Star Trek: Picard delivered an unexpected and potentially canon-breaking Easter egg when Captain Kirk’s body turned up in Section 31’s Daystrom Station facility instead of where it was seen to be buried in 1994’s Star Trek Generations movie. Although the final season of the Patrick Stewart-led Paramount+ series featured many returning characters and references to some well-known pieces of Star Trek lore for long-term fans, no one was expecting find Kirk’s corpse being stored away. In the latest edition of SFX Magazine, Star Trek Strange New Worlds showrunner Akiva Goldsman explained very briefly why this piece of canon disruption was in the series, and also suggested that he is not averse to the idea of bringing Kirk back from the dead through CGI means.
There has been a long line of legacy characters resurrected and deepfaked in a number of movies and TV shows, from Star Wars to Indiana Jones. Although there are no such plans currently in place for the Star Trek franchise, Goldsmith certainly wouldn’t dismiss the idea out of hand, and said if it did happen with Kirk then it would be for the simple reason that many people who have recently worked on the franchise didn’t like the ending Kirk received in Generations. He said:
"My friend Terry Matalas is not alone in feeling frustrated with Kirk's death in canon. It's why he put his body at Daystrom Station, right?"
Matalas, who was showrunner on Picard, certainly packed many familiar pieces of Star Trek history into the vaults of Daystrom Station, but Kirk’s body, which was being stored as part of “Project Phoenix,” is one of the most interesting and the series has planted the idea that Kirk could be resurrected like a proverbial phoenix from the flames has many possible uses in future.
Captain Kirk’s William Shatner is Still A Big Part of The Franchise.
Although it is unlikely that William Shatner would return himself to play Kirk if the character did have another appearance in the franchise, even with the aid of CGI de-aging similar to that used to turn back the clock on Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian’s season 2 finale. Having said that, the actor is never too far away from the heart of Star Trek, and most recently was seen in a clip from a new conversation for the Gene Roddenberry Archive about his time on the original Star Trek series.
Coincidentally, that clip included a computer generated version of Leonard Nimoy as Spock, appearing at the place Kirk was buried, which interpreted a scene from Shatner’s own Star Trek novel. Whether the modern technology of Hollywood could be about to find its way into one of the original sci-fi TV shows that boldly went where many followed is something that seems a strong possibility. When and how it happens is something that we will just have to watch and wait to find out.