But for the planned fourth Kelvin movie, writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay drew inspiration from a Next Generation episode, albeit one with TOS connections. Speaking with Esquire, Payne and McKay described their scrapped Star Trek 4 script as “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in space,” complete with “an original villain and a really cool 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque sci-fi idea at the core.” The movie would have brought back Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk, the Starfleet officer who briefly assumed command of the USS Kelvin at the start of the 2009 reboot movie. In his final moments, George Kirk communicates with his wife, safe on an escape ship, to help name their son after both of their fathers, christening the lad “James Tiberius Kirk.” George’s sacrifice inspires his son to join Starfleet himself, eventually becoming the legendary captain. To bring Jim face to face with George, Payne and McKay followed the model set by the episode “Relics,” from the series’ sixth season. In “Relics,” the Enterprise-D finds original Enterprise engineer Scotty alive in a transporter buffer, preserved for 75 years. Released from the buffer, Scotty helps new chief Geordi La Forge solve a problem with a Dyson sphere. For Payne and McKay, “Relics” offered a simple solution to the problem of George’s death, filmed with a pre-Thor Hemsworth. “Our conceit was, ‘What if right before the Kelvin impacted with that huge mining ship, George Kirk had tried to beam himself over to his wife’s shuttle where his son, Jim Kirk, had just been born?’,” explained Payne. That idea may have big sci-fi logic, but Payne grounds it in a relatable mundane act. “Think about when you send a text message and you’ve typed it out, but you haven’t quite hit send,” he elaborated. “On the other side, they see those three little dots that someone has typed.” The version of George who gets recovered would be like the three little dots finally receiving the message.
