Malcolm McDowell Knocked A Star Trek Actor Out Cold While Filming Generations

David Carson's 1994 film "Star Trek: Generations" sold itself on the idea that Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) would finally be able to meet face-to-face. It was constructed as a "passing the torch" film, ensuring that the cast of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" would be able to pick up, cinematically, where the original "Star Trek" crew left off.

The Picard-meets-Kirk story was mandated by the studio, and so the "Generations" writers contrived a reason to have them meet. The story followed an evil doctor named Soren (Malcolm McDowell) who was destroying stars around the galaxy, aiming to influence the gravitational path of a spatial phenomenon called the Nexus. The Nexus was a free-floating energy ribbon that could scoop up people and deposit them in a Heaven-like nether-dimension where time has no meaning. Soren tasted the Nexus about a century earlier, and he (belonging to a long-lived species) spent the ensuing time trying to get back. 

Picard and Kirk, through machinations of the plot, also found themselves inside the Nexus. "Generations" climaxed with the two men exiting the Nexus together and traveling back in time a few hours to confront Dr. Soren on a mountaintop. The grand meeting of Kirk and Picard culminated in a low-level fistfight on a catwalk on top of a mountain on a distant, uninhabited planet. It was a little anticlimactic. 

More dramatic is the fact that Malcolm McDowell accidentally punched William Shatner in the face for real. In the most recent issue of Empire Magazine, McDowell talked a little bit about working on "Generations," including the moment where Shatner forgot his fight choreography, leading to an unfortunate facial smack that laid out Kirk on the ground. McDowell was tickled by the incident. 

It should also be noted that the climax of "Star Trek: Generations" led to Captain Kirk's death. This was to be the final time any Trekkies would see Kirk in action. The fact that he died on a catwalk on some random planet was certainly disappointing. But Kirk's death was dealt at the hands of Dr. Soren (albeit indirectly), making McDowell's character incredibly significant in "Star Trek" canon. McDowell has even said that he savored the idea of killing such a beloved pop culture figure; it's certainly a memorable turn. 

McDowell was also more pragmatic about the experience, remembering his time with Shatner as whimsically ridiculous. The highlight of working with Shatner, he recalled, was punching him in the face. It seems that Shatner was not necessarily beloved on the set of "Generations," as McDowell's punch caused a small uproar. In McDowell's words: 

"[Shatner]. Oh God, I adored the man. He's absolutely ridiculous, but he gave me a good laugh. There was a time that we were doing this fight, and he went left instead of right, and I cold-cocked him and he went down on that platform and he was out. And about a hundred people turned away from where we were shooting, and all I saw was a lot of heaving shoulders. People were trying to stop laughing. He came to immediately, and blamed me.'"

It seems, though, that there wasn't any bad blood. Shatner has never spoken out about McDowell, and never said that working with the British actor was unpleasant. It was just a natural accident that likely happens frequently on film sets. And clearly no one was permanently injured: Shatner (94) and McDowell (82) are both still working to this day.