A new Star Trek promotional poster is making headlines for its notable exclusion of original leading man, William Shatner as Captain Kirk.

Every other commanding officer or equivalent is featured but representing the original crew are Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols).

The only other non-command character is Voyager's Seven (Jeri Ryan).

Even Prodigy's Dal R'El and Lower Decks' Beckett Mariner have a seat at this mostly captains table.

Bill has responded via twitter:

And that surprises you?

He has been openly critical of the more recent Star Trek titles, at last year's San Diego Comic-Con going so far as to say, in response to a fan asking if any of the new shows rivalled the original:

None of them.

I got to know [creator] Gene Roddenberry in three years fairly well. He’d be turning in his grave at some of this stuff.

Speaking of turning in graves we assume that by "new shows" they're referring to post Roddenberry, i.e. Discovery onwards.

Voyager, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise all followed his death by several years but were in the same spirit and quality as The Next Generation.

While we agree with Bill and it's gratifying to hear someone speak honestly about the modern entries, if you're making a promotional poster for the franchise with cast from all of the series, does he belong on it?

Having publicly shamed them, albeit accurately, putting his face on that poster would be a slap in the face to those other series.

On the other hand it's tragically ironic to exclude him for being honest - a quality valued in Starfleet.

This is the corner which Paramount have painted themselves into.

We note an additional point of difference between Bill and other Star Trek cast is his legal ownership of his image as Kirk which may have required Paramount to pay for its use on this poster.

Somewhat infamously, after having been Twitter harassed by Star Trek Online's community manager, Bill refused to deal with them.

As a result in original series anniversary content revisiting his time, players only ever saw Kirk unconscious on the floor and face down.

It amuses us slightly to imagine a pair of butt-cheeks representing Kirk on this poster but only STO players would get the joke.

[ Main Image: Star Trek promotional poster. Credit: Paramount via Twitter. ]

References

Marshall, Michelle (March 8, 2023). Star Trek fans fume as William Shatner reacts to Captain Kirk being 'removed' from advert. Express.

Shatner, William [@WilliamShatner] (March 8, 2023). And that surprises you? Twitter.