Star Trek: 10 Characters Who Must Return (2023)

He might have been a bit of an idiot at the start, but he was the best damn dips**t we all came to love in the end. We recently discussed why Shaw should make a return in a divinely inspired article, but we're doubling down on this curmudgeonly character with his heart in the right place as we want, nay, need, more!

Didn't he die, I hear you cry?! Sure, he appeared to, but that's never stopped Star Trek before. There's also a long history of fans demanding that their favourite character return from the grave. In the 19th century, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle decided he was done with his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes ended up at the bottom end of the Reichenbach Falls. Reader reaction to his apparent demise was so extraordinarily unprecedented that Doyle brought Holmes back from the dead.

The singular difference between budding Victorian and 21st century fandom is a Twitter account. We could watch in real time as Shaw's popularity increased, with his instantly memeable one-liners flooding our feeds, and as the calls for Star Trek: Legacy reached their apotheosis.

Even if the character really is dead, he could still return. One of the most powerful scenes of the season was on the holodeck in No Win Scenario as Shaw confronted Picard over his Borg past. No offense to Stashwick, but with some timeline-appropriate de-aging, we could re-visit the (until now only briefly seen on-screen) battle of Wolf 359 and its aftermath from Shaw's perspective. His five-year captaincy of the Titan-A prior to his death would also make for an excellent spin-off series or standalone 'Long Trek'.