he was difficult to work with, how he butted heads with other creatives, and it got so bad that he was forced out of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Based on the stories I've heard, I would love to see a Gene Roddenberry biopic get made one day.
There's a new book out now called The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek – The First 25 Years. In that book, it's revealed one of Roddenberry's early scripts for Star Trek: The Motion Picture had a scene where Captain Kirk fights Jesus Christ.
THR shared an extended excerpt from the book that you've got to read, especially if you’re a Star Trek fan. There were several screenplays written for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. One of those scripts featured a story involving time travel and the Enterprise crew trying to prevent John F. Kennedy from being assassinated. Then there is the one where he fights Jesus. William Shatner starts off by recalling the following pitch that Roddenberry gave him:
“[Rodenberry] said, ‘First of all, we have to explain how you guys got older. So what we have to do is move everybody up in a rank. You become an admiral, and the rest of the cast become Starfleet commanders. One day a force comes toward Earth — might be God, might be the Devil — breaking everything in its path, except the minds of the starship commanders. So we gotta find all the original crewmen for the starship Enterprise, but first — where is Spock? He’s back on Vulcan, doing R & R; five-year mission, seven years of R & R. He swam back upstream. So we gotta go get him.’ So we get Spock, do battle, and it was a great story.”
Director Richard Colla went into more depth on that story and explained:
"Gene showed me that treatment, which was much more daring than Star Trek: The Motion Picture would be. The Enterprise went off in search of that thing from outer space that was affecting everything. By the time they got into the alien’s presence, it manifested itself and said, ‘Do you know me?’ Kirk said, ‘No, I don’t know who you are.’ It said, ‘Strange, how could you not know who I am?’ So it shift-changed and became another image and said, ‘Do you know me?’ Kirk said, ‘No, who are you?’ It said, ‘Strange, how could you not know who I am?’ So it shift-changed and came up in the form of Christ the carpenter, and says, ‘Do you know me?’ and Kirk says, ‘Oh, now I know who you are.’
It gets even better! Author Michael Jan Friedman, who was hired to write a novel based on the screenplay, shared even more details, and he wasn't a big fan of it:
"To the best of my recollection, I received both the script and a short narrative version of it. Naturally I jumped at the chance to translate and expand it. Gene was — and still is — one of my heroes, for God’s sake, no pun intended. As he had already left the land of the living, this was a unique opportunity to collaborate with him. But when I read the material, I was dismayed. I hadn’t seen other samples of Gene’s unvarnished writing, but what I saw this time could not possibly have been his best work. It was disjointed — scenes didn’t work together, didn’t build toward anything meaningful. Kirk, Spock and McCoy didn’t seem anything like themselves. There was some mildly erotic, midlife-crisis stuff in there that didn’t serve any real purpose. In the climactic scene, Kirk had a fistfight with an alien who had assumed the image of Jesus Christ … So Kirk was slugging it out on the bridge. With Jesus."
Captain Kirk fighting Jesus. The image of that in my head is ridiculous and amazing. It's really not that hard to imagine. I wonder what fans would have thought of that back in 1979 when the movie was released. Hell, I wonder what people would think of it now! I personally kind of would have loved to see Shatner's Kirk fighting an alien that has taken the form of Jesus.
Shatner was obviously inspired by Roddenberry's story because Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which Shatner directed, features the crew of the Enterprise finding an alien being who claims to be God. Kirk just didn't get in a fistfight with him.