10 Ways To Sneak Shatner Into The New Star Trek Movie

This has nothing to do with this article, but it's funny.

Okay, we’ve all heard J.J. Abrams explain why William Shatner isn’t in the new Star Trek movie. And we’ve all heard Shatner’s much-repeated pissed-offedness about this fact. But, as I mentioned this week on the latest episode of the Starbase 66 podcast, I have a sneaking Starfleet suspicion that all this mucking about with the timeline in the new movie will result in a brief Shatner cameo at the very end … Spock “making things right” with respect to his oldest and best friend.

It probably won’t happen that way. But thinking about Star Trek is currently what I do for a living, more or less, so I do have some strange theories sometimes. So if my Shatner idea doesn’t happen, maybe there will be other ways to get the greatest starship captain of all time into the movie. Here are some I’ve been tossing around:

1. Have Shatner play a cameo as an older member of Kirk’s family. Maybe he can be creepy Uncle Bill, the one with the stories; everyone laughs nervously, but they’re secretly glad when he passes out in the recliner.
2. For that matter, he could play Kirk’s grandfather. Tangent time: the aborted Star Trek: The Beginning script included the nifty detail that Admiral Forrester, from Enterprise, was Kirk’s maternal great-grandfather. That’s kind of neat.
3. Let’s have young Chris Pine get a glimpse of the future, seeing himself (played by Shatner) in old age. Chris Pine can then display his acting chops by wincing convincingly.
4. Shatner could play a completely unrelated character, like an admiral or something. He just happens to look like Kirk, nudge nudge, wink wink.
5. Put a priceline.com billboard outside Starfleet Academy.
6. Hitchcock him into the movie: just have him walk by a window or something.
7. How about an audio cameo? An old episode of Buck Rogers (the Gil Gerard version) had a scene where Buck arrived at the spaceport just as Captain Christopher Pike was paged over the intercom. That was fun. Sadly, I was the only kid in Canada who got it.
8. Subliminally. Have microsecond-long Shatner faces flash onscreen, tucked away where you don’t notice. That way, when the movie’s over, you’ll have the sudden urge to watch The Original Series again. Then again, you may get that anyway. No, you’d get the sudden urge to buy Boston Legal box sets.
9. Slip in a passing reference to serial slasher Michael Myers.
10. Hey, they could just have William Shatner playing himself. Maybe Baby Kirk was inspired to steal that car (in the trailer) after watching holographic reruns of T.J. Hooker.

Lost: John Locke

(Indulge me. As we near the Season 5 premiere of Lost, I’m going to run through the current crop of main characters. There are spoilers.)

He’s the hunter, the philosopher, the warrior and the leader. Despite having one of the best-fleshed-out life stories on Lost, John Locke has been an enigma since day one. Remember that? Sitting on the beach, in the aftermath of the crash, Locke grinned, an orange peel over his teeth.

Terry O’Quinn won an Emmy for this role in season 2, and it was well-deserved. This veteran character actor nailed the part, turning what could have been a macho caricature into a textured, multilayered role that continues to surprise, season after season.

Locke has had a long and complex journey, both on the island and off. And it has always been fascinating to watch. As Locke evolved from hunter to heretic, from hero to villain to … whatever he is, he faced it all with an open-minded optimism he rarely displayed when he lived in the real world and life was kicking him in the bag on a regular basis.

Our last glimpse of John Locke was a shocking one: he was Jeremy Bentham, lying in a coffin in California. But that’s three years after the events on the island, and as far as we know, he’s also there, assuming leadership of The Others. So there’s a lot of Locke’s story yet to tell.

Highlights:

• Every single Locke flashback. What a life! It’s a miracle he’s able to even smile.
• That first moment with the knife in Season 1: “We hunt.”
• His excavation of the hatch and his faith in the button. No matter what happened, Locke stuck to his goal: solve the mystery, save the world.
• Blowing up the submarine. Or did he? We never actually see that happen, and Locke is just the type to stash the sub somewhere else for later use.
• His ability to walk is, of course, the biggest miracle in Locke’s life. And it has never been explained or even really addressed. Whatever happened to make this paraplegic whole again will likely form the crux of the explanation of what this island actually is.

Problems:

• Again, it’s the numbers. They were such a priority for so long, and they’ve been ignored for two seasons.
• How did Locke end up outside and okay after the Swan station was destroyed?
• He appears to have failed every test the island has given him, and yet he’s still given leadership?
• With the limited time left for Lost, is it even possible to tie up all Locke’s dangling storyline threads?