Star Trek: Enterprise Almost Brought Back Captain Kirk - As A Villain?

Charismatic and inquisitive, Captain James Tiberius Kirk is the consummate hero for the "Star Trek" franchise. Beginning in 1966, William Shatner was synonymous with that role until his final Kirk appearance in the 1994 film "Star Trek Generations." So how could the poster boy for intergalactic heroism be a villain? The idea was actually Shatner's.

When Season 4 of "Star Trek: Enterprise" was in the works in 2004, Shatner pitched a story that he developed with his longtime collaborators and "Enterprise" writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. The episode would have seen him guest-starring as an evil version of Kirk battling against Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise.

In Peter Holstrom's oral history of "Star Trek," titled "The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek," "Enterprise" showrunner Manny Coto recalled the rejected guest appearance. "The idea was it was a Mirror Universe-themed episode," he said (via Screen Rant). The Mirror Universe dates back to 1967, when it made its debut in a Season 2 episode of "Star Trek." In the sinister parallel reality, heroes are villains, the morally upstanding United Federation of Planets is instead the Terran Empire, and the tolerant Starfleet captains are replaced by the hawkish Imperial Starfleet who flash Nazi salutes. Spock even has a goatee! Think the multiverse of madness meets Bizarro Superman.

The Mirror Universe is a recurring locale throughout the "Star Trek" franchise. For their "Enterprise" pitch, Shatner and the Reeves-Stevens writing duo hoped to expand the Mirror Universe's lore.

In the 1967 episode "Mirror, Mirror," viewers were introduced to the Tantalus Field — a device through which Captain Kirk could eliminate his enemies with the touch of a button. For "Enterprise," Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens suggested that the Tantalus Field function instead as a teleportation device.

"Now, it was implied in there, in ['Mirror, Mirror'], that they just kind of died," Manny Coto recalled in "The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek." "But what the Reeves-Stevenes were saying [was], 'What if what this field did was transport everyone who was opposed to him into this pocket universe?'"

That pocket universe, Coto continued, was envisioned as a sort of penal colony of transported individuals. "The idea was what if Archer and the Enterprise stumbled into this pocket universe and evil Tiberius Kirk was now an older man, but still formidable, and wanted to take control of the Enterprise and escape," Coto explained. "It was a prison escape." The episode would have focused on William Shatner's evil Kirk as he and his cronies attempted to take siege of the Enterprise.

Unfortunately, Paramount and Shatner never reached a deal, and the episode never came to fruition. "Enterprise," however, did end up revisiting the Mirror Universe in Season 4's two-part episode "In a Mirror, Darkly." The episode features Archer's evil Terran Empire counterpart and serves as a prequel to "Mirror, Mirror." According to the DVD commentary, the cast and crew learned that "Enterprise" had been canceled while "In a Mirror, Darkly" was in production.