Star Trek: Living Memory To Revisit Kirk’s Days as Starfleet Admiral

Star Trek will revisit James T. Kirk’s days as a Starfleet admiral in the upcoming novel Star Trek: The Original Series: Living Memory. While William Shatner remains reluctant to reprise his role as Kirk, Star Trek novels give fans a chance to experience new adventures with the classic Star Trek captain and his crew. Christopher L. Bennett has written many such tales, and Living Memory is his latest. Releasing in June and taking place between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Living Memory sees Kirk acting as an administrator at Starfleet academy and dealing with trouble there, while Spock and Chekov investigate a cosmic mystery. Here’s the synopsis from Simon and Schuster:

“While attempting to settle in as commandant of Starfleet Academy, Admiral James T. Kirk must suddenly contend with the controversial, turbulent integration of an alien warrior caste into the student body—and quickly becomes embroiled in conflict when the Academy controversy escalates to murder. Meanwhile, Captain Spock of the USS Enterprise and Commander Pavel Chekov of the USS Reliant are investigating a series of powerful cosmic storms seemingly targeting Federation worlds—unstoppable outbursts emitting from the very fabric of space. Endeavoring to predict where the lethal storms will strike next, Spock and Chekov make the shocking discovery that the answer lies in Commander Nyota Uhura’s past—one that she no longer remembers….”

Bennett is a veteran Star Trek novelist. His past works in the Star Trek universe includes Ex Machina, The Buried Age, Titan novels Orion’s Hounds and Over a Torrent Sea, Department of Temporal Investigations novels Watching the Clock and Forgotten History, Enterprise novels Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures, Tower of Babel, Uncertain Logic, and Live By the Code, and short stories included in the anthologies Constellations, The Sky’s the Limit, Prophecy and Change, and Distant Shores.

ComicBook.com spoke to William Shatner in 2019. Regarding the possibility of resurrecting Kirk for a new series in the vein of Star Trek: Picard, he was skeptical.

“That word, ‘resurrect.’ That’s a key word,” Shatner said. “Resurrect. You’d have to resurrect me, Shatner, in order to do the daily. I don’t know what Patrick is doing doing that. Doing a series is debilitating for a young guy, for a 25-year-old, which I was doing when I was 25 years old. It’s a physical wrecker, it’s a mental wrecker, and it’s a homewrecker ’cause you’re working 14, 18 hours a day. And in the last series I did, Boston Legal, I had, in rush hour, a two-hour commute. So add that. So no, I would not be interested in doing a series, per se.”

Star Trek: The Original Series: Living Memory is available to pre-order now on Amazon. The book goes on sale on June 15th.

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