William Shatner Has No Plans For A ‘Star Trek: Picard’-Type Series

Williams Shatner is impressed with the work Patrick Stewart is doing in his CBS All-Access series, Star Trek: Picard. That doesn’t mean the man who played a major role in making Gene Roddenberry’s creation being so popular wants to dive back into his old Star Fleet uniform. The veteran actor, who is still best known for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek, was asked over the weekend whether he ever thinks about doing a show that would focus on Kirk’s career after his run on the Starship Enterprise was over.

One of Shatner’s followers tweeted at him and asked whether the actor thought anyone might think about doing a series like Picard for him. Tweeting back, he made it clear he had zero interest in that kind of project.

“No, I think Kirk’s story is pretty well played out at this point.”

Notwithstanding whether or not Shatner would want to do the kind of thing Stewart is doing in portraying Jean-Luc Picard once again, there is the little problem of Kirk’s death in Star Trek: Generations. While Stewart’s storyline in The Next Generation and the succeeding movies left enough room to tell the story of his life post-Star Fleet, Generations tied up Kirk’s life quite nicely.

This isn’t the first time Shatner has shot down talk of his returning to Star Trek, either. Comic Book had interviewed him in February of last year and he was just as certain his days of galaxy hopping were over. He also expressed some awe at the fact that Stewart is willing to go through the grind of a television series again.

“Resurrect. You’d have to resurrect me, Shatner, in order to do the daily. I don’t know what Patrick is doing doing that. Doing a series is debilitating for a young guy, for a 25-year-old, which I was doing when I was 25 years old. It’s a physical wrecker, it’s a mental wrecker, and it’s a homewrecker ’cause you’re working 14, 18 hours a day. And in the last series I did, Boston Legal, I had, in rush hour, a two-hour commute. So add that. So no, I would not be interested in doing a series, per se.”

While Shatner has moved onto other projects over the years, there’s another reason why a show focused on Kirk would be problematic. He’s no longer the only actor who has played the character — in the rebooted movies, Chris Pine has taken over the role. Going back to Shatner as James Tiberius Kirk would likely cause confusion among fans of the series, at the very least.