Last week’s Roddenberry Archive release of the short film “Unification” has had Star Trek fans buzzing as it brought together William Shatner’s Kirk with Leonard Nimoy’s Spock for an emotional goodbye. The film was developed by OTOY, who have been technology partners for the Roddenberry Archive since it was first announced as a sort of digital museum back in 2018. The film has accumulated almost 1 million views on the Roddenberry Archive on the web (and via the Apple Vision Pro app) in just over a week.
CEO Jules Urbach describes OTOY as “a company that creates tools to empower artists.” This includes their OctaneRender and LightStage scanning, and “digital doubles” technologies. Their work has helped fuel Oscar-winning feature film visual effects, and is used in Marvel movies and more. Urbach also has a long connection to the Roddenberry family as a childhood friend of Rod Roddenberry, who is also one of the early investors in OTOY.
For “Unification,” they mixed new live-action footage along with computer-generated enhancements that brought Shatner’s Kirk back to life, with actor Sam Witwer playing all the various aged Kirks. It’s OTOY’s “digital makeup” that captured the performance while transforming him to look like the original character, which they also did with Spock, played by Lawrence Selleck. All of this was under the watchful eyes of William Shatner and Susan Nimoy, who served as executive producers.
While it has been widely applauded by the fan and technology communities, the film is presented entirely without dialogue (with the exception of only one brief moment of voice-over), so fans are asking a lot of questions. TrekMovie had spoke with Urbach, who served as executive producer and also wrote the story for “Unification,” to fill in the details as we went step-by-step through the entire short film.
Picking up the story from Generations… and Beyond
In addition to their work “preserving Star Trek sets digitally” for the Roddenberry Archive, OTOY also worked on The Roddenberry Vault Blu-ray set released for the 50th anniversary. As they were developing the documentary features for “The Cage,” they began exploring the idea of what Urbach calls “concept videos,” which resulted in the “765874” short film series. “Unification” is actually the fourth of the series, and by far the most ambitious. The new short film was designed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Trek Generations.
Picard looks over Kirk’s grave from Generations (Paramount Pictures)
Urbach also noted that many fans were frustrated with how Kirk died in Generations, and although he thought the scene in Star Trek Beyond when Zachary Quinto’s Spock was notified of Spock Prime’s passing was “beautiful,” the death of the character happened offscreen. How these deaths were handled was a key motivation for the creation of “Unification,” Urbach explains:
“The point of this, emotionally, is we give them a proper sendoff. It was horrible that they died in separate universes… So, we thought: do we dare do this? And everyone was okay with this, from Shatner to the Nimoys to Paramount. Then it felt like something we should get as fans, as people that love these characters, as closure… And it makes sense from the characters’ perspective that they would connect, and we have given at least two ways for that to be possible.”
Kelvin Spock learns of Spock Prime’s death in Beyond (Paramount Pictures)
It started with Colt
Before diving into “Unification,” it’s worth exploring a bit about the previous three films in this series, each of which also features the character of Yeoman Colt from “The Cage,” played by Urbach’s wife Mahé Thaissa. They noticed she has a striking resemblance to the original actress Laurel Goodwin, which Urbach says was “serendipitous.” The conceit of the OTOY film series is a deep cut tied into a story from the 1998 Marvel comic Star Trek: Early Voyages featuring Colt. Urbach explains:
“What’s interesting in that Marvel comic book is not her adventure into the future. It’s on the way back she sees all of Star Trek’s timeline. It’s this ‘awakening’ and seeing everything and having that experience.”
Colt’s “awakening” in OTOY’s second short film “Memory Wall”
So for the OTOY Star Trek short films, Urbach has built off that comic and set Colt up as an “observer” who sees different moments throughout Trek history, allowing them to dive into those moments to tell these short stories. Some of the first three short films also feature Spock, and Urbach explains how they have picked up on the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which describes Spock’s mind-meld with V’Ger, giving the Vulcan an “awakening” and ability to be another one of the “observers” for their short films. Spock and Colt actually have a mind-meld in one of the previous films as well.
“Between them, they have had these experiences where they’ve seen sort of outside of the margins, right? And I think the vision of Star Trek is pretty much exploring of the unknown, and you want to see the universe as it is, and our place in it. Not everything is necessarily a new alien. Some of it is like opening your mind.”
Spock at Kirk’s grave in OTOY’s “Regeneration”
Keep your mind open
Keeping your mind open is key for “Unification,” according to Urbach. He emphasized how they wanted the film to be open to interpretation:
“We filmed this in a very specific way so that there’s nothing that locks you into this being one interpretation. Is this the afterlife, or not? You could read it both ways. You could see it as Kirk being resurrected from his bones you see in Picard season 3, or it could be totally in Spock’s mind on his deathbed. Or it could be the equivalent of the Star Trek afterlife. We were very careful in how we shot every scene so you have that ambiguity. I have my own interpretation of it, but we all agreed that we should let viewers decide what they are seeing.”
He also explained how this approach is a big reason behind the lack of dialogue:
“Obviously there is no dialogue. That was a choice. Everybody wanted no dialogue so that there’s no locking you into a specific interpretation.”
Colt in OTOY’s first short film “765874”
Gary Mitchell gets the word out… to (Kelvin) Colt
Urbach did say that while the film is open to interpretation,“there are certain anchors” that he can clarify and explain the story. So without further ado, let’s get started with the breakdown of “Unification,” beginning with the beginning.
Once again, OTOY picks up on Trek’s “beta canon” where Gary Mitchell lived on after the original Star Trek episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” They are particularly leaning into the “A Perfect System” story in IDW’s “Star Trek #400” issue featuring Mitchell. The team created a “cinematic” version of the look from that comic with original actor Gary Lockwood reprising the role, using OTOY’s technology to transform him to appear as he did in that second pilot for Star Trek from the 1960s. Urbach explains:
“In this scene, he has come full circle. He is sort of playing god and learning about humanity’s future… He is looking at all of Star Trek’s future and all of time… And he is very much responsible for everything you see later [in ‘Unification’]. Gary Mitchell has also seen our reality of the world that all these characters live in, just like Colt and Spock. His contribution is he has seen enough to pass along information. So it’s not doing something like Q and snapping his finger to resurrect Kirk, but passing on information that allows the rest of this to unfold. And again, we filmed this in a certain way so there is nothing specific that locks you into this being the afterlife or something literal, so, again, you can read it both ways.”
The next 30 seconds or so of the film features a series of flashes where you see Colt and Spock on Veridian III mind-melding, Spock in San Francisco in 2272, and more quick beats. These are all elements from the first three “765874” short films and Urbach notes this was “to give people a sort of recap of what has been happening” prior to “Unification.” Think of this as a sort of “previously on…” segment.
The montage of flashes ends with new footage of data readouts for Kirk’s remains retrieved from Veridian III, as seen in Picard season 3. This brings us back to Gary Mitchell, as Urbach explains the godlike entity gets things started by sending information “to the group holding Kirk’s body at Daystrom.”
This section of the video also features Colt again looking at the information, but she is in a different uniform and here is where your mind could start getting blown, as he explains:
“Colt is in a Kelvin uniform because this is in the Kelvin timeline, even though you have the readouts [of Prime Kirk] from the Daystrom Station from 2401… This is not the same Colt. She didn’t walk over from Prime to Kelvin, she is from Kelvin. Just like there is Zachary Quinto Kelvin Spock, this is Kelvin Colt. And she is not in the Daystrom Institute, but that data, that information is what she is looking at.”
So now the intro section comes full circle, as he explains:
“What Gary Mitchell kicks off is how that scene ends up. So there’s the beginning and end to that prologue. Colt in the Kelvin timeline seeing that is started from what Gary Mitchell did.”
According to Urbach, this scene in the Kelvin Universe takes place before Prime Spock dies in the Kelvin Universe, and Spock and Kelvin Colt (off screen) “definitely had an interaction and that explains possibly more than anything.”
Kirk’s walk in the park
And now we find ourselves in a beautiful park with our first hints of an officer in TOS movie-era uniform walking through a garden, seen from oblique angles.
Soon enough, it is revealed to be James T. Kirk (played by actor Sam Witwer along with OTOY digital makeup), as seen last in Star Trek Generations. Urbach confirms this is Prime Kirk, “definitely himself and conscious, after Generations,” but again he also wanted to be sure that what we are seeing here is “open to interpretation.” However, he was definitive the park and the garden are not the extra-dimensional Nexus, where Kirk was trapped for a century in Generations.
Kirk comes upon a group of people, none of whom are immediately recognizable. One white-haired man stands a bit ahead of the crowd wearing a late 24th-century Starfleet dress uniform. This character (played by John Daltorio) is credited as “Crusher.” Urbach didn’t offer any details except to say he is “a descendant of Beverly Crusher.”
As Kirk moves through the crowd he comes upon Saavik, with Robin Curtis reprising the role she played in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In this case, Saavik is older, so Curtis presented without any digital makeup. Urbach talks about how we can interpret seeing the older Saavik here:
“There are at least two interpretations. One is this is heaven, or Gene Roddenberry’s atheistic version of some sort of afterlife. Another is the body that was in the Daystrom Institute has been resurrected as a literal, physical Kirk. And this is in the future, which is why you see an older Saavik and aren’t seeing people from his past like Bones. At least both are plausible and we were careful making sure of that as we were shooting this. So Saavik is older, this could be in the future, we don’t know exactly, all we know is as of 2401 [in Picard] no one had taken Kirk’s body out of Daystrom.”
But before you get too specific about dates and Picard and Saavik, again Urbach hedges his bets:
“I could play devil’s advocate for why this could be some sort of afterlife. Like if you look at Richard Matheson—who wrote TOS “The Enemy Within”—he had a huge influence on this… In his version of the afterlife from his book What Deams May Come, people can appear any age, so there are always these two interpretations. We were very careful for nothing to contradict either.”
Saavik is accompanied by another Vulcan, who she sort of introduces (again without dialogue) to Kirk, who appears to understand who this is: Spock and Saavik’s son (named Sorak, played by Mark Cinnery). Once again, Urbach is drawing on Star Trek extended universe:
“Spock’s child with Saavik was in an early script for Star Trek IV and I talked to the Nimoys and they are sure that Leonard’s intent for Star Trek III and Star Trek IV is that this is what happened. And given that that’s there and Saavik and Spock do get married in the novel Vulcan’s Heart. And in the TNG episode ‘Sarek,’ Picard mentions that he was supposed to be at his son’s wedding.”
As for the name Sorak, Urbach says, “I literally just picked that out of thin air, something that would make sense you could imagine as Spock’s son.”
But for Urbach, including Saavik was particularly important:
“I always wanted Robin to be there, because if you are taking this literally and you are going to send just one person to be with Spock, Spock’s family was always meant to be in there in that crowd. And to me that was Saavik and their son. That’s why they are both there… And obviously it’s a beautiful piece of acting on Robin’s and Sam’s part.”
Kirk now looks past the crowd to the lone figure of Yor, established in Discovery as the only known traveler who has moved from the Kelvin Universe to the Prime Universe.
Urbach confirmed Kirk doesn’t know who Yor is, and he also gave his view on what exactly is going on with Kirk here (using a bit of Greek mythology to explain):
“The notes that I gave Sam [Witwer], whatever has happened, whatever Kirk’s awareness… His presence in this space has not been for very long. And that’s why he looks a bit perplexed, as he is adjusting to this thing. And he starts to get more and more comfortable with what’s going on. It’s almost like Orpheus going down to rescue Persephone in Hades, and Yor is like Charon. It’s a lot like that where he hasn’t had a lot of time to adjust to where he is.”
Yor’s ability to travel between universes is the critical component here.As Kirk reaches Yor, he is handed his old badge, which had been left on his grave in Generations. Spock had retrieved this badge in the previous OTOY film “Regeneration” (see above). So the implication here is that Spock picked up that badge, and later he gave it to Yor. Urbach explained:
“Our interpretation is that Spock kept that badge and brought it to the Kelvin timeline. And Yor—as established in Discovery—can travel through time and through universes. And Yor presents the badge to Kirk—whether it is metaphorical/spiritual explanation, or literally—but it comes from Spock holding onto it all the way to the end. The implication is clear, Spock wants to see Kirk. And maybe Spock has set this whole thing up because he is Spock and he thinks seven-dimensionally.”
But once again, this is one of those moments when Urbach was careful to say it could be seen different ways:
The literal way is just one interpretation. In the spiritual interpretation, using the Richard Matheson view of the afterlife, you can create matter and create things. If you think about all the pieces, then some of those elements become a little more clear. More importantly, we wanted people to experience the emotionality of it. So this is not meant to be like, ‘Oh it’s this or that.’
World between worlds
Now is when things start to get a bit trippy as Kirk finds himself in some kind of otherworldly tunnel with water reflecting on the floor. This scene clearly draws upon the classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey, as explained by Urbach:
“A lot of this was from Carlos Baena, the director. He and I love 2001. If you look at the three-minute piece we did for 2001 [“Odysseys“], you can see the love we have for that film. And it is a big part of how we approach this and Star Trek.”
In this tunnel, Kirk sees different versions of himself, including one from the Star Trek: The Original Series era and then an admiral circa Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Urbach confirms all three are played by Sam Witwer in various costumes (and hair), again using OTOY technology to recreate the original look for their faces, but keeping his performance. Urbach talks about how this meeting of the Kirks was drawn from the 2001:
“Initially there were not going to be three Kirks. We wanted to show him looking at himself, maybe the TOS Kirk, and then if we are going to do this like 2001, he is going to see himself in different ages, so we extended it to three.”
Urbach describes this entire segment of the short film as Kirk in a “world between worlds,” and soon we see the other two Kirks fade away, leaving the Kirk who entered this realm:
“It’s very much in a realm where your katra, your spirit is feeling these things. In Star Trek there are different instances where they use the transporter to reintegrate characters, there is a bit of that. So when you see the other two Kirks disappear it’s because Kirk has figured out who he is. He is Generations Kirk. These other shadows or echoes of him are real, in the sense that they existed and they’re part of who he is. But it is something like, ‘No, I’m not living in these different times. I’m living in the now, this now.’ So obviously it’s abstract, but there’s a part of that that calls out to the idea of, even in a physical, literal way, Star Trek requiring you to be de-integrated in order to move on when you’re split across different pieces of time or your very personhood is in just one place and one time.”
And here the Generations Kirk who came into this realm puts on the badge that Yor gave him, sort of completing his journey to this “reintegration.”
It is now that we hear some dialogue for the first (and only) time in the form of a voice-over, with Kirk saying “‘There are always possibilities,’ Spock said. And if Genesis is indeed life from death, I must return to this place again,” taken from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.According to Urbach, this was a late addition to “Unification”:
“As we were doing this, we felt we needed something here, because a lot of the connection between the death of Spock and Kirk and Star Trek II is such a huge instrumental, influential part of the emotion of this scene. It’s in Kirk’s mind. He’s playing back that line as he is reconnecting where Spock is.”
Urbach revealed they initially had Sam Witwer record the line as all three different Kirks, and he noted with their technology, “we can do speaking, there is no problem having them talk like all the other stuff we are doing.” But William Shatner gave them permission to use his voice and Paramount provided the original audio from Star Trek II, which Urbach thought was fitting, adding “therefore Bill is in the piece, literally, from that perspective.”
Spock’s final rest
We now come to the final segment of the short film. Kirk is now in the Kelvin Universe (in between the events of Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond) on New Vulcan, where Spock Prime and other Vulcans lived after the destruction of Vulcan in the 2009 Star Trek movie. Here again Urbach drew from the extended universe, in this case IDW’s Legacy of Spock comic released shortly before Beyond. The writer of that comic, Mike Johnson, was also a consultant for “Unification.” That comic was the only time that New Vulcan was depicted and it also has a story that is tied into Spock’s death.
For Spock’s final resting place, they brought in Picard production designer Dave Blass.
“Dave built us the most beautiful Spock bed and room,” says Urbach. Blass, along with Mike and Denise Okuda, helped appoint the room befitting Spock, along with placing some Easter eggs, such as the box that young Spock (Zachary Quinto) was presented with when informed of Spock Prime’s death in Beyond (see above). But these elements are more than just Easter eggs, as Urbach explains:
“You have to put the box in there, otherwise people won’t know it’s right before Spock dies or that it is in the Kelvin timeline. That box was the first thing I had the production team build because, because if that’s not in there we aren’t necessarily going to know we are in the Kelvin Universe.”
However, Kirk doesn’t need to know all this stuff, according to Urbach:
“He doesn’t even really care, he just knows that Spock is there and dying. He could feel it. That was always the intent.”
Kirk approaches Spock and they grasp hands, just as they did in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This is more than just an homage, explains Urbach:
“There is that scene from The Motion Picture, that simple feeling. There has to be that index or key to people looking at this. I didn’t know if they would, but people immediately picked up on all of this. It’s that sense of their friendship. For me, that scene in The Motion Picture is where Spock becomes human and he humanizes their bond. It’s from that experience of mind-melding with V’Ger and Spock comes back and becomes his brother… That was a huge moment for both of them. So here, they were messaging to each other that they were going back to that, without a word being spoken.”
And again, Urbach says they were careful to ensure that these moments can be seen in different ways:
“The idea is that Spock was not necessarily expecting this, but was hoping for this… Again, there are two interpretations. One is that he is dying it and there’s a literal Mission: Impossible plan that’s been going on for a long time and it led to this very moment physically happening. And there are other possible interpretations. He could just be on his deathbed and having hallucinations. All of this could be in his mind as he is dying, even Kirk in the park.”
Kirk and Spock share a look as they are reunited. And this is what it’s all about, according to Urbach:
“Spock is about to die and whether Kirk is physically there or not, he doesn’t go out alone. They are there together. And for Kirk, it’s all about being there for his brother and his friend.”
Together, the pair look out at a sunset on New Vulcan, sharing this final moment together. So while we can (and have) analyzed the piece and all the connections, it is about the emotional resonance of this moment. As Urbach notes:
“For me, and I think for a lot of fans, it was important to see them together and see them together in a meaningful way. And that is where the piece really ends. And from what we have been seeing from people commenting, it worked. They are together and that is a beautiful thing.”
Urbach says they may do more films for the series, but this moment with Kirk and Spock is the “ending scene,” adding “this is the culmination of everything that would have possibly happened with these characters, and we are not saying what would happen after.” He does say “there is absolutely more we want to tell,” so he is hoping they do follow up with more for “the middle part of this piece that connect the beginning and end that we have shown so far is something we would want to explore.”
More “Unification”
So there you have it. A beautiful short film full of deep connections to Star Trek characters and lore that can be enjoyed on many levels and through many different interpretations. TrekMovie will have more coverage of “Unification” coming up, looking into behind-the-scenes details on the performances and technology and artistry that went into creating the short film.
For the full experience, visit the Roddenberry Archive web portal, or download the app on Apple Vision Pro.
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