STAR TREK Director J.J. Abrams:

We Wrote A Scene For Shatner!!

William Shatner: Nobody Told Me!!

Both J.J. Abrams and William Shatner acknowledge that

Abrams met with Shatner on the set of "Boston Legal" not long

before Abrams was announced as director of the new "Star Trek"

movie due next summer. But Abrams has long maintained that Shatner's

Jim Kirk will not appear alongside Leonard Nimoy's Spock in the project.

Now Abrams says the original plan was to include Shatner in the project!

Q: How do you react to William Shatner's ire at not having a role

in the movie?

J.J. ABRAMS: It was very tricky. 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. We tried desperately to

put him in the movie, but 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.

Would a smarter group of filmmakers have written a story in which an aged Spock travels

back in time to Kirk's Starfleet Academy days to avert some sort of Romulan mischief?

Would those filmmakers have had Spock (since he's gone to the trouble of jumping back

to Kirk's youth) maybe hand a Marty McFly note to young Kirk warning him to steer

clear of the Enterprise-B's maiden voyage? Would those filmmakers have shot a scene

in which Spock returns to the future to greet a resurrected Kirk sharing a cocktail with

Admiral Sulu? Would those smarter filmmakers go to elaborate lengths to keep

77-year-old Shatner's appearance a secret? HMMMMMMMMMMMM?!!!!