After William Shatner wrapped the last season of Boston Legal, that left him free and clear to promote the ever-loving hell out of his next project: Why Am I Not In the New Star Trek, Guys? Leonard Nimoy is In It. Why Not Throw Ol' Shats a Bone, Here? (working title). Something tells me that a brand-new revelation from Trek writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci has just provided Shatner's whiny franchise with a sequel.
The two writers spoke to MTV about a Shatner cameo they scripted due to his badgering, but decided to cut. The sequence would have come at the end (spoiler alert, nerds!) when Leonard Nimoy's Spock tells Zachary Quinto's young Spock that he will eventually become besties with the brash James T. Kirk:
"Elder Spock said, 'Well, don't take my word for it,' and he handed him a little disc -- a DVD, really -- that projected a hologram, and then he walked away. And the hologram was of Kirk," Kurtzman continued. "It would've been Shatner."
[...]
"It was a 'happy birthday' message [with Kirk saying], 'This is the last time I'm going to be able to wish you happy birthday, so I want to tell you how much you've meant to me and how amazing it was that we had all these adventures together,' " Kurtzman said of the alternate ending, which would have provided the last act with a powerful voice over the film's final scenes.
"That narrative, that voice-over," Kurtzman said, "became a link [to be heard] over [scenes of] this new crew coming in ... a young Kirk accepting the medal and becoming captain of the Enterprise."
We can see why the idea was cut (it's a little too, "Hey young Spock, here's the original remastered series on Blu-Ray"), but I wonder if Shatner will be so magnanimous. What's the over/under on the days until a red-faced YouTube rebuttal?
ยท 'Star Trek' Writers Reveal The William Shatner Scene That Never Was [MTV]