"So now Captain Kirk is seeing death. How is he going to react?"
Before succumbing to his mortal wounds at the end of Star Trek Generations (1994), Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is actually given an opportunity in the screenplay to share a few final words with Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) on Veridian III. And after telling Picard that “it was fun” to help him defeat Dr. Soran (Malcolm McDowell), Kirk stares into what seems to be nothingness and whispers, “Oh my.”
So, what was Captain Kirk thinking and feeling when he uttered those two powerful words? Well, here’s how Shatner breaks down the iconic character’s final moments in a new interview via Esquire: “Here you have this heroic character, and suddenly he realizes that thing in front of him is coming his way and he’s going to die. So now Captain Kirk is seeing death. How is he going to react?”
Shatner, who first portrayed (in production order) the USS Enterprise’s commander in The Original Series episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (1966), continued by saying:
“Well, I forgot what they wrote, but it wasn’t, ‘Oh my.’ So, I thought he would react the way he is seeing all these weird things and the planets they visited, all the years of discovering new civilizations and new worlds. And he would react with awe and wonder. My God, here comes a new adventure.”
Kirk falling to his death near the conclusion of Generations remains one of the most controversial decisions ever made in Star Trek’s long and storied 60-year history.
Unfortunately, unlike Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who died in The Wrath of Khan (1982) and was resurrected in The Search for Spock (1984), Shatner’s iconic version of Kirk would not return — and he has been absent from the franchise for over 30 years now.
I love that Shatner came up with Kirk’s final realization at the moment of his death in Generations. And I’m so glad that the captain’s original death in the 1994 film was scraped at the last moment. Can you imagine Kirk actually going out by being shot in the back? Well, that’s what Dr. Soran was supposed to do: come up behind him and simply blast away.
What do you think about Shatner’s breakdown of Captain Kirk’s death? Share your thoughts and comments with us on the Redshirts Always Die Facebook and X pages. And for those who haven’t seen it, or would like to watch it again, Star Trek Generations is now streaming on Paramount+ and is available to buy or rent on the usual VOD platforms.
Live long and prosper, Trekkies!
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