The Final Frontier : ‘Star Trek’ Fans Piqued That Kirk May Not Live Long and Prosper

Call it Star Trek: The Generation Gap.

From Germany to Granada Hills, “Star Trek” fans are jamming the phone lines to reach Joyce Mason, president of an international William Shatner fan club, protesting what the rumor mill says is the death of their hero, starship Capt. James T. Kirk, in the new “Trek” movie.

Disgruntled followers of the original 1960s TV series feel that Shatner’s space-traveling patriarch is being knocked off to clear the way for movies with the cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the sequel series that also drew a big following in its seven-year TV run that ended last spring.

What brings the parent-child battle to a head is Paramount Pictures’ release this Friday of “Star Trek: Generations,” featuring actors from both series. Prominent among them is Kirk’s replacement as captain of a later edition of the USS Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard, played by bald British actor Patrick Stewart.

“I’ve had many people calling in to ask me to help them stop the death of Kirk,” said Mason, president of the 1,200-member International William Shatner Connection and host of the syndicated cable radio show “Talk Trek.”

She said some callers have threatened to boycott the movie and others plan to buy tickets to other films at multiplex theaters this weekend and sneak into the “Trek” feature, so their patronage won’t benefit the film’s box-office numbers.

“It’s a hopeless feeling” for Capt. Kirk fans, Mason said. “There is a deep resentment there because they feel that Paramount doesn’t care how they feel. Kirk’s the hero you grew up looking up to. . . . I enjoy the idea of the captains sharing the screen together, but if they finish off the first generation so that fans have no other choice but to turn to the next generation, that’s a bit of a cheat.”

On Friday, Mason will get Trekkers’ feelings about the film in the Tujunga studio of “Talk Trek,” which broadcasts an audio-only talk show to 10 million cable television subscribers nationwide. The station has been receiving nearly 100 calls a week from distraught fans, according to station managers.

But not every Trekker is eager to save Kirk from boldly going on a one-way trip to the planet of superannuated heroes.

Joel Engel, a Topanga Canyon writer who scripted last spring’s unauthorized biography, “Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek,” said Paramount has to consider a new generation of Trekkers.

“The original cast is too old,” Engel said. “They can’t go on saving the universe forever. Kirk has had a 28-year run. There comes a time when even Douglas MacArthur retires.”

Among those who agree: Shatner himself.

Asked Wednesday if he would ever play Kirk again, Shatner said he doubted it.

He’s flattered by the fans’ reaction, but “we’ve gotten to the age where we can’t remember where the stars are,” quipped Shatner, 63, a Valley resident. “In the case of Dr. McCoy, he can’t remember our names,” he said, referring to the sidekick character played by DeForest Kelley.

It would be hard for Paramount to come up with any better end to the story of the original characters than that contained in the film, he said.

But even Shatner’s comfort with the idea that it is time for Kirk to go quietly into the dark is unlikely to quell his fans’ uproar, Engel said.

“You can’t please all ‘Star Trek’ fans,” Engel said. “They fight over which ‘Trek’ is better. Nobody wants to see their favorite character die.”

They are unlikely to be mollified, he said, even by the knowledge that “Star Trek” has become an industry. Paramount plans future “Next Generation” films, and there are two more TV spinoffs--the current “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and the upcoming “Star Trek: Voyager.”

Even Phyllis Gutierrez, who presides over the Bakersfield chapter of the International Federation of Trekkers, said it is time for classic ‘Trek’ fans to let go. “I think some of these people need to go out and get a life someplace,” she said.

In the new film, Picard, a 24th-Century spaceman, employs a mysterious time nexus to seek help from Kirk, who lives in the 23rd Century, in defeating a nefarious alien known as Dr. Soran, played by Malcolm McDowell.

Although Paramount executives claim the film clearly marks the passage of the Enterprise helm from one generation to the next, they have kept mum about whether Kirk really does die, hoping that fans will flock to the film to see for themselves.

Trekker John Weaver of Reseda will wear a black strip of tape on his “Star Trek” insignia to the theater, just in case.

“This is like when cops wear black stripes on their badges to commemorate fallen officers,” said Weaver, 29, a Kirk fan since he was 5 years old. After viewing the film, Weaver said, he will decide whether to mount a letter-writing campaign. “I’m in love too much with Kirk’s character to let him die.”

In fact, the “Trek” and its characters have a habit of coming back from the dead, which may explain the studio’s coyness when it comes to whether Kirk is actually stone cold, nevermore, defunct.

The series’ cancellation in 1969 sparked a letter-writing campaign to Paramount, in which Mason and many other Trekkers participated. Although the series returned only in reruns, the outcry signified that the original cast and the story’s appeal were still so strong that Paramount put them on the big screen in six “Trek” movies.

In one of those films, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” the beloved Mr. Spock died. The storm of outrage from fans was so strong that the next film was dedicated to stretching the bounds of reason to bring him back to life.

Mason, an office manager and a Kirk fan since the first episode of “Star Trek” aired in 1966, fears the worst for her hero. “They’ve been trying to kill Kirk for 30 years,” she said.

Although Kirk’s future may be dark, Shatner’s is not.

After the series ended, he spent several years playing a cop in “T.J. Hooker” and is now seen regularly as the host of “Rescue: 911.” Shatner also wrote the popular “Tek War” series of science fiction novels and will produce and star in a cable television series by that name to be broadcast beginning in January.

Does that mean we will never see Shatner on the bridge of the Enterprise again? That Kirk is really, actually, truly dead?

“The only way I could meet the ‘Next Generation’ cast again would be to come back as T.J. Hooker and bop a couple of them on the head,” Shatner mused. “Especially the Klingon guy.”

Star Trek Q&A;: * On the new TimesLink on-line service you can ask producer Rick Berman questions about Capt. Kirk’s role in the new Star Trek film, view stills from the film, take a Star Trek trivia quiz, and get inside information about the production of the movie.

Details on Times electronic services, B4