A Far Better Resting Place for Jim Kirk

William Shatner made a surprise appearance on my show, The Markets Hub (wsj.com), in 2011. He was in the Wall Street Journal newsroom taping an interview for his new (at the time) book, and one of our producers thought it would be exciting to have him walk onto our show live.

You can watch the video here; Shatner comes on right at the 16:00 mark, and if I don’t seem all that surprised, trust me, it was just because I was keeping cool. Capt. James Kirk was a childhood hero, and to have the guy who played him come onto my set unannounced was an out-of-body experience.

Also, and much to his credit, he actually talked about the markets with us.

Anyhow, as you may imagine, I had Capt. Kirk on the brain a lot after that appearance. I started thinking Kirk deserved a better send-off than the one he got in Generations (as a truly deranged Trekkie, I will watch just about any Star Trek story if I come across it on TV, but Generations is pretty lame when you think about it). I started thinking if J.J. Abrams could screw with the Star Trek universe for his silly re-boot (see my take on that one here), then why couldn’t we redo Kirk’s final tale? That’s when this Kirk story started forming in my mind.

William Shatner on the Euro Crisis and the Best Trek Movie

Here's one of the Markets Hub shows from October 2011, when we were surprised on the set by William Shatner. Click in at the 15-minute mark to get an idea of what we were talking about before Shatner came on. He comes on set at the 16-minute mark.

Back then the shows were a half-hour (they're only 20 minutes now) and we had two anchors. So Michael Casey and I were interviewing Shira Ovide about banks in the U.S. and Europe when who do I see getting mic'd up on the set, but William Shatner. I think to myself, wow, William Shatner's here. But I'm wondering where he's going (you can see at one point in that 15-minute frame where it becomes obvious I've noticed him). I didn't think he was coming onto my show.

That's because Shatner was not scheduled to be on the show.