As we continue to enjoy the final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks and wait for the arrival of upcoming Star Trek shows, a welcome surprise popped up. A short film featuring a young William Shatner was uploaded to serve as an epilogue of sorts to the feature film Generations. De-aging technology is used to bring the classic Enterprise captain back to his younger years, and I both love and hate it.
I've gone back and forth on using this type of tech in Star Trek ever since Shatner said he'd be ok with AI being used for him after his death. He's an executive producer on this collaboration with OTOY and the Nimoy Estate. I appreciate that all parties involved consented to this ambitious project, but I still have things to say before we see this tech on any Trek show on the 2025 TV schedule.
I Think William Shatner's Return To Star Trek Was Done About As Well As It Could Be Done
As someone deeply critical of all attempts to use de-aging technology these days, I have to tip my hat to Unification for doing it the way I think is best. The brought in prolific Star Wars voice actor Sam Witwer to play the actual body of James T. Kirk (Lawrence Selleck for Spock), then used a combination of prosthetics and digital effects to polish off the look. As for the piece William Shatner contributed, his voice is heard in the short.
While I think there's an argument to be made there's more Sam Witwer than William Shatner in the performance, I think this is the best way to do it. De-aging the actual actor only does so much, as we've seen so many times. You can take the extensive amount of time to make Samuel L. Jackson look like he did in the '90s in Captain Marvel, but he's still going to move around like a man decades older than he is. I think the same would've happened with Shatner, who is 93.
The human body is biologically engineered to spot when something human is not human, which is why we experience that bizarre feeling of "uncanny valley." Therefore, it's always going to be very hard to fool the human eye, but credit where it's due, this looks pretty damn good.
Seeing The Faces of Leonard Nimoy And William Shatner's Characters Together Again Is Emotional And Weird
If this short didn't have the blessing of the estate of Leonard Nimoy, I might call the scene between his Spock and William Shatner's Kirk in bad taste. With that blessing, though, I can't help but smile and think about how nice it is to see these two share a screen again. It's a scene many Star Trek fans would've loved to have seen if the late original Spock actor was still around.
At the same time, a part of me feels wrong in enjoying the scene as much as I do. So much of what made Shatner's Kirk and Nimoy's Spock great for me is the real-life friendship these two shared later in life. If the appeal of this scene is seeing two actors back together and one is no longer living, I can't help but feel just a bit icky about that. It feels like my emotions are deliberately being played with at the expense of a person whose memory meant more to those close to him than it did me.
There is a part of me that thinks maybe it just needs to be normalized more. After all, I see plenty of fan art of these specific iterations of the characters, and I don't have such a strange reaction to it. Perhaps if it continues to happen in media, it'll be easier for me and others who have problems with it to embrace it. For now, though, I'm on the side of saying it feels weird, and maybe a little wrong.
I Still Don't Believe This Is Superior To The Recasting Method
As good as the effects look, and they look really good, it's hard to give the full green light to this kind of technology. Unification is very careful in how it presents the technology, in that it avoids some of the issues that can make it look a bit wonky. For example, no one is physically speaking in the movie, which can sometimes mess with the way the face looks in my opinion. It's also worth mentioning that this is only a little under 11 minutes in length, which is far less time than the average episode of Star Trek.
I don't think attempting to use this likeness for a full episode, series or movie in Star Trek would look great, and it seems the franchise's powers that be felt the same way. They tore off the Band-Aid of recasting major roles a long time ago, and if you were to ask who James T. Kirk is these days, you'd get the answer of either Chris Pine or Paul Wesley.
That's how it should be, in my opinion, and that's evident enough in seeing how limited other franchises like Star Wars have been in trying the other method. Sure, it was cool that Mark Hamill could return as Luke Skywalker for The Mandalorian, but it wasn't without controversy. I always wonder how much more Luke would've been utilized had the franchise just pulled the trigger on recasting him for the role and giving another actor a chance to shine.
All I can say is that I like what the new Captain Kirk actors have done since taking over the role. I'd much sooner debate about the strengths and weaknesses than whether something looks convincing enough, but I'm willing to admit my opinion could change as people continue to develop and work with this technology.
If all this talk made readers eager to revisit Star Trek: Generations for its 30th anniversary, it's available to stream right now with a Paramount+ subscription. Give it a watch or re-watch, as I recently did, and have a greater appreciation for it than I did a while back.
