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Anytime a Star Trek show comes about, we keep waiting for the inevitable cameos by series icons. And no Star Trek actor looms larger over the franchise than William Shatner. The original James T. Kirk actor has never truly left the franchise’s orbit over the years. In fact, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds tried multiple times to bring William Shatner back to play an older version of Kirk every season, but could never make it happen.

During a recent interview, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman talked about the stories they wanted to tell during the show’s five seasons but couldn’t, for one reason or another, make happen. The most striking is a plotline that would have had William Shatner return to the role of Kirk for a guest appearance. This Kirk would have taken place in a timeline where Kirk remained in Depression-era New York with the woman he loved, following the events of The City on the Edge of Forever.

In that episode, Kirk travels back in time to prevent history from changing, resulting in a future where the Federation never existed. While there, he falls in love with a soup kitchen worker named Edith Keeler. However, he discovers that, to secure the future he knows, he has to allow Keeler to die in a traffic collision. It is one of the most memorable episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series. 

The interview doesn’t specify why they couldn’t return to this iconic episode in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, whether it was William Shatner not wanting to come back as Kirk or just not being able to fit the episode into the series' four (soon to be five) seasons. However, the showrunners say that they tried to make it happen every season and even worked on multiple scripts for it. 

“I think if you get to the end and there’s nothing left for you to want to do, then that’s more of a disappointment,” Kurtzman said of the various ideas they never got to use in Strange New Worlds. “I’m proud of every episode we’ve done, but I feel like the best dinners you come to don’t leave you feeling stuffed. They leave you wanting more.”

Space may be the final frontier, but there's no end to Popverse's love of the Star Trek universe. Hop aboard the starship Enterprise with our Star Trek watch order, explore strange new worlds with our upcoming Star Trek TV shows and movies list, seek out the new life of the franchise, and boldly go where no Star Trek film has ever gone before - with Quentin Tarantino?