Sure, the 93-year-old William Shatner would appear as Captain Kirk again, if the part was good

The Star Trek franchise has been going strong for 60 years now, and William Shatner is part of the crew who kicked it all off in Star Trek: The Original Series back in the 1960s. Even now, all these years later, his Captain Kirk is still used as a reference point for rugged individualism and devil-may-care leadership.

Part of the reason why Kirk has stuck around in the public imagination may be that Shatner is still around to remind us. At 93 years old, he's still very active, becoming the spokesperson for a number of technology companies, promoting his new documentary You Can Call Me Bill, and even going into outer space aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin shuttle in 2021. As he told Global News, he'd even be willing to return to the role of Kirk in a future movie of TV show.

“It’s an intriguing idea," Shatner said. “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 suggests that de-aging technology could be used to make him look younger, which has been coming into vogue in movies more and more recently. He even pitched ideas for how Kirk could return, since the character died in 1994's Star Trek Generations. “A company that wants to freeze my body and my brain for the future might be a way of going about it,” he mused. “‘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!’”

Chris Pine still doesn't know whether he'll appear in another Star Trek movie

Here's a question: what seems more likely: a Star Trek movie featuring William Shatner as a de-aged Captain Kirk, or a fourth movie in the series of Star Trek films starring Chris Pine as Shatner? Because while rumors have swirled about another movie in that series ever since Star Trek Beyond bowed in 2016, nothing has ever materialized, and you get the idea that Pine is getting tired of being asked about it.

“I honestly don’t know,” Pine recently told Business Insider when he was asked yet again about a possible return to the final frontier. “There was something in the news of a new writer coming on board. I thought there was already a script, but I guess I was wrong, or they decided to pivot. As it’s always been withTrek, I just wait and see.”

So Pine will find out along with the rest of us. In the meantime, Star Trek is alive and well on TV even if it's absent from the big screen:

h/t The A.V. Club

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