STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE Showrunner Reveals William Shatner's Scrapped Villainous Captian Kirk Story Arc

There was a plan for William Shatner to return to his role as Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek: Enterprise series, but it ended up being scrapped. Kirk would’ve been a villain in the series and during a recent interview, Star Trek: Enterprise showrunner Manny Coto shared the details on how this story arc for Kirk was going to play out.

Kirk was killed off in 1994's Star Trek: Generations, but Shatner, along with writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, had an idea to resurrect an evil version of Captain Kirk to battle with Captain Jonathan Archer and the NX-01 Enterprise's crew. 

Coto revealed the following information in the Star Trek oral history book, The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek by Peter Holmstrom. He explained:

"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."

That actually would have been a really cool Star Trek story to tell! I would have loved to see that! This is a concept that could actually still be played with, but I doubt it will ever happen. I’m not sure if Shatner would even want to play Kirk again at this point in his life.

The reason why this never happened, is because Paramount didn’t want to pay Shatner the kind of money he was asking for to return.

As for the series, Coto is convinced that the studio "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?