Star Trek: 10 Biggest Takeaways From 'William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill'
3. The Age Of De-Aging
William Shatner has written the return of Captain Kirk from the grave in his novel The Return — second of 'The Shatnerverse' — but he hasn't played Kirk since his death at the end of Star Trek: Generations. Whilst out promoting You Can Call Me Bill, Shatner told The Canadian Press/La Presse Canadienne that he would take on the role of Kirk again, if the idea was right:
It's almost impossible but it was a great role and so well-written and if there were a reason to be there not just to make a cameo appearance, but if there were a genuine reason for the character appearing, I might consider it.
Shatner is also now the new spokesperson for OTOY, the cloud-based graphics company which has for many years collaborated with The Roddenberry Estate "to preserve Gene Roddenberry's Legacy" through "The Roddenberry Archive".
Most recently, OTOY, Paramount Game Studios and Roddenberry Entertainment have brought 'The Archive' in hyper-immersive form (including ship and station walk-throughs) to Apple Vision Pro. OTOY had previously produced the stunning 765874 "Archive concept video series," the third of which, Regeneration, was based on aspects of Shatner's Ashes of Eden novel — the first of 'The Shatnerverse' — and followed Spock as he journeyed to Kirk's cairn on Veridian III.
It just so happens, then, that OTOY specialises in de-aging technology, and, to put it bluntly, even de-aging to the degree that it can bring an actor back from the dead. "[It] takes years off of your face, so that in a film you can look 10, 20, 30, 50 years younger than you are," Shatner told The Canadian Press, going on to postulate a possibility for Kirk's return:
A company that wants to freeze my body and my brain for the future […] 'We've got Captain Kirk's brain frozen here.' There's a scenario. 'Let's see if we can bring back a little bit of this, a little salt, a little pepper. Oh, look at that. Here comes Captain Kirk!'
In canon, we know exactly where Kirk's body is by the year 2401. It's at Daystrom Station, along with a Genesis Device and an attack tribble.