There’s a new Star Trek short film. It’s about TOS, somehow

It’s the morning of Nov. 18, 2024, and I awake to some unexpected news. Apropos of nothing, it seems a new Star Trek short film titled “Unification” dropped the day prior, without any marketing ahead of time, at least that I’d heard.

On its own, this is a promising way to start a Monday. The franchise has become one of my favorite fictional worlds in the last few years, partially thanks to my proximity to Riverside, the future birthplace of Capt. James T. Kirk. It’s surprising, sure, but Paramount has been known to release occasional mini episodes even when the Trek series of the day is out of season, so I don’t think too much of it.

This one’s not listed on Paramount+ for some reason, but I’m awake a little earlier than normal, so I have time to track it down, being careful not to read any articles about the story for fear of spoilers. I manage to find the roughly 10-minute video after a few minutes, and hit play with zero knowledge of its contents. A little over 90 seconds in, I’m struck by a new revelation.

I’m looking at William Shatner, and, by extension, Capt. James T. Kirk. The experience goes from a pleasant little surprise to an unimaginable bombshell.

The last episode of Star Trek: The Original Series aired in June of 1969. The last feature film for its cast of characters, “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country“ reached theaters in December of 1991. There’s been plenty of Trek content released in the years since, but Shatner’s Kirk hasn’t showed up on a screen in about three decades, after his cameo appearance in ”Star Trek: Generations“ (1994) where his character died.

Imagine if, in 2074, some archive studio released a newly made, 10-minute short film about the characters from Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones, or Grey’s Anatomy. Now imagine it’s got the same actors portraying the characters. It would be unbelievable. And yet, that’s what’s happening on my phone screen as the clock strikes 6:00 on this chilly Monday morning.

The presence of Kirk also means I’ll be writing an article about this, as I’ve taken up the mantle as Iowa’s most beloved columnist for Star Trek: The Original Series-related news, a self-imposed responsibility that doesn’t come up that often because, again, this franchise has been off the air for the better part of a century.

Mixed in with the shock, the elation and the caution not to wake my sleeping fiancee who does not care about Star Trek before 9 a.m. at the earliest, I also feel a little worried. The tale of Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock is profoundly sorrowful, but the Star Trek writers room often seems to forget that, and I’m nervous they’ll screw this up.

Kirk was presumed dead by everyone he knew in the first 20 minutes of “Generations.” His friends all made the reasonable conclusion he’d died after a spacetime anomaly vaporized a section of the Enterprise with him inside. He had no chance to say goodbye to anyone, and to make matters worse, his closest companion of all, Spock, wasn’t aboard. Kirk’s former first officer and best friend presumably had to hear the news secondhand after the fact, and deal with the pain of wishing he could’ve helped.

Kirk actually ended up dying about 80 years later (but in the same film) because that spacetime anomaly turned out to be a window to another dimension called “The Nexus,” where he hung out for a while before it flung him forward in time. But even then, Kirk kicked the bucket on a planet far from home, long after nearly all of his friends had passed away and believed him dead as well. “Generations” failed to show the audience the gravity of that moment for Kirk before he died, and the story choice divided fans, many of whom called it a publicity stunt.

Spock, meanwhile, went on to become an ambassador, but apparently still got to do exciting adventures sometimes. In “Star Trek” (2009), almost a century after Kirk’s presumed death, the Vulcan flew a ship full of red sci-fi juice that he used to create a black hole, but then accidentally fell into it along with a Romulan mining vessel, sending both back in time 154 years where their presence altered the course of history and created a new parallel reality, which fans called the Kelvin Universe, where all the newer Star Trek prequels happen.

Spock ended up dying in the Kelvin Universe, but it happened offscreen, shortly before the events of “Star Trek Beyond“ (2016). This was a logistic decision more than a plot-based one: Leonard Nimoy passed away in real life in 2015. Still, news of his character’s death was conveyed by a 20-second scene without dialogue, connected to little else in the film. The tragedy of Spock dying in a universe he didn’t belong to, isolated from his friends — some of whom would never exist there because of his own actions — was lost on viewers.

Like Kirk, Spock died alone. Worse, he didn’t even know the true fate of his best friend, who died not in a random space accident, but in a heroic sacrifice that saved a planet’s worth of lives.

Back to this moment. I’m 90 seconds into this short film, and after rewinding it I can confirm, yes, that’s the one and only Billy Shatz, digitally de-aged a bit, but wearing the same dress uniform Kirk died in.

He’s moving through a tastefully statue-decorated grove, and the vibe is on par with his time in The Nexus, depicted in “Generations“ as an idyllic, heaven-like trip down memory lane where time doesn’t have to make sense. Kirk wanders into a clearing where he finds a handful of his friends from life, one of whom hands him his Starfleet badge, before the surroundings fade away and the captain appears in glossy void lit by a column of light at the end of a tunnel. There he sees two younger versions of himself who fade away before we hear the only line of dialogue in the entire piece while Kirk saunters toward the light.

“’There are always, possibilities,’ Spock said,” announces a voice-over, using audio of a Kirk quote in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. “’And if genesis is indeed life from death, I must return to this place again.’”

A solemn piano plays in the soundtrack as Kirk leaves the void, appearing in a sparsely decorated room illuminated by a sunset visible through massive windows. He walks to an unusually shaped piece of furniture a few paces away.

Kirk kneels in front of it, and as the camera adjusts its focus, he takes the hand of a figure lying in the bed. The next shot reveals it’s Spock, depicted using recycled footage of Nimoy in his later days, a CGI mask over a living actor serving as a body double. The framing of this shot, combined with a meta-narrative 50 years in the making, suggest that this is a deathbed.

I have to pause here and take a deep breath.

Nimoy’s Spock is Shatner’s Kirk’s Spock. Let me explain.

The Kelvin timeline features a younger Spock played by Zachary Quinto, star trekking around with a younger Kirk played by Chris Pine. But Quinto’s Spock is a fundamentally different character from original series Spock. The Kelvin universe is a different timeline altogether, Quinto’s Spock lost his mom at a young age, along with many of his loved ones and everything on his home planet, so Quinto’s Spock and Nimoy’s Spock have different life experiences, different friends, different levels of control over their emotions.

Nimoy’s Spock could talk to Pine’s Kirk, but Pine’s Kirk wasn’t born in Riverside and never met his dad, which makes for a pretty different character from TOS Kirk. Nimoy’s Spock and Pine’s Kirk would be somewhat familiar, but Nimoy’s Spock wouldn’t find the same chemistry of the lifelong friend he misses from home. And Shatner’s Kirk could probably get along with Quinto’s Spock if they were in the same reality, but Shatner’s Kirk wouldn’t intuitively understand Quinto’s Spock like he would Nimoy’s Spock, because Nimoy’s Spock is Shatner’s Kirk’s Spock.

Nimoy is also the audience’s Spock, and my Spock. He’s the OG. At the moment I pause, the screen shows a character I love, depicted by a man I never expected to see playing him again, because he died nine years ago. This is a powerful moment both for the characters within the fiction and for those of us watching from the other side of the fourth wall, and it’s powerful for the same reasons on both ends. Spock (Nimoy) is dead. But Kirk (and we) will finally have the chance to say goodbye in a way suitable for someone with such a profound impact on the adventures we remember and the stories we love.

I unpause. Kirk and Spock clasp hands, which is a huge deal on its own. Vulcans very rarely shake anyone’s hand. They typically greet strangers with that “Star Trek Salute” you can find in your emoji keyboard, where you divide your ring finger and pinky from your other two fingers and hold your hand up. They sometimes ritualistically touch fingertips, but even that is pretty intimate for an alien race that suppresses every emotion: it almost exclusively happens between vulcans who are married, about to be married, or extremely diplomatic with other handshake-prone races.

And here we have Kirk and Spock holding BOTH HANDS. At the same time! In front of a sunset! This carries significantly more weight than any movie-ending sunset kiss, at least for the characters involved.

Spock wakes up and stares at the captain, the recognition instantly visible in his eyes that can usually mask any hint of emotion. A TOS-era motif is back in the score — it’s playing on violin now — as the two share a look of surprise, reaching an unspoken agreement that the story of their arrival in this moment is far too long to tell.

Neither speaks. Both turn to the sunset as the music swells, and watch the horizon as the sun disappears below it. The screen fades to black, before revealing capital letters in a Star Trek-looking font that dedicate the video to Leonard Nimoy, and the credits roll.

I’m sobbing, by the way.

Kirk and Spock’s relationship transcends friendship. They are comrades in arms, they are coworkers, they are drinking buddies, they are best friends. On multiple occasions, they cross the vast emptiness of space to help one another, or just to be together. The real world spent 30 years thinking they died alone and far, far apart, yet now we see that their bond surpasses not only time, but the barriers of the universe itself, and even the plot devices of a J.J. Abrams film.

There are some flaws in this piece. A trippy montage of disconnected scenes in the first few seconds is a jarring opener. Digital prosthetics used to de-age characters are not quite perfect yet, the technology is about 90% of the way there but still mildly uncanny when you pay attention to forehead wrinkles. Every time a character looks like they’re about to speak they seem to decide against it, and that’s poignant at first but once you notice it, it becomes a clear limitation of actors who can be digitally enhanced to look younger, but not quite precisely enough to mimic the human mouth during speech.

I don’t especially care about those issues. I care that my beloved characters get to be together, one last time.

Kirk’s spirit (Or soul? Or consciousness within The Nexus? Or whatever?) has traveled across universes, leaving behind every atom of reality he knows, all for the simple purpose of comforting his best friend in his final moments. They must now face the true final frontier in a universe they don’t belong to, but neither will do it alone, and that’s the most Star Trek ending to a story I can imagine.

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com