J.J. Abrams told AMCTV in an interview published yesterday that he wanted 'desperately to put [Shatner] in the movie', but that the Enterprise's original Captain Kirk didn't fancy a turn on the sidelines.

"It was very tricky," said Abrams. "We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn't quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn't want to do a cameo... he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves. The truth is, the story that we were telling required a certain adherence to the Trek canon and consistency of storytelling. It's funny -- a lot of the people who were proclaiming that he must be in this movie were the same people saying it must adhere to canon. Well, his character died on screen. Maybe a smarter group of filmmakers could have figured out how to resolve that."

Shatner's Kirk died helping successor Patrick Stewart beat baddie Malcolm McDowell in Star Trek Generations in 1994, and it must be admitted that it's the worst and least-spectacular screen death since Al Pacino tottered over in the Vatican city in Godfather III. No doubt The Shat was hoping to give Kirk a slightly finer cinematic valediction in the spectacular new pre-boot, which boasts a far higher budget (and potential gross) than any of the six original-cast movies that he presided over 1979-91.

AMCTV

• Star Trek: is a $72.5m opening weekend enough?
• 8 problems I have with J.J. Abrams' Star Trek
• The Shaky-Cam: it's dead, Jim