The movie’s already out and a hit, and still the media can’t seem to get over the fact that Shatner’s not in it. This is the same media screaming and pushing the film’s producers and screenwriters to rehash old characters like Khan for the sequel, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. Their questions are, by necessity, all about name recognition. They must get the JJ Abrams to say something about a person or character people recognize if they want their readers to read the interview. Tell them the next movie will be about someone named “Bob” and nobody reads. Tell them they’re bringing back Khan and everyone tunes in, whether or not bringing him back would be well advised.

So the questions about Shatner’s absence continues, because his name gets people interested and because we all just can’t help ourselves. For once though, the endless questions about his lack of involvement in the new film actually yielded interesting results. IO9 caught up with Trek screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, put them to the Shatner question, and got them to admit that at one point, they had indeed written him in.

Says Kurtzman, “We had a scene with Shatner, and that ended up going.” What was the scene? If you’ve seen the movie, think back to the final scene between Classic Spock and New Spock. They’d written in a moment where Classic Spock whips out a recorded holographic message from Classic Kirk and hands it to New Spock, as a way of proving his future friendship with a human. Honestly, it sounds pretty cheesy. I love Shatner as much as the next guy, but good move taking it out. Bill has already had his Star Trek swansong. They killed him off in Generations. This was Nimoy’s turn. Get over it.