November 18th was the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: Generations. In the film, Captain James T. Kirk partners up with Captain Jean-Luc Picard to save millions of lives on Viridian III. In the process, Captain Kirk sacrifices his life for the good of the many.
30 years later, William Shatner’s Captain James T. Kirk is seen once again donning his Starfleet uniform. This is for a short in honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: Generations. The film was released by the Roddenberry Archive and technology partner OTOY (in cooperation with Paramount). The short is titled Unification and was launched on The Archive web portal (at roddenberry.x.io) and via the Apple Vision Pro app. It also can be seen on YouTube. It is the fourth in the Archive’s “765874” series. These short films tie in live-action shots along with CGI.
For Unification, William Shatner returned to the screen along with some other recognizable names from the world of Star Trek. During the 8-minute film, there are decades of Star Trek moments connected together. Sharp-eyed fans will recognize Saavik (Robin Curtis) from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, J.M. Colt (Mahé Thaissa) from The Cage in 1964, and Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood) from Where No Man Has Gone Before, the pilot episode of Star Trek. Yor (Gordon Tarpley), from Star Trek: Discovery, also appears in the short.
The characters were brought to life through a combination of live-action footage, prosthetics, and some incredible technology. The young James Kirk is played by Sam Witwer (Darth Maul) and Lawrence Selleck portrays Spock. OTOY shared that the actors were filmed in costume as the characters and were aided by “both physical and digital prosthetics resulting in period-accurate portrayals matching the appearance of the characters as they originally appeared in TV and film at the time.”
OTOY also revealed that “Mr. Shatner worked with the OTOY team to fine tune the technical and creative direction required to bring his interpretation of Kirk back to live action for the first time in 30 years, including the addition of his voice to narrate a key moment in the experience.”
William Shatner talked about digital prosthetics saying, it “takes years off of your face, so that in a film you can look 10, 20, 30, 50 years younger than you are.”
There were also other Star Trek alumni at work behind the scenes as well. Academy-award-winning Star Trek composer Michael Giacchino wrote music for this film which was directed by award-winning Spanish filmmaker Carlos Baena. William Shatner and Susan Bay Nimoy, widow of the late Leonard Nimoy, served as executive producers on the production.
What do you think of this new short? What other shorts would you like to see come out of this initiative? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments below!
