Star Trek's William Shatner Wishes He Could Reshoot One Kirk Scene

In 1993, William Shatner still regularly appeared at "Star Trek" conventions and worked as often as he could. By 2024, he was voicing Keldor (who eventually becomes Skeletor) in "Masters of the Universe: Revolution" and was still hosting the paranormal documentary series "The UnXplained" on the History Channel. His last "Star Trek"-related gig was in 2013 when he played Admiral Kirk opposite host Seth MacFarlane at the Academy Awards. He also has directed several documentaries about "Star Trek," including "The Captains," "Get a Life!," and "Chaos on the Bridge." Even when he's not on-screen playing James T. Kirk, "Star Trek" has long been in Shatner's blood, and he has had plenty of opportunities to think about his craft, his character, and the scads of fans that still gather to see him speak.

Shatner's final major appearance as James T. Kirk, however, came back in 1994 with the release of "Star Trek Generations." That film, Trekkies can tell you, was a "passing the torch" event wherein Kirk — snarled in a temporal nexus — was able to meet Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) face-to-face. The pair then teamed up to stop a villain named Dr. Soren (Malcolm McDowell) from destroying a nearby star. The sequence saw Kirk leaping onto a collapsing bridge to retrieve a widget that would unveil Soren's missile, allowing Picard to destroy it.

The bridge collapsed under Kirk, however, and he tumbled to his death. He delivered his final words to Picard.

Shatner, in his new interview film "William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill" (partially transcribed by ScreenRant), admitted that he didn't like his performance during his death scene. Specifically, he feels the final two words Kirk utters — "Oh my" — didn't read quite the way he wanted them to.

In "Generations," Kirk's final moments come when he's pinned underneath the metal girders of the collapsed catwalk. A trickle of blood comes from the corner of his mouth, which is movie shorthand for inevitable death. Picard, having dispatched Soren, rushes over to check on Kirk. Kirk, knowing he is dying, asks Picard if they made a difference. Kirk was concerned that a comfortable retirement would rob him of his ability to be a hero. Picard says that yes, they did make a difference. Kirk relaxes, pleased that his final acts were heroic.

Kirk becomes reflective. He looks back over his life and merely says, "It was fun." He then looks into the middle distance, his life draining from him. His final words are a somewhat surprised "Oh my."

That "Oh my" has haunted Shatner for years. The line wasn't written by one of the "Generations" screenwriters Brannon Braga or Ron D. Moore, and Shatner says that he ad-libbed it. Was it a line of fear? A line of hope? Shatner eventually figured that it was a line of exhilaration. Kirk, he figured, loved heroism and adventure, and would look at death as another step into the unknown:

"I thought of Kirk as being so courageous in life that when he faced things that he didn't know about, like the strange, the weird ... the entities that the writers thought up, when he faced death, he would face death with a sense of adventure. 'Oh, what's going to happen now?' So I ad-libbed, 'Oh my.' And I wanted that 'Oh my' to be 'Oh my,' like, dreading it ... but, but looking forward to the adventure; somewhere in between, you know? And it would be very obvious to you what he was thinking."

But, Shatner said, he didn't quite nail it. The mixture of fear and adventure, he feels, didn't make it to the audience.

Shatner continued:

"I never quite hit it. I never quite got that nuance that I was looking for. I had another couple of takes, but they ... they didn't understand what I was doing. [...] [I wanted] awe and wonder. Every time [Kirk] faced an animal, an entity, he didn't say, 'Oh my' [with fear or disdain], he would say, 'Oh, my. Look at that. I wonder if it's going to eat me?' You know? I think that was his attitude."

In a later interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Shatner elucidated by saying that he didn't want Kirk's final moments to be fearful. He "thought [Kirk] would see death, an old man with the scythe on his shoulder, and look at it and wonder." Kirk has a reputation throughout pop culture as being reckless and brash, but looking back over the character, one typically finds a curious and judicious commander — one who approaches the unknown with more curiosity than suspicion. He kept a hand on his phaser, but he wasn't ever the first to draw.

Hence, Kirk would look death in the face with the same curiosity. Shatner wanted to communicate an "I wonder what this will be like" attitude.

As someone who has seen "Star Trek Generations" multiple times, I can see what Shatner means. The "Oh my" didn't communicate all of those ideas. Shatner delivered his line with as if it was a surprise. Like, "Oh crap, this is the real thing." Picard buried Kirk under a pile of rocks and left him to decompose on an uninhabited alien world called Veridian III. I wouldn't be until "Star Trek: Picard" in 2023 that it would be revealed that Kirk's body was salvaged. Wise. One doesn't want a human corpse messing with the local ecosystem.