Thank Mark Waid's podcast for the heads-up about this failed pilot starring a pre-Trek Shatner and pre-Batman West. Just think, if this show had been picked up, there might never have been a series about humanity boldly going where no man had gone before...!

As writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci told us earlier this year, Shatner's appearance wasn't on the same scale as Leonard Nimoy's, but instead a recorded message that Nimoy's Spock would've presented to Zachary Quinto's younger version of the character at the end of the movie. TrekMovie has the complete text of Shatner's scenes, but here's a taste... including another Original Series cameo:

INT. CORRIDOR – CONTINUOUS

As Spock Prime walks off down the corridor, he passes
right by a man conferring with a nurse - the man pauses,
turns… it's SAREK. Suddenly overcome by a feeling that
the stranger who's just passed him is… oddly familiar.

KIRK/SHATNER (V.O.)
I suppose I'd always imagined us…
outgrowing Starfleet together. Watching
life swing us into our Emeritus years…

INT. STARBASE ONE – HANGAR – ETERNAL NIGHT

MUSIC BUILDING - glass walls reveal THE ENTERPRISE at
dock, UTILITY CRAFTS floating around it, repairing.
Standing at attention in rows, THE ENTERPRISE CREW -
over four hundred of them wearing DRESS UNIFORMS - TRACK
DOWN the faces, all proud:

KIRK/SHATNER (V.O.)
I look around at the new cadets now and
can't help thinking… has it really been
so long? Wasn't it only yesterday we
stepped onto the Enterprise as boys?
That I had to prove to the crew I
deserved command… and their respect?

And we STOP ON YOUNG KIRK. Composed, focused, proud. A
man. And to every fan's delight, finally wearing his
YELLOW SHIRT.

Go and read the whole thing, and see if you don't get slightly choked up at the end.

Exclusive: Read The Star Trek 2009 Scene Written For William Shatner [TrekMovie]

While Star Trek bascially depended on Nimoy's involvement to work, at least for the writers, Shatner was nowhere to be found in the reimagining of the Trek lore.

Abrams explained to reporters, at the Trek DVD junket last week, that one of the hardest decisions for him was not to include William Shatner in the film — however, it just wasn't logical in the big scope of the story and where on the timeline they wanted to set the movie.

The idea ... was a forgone conclusion, we wanted him in the movie. The problem was his character dies onscreen in one of the Trek films and because we decided very early on we wanted to adhere to Trek canon as best we could. ... The required mechanations to get Shatner into the movie would have been very difficult to do given a story where he was himself and also give him the kind of part he would be happy with. It was this thing where it would have felt like a gimmick in order to get Shatner into the movie, which would have honestly, to me, have been distracting.

Sure, they could have set the film before "Generations," but then what would the story have been? I concede it would have been totally possible, but it would not have been the same film.

He went on to explain that the special feature delves into the very issue of how do you try to get him in the film? How do you "put him in the movie when we want him in it so badly, and yet the story" just doesn't fit in the context of the movie?

No word on whether the scene Orci and Kurtzman originally wrote with Shatner's Kirk Prime in it is discussed in the Conundrum special, however.

Abrams definitely doesn't sound like he's against the idea of including Shatner in a later film, even saying the two have a lunch date planned for the near future.

"Would it have been fun to have him in the movie? Of course. Would it have been great to work with him? No doubt."

On November 17, Paramount is releasing the highest-grossing Star Trek movie of all time on DVD and BluRay. The DVD version has considerably less than the BluRay — the latter version has "branching pods" embedded in the special features. Think of it like a non-hidden Easter Egg, a special featurette within the features.

Disc One of the two-disc DVD version contains the film, along with commentary from J.J. Abrams, Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, executive producer Bryan Burk and producer Damon Lindelof. There's also a special called "A New Vision," featuring Abrams' style and drive to make the film real and relatable, as well as a gag reel.

In addition, the second disc is of course more fun stuff, including four features, DVD-ROM accessible content (free trials of Star Trek D-A-C for XBOX 360, PC and PlayStation network), and deleted scenes.

The deleted scenes include optional commentary and are:

o Spock Birth
o Klingons Take Over Narada
o Young Kirk, Johnny and Uncle Frank
o Amanda and Sarek Argue After Spock Fights
o Prison Interrogation and Breakout
o Sarek Gets Amanda
o Dorm Room and Kobayashi Maru (original version)
o Kirk Apologizes to the Green Girl
o Sarek Sees Spock

Abrams said that he was always thinking about the DVD, saying he was constantly making sure things were being filmed and recorded specifically for the DVD, getting video crews in the mix as early as possible.

And that prevalence of cameras is wildly apparent on the Blu-Ray edition.

The first disc of the Blu-Ray edition has the film and the same commentary as the DVD, as well as a BD Live feature giving viewers access to the latest NASA news about space. It has an RSS feed of the news as well as a space pic of the day. The second disc has the same specials as the DVD's disc two above, plus six (!) others and those crazy "branching pods."

Disc two of the Blu-Ray adds on these special features.

• Starships - An in-depth look at the creation of the film's starships and vessels.
• Planets - How the art department created the look for planets such as Delta Vega.
• Props and Costumes - Paying homage to the original series was very important with this update, and here's how they did it.
• Ben Burtt and the Sounds of Star Trek - Sound designer Ben Burtt shares the music he created for the newest Trek.
• Gene Roddenberry's Vision - The vision of Gene Roddenberry as told by J.J. Abrams, Leonard Nimoy, previous Star Trek writers and producers, and scientific consultant Carolyn Porco.
• Starfleet Vessel Simulator -Here you can see a 360˚ model of the Enterprise and the Narada including some looks inside as well some fun firing their weapons onscreen.

Most of the features contain extra content within. "To Boldly Go" contains some of these mini-specials, including "The Shatner Conundrum," accessible while watching the overarching main special or by the menu, as seen above.

There is also a digital copy of the movie included with both releases.

In any case, suffice it to say any Trekkie worth his or her weight who doesn't own a Blu-Ray player (especially this poor college girl) is definitely pining for one right now.

The End of The World Isn't The Worst Thing That Can Happen

The Twilight Zone loved to threaten us with the end of the world over and over again. And every time good character or bad, the end of the world is always eclipsed by something even worse happening. Take the little man with the huge glasses, Burgess Meridith. All he wanted was peace and quiet so he could read, then the world ends and he's the last man on the face of the Earth with plenty of reading material. Then he breaks his giant coke-bottle glasses. Even fake end of the world can get one-upped by our neighbor's gusto to break down our doors to get into the only shelter.

Aliens Are Dicks

Whether they want to trick us into coming home with them so they can cook us for dinner, gloating that they're about to colonize our planet right under our noses, or just shooting us with tiny guns, aliens are always jerks. Even when they're just dressed as aliens and from our home planet. They are not to be trusted, and nine out of ten times are merely just messing with you. Meet an alien? Turn the other way, or you may wind up in their zoo.

If You Can't Be Good, Be Clever

Bad people getting their comeuppances is pretty much a Twilight Zone mainstay. So either be a good person, or you'll either die, or spend your life regretting it. Especially, don't steal. But if you can't be good, be smart. When someone tells you, you can get a large sum of money for wearing a mask until midnight, and then that person dies, that's a "too good to be true" deal. And you'll probably be paying for it, forever. Also should you discover a great gimmick, like a camera that tells the future and just made you a ton of money, don't get greedy. Take the first pay-out and call it a night. A good person wouldn't try and hide a dead hitchiker, but a clever person wouldn't have hit them in the first place.

Children And Other Small Things Are Evil And Must Be Destroyed

Kids always have god-like abilities and/or vengeful dolls. There's nothing good about children or their toys. This scene from "The Good Life" still haunts me.

Machines, Robots, And Technology In General Are Evil. Smash It All With A Hammer

Machines can erase your memory and leave you stuck in some godforsaken town. They can keep you locked up in a cave for years pretending to be a human, they can even fall in love with you and ruin your chances with another human. Avoid machines, computers, and especially airplanes. They are the devil. And never ever get on a plane with William Shatner. Note: the episode "From Agnes With Love" is also where I learned the term "sex machine."

War Is Hell

Anything and everything can happen during wartime. You can be time-warped to another dimension where you find out you past self was a big fat coward or. one day you're fighting on your side the next morning you wake up, and you're the enemy. Also, you can never leave the war behind you it will always come back to haunt you. So, no thanks.

During an appearance with William Shatner at this weekend's Dragon*Con, Nimoy to the crowd,

There are no plans for me to return for the second movie. I think the Spock character is very well established as portrayed by Zachary Quinto. And I think if you saw the movie Bill, you'd say the same of Chris Pine.

Shatner, channeling his Boston Legal character Denny Crane, responded with a quick "Bullshit," although he apparently spent a large part of their shared panel mock-pouting about not being in the JJ Abrams remake. Some of the panel has already ended up online:

No Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek Sequel [Reelz Channel]

I don't know what's more adorable: Shatner trying to do the Vulcan salute, or Conan getting so angry that Kirk can't do it, he jumps up on his desk. Is Shat totally inebriated? Mayhaps, but do we ever know when he's sober? And who cares he's too charming for words. Shatner needs his own show that isn't on the "Bio" channel, just a room with two chairs and booze, he can bring whomever he wants drink and chat, I'd watch it. Chris Pine, you may make us think strange, torture porn lip licking thoughts, but you can't pull off this type of tipsy suave.

The entire guest is spot below:

To be fair, Abrams isn't saying that Shatner will be in the next movie. (And it's early enough that if interviewers asked, "Could Gracie the whale and Squire Trelaine dance together in the next movie?" Abrams' response would probably be, "Maybe.") But still, this is the first indication from Abrams that a long-awaited Shatner cameo could happen in the next movie. And he even has a rationale for it.

Abrams told MTV:

"The point of creating this independent timeline is to not have the restrictions we had coming into this one. And one of those restrictions was that Kirk was dead."

The second name that came up was whether or not they'd be bringing back the most beloved villain in all Trekkerdom, Khan.

As for Khan, many people believe that since Kirk never stranded him on Ceti Alpha V, the character would no longer be the same villain we saw in Star Trek 2. But Abrams argues that it is still possible to feature Khan as the villain in the Trek sequels: "[Kirk and Khan] exist - and while their history may not be exactly as people are familiar with, I would argue that a person's character is what it is. Certain people are destined to cross paths and come together, and Khan is out there … even if he doesn't have the same issues."

Well at least it's good to know that they are toying with the idea of bringing him back. I feel like no matter the time rift, Kirk and Khan are destined to be enemies. If not in one way, then in another.

Before I start, let me be clear: I loved the new Trek, numerous plot holes and all, and pretty much the whole movie worked for me, not just as Star Trek, but as a movie. I would have probably liked it better if it'd used all that inventiveness and emotional charge to create a totally new space-opera franchise, but it actually made me think Trek still had some lingering potential. But the one thing that bugged me was this new Kirk, who didn't just seem like the admittedly dickish Shatner Kirk as a young man, but a much more annoying frat-boy-ish version.

It's also funny, because I would not have described myself as an admirer of Shatner's version of Kirk. Shatner's Kirk was abrasive, mean to his underlings, bombastic, prone to insanely long speeches, burst into fits of laughter in his command chair for no reason, and cast sleazy illuminated-eye gazes at any woman who wandered into his orbit. I had a couple of bosses who reminded me way too much of Kirk, which is one reason I made him one of the seven types of bad bosses in Star Trek.

But over time, Shatner's portrayal has grown on me again, and I've regained a bit of the Shatner-love I felt as a child. The way he purrs "Steady as she goes" when the Enterprise is maneuvering into a tight spot. That uplifting inspirational message he leaves for Spock and McCoy to get them to stop bickering when he's presumed dead in "The Tholian Web." Sure, Shatner was a dick, but he was also a leader. I can't believe I'm praising Shatner's Kirk, and I'm going to stop now.

It's entirely possible that PineKirk will grow on me, either in the inevitable repeat viewings of this movie, or in the also-inevitable sequels. But for now, I have a few major problems with him: 1) He's kind of a meh James Dean clone. 2) He has a capital-D Destiny. 3) He's not as nerdy as Shatner's Kirk. 4) He gets a totally undeserved promotion, because the people in charge just like him.

1) He's a rebel without a cause.

The new movie makes a pretty strong case for Spock being a unique character in the history of science fiction... and meanwhile, it turns Kirk into a cookie-cutter James Dean ripoff. It's all shorthand: the slouch, the motorcycle, the brawling, the way his voice tends to creep into the soprano register when he's being extra dickish. The New Yorker put it best when it said Chris Pine

struggles with a screenplay, written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, that could have been downloaded from a software program entitled "Make Your Own Annoying Rebel." Sample line: Kirk is hailed as "the only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest" by Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who exhorts him to put aside his brawling and enlist in Starfleet. Jim rolls up next morning on a motorbike, hung over, with bruises from the night before, as surly as Steve McQueen; but roll up he does.

Actually, Pine's Kirk aims for James Dean and hits Fonzie instead. He's a little too jolly for Dean, a little too self-consciously "bad boy." He's more of a class clown, and you can see why everyone thinks he's just trying to get attention again, when he bursts into the Bridge to announce that the Vulcan disaster is a trap. I fully understood why Spock wanted to dump the smug jerk on the first ice planet he went past.

2) He has a capital-D Destiny.

One thing I liked about the original Captain Kirk was that he was the best captain in Starfleet, not becuase he'd been anointed as a young man, but because he was just the best. It was a singularly old-school idea of heroism: He came up through the ranks, he passed the same tests as everybody else, and he just happened to turn out the best.

In the new movie, though, Kirk's great destiny is pounded into us, and it's like a pillar of light singles him out from amongst the riffraff in that Iowa bar. It's the boring old "Hero's Journey" all over again, with a heavy dose of Luke Skywalker. Some people are just special, and they're better than you and me from the beginning, just because they're so special. Captain Pike pretty much turns to the camera and tells us that James Kirk has the mark of greatness upon him. Later on, it's Leonard Nimoy's turn to intone that Kirk will become the greatest thing since self-slicing bread.

To be fair, though, the movie pokes fun at this idea a bit - Nimoy tells Kirk it's his "destiny" to go back to the Enterprise alone, but later in the movie, Nimoy basically winks and admits he only said that because he knew Kirk would like it.

The hammering on Kirk's awesome destiny is also part of the fetish for origin stories, as the New Yorker piece points out. It's like Kirk isn't just a guy, he's a superhero, like Spider-Man. And he's chosen for something greater than just making sandwiches in an Iowa sandwich shop, because he's special. Weirdly, the more the movie tries to tell me how special Kirk is, the less special I actually think he is.

3) He's just not as nerdy as Shatner's Kirk.

How many times did you hear Shatner gush about how much he enjoyed reading someone's work at the Academy? Seriously, it's in like every other episode. Usually, to be fair, Kirk gushes about reading someone's work at the Academy and then punches him five minutes later. (Well, at least that was true for Captain Garth. In the case of the guy who decided to turn an entire alien race into Nazis, Kirk just has McCoy shoot him up with heroin or something.) But the point is, Kirk was a nerd. And maybe even a bit of a wonk. He loved to geek out about computers, strategy, the difference between a soldier and a diplomat, poetry and physics. (Let's not even get into how he was pwned by a skinny Irish guy wearing a blue rayon raver shirt.)

Pine's version, meanwhile, looks like... well, I mentioned "frat boy" already, didn't I? That's pretty much what I keep coming back to. He just sort of oozes self-regard and know-nothingness. Watching him lurch around the screen, you can't help imagining him strong-arming Chekov into doing his homework for him. Here's a telling sign: in the scene where Kirk is actually trying to provoke Spock into showing emotion so he can take over command, you can't really see any difference in Kirk's behavior. It's not like he suddenly becomes more obnoxious. He can't, because his obnoxiousness dial has been turned all the way up, right from the start.

Oh, and I'm just going to come out and say it: the way he cheats on the Kobayashi Maru was not brilliant, it was just dickish. I always figured "reprogramming the simulation" involved adding some clever loophole. Not just adding a game cheat that turned all the Klingons into Klingoffs.

4) He gets a totally undeserved promotion.

Actually, he gets two. First he gets bumped up from "academically suspended cadet" to "first officer," when the Enterprise is still full of people better qualified than him. (I know the crew is mostly cadets, but Sulu is right there. So is Uhura. They, at least, finished Starfleet.) And then he promotes himself, to Captain. He starts sitting in the Captain's chair before he's even made his power-grab.

The moment that's in all the trailers, where Bones says "We've got no captain, and no first officer to replace him," and Kirk says "Yeah we do," then sits in the chair, is the worst. It doesn't feel like Kirk finally stepping into the role he belongs in - the authority he's earned - it just feels like a self-centered jackass making a power grab.

There's something fundamentally unsympathetic about watching a self-satisfied weasel get a promotion he didn't earn. It's just hard to get around that, really.

So what's the deal?

So why is the new Kirk such a lout? We've been wondering for months - since it was one of the movie's main selling points, in all the trailers and promotional materials. "Now with a douchier Kirk!" Back in November, we thought we had an answer: in this new timeline, Kirk was mistreated by his Uncle Frank.

Last fall, an actor named Brad William Henke went around giving interviews in which he said he played Kirk's Uncle Frank, who raised Kirk after his dad died on board the U.S.S. Kelvin. And Henke hinted that Uncle Frank was an alcoholic, who subjected young James Kirk to torments worthy of Gul Madred, the "five lights" guy. And that's why Kirk felt the need to trash Uncle Frank's pricess Corvette, and that's why Kirk winds up a brawling barfly who needs a motivational speech to get him to join Starfleet.

Except, of course, Henke isn't in the movie. There is an Uncle Frank, who's played by Greg Grunberg, and consists only of a voice yelling at Kirk about destroying his priceless car. So scratch that explanation.

The movie, as screened, doesn't really replace the "abusive Uncle Frank" backstory with anything else, except the vague hints that Kirk grew up without a real father. But judging from all the interviews Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have given, it's pretty clear that they just think this is who Kirk is/was. Shatner's Kirk started out as a know-nothing moron, and then matured somehow into the slightly more cerebral version we saw on television.

I'm sure people will accuse me of being a Star Trek fan who's annoyed that the new Kirk doesn't live up to the old Kirk. And there's maybe a bit of that here. But I'd say at least 80 percent of my annoyance with the new Kirk just comes from a general dislike for seeing douchebags on screen. And a distaste for the weaselly generation of man-boy heroes represented by Tobey Maguire, Shia LaBoeuf, and now Chris Pine. (Although Pine is more self-satisifed than either Maguire or LaBoeuf, he shares the same weird "grinning and talking in a high-pitched voice" thing with them.) It reminds me of the early 1990s, when ever female hero had to have "attitude," which translated to "pouting and making speeches about how boys are dumb." Now it's the guys who have "attitude," and it's just as annoying.

And it's especially galling in a science fiction movie, which ought to be at least somewhat, you know, about science. Having a hero who seems so profoundly uninterested in ideas is a bit of a downer.

In our exclusive interview with Star Trek writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, we managed to pick their brain as to what landed on the cutting-room floor during rewrites. The most shocking was the actual Shatner scene.

Alex Kurtzman: We had a scene with Shatner, and that ended up going.

Roberto Orci: Right, we had a scene with Shatner.

Did that even get tossed around at all?

Orci: We wrote it, it was in the script.

Kurtzman: The very last scene when Spock and Spock meet each other, finally. And elder Spock is convincing young Spock that he couldn't interfere, because it would have diverted [Kirk and Spock] away from their friendship. And that their friendship is the key to the whole sort of shebang.

Orci: He gave him a recorded message from Kirk.

Kurtzman: He [elder Spock] said, "Don't take my word for it." And he handed him [younger Spock] a little holographic device and it projected Shatner. It was basically a Happy Birthday wish knowing that Spock was going to go off to Romulus, and Kirk would probably be dead by the time...

Orci: It turned into a voiceover, at the end of the movie.

Kurtzman: So It was a nod too, but it ultimately felt like a cameo, in a way that wasn't.

Orci: I still liked it [Laughs].

Wow, I really wouldn't have had a problem with this scene as described. I'm sad Shatner wasn't in the final version, I could have done with a little less Nimoy by the conclusion in any case. Oh well, maybe Shatner will appear in the next one. But that's not the only thing that was cut from the script. According to the writers, they had a scene of Spock playing the Vulcan lute, and his mother, that got axed. And they had written a young love Kirk moment. We would have met the lovely Carol Marcus, who actually had Kirk's son David in the original series, as a child.

Orcir described it as, "this whole Forrest Gump, young Kirk growing up near Carol Marcus, thing." Which would have been very sweet, I'm sure, but then ruined the whole, "I'm a drunk jerk" image for twenty-something Kirk years later.

While Star Trek's original comic run, which lasted from 1967 through 1978 from publisher Gold Key, may have often seemed like the work of people who has never seen the show (In part because its artist had really never seen the show; he was working off publicity shots and his imagination the whole time), it had a certain charm; look at the image at the top of this post, for example, and tell me that you don't wish that you'd seen it happen in the TV show, just to watch William Shatner acting like a man under voodoo attack. Mostly, though, the charm was that the stories were goofy; not for nothing is Chris Sims' list of The 11 Most Ridiculous Moments In Star Trek Comics mostly made up of Gold Key stories (Especially that awesome shower scene). But when Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released, the comics started appearing from Marvel and DC, and being worked on by fans... and that's when things started to get good. Or, at least, goodesque. Unconvinced? Keep reading.

The Stories The Movies Should've Done
Don't get me wrong; I loved the original Star Trek movies as much as the next man - Well, aside from Star Trek V, obviously; I have some taste - but DC's 1980s comics did manage to tell a couple of stories that really should've been coming soon to a theater near you. For example, the Mirror Universe Enterprise invading our reality:
Yes, that's right; Evil Kirk just slapped Regular Kirk's face. Just to show how evil he is. There was also the pre-Star Trek VI "Trial of James T. Kirk," in which our favorite Starfleet Captain has to deal with finding out that the price of intergalactic peace with the Klingons is going on trial for thirty years of recklessly disobeying orders, complete with cameos and shoutouts to numerous episodes of the original series. Hey, it could've been a warm-up for Boston Legal.

The Stories The Movies Couldn't Have Done
The comics were also, often, home to stories too small for the movie screen... which often translated as "stories about characters other than Kirk or Spock." For example, Doctor McCoy meeting up with the daughter who'd rejected him:
Or a Harold Pinter-inspired (No, really) look back at Scotty's love life, complete with awkward, unconvincing accents:
We were also given the final tale of the Enterprise's original five year mission, the return of Kirk's dead son, spotlights for Uhura and Sulu (Alas, Chekhov always kind of got the shitty end of the stick even in the comics) and all manner of Klingons, Romulans and Vulcans. The comics even managed to almost give Saavik a personality. Almost.

The Stories That No-One Should've Done
Okay, admittedly, it wasn't all gold. Occasionally, there would still be the occasional clunker. Like, for example, this:
Worst of all would be when creators would try and recapture the whimsy and sense of wonder of the original series and fail badly. After all, Tribbles are one thing (sadly), but there's never any excuse for gnomes:
Let's move on quickly, shall we?

The Guest-Stars! The Guest-Stars! The Guest-Stars!
Of course, one of the benefits of making Trek without actors is that you can always get the guest-stars that you want, regardless of whether they're available. For example, here's "Sweeney," a bounty hunter who was pretty much just John Cleese with goggles:
The guest stars didn't even need to be alive; here are some famous historical figures about to beat the crap out've the Enterprise crew:
Not that every historical figure advocated violence, of course:
More than anyone else, though, Trek comics allowed guest stars that would be impossible without ridiculous and unconvincing amounts of technology. I mean, here's 1960 William Shatner meeting 1980s William Shatner:
Or what about the 1960s Enterprise being helmed by Jean-Luc Picard?
That said, it doesn't get any better than this:
If JJ happens to be reading this, all I'm saying is: Imagine the box office if you managed to make a movie that crossed Trek over with the X-Men franchise. Hell, never mind the money; imagine the lens flares.

1. Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG-1)
While pretty much the entire team has died and come back, Daniel wins the prize for doing it the most. He gets shot, he gets radiation poisoning, he gets killed, he gets killed again. And then again. And then again. You know, it's hardly any wonder he's gotten compared to Kenny from South Park.

2. Ellen Ripley (the Alien movies)
As far as resurrections go, Ellen doesn't totally adhere to the strictest definition. But when she's brought back as a clone in Alien Resurrection, it's in order to bring Sigourney Weaver back. This time with enhanced strength and acidic blood. So she's not only back, but she's also even more badass than she was before. (Which actually seems to be a trend with scifi resurrections.)

3. Captain Jack Harkness (Doctor Who and Torchwood)
In "The Parting of the Ways," the finale of Series 1, Jack is killed by the Daleks, but is brought back by Rose Tyler, who's essentially ingested the power of the time vortex, making her pretty much all-powerful. When she brings him back to life, however, she kind of overdoes it, and now Captain Jack cannot die.

4. Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
In the hundredth episode, "The Gift," Buffy sacrifices herself for her sister Dawn. After she's been dead for five months, she's brought back by her friends in "Bargaining." Whoever said you can't get by with a little help from your friends?

5. Charlotte "Chuck" Charles (Pushing Daisies)
Really, every single dead person Ned touches comes back to life. (Remember the Resurrection Glove in Torchwood? That's basically Ned, only Ned bakes pie too. And has a few more rules about how long he's allowed to keep the dead alive.) Well, he breaks those rules to let his dead childhood sweetheart, Chuck, remain in the land of the living, making her the most permanently resurrected character on the show.

6. Pretty Much Every Dead Superhero Ever
It would take forever to even tip the iceberg here. I figure it's a pretty fair assumption that if a superhero's died, they've also come back, maybe more than once. And if they haven't, you just have to wait a few years and they will. (Or they'll somehow manage to keep showing up in death. Exhibit A: The Dibnys.) Superman, Jean Grey, Batman, Jason Todd (Robin II), Hal Jordan (Green Lantern I), and on and on and on . . . No wonder they say death is a revolving door in comics.

7. The Iron Giant (The Iron Giant)
Now, once you open the list to robots, it gets a little messy. You can, after all, repair and rebuild them. (You have the technology.) In this case, however, the Giant sacrifices himself in order to prevent the entire town getting destroyed by a nuclear missile from the USS Nautilus sent to destroy the Giant. Several months pass, and everyone thinks the Iron Giant is dead, but we see him in pieces at Langjökull glacier in Iceland, slowly calling all his parts together, ostensibly to reassemble. (On top of that, I still hold that voicing the Iron Giant is Vin Diesel's greatest role to date.)

8. Sam and Dean Winchester (Supernatural)
In the finale episodes of Season 2, Sam is killed by Jake, another "special" kid ("special" being "potentially demonic"), who really does think he's doing the right thing. Dean, however, feels that killing Sam is decidedly the wrong thing, so he makes a deal with a Crossroads Demon: Sam back to life in exchange for one year left of life for Dean. That's Winchester Resurrection #1. Unfortunately, Dean only has a year left to live, so at the end of Season 3, he, er, dies. Lucky for him, however, he gets dragged back by an angel named Castiel. (Unlucky for him, it's because it's his job to stop the Apocalypse.) And that's Winchester Resurrection #2. (Actually, it's probably also the second or third time Dean's died. But still.)

9. Captain James T. Kirk (The Return, a novel by William Shatner)
While the canonicity is most definitely in question, The Return also most definitely has Kirk coming back from the dead. He's resurrected by the Borg and implanted with false memories designed to make him hate the Federation. The goal is, of course, to destroy Picard, but at the end of the day, Kirk sacrifices himself in Picard's place, thereby making it seem that he is once again dead. Spock, however, does not believe that.

10. Pat Henry "Hobbit" Hobbins (The Armageddon Rag by George R. R. Martin)
Pat Hobbins was the frontman for a rock band called The Nazgul, but was assassinated at a 1970 concert. When the band reunites with a young lookalike singer named Larry (who's even had the cosmetic surgery to look like Hobbins), they begin noticing a change in Larry at concerts, but only when they perform songs off their aptly named last album, Music to Wake the Dead. Larry, for all intents and purposes, becomes the once-dead Hobbins. Maybe it could be argued more as possession, but the novel's title is taken from one of the band's songs, the second half of which is "The Resurrection Rag."

11. Aslan (The Narnia series, C. S. Lewis)
Hey, what better way to end a post in honor of Easter with a little allegory? He's tortured, humiliated, and murdered by the White Witch and her followers, but come dawn and he's back in all his glory, which he explains thus:

"But if she could have looked a little further back, [...] She [the White Witch] would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."

Talking to IGN about Groom Lake, his new directorial effort, Shatner explained that although this movie's scifi leanings may have more practical origins than usual ("I just wrote a science-fiction film because it would get the financing," he said), he really is one of us at heart:

I was always a scifi fanatic. I was reading all those guys who came to write for us on Star Trek several years before Star Trek existed. Those great science-fiction writers of the 50's and 60's and 70's, they were brilliant storytelling minds, and the fascination, for me, is imagining a world that you'll never see, you'll never be a part of. In 2020, when the last bubble of methane comes out of the arctic lake, what's going to happen? What's going to happen in 100 years when what the planet has planned now goes through its many manifestations? It drives me crazy that I will not know what's going to happen. It's like a child growing up and going off and you don't know what becomes of them. You yearn for a letter. Write home! Yet they never do. And that's the tragedy of death. One of the fears of dying is that you won't know what's going to happen – not just the next minute after you die, but what'll happen in 50 years when all your relatives are dead and a new set has come along. Who are they? Will there be a cure for cancer? Will there be interplanetary travel? Will we find answers to all these incredible questions that plague me? What is Dark Matter? What is the essence of light? The very questions that scientists are asking themselves today, and are striving to find the answers to, what's driving them is an outrageous curiosity as to the nature of our world… Somebody was able to transport a molecule… Now, that's interesting. They got a molecule, which means they can do two molecules. And then…what? You know the adage that if you can imagine something, it's possible? It's true. Because what's really out there, we can't imagine. That's the most fascinating part. Instead of straight-line travel, it's all bent. So if you think in bent-line terms, nothing makes sense. Maybe the galaxies are speeding up. The mystery of everything! But I hate mysteries. But that drives my interest in science-fiction…If you think finding life on Mars is going to be a big thing, the day we find that the speed of light isn't the law of the universe, that'll be something!

The only thing better than that quote would be to hear Shatner deliver it in his special, breathless insincere way. As it is, I want this on a T-shirt right now. Admittedly, a large T-shirt.

Shatner Talks Trek [IGN]

Crossing the 22-mile English Channel in a mere 13 minutes, the 48-year-old Rossy is said to have simply moved his head and back to steer the gizmo—made of eight-foot carbon-composite wings and kerosene-fuelled jet turbines—and landed by parachute. Wearing only a heat-resistant suit and helmet, he was moving at upwards of 125 mph. Remarked the sky captain, who took a similar, if shorter, joy ride above the Alps four months ago:

I was under tension. But fear? The day I fear, I don’t go.

If you’d like to watch the record-making flight in action, MSNBC has handily provided some footage, with a Matt Lauer play-by-play at no extra charge. (Alternately, you can turn down the volume and space-out to William Shatner’s vintage cover of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”) Next up for the real-life Rocket Man: soaring above Arizona’s Grand Canyon. Talk about flying like an eagle.

Photo courtesy of ducaduca.

6. Trek is a poison dart of nostalgia aimed at the hearts of aging fan-dudes. The franchise caters to a fearsomely loyal cadre of dorks who recite Shatner's Promise Margarine commercials to each other. They also obsess over every minor detail from the show's 40,000 year history, leading to...

5. Obsessive continuity and reveling in cheese. Rumor has it the new Trek movie will feature tribbbles and the Guardian of Forever, and god knows what other callbacks to ancient episodes. Trek also groans under the weight of cliches it can never outgrow, from "beam me up" to "warp nine" to "shields down to 59 percent."

4. It's an out-of-date news flash. Trek's format is a Cold War relic, from the original show's running Soviets=Klingons metaphor to the post-Cold War "new order" of TNG and DS9. Most storylines relate to "our" superpower, the Federation, facing off against other superpowers or coping with third-world planets. Take away the Cold War as a reference point, and you have boring space opera.

3. It's no longer looking ahead. Like Star Wars, Trek is trapped in prequel-land. Enterprise bored us by filling in pointless backstory on the early days of Starfleet, but the J.J. Abrams movie looks to be twice as pointless. We already know everything we need to about young Kirk and the other Trek tots. Mining your own past is a prime symptom of idea bankruptcy.

2. We're tired of the clueless wanker with Aspergers who teaches us what it means to be human. Spock was sort of cute, so nu-Trek served up Data, Odo, that holographic doctor, Seven of Nine and T'Pol. It's not Trek without Rain Man trying to understand our human ways. We prefer the Cylons, who school us about humanity by screwing and killing us.

1. Sanctimonious preaching is in Trek's DNA. From the Prime Directive to the Captain's Log, the franchise was made for droning voices giving us lectures. Starfleet Academy must give would-be captains a special course in holding forth about the moral lesson in every conceivable situation. We're also sick of constantly hearing about how our heroes are too noble to share their advanced technology with other cultures.

In a nutshell, the only Star Trek we've liked in ages was Galaxy Quest, and that was mostly for Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman and Veronica Mars' dad.

• 
  
• The Original: Kirk's outfit changed here and there during the original series, but he stuck to the theme of black pants, black boots, and bright yellow shirt. Sometimes they embellished his captain's rank insignia on his wrists with more gold sparkle, but this is what swept countless hapless alien maidens onto his plastic bunk.
• 
  
  
  
  
  
• The Fancy Dress: When Kirk had to attend high-level functions like bar mitzvahs on Vulcan, he wore his dress uniform which had even more gold sparkles and a lime-green shirt. Nothing says hoity-toity fancy dress like sparkles and sequins.
• 
  
  
  
  
  
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Kirk got a funky mod outfit upgrade in this 1979 film. He's ready to hit a few disco floors and trip the light fantastic. Why they got rid of this uniform is beyond us, to say nothing of the mega-pointy sideburns.
• 
  
  
  
• Spacesuit Edition: Kirk had to venture outside the Enterprise to check things out in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which meant he got to wear his white Captain's spacesuit, complete with accessories. Can you imagine the cleaning bill for this thing? It probably attracted smudges like tribbles.
• 
  
  
  
• Star Trek II: This movie gave Kirk a much-updated uniform, complete with an epaulet-flap that he could unbutton for dramatic effect. It didn't take long for him to get blood on it and ham it up in an effort to win a Purple Heart.
• 
  
  
  
  
  
• Kirk's Parka: In Star Trek II, Kirk also had to venture onto an ice-cold space station that had lost most of its power. This meant he had to bundle up to keep warm, giving birth to more Kirk-fashion in the form of a parka. Swanky.
• 
  
  
  
  
  
• The Casual Edition: When Kirk and crew visited our era in Star Trek IV, Kirk got a chance to wear his normal going-out clothes. We're not sure what's up with that funky shirt that looks like a tuxedo-spiral. Can you imagine your date showing up in this?
• 
  
  
  
• The Death Outfit: Kirk bought the farm in Star Trek: Generations, and luckily he had an outfit all prepared for it. This one looks as though his Star Trek II outfit mind-melded with his parka, and that union gave birth to this bastard child costume. Plus it has a jowl-disguising turtleneck as a bonus.

Famous names: Gene Roddenberry, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan, Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon.

Crunchy goodness: 3

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: Eleven films, plus Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise.

Sights you'll never unsee: The half-black, half-white space racists running through fake yule log flames. A big blob ordering Abraham Lincoln to wrestle Vulcans. Captain Kirk flying a starship into a space dildo. Spock flamenco-dancing. It goes on and on.

Life lesson: "You'll have to get your entertainment somewhere else." — Captain Kirk.

Most painfully dated moment: The planet where the Vietnam war never ended.

TrekToday