It’s a different life, Jim, not as we know it, and it almost happened in Strange New Worlds. The creative minds behind the Star Trek show have revealed that their biggest regret has been not getting the chance to do an episode that would have explored what might have happened if William Shatner’s Captain James T. Kirk had decided to remain in New York with Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) in The Original Series installment “The City on the Edge of Forever”—and they planned to bring back Shatner for it, too.
In conversation with Polygon, Strange New Worlds showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman confirmed they’d been working to make Shatner’s return possible for that alternate-universe story since the show began, and even penned a few scripts for it.
“I think if you get to the end and there’s nothing left for you to want to do, then that’s more of a disappointment,” Kurtzman explained about his and Goldsman’s lingering Strange New Worlds regrets. “I’m proud of every episode we’ve done, but I feel like the best dinners you come to don’t leave you feeling stuffed. They leave you wanting more.”
In the acclaimed episode of The Original Series, Dr. McCoy accidentally overdosed on a powerful drug and traveled through a time portal called the Guardian of Forever. In doing so, he drastically altered history, and the Enterprise ceased to exist. Kirk and Spock tracked him to 1930s New York City, where Kirk fell in love with Keeler, only to discover that her survival would delay America’s entry into WWII and allow the Nazis to win. Heartbroken, Kirk let Edith die to restore the timeline.
