Incredible Official STAR TREK Short Film UNIFICATION Sees the Return of William Shatner’s Captain Kirk
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the film Star Trek Generations, which marked the final appearance of William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk, Roddenberry Archive and their technology partner OTOY have released an official short film titled “Unification.”
The short film sees the return of Shatner’s Kirk, who sacrificed himself during a pivotal moment in the film that ultimately saved millions of lives. As he dies, Kirk reflects on his life with a sense of fulfillment, his final words being, "Oh my..."—a poignant end to his legendary journey.
The short film takes place at the moment of Kirk’s death. It’s a much better ending for Kirk than how the film ended his story and this thing got me all teary-eyed, especially when we get to see him reunite with Leonard Nimoy’s Spock.
The film connects multiple decades of Star Trek lore, and it features Robin Curtis’s Saavik (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock), Mahé Thaissa and Gary Mitchel’s J.M. Colt (1964’s The Cage), Kirk’s friend from the second Star Trek pilot episode, Gary Mitchell, performed by original actor Gary Lockwood.
The short also incorporates the character Yor (Gordon Tarpley) from Star Trek: Discovery who crossed from the Kelvin Universe to the Prime Universe.
According to OTOY, Shatner worked with them to “fine-tune the technical and creative direction required to bring his interpretation of Kirk back to live action.” This included “the addition of his voice to narrate a key moment in the experience.”
765874: Unification was directed by Carlos Baena, from a story created by Jules Urbach and features original music by Academy award-winning Star Trek composer Michael Giacchino. Production design was provided by Star Trek: Picard production designer David Blass.
Visual effects supervisor Mark Spatny led OTOY’s team of artists and animators, who combined digital and physical prosthetics with live-action location photography, virtual production, and CG set extensions.
The visual effects in Unification were created using OTOY’s “Octane” rendering software and the “Render Network” decentralized GPU rendering platform. Characters and props were digitized using OTOY’s Academy-Award winning “LightStage” scanning system.
These locations were scanned in and merged with CG set extensions to become part of The Archive’s growing library of 3D worlds and locations.
I love this short film and I hope that you enjoy it!