shatner in star trek

William Shatner

William Shatner is best known for his distinctive voice and his roles on 'Star Trek' and 'Boston Legal.'

Who Is William Shatner?

Actor, director, author, singer William Shatner is best known for his roles on Boston Legal and Star Trek .

Born on March 22, 1931, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Shatner started his career as a child performer in radio programs for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. As a student at McGill University, he continued to pursue acting. Shatner spent his summers performing with the Royal Mount Theater Company. He graduated from the university in 1952 and joined the National Repertory Theater of Ottawa. Working with Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Shatner also appeared in productions at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario.

Early Stage and Screen Roles

In 1961, Shatner had a small part in the Holocaust drama Judgment at Nuremberg , playing an army captain. He had a lead part in The Intruder (1962) as a racist who fought against school integration. On the small screen, Shatner had his first series, For the People , in 1965. He starred on the short-lived drama as an assistant district attorney in New York City.

'Star Trek' Series and Films

The following year, Shatner took on the role that made him famous around the world. As Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek , he commanded the U.S.S. Enterprise , a starship traveling through space in the twenty-third century. Kirk encountered all sorts of unusual aliens and challenging situations during his journeys. Accompanying him on these adventures was his loyal crew, which included first officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and medical officer Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley). The science fiction series created by Gene Roddenberry premiered on September 8, 1966, and lasted for three seasons.

During the run of the show, Shatner also made an unusual career move. He recorded an album, The Transformed Man (1968), which featured spoken word versions of contemporary pop hits. Already known for his dramatic, but earnest delivery of his lines on Star Trek , Shatner recorded renditions of such songs as the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

Not long after the album, Star Trek was canceled. The show, however, continued to live on in syndication and became even more popular. Star Trek became a Saturday morning cartoon that ran during the mid-1970s, and it was resurrected a live action film in 1979. Returning to the role of Kirk, Shatner starred in Star Trek: The Motion Picture . The film's warm reception by film-goers showed how much affection the public had for the old series. At the beginning of the film, Kirk has become an admiral, Bones has retired, and Spock has returned to the planet Vulcan. But the three return to work on a new version of the Enterprise to solve a crisis involving a mysterious cloud that has destroyed several spaceships.

In the sequel Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Kirk has to overcome an old adversary out for revenge, Khan Noonien Singh (Richardo Montalban). He followed with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).

The next chapter in the Star Trek film series received a lukewarm reception. For Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), Shatner not only returned as Kirk, but made his debut as a feature film director as well. The film, unfortunately, received some fairly negative reviews. Movie critic Roger Ebert called it "a mess," involving "not much danger, no characters to really care about, little suspense, uninteresting ... villains, and great deal of small talk."

Not matter what the reviews said, the Star Trek film series continued at warp speed. The next installments were Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and then Star Trek Generations (1994). In Generations , the members of the original Star Trek hand the baton to the cast of the spin-off series Star Trek: The Next Generation , marking the end of Shatner's starring role in the franchise.

TV and Movie Roles

't.j. hooker'.

In 1982, Shatner took on a new leading television role in T. J. Hooker , as a veteran police officer who returns to a street beat. The supporting cast included Heather Locklear and Adrian Zmed as younger officers who work with and look up to Shatner's character. Unlike the original Star Trek series, T. J. Hooker was immediately popular with television audiences.

Shatner remained a fixture on television even after T. J. Hooker went off the air, becoming the host for Rescue 911 in 1989. This was an early entry into the reality television genre, featuring reenactments of emergency situations.

'The Practice,' 'Boston Legal'

On the big screen, Shatner appeared as a beauty pageant host in Miss Congeniality (2000) and its sequel Miss Congeniality 2 (2005), with Sandra Bullock . In 2003, he made a guest appearance as a talented, but eccentric lawyer on The Practice . His turn as Denny Crane brought him his first Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2004. He had been previously nominated for his guest appearance on the science fiction sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun in 1999.

The Practice creator David E. Kelley created a spin-off series, Boston Legal , featuring Shatner's character Denny Crane in 2004. Law partner and master litigator Crane acts as a mentor of sorts to Alan Shore (played by James Spader). For his work on the series, Shatner won his second Emmy — this time for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series — in 2005. More nominations in this category followed in 2006 and in 2007.

'Shatner's Raw Nerve,' 'Weird or What?'

In 2008, Shatner began work on Shatner's Raw Nerve, a celebrity interview program on the Biography Channel. He then worked on another Biography Channel project entitled Aftermath with William Shatner , which focused on the stories of ordinary citizens who became overnight celebrities, and also hosted the supernatural-themed Weird or What?

'$#*! My Dad Says,' 'Better Late Than Never'

In 2010, Shatner returned to sitcom TV in the short-lived $#*! My Dad Says , based on a Twitter feed of the same name. He began hosting the U.S. version of the stop-motion series Clangers in 2015, and enjoyed some success with the reality-travel series Better Late Than Never the following year, alongside Henry Winkler , George Foreman and Terry Bradshaw .

'The UnXplained' on HISTORY

Shatner is the host and executive producer of the HISTORY nonfiction series The UnXplained , which premiered on July 19, 2019, at 10 pm ET/PT. The series tackles subjects that have mystified mankind for centuries, from mysterious structures and cursed ancient cities to extraterrestrial sightings and bizarre rituals.

“It’s an intriguing show that will offer viewers credible answers to questions about mysterious phenomena, while also leaving other theories left unexplained," Shatner said.

Shatner has experienced great success as an author. During the writers' strike of 1987, he transformed a screenplay idea into a novel. The result was TekWar (1989), a work of science fiction featuring a middle-aged private detective working in the twenty-second century. More Tek titles followed and were later adapted for television.

Additionally, Shatner worked with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens to create a series of Star Trek novels, and launched the Quest for Tomorrow and Samuel Lord science fiction series.

Also a veteran of nonfiction, Shatner co-authored Star Trek Memories (1993) and Star Trek Movie Memories (1994) with Chris Kreski. He and Kreski also worked together on Get a Life! (1999), a look at the whole Star Trek fan phenomenon. The actor went on to pen several nonfiction books with David Fisher, including Up Till Now: The Autobiography (2008) and Live Long And...: What I Learned Along the Way (2018).

Marriages and Personal

From 1956 to 1969, Shatner was married to Canadian actress Gloria Rand. The couple had three children together. Shatner married actress Marcy Lafferty in 1973. That marriage ended in divorce in 1996. Shortly thereafter, he married model Nerine Kidd. Kidd's life came to a tragic end in 1999, when she accidentally drowned in a pool at the Shatners' home in Studio City, California.

After such a tragic loss, Shatner was able to find happiness again with his 2001 marriage to Elizabeth J. Martin, a horse breeder. In late 2019, it was reported that the 88-year-old actor had filed for divorce.

As part of his own love of horses, Shatner started the annual Hollywood Charity Horse Show to raise funds for children's charities in 1990.

In late 2017, Canadian Governor General Julie Payette appointed Shatner an Officer of the Order of Canada for his contributions to popular culture and his charity work.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: William Shatner
• Birth Year: 1931
• Birth date: March 22, 1931
• Birth City: Montreal
• Birth Country: Canada
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: William Shatner is best known for his distinctive voice and his roles on 'Star Trek' and 'Boston Legal.'
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• McGill University

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: William Shatner Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/actors/william-shatner
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: December 11, 2019
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• The line between making a total ass of yourself and being fundamentally funny is very narrow.

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Published Apr 23, 2014

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: William Shatner, Part 2

William Shatner moves at a pace that would exhaust most people half his age – and Star Trek ’s legendary Captain James T. Kirk turned 83 years old in March. Last year, he starred in Shatner’s World , a one-man stage show that played on Broadway and toured the country. That’s now a movie… with Shatner’s World set to play for one night only in 600-plus theaters on Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. local time, presented by Fathom Events and Priceline.com.

Shatner will also host his annual Hollywood Charity Horse Show on April 26. And, not at all shockingly, there’s more, lots more: he’s got a new album, Ponder the Mystery , out now, not to mention a book on the way (it’s called Hire Yourself ), another Star Trek documentary in the works, plenty of convention appearances lined up and two new TV projects in development. StarTrek.com recently caught up with the man himself to discuss all those aforementioned enterprises and more. Below is part two of our exclusive conversation; click HERE to read part one.

Your latest book is Hire Yourself . What inspired that?

SHATNER: The fact that people over 50 are being rehired at a much slower rate because they want more. They want more, but they have more to offer. And in many cases, they’re failing to be rehired. Corporations are hiring younger people with less experience and less knowledge and paying them less. So I’m advocating… hire yourself.

The 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek series is almost upon us. For you, it was one job that lasted three years. Some people might call it a failed series or, at best, semi-successful. So how surreal has this all been for you, that Star Trek snowballed into what it’s become?

SHATNER: It is surreal. It has an aura of unreality about it. It’s a phenomenon. There’s never been anything like it before. If you talk in 50-year terms, then we need to go another 50 years before we think there’s something like it again, but we’ll all be dead, so we won’t know. So we can safely say that (in our lifetimes), it’s never happened before and it will never happen again.

We ran a story recently on StarTrek.com in which we commented on some of your best non- Star Trek work and asked readers to share their thoughts on the matter. We were talking about your acting, but people included other things, too, so the list encompassed The Brothers Karamazov, Judgment at Nuremberg , your episodes of Twilight Zone and Columbo, Rescue 911, The Andersonville Trial, Airplane 2: The Sequel, Third Rock from the Sun , and, of course, Boston Legal . We know you tend to joke about not remembering things, but in all seriousness, what of your non- Trek work are you proudest of?

SHATNER: My attitude towards what I do as an actor is more about hitting a moment. Did I play that moment with honesty and with truthfulness and in character? Did I hit the right notes? So that breaks itself down into moments, and that means that every one of the shows and movies you mentioned I may have hit a moment that resonated in me and for other people. Certainly the ones I can remember the best are from Boston Legal , when there moments when I thought I’d brought to life a line within the character dimensions, moments that were truthful, that conveyed the meaning, that had layers of meaning, so that if you were to see it again, you’d think, “Maybe he meant ‘Hello’ in a different way.” So I don’t break those things down into, “That was my favorite,” because everything I have done has something about it that I really like. That includes the commercials I’ve done for Priceline.

We had people state the case for T.J. Hooker

f that more as a guilty pleasure than as some of your fine e of your finest work, but you may disagree…

SHATNER: I did have moments there, too. And I will give you an instance of a moment. I directed quite a few of the T.J. Hooker s. One of my shots is used in the opening sequence, and that is a silhouetted policeman – which happens to be me – running down a tunnel. The cinematographer wanted to light the tunnel and I said, “No, leave it in shadow.” And it was dramatic. It paid off. I felt exultant having conceived the shot, fought for the shot, made the shot and that people agreed with me by using it not only in the show, but as part of the opening credits.

And many fans pointed out that Airplane 2 , in which you pretty much spoofed Kirk, sent you down the comedy path. How much of your performance was ad-libbed?

SHATNER: A lot of it was ad-libbing. To hear a laugh… Here’s the delineation of the situation. You do something on the set and a year later you see it in a film. I went to see Airplane 2 , and one of the lines that I’d ad-libbed, which I forget now, but which I knew when I did it I had timed correctly, got a huge laugh in the movie theater. So I felt terrific, warmed by the reaction to the delivery of that one line a year later.

We talked about some of your new endeavors, but there are actually more. If you have a few more minutes for us, let’s go through them. One that most people probably have not heard about yet is The Shatner Project . What is that?

SHATNER: The Do-It-Yourself Network, DIY, is shooting me and my wife as we renovate our house. We’re having a terrific time. And they’re making what I say in the beginning part of the show is a perfectly fine house into a much better house. But I fought the change for quite a while. This is my house in L.A.

And what else do you have going on?

SHATNER: The Hollywood Charity Horse Show is on April 26. We’ve raised several million dollars for charity. We usually raise between $300,000 and $400,000 a year and I’ve been doing it for nearly 30 years, so it’s the millions of dollars that we’ve raised. Wynona Judd will be coming to sing for us. If people go to www.horseshow.org , they can contribute $1 or $5 or $10 even if they can’t come to the show. Every penny goes to the charities. We have a private donor who takes care of the expenses. So every dollar goes straight to children and veterans.

My album, Ponder the Mystery , is out there now. I’m inordinately proud of Billy Sherwood’s work and my own. I’ve also sold an interview show called Brown Bag Wine Tasting . It’s been on my website, but a company has bought it, so we’re going to make some more. It’s me interviewing people. Talking to people, it can take time for them to warm up. My insertion, if you will, is a sip of wine from a brown bag. We analyze the wine and then the guests talk about themselves, and they’re mostly man on the street people rather than celebrities. They’re literally man on the street; they’ll be walking by and I’ll accost them and start talking to them.

Visit StarTrek.com to read part one of our exclusive interview with William Shatner, and check out his official site at williamshatner.com . Also, go to fathomevents.com for details about a Shatner's World screening near you.

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William Shatner Shares Some Great Behind-the-Scenes Stories About Making 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan'

The original ‘Star Trek’ Captain reveals how he learned about Spock’s death, how they thought Khan could be their last movie, and so much more.

We live in a day and age where no one can agree on anything. People are divided on almost every subject imaginable and it’s incredibly rare when a group of people can come together on anything. But if you get a group of  Star Trek fans together, no matter their political background, no matter what they think is the best Star Trek show, I’d wager every person in the room would agree with this one statement: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is the best Star Trek movie.

Released in the summer of 1982, The Wrath of Khan was made on a fraction of the budget compared to the first Trek movie ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture ) by using tons of cost-cutting techniques to keep the budget down including reusing models, sets, effects footage, and costumes from the first film.

But while the film might have done things on a tight budget, what sets it apart from the slow-moving first installment is director Nicholas Meyer's focus on action and a great villain. In addition, while Khan (played brilliantly by Ricardo Montalban ) is a fantastic antagonist, I think what many people overlook is the decision by Meyer and the creative team to not have a stereotypical fight scene in the third act. In most movies, you’d have the two main characters on a collision course towards the eventual fight scene, but that’s not The Wrath of Khan . While you might not realize it, all the stuff between Captain Kirk and Khan Noonien Singh is done on view-screens and communicators. It’s what a futuristic fight scene would actually be and it’s one of the many reasons I love The Wrath of Khan.

With the film celebrating its 35 th Anniversary, Fathom Events and Paramount Pictures are going to bring back the classic film to more than 600 theaters throughout the U.S. on Sunday, September 10th, and Wednesday, September 13th, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (local time) each day.

To help celebrate its Anniversary and also to promote its return to theaters, I recently landed an exclusive interview with William Shatner . During the wide-ranging conversation, he shared some great behind-the-scenes stories from the making of the film, how the film had the highest opening weekend of all time when it first opened, how they all thought it could be the last time making a Star Trek film while shooting, his friendship with Ricardo Montalbån, how he was first told about Spock’s death, and so much more. Check out what he had to say below.

Finally, if you’ve never seen The Wrath of Khan on a movie screen, I’d definitely recommend checking it out. You can buy tickets to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan here: www.FathomEvents.com .

Collider: How are you doing today, sir?

WILLIAM SHATNER: So well. What about you?

Anytime I can talk to you about Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan is a great day.

SHATNER: Oh my gosh, that's great Steven.

I've been a fan of yours a very long time so I want to thank you for talking about the film with me.

SHATNER: Thank you.

A lot of people won't remember because it was 35 years ago, but when Wrath of Khan came out it had the biggest opening weekend of all time up to that point. Did you have any inkling that it was going to do that kind of business?

SHATNER: Nobody had any idea. We were holding our breath. It came on the heels of Star Trek: The Movie which today has made money and is looked on a little more fondly than it was when it was received. But because it was so rushed, I can remember we had the opening in Washington D.C., and the film, because they were carrying film around those days, the film hadn't arrived to be played in the theater in Washington til late that afternoon. It came handheld on a commercial airplane accompanied by the studio person.

That's crazy.

SHATNER: Yeah. So Star Trek: The Motion Picture was not well received because it was so rushed and didn't have the final editing time. So to all intents and purposes, that was it. The reviews weren't that great, business wasn't that great, that was going to be the end of it.

The owner of Paramount Studios at that time whose name I can't remember... his wife, so everybody said, "Okay, that's it, we've done it. We've made a movie of Star Trek ." That guy's wife said to her husband, "You've got to try again. It's such a great series," and she convinced him to bring in Harve Bennett who said, "I could make it for less," and then he hired Nicholas Meyer, who had written a really great segment, and it was done much more efficiently, much more like a TV show. Smaller, contained, and when it opened, we were thinking, hoping, that it wouldn't follow the same fate as the prior movie.

Well one of the things that I love about the film, and I think people won't realize, is that you and Khan never do the stereotypical fight scene. It's all done via view screen or a communicator. Did you ever want to do one of those fight scenes, or were you sort of like, "This is really cool that we're not going to just do what normally happens in a movie."

SHATNER: To the best of my recollection, I don't even remember being conscious of it. There was so much dialogue between us, it never occurred to me until after we had done it that I never set foot on the same set. I had known Ricardo [Montalbån] prior to working with him on the movie, but only slightly. In fact, the story is that as a teenager, I was from Montreal, and I'd come down with my parents every so often to New York City just to see New York City. And now I was in my late teens, and I was down in New York for the first time by myself and I went to see a musical. And I saw this dancer who really was good, a handsome man, dancing, and I thought, "Well, what a remarkable dancer, and you don't see good looking men dancing." And then I went to a movie and I saw the same guy and he was a good actor, a Latin lover, thought, "Wow, this guy is really terrific." So I noticed Ricardo Montalbån before I met him. I was aware of this guy who looked really good on film.

Then I met him, and then we worked together, and he had ridden horses and I was so interested in horses, and he was quite an athlete, and he had a sore hip. And then it just degenerated into, he totally became totally incapacitated. And the fact that I didn't do a scene with him together has only latter day been aware and sad about.

I think it's one of the reasons why the film is so good. Because normally, a film would build towards you guys having some sort of scene where you're fighting. That's what every movie does. And I think it's stronger that it's this futuristic kind of fight scene, where it's just via communicator and view screen.

SHATNER: I agree, there's a tension there that remains throughout the movie.

One of the things that I found fascinating when I was researching to talk to you is that the death of Spock actually leaked when you guys were making the movie. Which in that day and age, before the internet, is kind of shocking. So do you remember when you first heard that that sort of information had leaked, and what was the reaction from everyone?

SHATNER: Here's my memory of it. I'm sitting in a Harve Bennett's office, and he's describing the death of Spock and I'm shocked. "You mean we're going to kill Spock?" And "Yeah, and he goes into this room and this plastic door and he puts up his hand." And I said well, "Kirk would put up his hand to the door and they would touch and slide down." I acted out what the way I thought the scene would go, which they ultimately did the way I thought of it, so I was not only privy to the way it was going to go, I helped plot the outline of the way it would look.

That scene is obviously one of the most iconic in Star Trek history, but speaking of another iconic scene is, when you scream "Khan," it is one of these scenes that everyone knows that it's probably the most iconic Star Trek scene that's ever been done. At the time when you were making it, did you have any inkling that this was going to be such a memorable scene?

SHATNER: No. I was, nobody told me that there was some thought about bringing him back and that Leonard [Nimoy] leaned over, McCoy [DeForest Kelley], and whispered "remember." I said, "What's that all about? Why are we killing Spock? Why are we killing Spock?" And they said, "Well, Leonard doesn't want to do it anymore. I was thinking god, if Leonard doesn't want to do it anymore, what's going to happen to Star Trek ? If we were to make another film? Well, that's the way that went. They never told me.

At the time when you guys were making Khan , a lot of people felt that that should've been the first movie because the critical reaction to the first one wasn't there. Do you think that Khan should've been the first Star Trek movie, or do you think Khan's success is directly as a result of the first film you guys made?

SHATNER: Well I think you could that way. Who knew? The people heading up Paramount said, "Let's get Robert Wise, the great director, the great editor," he'd done so many movies for them. All those big musicals and ... So then Robert Wise says, "Yes, well my goodness what a coup that is, we're going to make a great motion picture." Well it didn't turn out to be a great motion picture because it lacked a humanity. It was special effects. Doug Trumbull wasn't edited because there wasn't time to edit the special effects. So the special effects went on too long and dragged a little here and there.

But the basic story lacked a humanity, because it was dealing with technology. Everybody fell in love with technology, which is a temptation in science fiction. You forget the human story, which is the most important thing.

No absolutely, and also the sequel, Wrath of Khan , has more of a swashbuckling type feel you know, and it's...

SHATNER: And a humanity. So the lesson that was learned, and we were given the opportunity to apply that lesson, was don't forget what Star Trek was originally, which was a good story.

Well speaking of technology, one of the things that Wrath of Khan did, which again I don't think a lot of people might realize, it was the first film to use an entirely computer generated sequence. But you guys used it effectively, because it used technology around the human story. Which you know the first film did, Douglas Trumbull as you said, do you remember your reaction when you first saw what computers could when you first saw the visual effects on Khan ?

SHATNER: Well, the evolution of special effects, I've got to imagine people have written books and articles. I don't believe I've read any, but from those beginning primitive, you know, filming the Enterprise was done in a little studio closet and they would move, sometimes by hand, the Enterprise and the camera would pick it up and somebody would be flicking the lights, and it was so primitive. And I've got to imagine that unless there was some geniuses who could look into the future and say, "This is primitive and we've got good stuff coming down the pipe," I thought, well that's the way it is, that's the way we'll do things.

Nobody that I spoke to over the many years had any inkling of what computer graphics could do, and that goes for everybody up til recently, until Avatar , there were ... “It's nice, these are great explosions and little animals,” but until Avatar which is a milestone of what you could do with interaction of humans and the computer graphics, nobody knew. All this is new. We're just, all of us humans on earth are just beginning to, it's just beginning to dawn on us what this technology can do for us and against us. We're just, we're all staggered by learning this. And that was the same way it was with the computer graphics in films. Oh my god, you mean you don't need a green screen?

I'm always curious about how involved have you ever been with the editing room. For example on Khan , did you ever go to the editing room and see how Nicholas was working and see what takes he was using, or are you sort of the type of person that like, "Show me the finished film."

SHATNER: Well, to answer that, I would have no authority to say "use that." That would be awful. That just isn't done. I mean, as I said, you have no authority to do it, so it would be senseless. Not only that, I was in the editing room on Star Trek five, but it's an anathema to me to look at myself, so I chose the easy way out which is not to pay any attention, hope that these really good, that these fine talents would come up with the right combination. Which of course they did.

Yeah, I read a thing with Nicholas Meyer and he said that as an actor, you seemed to get better after doing a few takes. Do you agree with that assessment, and typically speaking, how many takes do you like to do?

SHATNER: You can't put a number on it. I'm sure that he wouldn't have said, those words don't sound like Nick, but of course if you rehearse something and "oh, that’s how it workd, but I'm going to do this," and you rehears a few times on camera because you never know what's going to happen, after a number of takes it gets better because you know what's working, what's not working.

By the same token, you might be able to do something simple in one take, do something complicated in 12.

When you guys were making the sequel, do you remember an atmosphere on set thinking you know, "If this doesn't work this might be our last adventure."

SHATNER: Everybody thought that each movie was the last time. They burned the sets. Every movie, they burned the sets because that was the last movie. There was no point in storing it because nothing else was going to happen.

It's so crazy.

SHATNER: It was crazy. It was expensive.

I'm still amazed as a film fan that more of these sets actually don't get saved or put somewhere. Even though I guess they're not really made to last.

SHATNER: They aren't made to last, so they couldn't ... You know, there was talk about making a ride using the original sets, but they were made to, they were plywood. They were backed up, something was holding a piece of plywood up.

My last thing for you because I'm running out of time, when you think back on the making of Khan , is there a day or two that you will always remember?

SHATNER: Well, long time ago, my acquaintanceship, burgeoning friendship, with Ricardo Montalbån, although we never were in the same scene, I saw him frequently at his home or we'd eat someplace together. He was a lovely man, I cherish my memory of him.

I guess I have time for one last question, which is do you remember with Nicholas Meyer, were there a lot of changes onset with the script, or do you remember if it was one of those productions that kind of stuck closely to it? Because I know he did a rewrite in a very limited time frame to get this film green lit.

SHATNER: Right. No, he wrote extremely well and best of my recollection, there was very little adjustment.

Cool. Sir, I have to tell you sincerely, it is an absolute pleasure to talk to you about this and have a fantastic day.

SHATNER: You too, the pleasure is mine.

SHATNER: Bye bye.

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William Shatner boldly went into space for real. Here's what he saw

Joe Hernandez

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket system lifts off from the launchpad carrying 90-year-old Star Trek actor William Shatner and three other civilians near Van Horn, Texas, on Wednesday. Mario Tama/Getty Images hide caption

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket system lifts off from the launchpad carrying 90-year-old Star Trek actor William Shatner and three other civilians near Van Horn, Texas, on Wednesday.

Blue Origin's second human spaceflight has returned to Earth after taking a brief flight to the edge of space Wednesday morning.

Among the four passengers on board — there is no pilot — was William Shatner, the actor who first played the space-traveling Captain Kirk in the Star Trek franchise.

Canadian actor William Shatner, who became a cultural icon for his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise, speaks at a convention in 2019. Michele Spatari/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Canadian actor William Shatner, who became a cultural icon for his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise, speaks at a convention in 2019.

"The covering of blue. This sheet, this blanket, this comforter that we have around. We think, 'Oh, that's blue sky,' " an emotional Shatner said after returning to Earth.

"Then suddenly you shoot through it all of the sudden, as though you're whipping a sheet off you when you're asleep, and you're looking into blackness, into black ugliness."

At age 90, Shatner is now the oldest person to fly into space.

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself in now & then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me," he said in a tweet after landing.

William Shatner dresses as Capt. James T. Kirk at a 1988 photo-op promoting the film Star Trek V: The Final Frontier . Bob Galbraith/AP hide caption

William Shatner dresses as Capt. James T. Kirk at a 1988 photo-op promoting the film Star Trek V: The Final Frontier .

The rocket system, New Shepard, took off around 9:50 a.m. CT from a launch site near Van Horn, Texas.

Joining Shatner on the flight was a Blue Origin employee and two paying customers.

Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns Blue Origin, was on-site for the launch and shook the hands of all four passengers as they boarded New Shepard. The rocket is named after American astronaut Alan Shepard.

William Shatner is bound for space, but the rest of us will have to wait

The entire suborbital journey lasted about 10 minutes. On part of the trip, the four passengers experienced weightlessness.

The capsule topped out at an apogee altitude of 351,000 feet (about 66 miles up). It then fell back to Earth, landing under a canopy of parachutes in the West Texas desert.

Blue Origin launched its first human spaceflight in July , with Bezos and three others on board.

Wednesday's flight came about two weeks after 21 current and former Blue Origin employees wrote an essay accusing top executives at the space company of fostering a toxic workplace that permits sexual harassment and sometimes compromises on safety. Blue Origin denied the allegations.

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• William Shatner

William Shatner on ‘Star Trek,’ Space Travel and Mortality: ‘I Don’t Have Long to Live’

By Brent Lang

Executive Editor

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William Shatner kicks things off with a compliment.

We’re talking via Zoom — he’s beaming in from the sprawling kitchen of his Los Angeles home, which overlooks the San Fernando Valley. I’m dialing in from the living room of my walkup apartment in Brooklyn, a much more modest setting. But Shatner is impressed by the over-stocked bookcase behind me, as well as the paintings, a seascape and an impressionist pastoral scene that I inherited from my grandmother, that line the wall around it.

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Why did you decide to make the documentary?

I’ve turned down a lot of offers to do documentaries before. But I don’t have long to live. Whether I keel over as I’m speaking to you or 10 years from now, my time is limited, so that’s very much a factor. I’ve got grandchildren. This documentary is a way of reaching out after I die.

Did you learn something about yourself that you didn’t know before you made this film?

That’s sad. What about your legacy?

When Leonard Nimoy died a few years ago, his funeral was on a Sunday. His death was very sudden, and I had obligated myself to go to Mar-a-Lago for a Red Cross fundraiser. I was one of the celebrities raising money. That event was on Saturday night. I chose to keep my promise and go to Mar-a-Lago instead of the funeral, and I said to the audience, “People ask about a legacy. There’s no legacy. Statues are torn down. Graveyards are ransacked. Headstones are knocked over. No one remembers anyone. Who remembers Danny Kaye or Cary Grant? They were great stars. But they’re gone and no one cares.” But what does live on are good deeds. If you do a good deed, it reverberates to the end of time. It’s the butterfly effect thing. That’s why I have done this film.

Your decision not to attend Leonard Nimoy’s funeral was controversial . How did the backlash feel? Do you regret your decision?

Who cares? I know what I did was right. So it doesn’t matter. We’re criticized when we lift a finger. I don’t read that stuff. I try to not to indulge in the evil that’s out there.

Everyone thinks about dying, but actors actually get to act out what it’s like to die on stage or on film. Does that change your perspective on death?

There was a time when actors, and I include myself in this, would portray death by falling to the ground and your eyes would flicker and you’d slump around and then you’re dead. That’s not how you die. This is how you die [Shatner’s eyes go wide abruptly and his breath stops] . See? I’m dead. Ever put a dog down? When I have to put a dog down and I’m at the vet, I cup my dog’s head and I say, “I’m with you baby, I’m with you.” And the injection goes in and the dog looks at me with love, and that’s it. You don’t know they’re dead. That’s how you die. It’s abrupt. My wife’s brother walked out of the living room and into the bedroom. There was a thud. His wife walked in, and he was dead. Death comes anew to all of us.

In “Star Trek: Generations” you got to have some say in how Kirk died. In that scene , he approaches his last moments with wonder. Why was that something you pushed for?

I’m of the opinion that you die the way you live. I thought Kirk would die with a “Wow, look at that coming at me. There’s a guy with a scythe. Holy shit!” He’d seen all these weird aliens before. Here comes death and he meets it with awe and a sense of discovery.

You’ve been touring the country with sold-out screenings of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” a movie that came out in 1982. Danny Kaye and Cary Grant aside, some of your movies are going to outlast you. Is that comforting?

They’ll be good for another 10 years, maybe five. I’ve made all these films that are popular, so I’m sure they’ll pop up every so often. But I don’t need validation from a film I made in 1982. I get pleasure in talking to you right now.

I have a grandson named Sebastian, who is 3 months old and already he’s got a mischievous smile. He’s already a little bit of a comic. His mother and father are lovely people. You look into his eyes, and you can see the aspects of what he will be like. If hunger and disease and bad fortune don’t disturb him too much, he should become this wonderful, amusing human being. So with the time I have left, I like to look at all my grandchildren and try to extract what I can out of my impressions.

Do you like going to “Star Trek” screenings and conventions and being in front of all those fans?

I don’t enjoy being tugged at, but I enjoy answering questions and being in front of thousands of people.

Do you have a favorite role?

No. I just try to have a good time on the set. I just did a commercial for a watch that I designed. It has a face with a telescope, a sun, the milky way. And the watch company did this whole science fiction background for me to talk about it. Well, there’s a part of the commercial where they use CGI to have a meteorite land next to me. I ad lib, “That’s a lot of meteorite.” That was a pretty funny improv. I did that on Monday, and that’s become one of my favorite moments. I don’t know what it’s like for others. I went to watch Dwight Yoakam record an album last night, because I have no idea how a great artist makes their art. It’s like, how does everybody else fuck? You have no idea. I don’t know if he has a favorite album, and I don’t know if I have a favorite role.

In 2021, you went into space on Jeff Bezos’  Blue Origin  space shuttle and you said it made you weep because it gave you a better sense of what is happening to the planet. What did you mean?

When I came out of the space ship I was crying, just sobbing, and I thought why am I crying? What’s going on? I’m in grief. What am I grieving about? Oh shit, I’m grieving about the world, because I now know so much about what’s happening. I saw the Earth and its beauty and its destruction. It’s going extinct. Billions of years of evolution may vanish. It’s sacred, it’s holy, it’s life and it’s gone. It’s beyond tragic. We stupid fucking animals are destroying this gorgeous thing called the Earth. Doesn’t that make you angry? Don’t you want to do something about it?

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93 Years of Shatner

A tribute to an irrepressible TV star’s ability to live long and prosper.

William Shatner, who turns 93 today, will always be best remembered for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek series. Star Trek ’s creator Gene Roddenberry deserves a lot of credit for the enduring popularity and influence of the program, but it was Shatner who made the main character indelible. By the 1990s, a lot of people had begun to think of Shatner as a shameless ham—the TV actor who overplayed every role. Indeed, he was so good at playing Kirk that he was hired to do so as both a pitchman for the online travel agency Priceline and in TV shows such as The Practice and Boston Legal , in which, as a New York Times Magazine profile once noted , “William Shatner the man was playing William Shatner the character playing the character Denny Crane, who was playing the character William Shatner.”

If that sounds a bit confusing, it is probably because no actor has ever really had a career quite like Shatner’s. Scroll through his credits at the Internet Movie Database and you’ll discover that he has played himself in a wide array of projects: an episode of The Big Bang Theory , the 2002 film Showtime (starring Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy), an episode of Futurama , the 2009 film Fanboys , a Bruno Mars music video , Shatner’s own spoken-word video for It Hasn’t Happened Yet , an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air , the 2012 film Horrorween (in which Donald Trump also appeared as himself), the TV series Hashtaggers , and so on.

If you watch episodes of the original Star Trek now, Shatner may seem to be overacting. This is also true of many of his 1960s and ’70s guest-starring appearances. But Shatner wasn’t really hamming it up. He only appears to be doing so nowadays because our TVs have gotten so much bigger and their pictures have gotten so much clearer. In the 1960s, like most American families, my family owned a single TV set, which was only capable of producing black-and-white images, and it was minuscule by today’s standards (23 inches measured diagonally). It sat in our basement family room and got mediocre reception (this was long before satellite and cable television made TV images much sharper). If someone turned on an appliance in another room, it could cause the TV screen to grow fuzzy. If someone walked on the floor overhead, it could mess with the reception.

Sometimes, in order to get a clear picture, you had to toy with the “rabbit ears” (a pair of antennae) on top of the TV. Many 1960s TV sets had tinfoil connecting the two ears of the antennae. Sometimes, just the way the electrical cord was draped or coiled behind the TV could alter the picture. If the wind outside blew strong enough to cause the big antenna on our roof to vibrate, the screen could grow fuzzy. TVs were so temperamental back then that, in order to operate them, you had to be handy with knobs that read “horizontal hold,” “vertical hold,” “contrast,” and so forth. It’s possible that my current, flat-screen plasma TV has control buttons like that, but I haven’t used any of them in the ten years that I’ve owned it. And rabbit ears appear to be a thing of the distant past. 

In other words, TVs were small in the days when Shatner went to work in Hollywood, the picture and sound quality was often poor, and to top it all off, most of us in the Baby Boomer generation were raised to believe that it was dangerous to sit close to a television while watching it. Tech journalist Ian Bogost of the Atlantic recently wrote an essay titled “Your TV is Too Good for You,” in which he noted:

Years ago, sitting too close was the problem. If you’re old enough to remember watching cathode-ray-tube sets, you may have been enjoined to give them space: Move back from the TV! The reasons were many. Cold-War-addled viewers had developed the ( somewhat justified ) fear that televisions emitted radiation, for one. And the TV—still known as the “boob tube” because it might turn its viewers into idiots—was considered a dangerous lure . Its resolution was another problem: if you got close enough to the tube, you could see the color image break down into the red, blue, and green phosphor dots that composed its picture. All of these factors helped affirm the TV’s appropriate positioning—best viewed at a middle distance—and thus its proper role within the home. A television was to be seen from across the room. … The media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously described television as a “cool” medium, one that provides somewhat meager sensory stimulation, as opposed to a “hot” medium such as cinema, which intensely targets the eyes and ears.

My parents kept the TV in the basement because it was the only space big enough for us to watch it from a distance. The first and second floors of the house were divided into a variety of small rooms, but the basement was one long and empty space. Our family would gather in the basement on Saturday nights to watch TV, my parents in chairs about ten feet from the TV while my siblings and I sprawled on a sofa and chairs behind them. My parents weren’t being greedy, hogging the best spots in the room—they were protecting the eyes of their children by keeping them a good 15 feet from the screen, and it was often difficult to follow everything happening in a program from that distance.

Shatner seemed to understand all this better than just about any other TV actor of his era. While a lot of TV actors were trying to mimic the mush-mouthed vocal delivery of big-screen movie stars like Marlon Brando or James Dean, Shatner went in the opposite direction. He enunciated his words carefully and broke his sentences into bite-sized pieces, making each clause a separate unit of delivery. He would speed up his cadence at times, and then bring it to a near halt. Shatner’s unique speaking style has been parodied countless times. Among living actors, probably only Christopher Walken’s line delivery has generated more parodies. One of the more memorable Shatner impersonations was delivered by actor Jesse Plemons on the “ USS Callister ” episode of Black Mirror , which was both a loving homage to the original Star Trek and a spoof of its excesses.

Most viewers under the age of 50 probably have a difficult time appreciating what Shatner was doing back in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. But when I was growing up, it was always a treat whenever Shatner appeared on one of my favorite programs. I knew that, even sitting ten feet or more away from a tiny screen, I’d get a performance that would fill the room.

Critics appreciated what Shatner was doing in those early years. In June 1958, Shatner co-starred with Rod Steiger in an episode of CBS’s Playhouse 90 called “ A Town Has Turned to Dust ,” which was written by Rod Serling and directed by John Frankenheimer. Time magazine’s reviewer wrote:

The result was far better than anyone … had a right to expect. Director John Frankenheimer caught the drought-heightened tension of the desert town, William Shatner was terrifyingly convincing as the rabble-rousing shopkeeper bent on avenging his hurt pride, Steiger made the drunken sheriff both scruffy and appealing, as Serling intended. Seldom has the hate-twisted face of prejudice been more starkly depicted.

In the New York Times , reviewer Jack Gould noted that “A Town Has Turned to Dust” contained “two of the season’s superlative performances by Rod Steiger and William Shatner.” Those performances were all the more impressive for being broadcast live. In the early days of television, actors had just one chance to get a performance right and Shatner excelled at it.

William Shatner was born in Montreal in 1931. Television first became a widespread phenomenon in the late 1940s, just as he was reaching adulthood. He was born at exactly the right time to become one of the new medium’s first new stars. Many of the stars of TV’s first decade or so were has-been movie actors, such as William Boyd ( Hopalong Cassidy ), George Reeves ( Adventures of Superman ), Robert Young ( Father Knows Best ), and Lucille Ball ( I Love Lucy ). Others came to television from radio, and the transition was not always easy. Shatner had a small role in a 1951 Canadian film called The Butler’s Night Off . In 1958, he gave a well-received performance in director Richard Brooks’s The Brothers Karamazov , and in 1961, he appeared in Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg . But most of Shatner’s pre- Star Trek work was for television. He and Leonard Nimoy (who played Mr. Spock on Star Trek ) actually appeared together in a 1964 episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E .

Back then, a lot of people were predicting that Shatner’s career would soon follow the trajectories of Steve McQueen’s and Paul Newman’s, which began in the theater, then moved on to television, and eventually carried them to movie stardom. But it never happened. That 2010 New York Times Magazine profile notes that :

The great movie roles weren’t coming his way, so in the ’60s, waiting for stardom, he took parts in forgettable movies like The Outrage and Incubus ; guest roles on TV dramas like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone ; parts on TV serials like Route 66 and Gunsmoke and Dr. Kildare . At 35, he was a working actor who showed up on time, knew his lines, worked cheap and always answered his phone. In 1966, he accepted a starring role in a sci-fi series called Star Trek , joining a no-name cast, some of whom later accused him of being pompous, self-aggrandizing, clueless and insufferably William Shatner, which became his greatest role once he finally accepted the fact of it.

It’s easy to understand why many of Shatner’s Star Trek castmates might have resented him. With the exception of Nimoy, none of the others gained the kind of iconic status that Shatner enjoyed as a result of his association with Star Trek . His performances were big and showy and often overshadowed the performances of those who worked with him. But Captain Kirk was the show’s main character, and he was written to be big and showy. A more subtle performance might have gotten the program cancelled after a single season.

Kirk’s closest associate/friend is Spock, a half-human/half-Vulcan whose father’s alien race values logic above all else and suppresses all emotion. In order for Spock to appear truly alien, he needed to be paired with a human who embraced all of the emotions—anger, fear, joy, anguish, love—with reckless abandon. Spock and Kirk were one of the great odd couples of a 30-year period in which TV embraced many such double-acts (Lucy and Ricky, Felix and Oscar, Samantha and Darren Stevens of Bewitched , Major Nelson and Jeannie in I Dream of Jeannie , Ilya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. , Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates on Rawhide , Laverne and Shirley, etc.). If Shatner had toned down Kirk, Nimoy’s Spock would not have been as intriguing or as interesting as he became. Shatner certainly chewed a lot of scenery on Star Trek but his approach succeeded spectacularly. Unfortunately, Hollywood didn’t really appreciate how successful the show had been until it was cancelled, went into syndication, and became an entertainment juggernaut.

Science-fiction novelist Tony Daniel has written two novels set in the world of Roddenberry’s original series. Both Devil’s Bargain (2013) and Savage Trade (2015) feature Kirk, Spock, and other original crew members of the Starship Enterprise, which makes Daniel something of an authority on the original series and Shatner’s role in it. I emailed him to ask if any Shatner performances particularly impressed him. “One that’s generally considered good is the Harlan Ellison-based episode ‘ The City on the Edge of Forever ,’” he told me, “where [Kirk] goes back in time and has to decide whether to let Joan Collins live or die. It was like a little Twilight Zone stuck into Star Trek .” Daniel also noted that Shatner “was good with interacting with comic villain types, like Harry Mudd (the ‘ Mudd’s Women ,’ and ‘ I, Mudd ,’ episodes). He never just played the straight man, but brought a hint of roguish understanding to the lovable villains Kirk dealt with. What I liked most were Kirk’s love affairs. Shatner always played them in believable fashion. My favorite of these is ‘ Requiem for Methuselah ,’ where he falls for the android Rayna Kapec. It’s like a little Bladerunner in 49 minutes.”

The original Star Trek embraced the idea of Kirk as a romantic lead. Later iterations have strayed from that artistic choice, which Daniel thinks was a mistake. “One of the great strengths of the original series (which the later series utterly lost) was the depiction of sexuality. Characters were male and female. They were attracted to one another when appropriate, and showed it. It spoke to and formed many a boy’s archetypes of sexuality in the 1970s and 1980s, when we all saw it via watching afternoon reruns after school. While cartoonish and a bit sadomasochistic at the time, and very 1960s, it was far truer to our underlying forever-fixed human nature than the sexless 1990s shows. Shatner was particularly good at playing a guy with a healthy sex drive, that is, a normal adult male.”

It isn’t just a coincidence that names like Richard Matheson, Harlan Ellison, and Rod Serling crop up frequently in discussions of Shatner’s career. Academics frequently celebrate the work of various American literary schools—the American ex-pats of the so-called Lost Generation, the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats—but few literary salons have influenced American popular culture as profoundly as the Southern California fantasists who were all brought together by Rod Serling for his Twilight Zone series and later worked on other fantasy and sci-fi shows, including Star Trek .

The best known of these were Serling himself (who wrote 92 Twilight Zone episodes) and Ray Bradbury (who only wrote one but was a mentor to many of the other writers). Charles Beaumont (who wrote 22 episodes of The Twilight Zone ), Richard Matheson (14), and George Clayton Johnson (five) all had strong connections to Shatner. Johnson wrote episode one of the original Star Trek , “ The Man Trap .” Shatner starred in two of Matheson’s Twilight Zone episodes. He also starred in two live dramas written for television by Serling prior to the creation of The Twilight Zone . And he starred in an episode of the HBO anthology series The Ray Bradbury Theater .

Shatner also starred in the 1962 Roger Corman film The Intruder , which was scripted by Charles Beaumont. Both Shatner and Bradbury were good friends of Beaumont, who, like a character in The Twilight Zone , succumbed to Alzheimer’s in 1967 at the age of 38. In 2015, when Penguin Classics published Perchance to Dream , a collection of Beaumont’s short stories, they added an introduction by Bradbury and an afterword from Shatner. Shatner notes that The Intruder was a pro-integration story that was shot in southern Missouri in the early 1960s, at a time when the local population (or at least the white members of it) were mostly anti-integration. The cast and crew lived in constant fear of attack by the locals. The experience bonded Shatner and Beaumont and they remained friends after returning to LA.

Shatner notes that the founding members of the Southern California fantasists—Beaumont, Matheson, Bradbury, etc.—originally referred to themselves (for unknown reasons) as the Green Hand. The name never really caught on. But Shatner is probably the only actor who starred in productions written by nearly every member of that group. Although Shatner has written or co-written more than two dozen books, his greatest contribution to pop-fiction is probably the work he did on programs like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek to help popularize writers such as Matheson, Beaumont, Johnson, and the others.

The Times profile of Shatner notes that, “After Star Trek was cancelled in 1969, he appeared in more schlock movies— Big Bad Mama , The Devil’s Rain —and as the lead in a TV series, Barbary Coast , that never caught on. So he guest-starred on game shows: The Hollywood Squares , Celebrity Bowling , not even a regular among C-listers.” This isn’t actually fair to Shatner, and it elides a great deal of his best acting work. Some of the programs he guest-starred on may have been mediocre— Medical Center , Ironside , Owen Marshall: Councilor at Law —but the performances rarely were. What’s more, Shatner also did guest work on some of the best-known shows of the era, such as Hawaii 5-O and Mission: Impossible , programs that are still part of viable franchises.

Recently, my wife and I binged some episodes of Barnaby Jones on Amazon Prime. Our TV screen is now 35 inches (modest by today’s standards), our picture is generally razor sharp, and we sit only about eight feet from the set. Barnaby Jones , which starred Buddy Ebsen as an elderly Los Angeles private detective, ran on CBS-TV from 1973 to 1980. Shatner guest-starred on the program’s second episode . We hadn’t watched an episode of Barnaby Jones since the 1970s, and the pilot episode, which guest-starred William Conrad and Bradford Dillman (among others) was entertaining enough. All of the performances seemed properly modulated to one another. But in that second episode, “To Catch a Dead Man,” most of the performances seemed to pale in comparison with Shatner’s.

Unlike, say, Columbo or The Rockford Files , Barnaby Jones wasn’t prestige 1970s television. It was just another slightly above-average TV detective show. The plots were predictable and the characters were generally underwritten. Shatner’s character is a rich man named Phillip Carlyle who fakes his own death in order to start over under an assumed name with his mistress. We are told almost nothing of importance about Carlyle but Shatner manages to make him memorable. It isn’t just his line delivery that stands out. His facial expressions, his body language—everything about the character is eye-catching. Shatner’s highly animated performance pairs particularly well with Ebsen’s trademark laconic style. We enjoyed it tremendously, but we also noted with regret that younger viewers, seeing it for the first time, would likely find Shatner’s performance to be campy.

And sadly, on a big-screen TV with a crisp picture and excellent sound, Shatner’s performance does seem over the top. On the pilot episode of Barnaby Jones , Bradford Dillman’s villain was largely unmemorable. And viewed on a tiny TV set back in 1973, the villain would have been practically an afterthought. Nowadays, watching it on a 35-inch high-def TV, Dillman’s performance is just fine. His character (a Bobby Kennedy wannabe) is as poorly written as Shatner’s was, but the actor’s boyish good looks and slight smarminess come across in a way that wouldn’t have been nearly as effective 50 years ago. A lot of well-known actors appeared as guest stars on Barnaby Jones —Margot Kidder, Roddy McDowell, Don Johnson, Ed Harris—but none of them ever made a bigger impression than Shatner.

Shatner’s performance in “ Nightmare at 20,000 Feet ” helped to make it one of the most memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone (although Richard Matheson’s script deserves much of the credit). He was also the star of a Twilight Zone episode called “ Nick of Time ,” now regarded as a classic. In Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination , author Nicholas Parisi writes, “‘The Howling Man’ aired on November 6, 1960. The Following week, Serling’s ‘Eye of the Beholder’ debuted. And one week later came Matheson’s ‘Nick of Time.’ This three-week period likely constituted the pinnacle of the series.”

Shatner’s performance in a season-five Columbo episode called “ Fade In to Murder ” is a great piece of meta-fiction. He plays an actor named Ward Fowler who has become famous as the star of a fictional TV series called Detective Lucerne and is now such a big star that he can make all kinds of ridiculous demands of the studio and the program’s producers. This was an inside joke. Peter Falk was in the final year of a five-year contract as Lt. Columbo, and was eager to leave the series and make movies. At least, that was his claim. He used the program’s enormous popularity to negotiate a huge pay raise and then continued to play Columbo for another two seasons (later the program would be resurrected by a different network and Falk would return for more episodes, but many fans consider only the episodes made between 1968 and 1978 to be canonical).

In his book The Columbo Phile , author Mark Davidziak notes, “Shatner’s portrayal helps a good deal here. The glimpses of his Detective Lucerne remind us of how phony most television detectives are. His Ward Fowler, though, is a character with several intriguing shadings.” In his book Shooting Columbo , author David Koenig writes that Ward Fowler is “played to the hilt by William Shatner.” And in The Columbo Companion , a blogger known as The Columbophile writes: “Shatner and Falk really seem to hit it off. Both are blessed with an inherent likability which they put to excellent use in several scenes. Perhaps the best example is when Fowler finds Columbo in his trailer trying on his trademark hat and shoes. Their interchange feels charming and authentic … the chemistry between leads is unmistakable.”

Shatner would return to Columbo 18 years later, in 1994, in an episode called “ Butterfly in Shades of Gray ,” in which he played Fielding Chase, a bombastic rightwing radio host. The producers wanted Chase to be an enormous blowhard, patterned after Rush Limbaugh. But by now, TV screens were bigger and picture quality was much better and Shatner must have instinctively understood that if he played the character as broadly as the producers wanted him to, the performance wouldn’t work. Instead, according to David Koenig, “He tried to channel Firing Line ’s William F. Buckley, Jr. … ‘I tried to do his voice and his arrogance of personality,’ Shatner revealed.” Shatner’s choice was the right one. The character is bold and brash but he also comes across as intelligent and believable, something that a Limbaugh lampoon probably couldn’t have achieved.

Much of Shatner’s best guest-star work was done during his wilderness years, between the cancellation of the original Star Trek in 1969 and its triumphant revival on the big screen ten years later in Star Trek: The Motion Picture , directed by Robert Wise, one of Hollywood’s most bankable filmmakers ( The Day the Earth Stood Still , The Sound of Music , West Side Story , etc.). Despite a lukewarm critical reception, the film set a record for opening-weekend receipts at the box office and was the fifth highest grossing movie of 1979, although its huge budget ($44 million) made it less profitable than many of the year’s other big hits, such as Kramer vs. Kramer (made for $8 million) and The Amityville Horror ($4.7 million). Nonetheless, the film revived both the franchise and Shatner’s star power. It was followed by five sequels, released between 1982 and 1991, the first of which, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , also set a record for opening-weekend receipts and is still widely regarded as the best Star Trek film of all time.

Shatner wasn’t the type to sit around and relax between film roles, so he also took on the starring role in a TV action drama called T.J. Hooker , which debuted in March 1982, less than three months before the release of Star Trek II . He played the title character, a former police detective in a fictional California city (clearly meant to be Los Angeles) who goes back to being a patrol officer after his partner is killed. Hooker has plenty of Captain Kirk in him, but he is older than Kirk, divorced, despondent over the loss of his former partner, and thus Shatner often (but not always) tones down the theatrics for which he was famous, turning Hooker into a sadder but wiser version of Kirk. What’s more, Kirk was clearly intended to be the sexiest character on Star Trek, but on Hooker, Shatner is supported by much younger and more attractive actors, particularly Adrian Zmed, as Hooker’s new patrol partner, and Heather Locklear, as a rookie cop whom Hooker helps train and mentor.

Prior to landing a role on T.J. Hooker , Zmed had plenty of theatrical experience, having appeared in Grease and other stage musicals, but in 2016, he told an interviewer for Las Vegas Magazine that it was Shatner who taught him how to act for the TV cameras:

I learned so much just watching him ... it’s a very different energy on camera than onstage. Instead of reaching the last person 50 rows away from you, you’re reaching someone three feet in front of you, which is really daunting. ... His camera technique was just incredible. He was so relaxed and all. I learned so much in terms of the moment, on how you readjust your energy, how you get efficient with camera technique. And just the stories. When he directed, he would mentor me. I do consider Bill a mentor, no question about it.

T.J. Hooker isn’t remembered as a landmark television program but it was actually more commercially successful than the original Star Trek . It ran for five seasons and generated 91 episodes, while Star Trek ran for three seasons and 79 episodes. However, neither of these programs provided Shatner with his longest-running TV stint. Between 1989 and 1996 Shatner narrated 186 episodes (plus two specials) of a nonfiction program called Rescue 911 , which recreated real-life incidents that led to calls to 911 emergency dispatch centers around the country. It was the opposite of prestige TV, a low-budget program that appealed mainly to indiscriminate TV viewers, but Shatner committed to it as enthusiastically as he did to all of his projects.

As noted by the New York Times profile, Shatner had a working-class sensibility and hated to turn down any paying work. Later, he would appear in five seasons (101 episodes) of Boston Legal , which was created by David Kelley as a spinoff of his successful legal drama The Practice . British barrister and writer John Mortimer was brought in as a consultant on Boston Legal , and he seems to have injected Denny Crane (Shatner’s character) with some of the characteristics of his famous fictional barrister Horace Rumpole. Both are older men who think highly of their legal skills, are largely dismissive of their colleagues, and prefer performing in front of a jury to the actual nuts and bolts of case law and judicial procedure.

Had Shatner been born in 1962 rather than in 1932, he would have been reaching his prime just as the so-called “second golden age of television” arrived with the debut of The Sopranos in 1999. His approach to television would almost certainly have been very different than it was back in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. He might have taken his place among actors like James Gandolfini (born in ’61), Bryan Cranston (’56), Bob Odenkirk (’62), and Jon Hamm (’71), all of whom embodied iconic characters of the era. Instead, Shatner is often unfairly written off as a second-rater.

Nevertheless, Shatner may have indirectly helped usher in the era of prestige television. Not all TV authorities believe that prestige TV began with The Sopranos . As Wikipedia notes : “Stephanie Zacharek of The Village Voice has argued that the current golden age began earlier with over-the-air broadcast shows like Babylon 5 , Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (both of which premiered in 1993), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997).”

Both Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine are heavily indebted to the original Star Trek . J. Michael Straczynski, who created Babylon 5 , was trying to create an “anti- Star Trek ”—a show similar to Roddenberry’s original but with science that actually worked and interplanetary politics that were more complex and believable. He even occasionally employed some big names from Star Trek —writer D.C. Fontana and actor Walter Koenig, for instance—to channel some of its energy. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , as the name indicates, is an actual spinoff of Roddenberry’s original (although some have accused it of being a rip-off of Babylon 5 ). Even Buffy , with all of its alien creatures and over-the-top villains, seems to owe something to Star Trek . Shatner may not have been a big part of the second golden age of television, but Star Trek itself seems to have been.

Shatner guest-starred in some of the best TV shows of the 1970s and some of the silliest. But whether he was playing a role in Police Story or The Six Million Dollar Man or Mannix or Hawaii 5-0 or Mission: Impossible or Kung Fu , he was usually the best thing in it. In Billy Wilder’s classic 1950 film Sunset Boulevard , Gloria Swanson plays Norma Desmond, a silent film star whose career is in decline. When William Holden’s character tells her, “You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big!” Desmond responds, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.” Something similar has happened to Shatner’s great TV performances of the mid-20th century. Nowadays, they seem overly large and elaborate. But it isn’t the performances that have gotten too big, it’s the television sets.

Alas, the only people likely to appreciate that fact now are aging Baby Boomers like me, who grew up watching him on tiny, snowy screens ten feet away. He brought us high-definition, widescreen, full-color performances despite the fact that he was working in an era of small, balky, black-and-white TV sets. And that probably explains why he has lived long and prospered.

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When you have William Shatner , aka Captain James T. Kirk, on your show, you get to ask the Star Trek questions you’ve always wanted answered.

That’s what Bill Maher managed to do on Friday’s Real Time , as he probed one of pop culture’s most interesting moments — the interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura.

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Maher also marveled how far Shatner fell from grace after the first run of Star Trek was canceled after three seasons. Shatner talked about watching the actual moon landing from a pasture while in his truck, his base of operations after a divorce and a lull in work.

How did you fall so fast? Maher asked. “With great precision,” Shatner joked, adding that it was just “circumstances of life.”

Of course, those days are gone for Shatner. He is the subject of the new documentary,  You Can Call Me Bill, and the artist behind the upcoming digital album, So Fragile, So Blue, which he recorded live with the National Symphony Orchestra.

He’s also planning a trip to Antarctica, another of his efforts to explore and spotlight his efforts in climate change.

Of the latter, “There’s no way out except through technology,” Shatner said. “There’s a wave coming.” It’s one reason he may consider once again going into space, he said, as a way to “promulgate the idea that there’s so much going on by science and scientists to correct global warming.” He added, “There’s an element of hope I will cling to.”

Maher wrapped up the segment with a mention of Shatner’s age (93) and compliments on how well he looks.

“I don’t mind when you say my age,” Shatner said. “But when they clap…”

After Shatner, Maher had a panel discussion with Piers Morgan ,  New York Post  columnist and host of the YouTube channel’s P iers Morgan Uncensored , and  Gillian Tett , provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and columnist at the  Financial Times .

They also talked about a protest in Dearborn Michigan that featured chants of “Death to America.” Maher pushed back on those at the protest who said, “The entire system has to go.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Maher countered. “I like our system. I’ve always liked America and thought death to it was bad.”

In Maher’s “New Rules” editorial, he pointed out the falsehoods about Canada and some progressive European countries where the idyllic myth doesn’t jibe with reality, resulting in what Maher termed “zombie lies.”

Maher pointed out several ways that these countries are faring worse in housing, health care, and on immigration issues

“I need to cite you as a cautionary tale: yes, you can move too far left, and you push others to the extreme right,” he said. “Calling something racist doesn’t solve the problem,” Maher said. That opens the door to someone conservative who will act, and “Who I promise, you’re not going to like.”

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William Shatner

• Born March 22 , 1931 · Montreal, Quebec, Canada
• Height 5′ 9″ (1.75 m)
• William Shatner has notched up an impressive 70-plus years in front of the camera, displaying heady comedic talent and being instantly recognizable to several generations of cult television fans as the square-jawed Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise. Shatner was born in Côte Saint-Luc, Montréal, Québec, Canada, to Anne (Garmaise) and Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacturer. His father was a Jewish emigrant from Bukovina in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while his maternal grandparents were Lithuanian Jews. After graduating from university, he joined a local Summer theatre group as an assistant manager. He then performed with the National Repertory Theatre of Ottawa and at the Stratford, Ontario, Shakespeare Festival as an understudy working with such as Alec Guinness , James Mason , and Anthony Quayle . He came to the attention of New York critics and was soon playing important roles in major shows on live television. Shatner spent many years honing his craft before debuting alongside Yul Brynner in The Brothers Karamazov (1958) . He was kept busy during the 1960s in films such as Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and The Intruder (1962) and on television guest-starring in dozens of series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) , The Defenders (1961) , The Outer Limits (1963) and The Twilight Zone (1959) . In 1966, Shatner boarded the USS Enterprise for three seasons of Star Trek (1966) , co-starring alongside Leonard Nimoy , with the series eventually becoming a bona-fide cult classic with a worldwide legion of fans known variously as "Trekkies" or "Trekkers". After "Star Trek" folded, Shatner spent the rest of the decade and the 1970s making the rounds, guest-starring on many prime-time television series, including Hawaii Five-O (1968) , Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969) and Ironside (1967) . He has also appeared in several feature films, but they were mainly B-grade (or lower) fare, such as the embarrassingly bad Euro western White Comanche (1968) and the campy Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) . However, the 1980s saw a major resurgence in Shatner's career with the renewed interest in the original Star Trek (1966) series culminating in a series of big-budget "Star Trek" feature films, including Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) , Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) , Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) , Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) , Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) . In addition, he starred in the lightweight police series T.J. Hooker (1982) from 1982 to 1986, alongside spunky Heather Locklear , and surprised many fans with his droll comedic talents in Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) , Loaded Weapon 1 (1993) and Miss Congeniality (2000) . He has most recently been starring in the David E. Kelley television series The Practice (1997) and its spin-off Boston Legal (2004) . Outside of work, he jogs and follows other athletic pursuits. His interest in health and nutrition led to him becoming spokesman for the American Health Institute's 'Know Your Body' program to promote nutritional and physical health. - IMDb Mini Biography By: [email protected]
• Spouses Elizabeth Shatner (February 13, 2001 - 2020) (divorced) Nerine Kidd (November 15, 1997 - August 9, 1999) (her death) Marcy Lafferty (October 20, 1973 - December 11, 1996) (divorced) Gloria Rand (August 12, 1956 - March 4, 1969) (divorced, 3 children)
• Children Melanie Shatner Leslie Carol Shatner Lisabeth Shatner
• Parents Joseph Shatner Ann Shatner
• Clipped, dramatic narration.
• Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek (1966) and seven of the Star Trek films.
• Voice like a radio disc-jockey.
• Shortly after the original Star Trek (1966) series was canceled, his wife Gloria Rand left him and took a lot of money with her. With very little money and his acting prospects low, he resided in a pick-up truck camper until continually acting in bit parts led into higher-paying roles.
• Recorded a special message for the crew of NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-133 that woke up them at 3:23 a.m. (EST), March 7, 2011. The message included the Star Trek theme song along with Shatner's narration: "Space, the final frontier. These have been the voyages of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Her 30 year mission: To seek out new science. To build new outposts. To bring nations together on the final frontier. To boldly go, and do, what no spacecraft has done before.".
• His clipped, dramatic delivery of his lines, peppered with dramatic pauses, is often referred to as "Shatnerian".
• Auctioned a kidney stone to GoldenPalace.com for $75,000. The money went to Habitat for Humanity, a charity that builds houses for the needy.
• In 2001, he married Elizabeth Shatner (Elizabeth Anderson Martin), 30 years his junior. She is a horse trainer who had lost her husband to cancer in 1997. Their grief (Shatner was a widower) and their love of horses drew them together. They reside in Southern California and in Kentucky.
• [When asked if he wore a hairpiece] It's a question that I find like asking somebody, "Did you have a breast implant?" or "When did you get your lobotomy?".
• [When asked if he was a fan of technology] I love technology. Matches, to light a fire is really high tech. The wheel is REALLY one of the great inventions of all time. Other than that I am an ignoramus about technology. I once looked for the 'ON' button on the computer and came to find out it was on the back. Then I thought, anyone who would put the 'on' switch on the back, where you can't find it, doesn't do any good for my psyche. The one time I did get the computer on, I couldn't turn the damn thing off!
• I am not a Starfleet commander, or T.J. Hooker. I don't live on Starship NCC-1701, or own a phaser. And I don't know anybody named Bones, Sulu or Spock. And no, I've never had green alien sex, though I'm sure it would be quite an evening. I speak English and French, not Klingon! I drink Labatt's, not Romulan ale! And when someone says to me "Live long and prosper", I seriously mean it when I say, "Get a life." My doctor's name is not McCoy, it's Ginsberg. And tribbles were puppets, not real animals. PUPPETS! And when I speak, I never, ever talk like every. Word. Is. Its. Own. Sentence. I live in California, but I was raised in Montreal. And yes, I've gone where no man has gone before, but I was in Mexico and her father gave me permission! My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!
• We were basically one and the same, although Jim [Kirk] was just about perfect, and, of course, I am perfect.
• What he tells his kids about money: Don't buy anything on time, and that includes cars and houses. (Money magazine, 2007)
• Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) - 20,000 plus 7 1/2 percentage of the gross

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William Shatner tells of ‘loneliness’ during Star Trek years

Still starring in films and releasing music at 90, the actor reflects on success and feeling alone

William Shatner has spoken of the “loneliness” he experienced at the height of his Star Trek fame. The actor shot to fame as Captain James T Kirk, commander of the USS Enterprise, in the sci-fi series which originally ran from 1966 to 1969.

He has reprised the role numerous times over the years, as well as starring in hundreds of films and TV shows including TJ Hooker, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Boston Legal, and Miss Congeniality.

The 90-year-old’s latest role is in Senior Moment, as a retired Nasa test pilot and self-proclaimed ladies’ man who loses his driving licence and meets a woman, played by Jean Smart, who changes his life.

Discussing why he still works so hard, Shatner told the PA news agency: “I’ve got a very full creative life, I’m more creative now than I’ve ever been. And so that aspect of my life has not slowed down.

“As a young actor, you’re always balancing on the precipice of failure and you’re about to fall all the time. And you stumble back and something comes along and it’s successful, you’re OK for a while and then you agonise over everything.”

Shatner, who will release an album called Love, Death and Horses later in the summer, said he wishes he knew when he was younger that fame and success do not prevent loneliness.

He said: “The album is autobiographical and one of the songs is about loneliness, how much loneliness was a part of my life. It is a part of everybody’s life, no matter how much attention you get, and how happily married you are, and how many children you have. As the song says, we’re all essentially alone and the big mystery is will there be anybody there at the end?”

Shatner said he attributes the energy he still has to “DNA, no question about it” and added: “I have lived a good life. I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink and smoke, and I try to exercise as much as possible, with good food.”

However, he revealed he is currently suffering from a serious injury, saying: “My shoulder is shattered right now. I cracked the bone falling off a horse a couple of weeks ago. So my left arm is bad but I keep exercising it. It’s getting better and better.

“But I’ve had the good luck of not having anything really debilitating. So nothing has sapped my energy.”

• William Shatner
• US television

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William shatner's relationship with each of his star trek castmates explained.

William Shatner has been a presence in popular culture since Star Trek: TOS, but he rubbed several of his closest castmates the wrong way.

William Shatner’s iconic role as Captain Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series solidified his fame, but not all of his Star Trek castmates had great relationships with the man behind the captain. Star Trek ’s devoted following means plenty of deep dives have been made into the history of Gene Roddenberry's  Star Trek: The Original Series and how it influenced the rest of the franchise. This means a lot of dirty laundry has been aired about how Shatner and his Star Trek castmates felt about each other.

Star Trek: The Original Series only ran for three seasons from 1966-1969. However, the stories of the USS Enterprise and its crew traveling through space in the distant future captured a huge following and defined the careers of the lead actors in the TV series. Star Trek ’s effect on popular culture cannot be overstated, and fans of the show at the time protested NBC’s repeated attempts to cancel the series with passionate letter-writing campaigns. It is perhaps not surprising that Star Trek: The Original Series developed a strong cult following as it aired during the height of the space race and the lead-up to Neil Armstrong’s first moonwalk in 1969. Since then, the series has spawned many books, movies, and other TV shows, both live-action and animated. In many of these, the  Captain Kirk that Shatner originated is an important part of the Star Trek mythos, even if he doesn’t actually appear in person.

Related: Why William Shatner's SNL "Get A Life" Sketch Was So Controversial To Star Trek Fans

While Shatner holds an important place in science fiction history, the man himself has had somewhat of a tumultuous relationship with his castmates, fans, and marginalized groups. Roddenberry's family voiced displeasure over Shatner’s 1986 appearance on Saturday Night Live in which he mocked cosplayers at a convention, and more recently he has provided unnecessary hot takes on the word “cis” and attacked the LGBTQ+ community over its use. Clearly, Shatner has always been a strong personality, so how did his  Star Trek: The Original Series castmates feel about the actor over the years?

Leonard Nimoy – Spock

Leonard Nimoy’s Spock was the Vulcan first officer of the USS Enterprise and second in command to Captain Kirk. Consequentially, Nimoy shared a lot of screen time with Shatner, and the two actors were the only cast members credited during the opening title sequence for the first season, while the rest of the cast was listed in the end credits. During the filming of Star Trek: The Original Series , Nimoy and Shatner had a sometimes strained relationship as Shatner became jealous of the love and attention Nimoy received from fans. This escalated to the point that Shatner would occasionally steal some of Spock’s lines (in the hopes of making his own character seem more intelligent) as well as perform petty acts around the set such as hiding Nimoy’s bike. In later life, Shatner acknowledged he had been jealous of Spock and did not handle the challenge to his ego well.

Despite their on-set rivalry, Shatner has made much of his relationship with Nimoy in the years after Star Trek: The Original Series . In 2016, a year after Nimoy’s death, Shatner published a book titled Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship With a Remarkable Man in which he referred to Nimoy as the only real friend he ever had. However, in the final years of Nimoy’s life, the two had a falling out potentially related to  Shatner using footage of Nimoy in his The Captains documentary against his wishes. The two did not speak for the last five years Nimoy was alive, but Shatner expressed his regrets he was unable to attend Nimoy’s funeral, with Shatner’s children going in his place.

DeForest Kelley – Leonard “Bones” McCoy

While Kirk and Spock might be the first to come to mind when thinking of Star Trek: The Original Series , Deforest Kelley’s chief medical officer, Leonard “Bones” McCoy, is never far behind. Famed for his “ he’s dead, Jim ,” line, Kelley received equal recognition alongside his co-stars in Star Trek: The Original Series season 2 and 3, with his name appearing in the opening credits along with Shatner and Nimoy’s. While Kelley did not have as close a relationship with Shatner as Nimoy, Kelley said he loved Shatner despite some occasional arguments and having to set the captain straight on points here and there.

Related: Star Trek: What Happened To Bones After TOS & Movies

George Takei – Hikaru Sulu

Star Trek: The Original Series saw the helmsman Hikaru Sulu brought to life by George Takei, who has gone on to become just as well known for his online presence and bringing greater acknowledgment to the internment of Japanese-Americans in the United States during World War II. While Nimoy and Kelley had largely close or amicable relationships with Shatner for most of their lives, the same cannot be said for Takei. The two have been outspoken about their struggles to get along, with both accusing the other of bringing up the controversy between them to garner attention for their careers.

Takei has criticized Shatner’s ego, both before and after his time as Hikaru Sulu, noting he is a hard man to work with as he is not a team player. At various points, the two have downplayed the seriousness of their feud, including during Comedy Central’s 2006 Roast of William Shatner , when they suggested past tensions were behind them. However, more recent events make it clear that is not the case. In 2021, the two argued after Takei criticized Shatner’s trip into space and mocked him, with Shatner speaking out against Takei in return. The poor relationship between Takei and Shatner is certainly the most enduring and well-publicized of the Star Trek: The Original Series feuds.

Nichelle Nichols – Nyota Uhura

Nichelle Nichols played the USS Enterprise’s communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura, a role that was ground-breaking for African American female characters on TV in the United States. Neither Nichols nor Shatner have spoken much about their relationship with each other, and there is no reason to think it is not amicable. The two made TV history together when they filmed the first interracial kiss on scripted U.S. television, and Nichols made a quip about the fact during Comedy Central’s Roast of William Shatner .

James Doohan – Montgomery “Scotty” Scott

Montgomery “Scotty” Scott was the USS Enterprise’s chief engineer and was portrayed by the Canadian James Doohan. A common theme in Shatner’s relationships with the other Star Trek: The Original Series cast members is a frustration aimed at Shatner’s ego and desire to hog the camera and the best lines. This was a key component of Shatner’s relationship with Doohan. While they worked together on the original series and many Star Trek movies, Doohan clearly didn’t care for Shatner and is quoted as having said “ I like Captain Kirk, but I sure don't like Bill. He's so insecure that all he can think about is himself. ” He refused to be interviewed by Shatner for either of his Star Trek Memories books. However, after their working relationship ended with Star Trek Generations in 1994, it seems the two were able to mend their relationship; they made a final convention appearance together in 2004 before Doohan’s death.

Related: Star Trek Generations: Kirk's Opening Scene "Death" Is A More Fitting End

Walter Koenig – Pavel Chekov

The navigational, tactical, and security officer Pavel Chekov, played by Walter Koenig, was introduced in Star Trek: The Original Series season 2. While Koenig has acknowledged the feuds and poor relationships some of the cast had with Shatner, he was never overly bothered by it himself. Koenig has suggested he simply expected the lead actor on a show to be somewhat self-absorbed. It is possible that Koenig’s laid-back attitude towards Shatner and the issues the others struggled with might be attributed to the fact he came to the series after other dynamics had already been established and was also the youngest member of the main cast.

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William Shatner thinks Gene Roddenberry "is twirling in his grave" over new Star Trek

Gene roddenberry had strict rules, and new star trek doesn't abide by them, says william shatner.

With a property as sprawling as Star Trek , of course everyone has their own opinions on which entry is the best and which entry is their favorite. (Those might be two distinct answers!) It shouldn’t be a surprise that OG Star Trek star William Shatner thinks OG Star Trek is the truest version, not just because of his involvement but because of creator Gene Roddenberry ’s particular vision. “He was in the military, and he was a policeman,” Shatner says in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter . “There are strict rules and you abide by the rules. Around that, [the writers] had to write the drama.”

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Roddenberry steered the series with “the discipline of ‘This is the way a ship works,’” Shatner explains, and that includes crew members not making out with each other. “Well, as Star Trek progressed, that ethos has been forgotten [in more recent shows],” the actor observes. “I sometimes laugh and talk about the fact that I think Gene is twirling in his grave. ‘No, no, you can’t make out with the lady soldier!’”

Shatner, who hasn’t “watched the other Star Trek s very much,” recalls “big” fights between Roddenberry and the writers of Next Generation . He reiterates that Roddenberry wouldn’t approve of the romances between crewmates on the new shows, adding that “the difficulty in the beginning, between management” of Next Generation and Roddenberry “was all about Gene’s rules and obeying or not obeying those rules.”

Shatner got his own shot at the pilot’s seat directing the movie Star Trek V , which he lists as one of his biggest regrets. “I wish that I’d had the backing and the courage to do the things I felt I needed to do,” he reflects, saying management altered his original concept of “ Star Trek goes in search of God.” From there, “it was a series of my inabilities to deal with the management and the budget. I failed. In my mind, I failed horribly,” he says. “When I’m asked, ‘What do you regret the most?’, I regret not being equipped emotionally to deal with a large motion picture. So in the absence of my power, the power vacuum filled with people that didn’t make the decisions I would’ve made.”

That said, he would be willing to return to the Star Trek universe under the right circumstances, so long as it wasn’t a “stunt” like Leonard Nimoy ’s cameo in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie. Shatner states, “If they wrote something that wasn’t a stunt that involved Kirk, who’s 50 years older now, and it was something that was genuinely added to the lore of Star Trek , I would definitely consider it.”

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Why William Shatner Allegedly Blocked Kirstie Alley From Returning For 'Star Trek 3,' According To A Trek Documentarian

Posted: April 17, 2024 | Last updated: April 17, 2024

Space may be the final frontier in the "Star Trek" world, but apparently, earthbound grudges can still travel quite keenly through the vastness of space. "Icons Unearthed" director Brian Volk-Weiss knows that firsthand, as an interview he conducted for another project involving Gene Roddenberry’s “Wagon Train to the stars” saw "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’s" Kirstie Alley tell a story about how William Shatner allegedly blocked her from returning for the next film in the series that gave us some of the best sci-fi movies.

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William Shatner is beaming in to see the 2024 total solar eclipse from Indiana (video)

Captain Kirk got philosophical when speaking about the upcoming solar eclipse, saying it's not worth worrying about clouds.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Of the many cities and small towns along the April 8 solar eclipse's path of totality, Capt. Kirk is only beaming down to one. Bloomington, Indiana, will play host to the original "Star Trek" captain, William Shatner.

Indiana University (IU) is marking the April 8 solar eclipse with the Hoosier Cosmic Celebration, a performance-packed event at IU's Memorial Stadium where some of the expected 300,000 visitors to Bloomington will watch the highly anticipated celestial alignment.

Shatner will be joined on the afternoon of April 8 by performers from IU's musical theatre and dance programs, as well as an appearance by retired NASA astronaut Mae Jemison and a concert by Janelle Monáe. As star-studded as the Cosmic Celebration is, Shatner is playing a critical role in the big day. The 93-year-old " Star Trek " actor and philanthropist will be performing a spoken word piece as part of the celebration's program, with his last words ending just as totality is beginning.

Related: Why I’m staying home for the April 8 solar eclipse

He spoke with Space.com and other local Indiana media ahead of his upcoming Indiana trip, and he noted the possibility of rain or clouds getting in the way of experiencing something wonderful.

What if the weather clouds out your solar eclipse?

William Shatner: It's the Sword of Damocles . It's the animal outside the door. And nobody talks about it because it's perfectly probable that there will be an enormous thunderstorm the instant the sun is eclipsed. It's also perfectly possible that it will be a clear, bright, lovely, warm spring day, and we will all enjoy the benefits of the Hoosier weather. What happens if it's cloudy? I don't know. It's like looking into the pit of a volcano saying, "What do we do about that thing?" And it's nothing can be done. There's nothing can be done."

Shatner spoke at length about the wonders of getting to see something as special as a total solar eclipse. It is, after all, a complete coincidence that the sun and moon appear relatively the same size in the sky.

That's not the case on many other worlds. For instance, scientists have witnessed Mars' tiny moon Phobos transiting the sun , as seen by the Curiosity rover from the surface of the planet, but the relative size of the moon and sun in the Martian sky don't create the same totality phenomenon seen during solar eclipses on Earth.

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What does this solar eclipse mean to you?

Shatner: One of the curses, and one of the benefits of humanity is our curiosity. And we'll never overcome that curiosity. "What's there? Why is it hiding?" I mean, even this eclipse, "How did it happen? Oh, you mean a great big piece of debris...brushed up against Earth, causing it to scoop out an amount of Earth to make the moon?" How do we know that, and how do we do that? How did we see it? I mean, the mystery of the beauty of our existence — to examine that is a voyage we all have to take...

To me, the magic of the eclipse, the extraordinary events it all took in the heavenly bodies to cause this eclipse, should make us ponder the mystery of existence, of our own existence, of the existence of everything else and how unified everything is...

The eclipse should bring about all of us thinking about the mystery of existence. And the beauty of the fact that we live and are able to observe it from this little rocky outpost called Earth, and how valuable that is to keep alive, to keep healthy, because that's why we are alive. So this event, the eclipse, should bring about a whole manifestation of the mystery of everything...

It's going to be so much fun-filled, with some of the answers to the mysteries and some of the mysteries posed as questions. You'll have a great time.

—  Total solar eclipse April 8, 2024: What you'll see if you're outside the path of totality

—  These 15 solar eclipse beers were brewed to sip in the path of totality

—  What time is the total solar eclipse on April 8?

The total solar eclipse on April 8 will sweep across the United States from Texas to Maine, passing through Indiana around 3 p.m. EDT, with Bloomington experiencing 4 minutes and 2 seconds of totality between 3:04:50 p.m. EDT and 3:08:53 p.m. EDT. The forecast is calling for partly cloudy skies in Bloomington on April 8, but, like the captain said, "There's nothing can be done."

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Josh Dinner is Space.com's Content Manager. He is a writer and photographer with a passion for science and space exploration, and has been working the space beat since 2016. Josh has covered the evolution of NASA's commercial spaceflight partnerships, from early Dragon and Cygnus cargo missions to the ongoing development and launches of crewed missions from the Space Coast, as well as NASA science missions and more. He also enjoys building 1:144 scale models of rockets and human-flown spacecraft. Find some of Josh's launch photography on Instagram and his website , and follow him on Twitter , where he mostly posts in haiku.

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William shatner on living boldly throughout acting career: “the future is unheralded”.

The actor, who's had legendary roles in 'Star Trek' and 'Boston Legal,' shares what he's learned over the years with host Bill Maher.

By Carly Thomas

Carly Thomas

Associate Editor

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William Shatner took a moment on Real Time Friday to reflect on living boldly throughout his acting career.

The Star Trek star, who has hundreds of credits to his name, was asked by host Bill Maher if his outgoing personality was shaped by his character Captain James T. Kirk or if the show thought he was already a “boldly going guy” when he auditioned for the legendary role.

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He continued, “The fact that Star Trek became a showbiz phenomenon that lasted, what, 60 years? And there’s all these other shows and all these other actors. Who knew? Nobody knew.”

In 1966, Capt. Kirk was Shatner’s breakout role in Hollywood, although the series was canceled after just three seasons. But it ended up scoring a cult following in syndication, leading the actor to reprise the beloved role in seven feature films. 

However, the Boston Legal alum has previously been open about going broke after the Star Trek show was initially canceled by NBC, forcing him to learn to roll with the punches. And following a decades-long career, it’s safe to say he’s learned a thing or two, so also during his conversation with Maher, he shared some wise words with the host about living life to the fullest as the future is unpredictable.

“[You] don’t know anything. You’re gonna step out of the studio after the show, you don’t know that a car isn’t gonna hit you,” Shatner explained, drawing laughter from the audience at the timing of his comments. “Or a bus or some big guy who says you’ve said enough, bang, right on the head. You don’t know the future. The future is unheralded.”

Last month, Shatner got candid with The Hollywood Reporter about his “growing realization that all the plans you have for your life are dependent on the guy driving a car behind you or in front of you.”

He added at the time, “You may think you’re like, ‘I’m going to control. I’m going to choose that motion picture,’ or go onstage choosing elements of your career, thinking you’re making a career move. It has nothing to do with reality at all.”

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Bill maher drills down on 'star trek's controversial interracial kiss, bill maher sits down with william shatner ... interracial kiss mystery solved.

Bill Maher tackled one of the most burning questions in the history of "Star Trek" Friday ... and thanks to William Shatner , we now have our answer!

The 'Real Time' host interviewed Shatner on his HBO show – and, at one point during their convo, Bill asked about the famous interracial kiss between Admiral James T. Kirk (white) and Lt. Nyota Uhura (Black).

Shatner, as Kirk, planted the lip smacker on Nichelle Nichols , as Uhura, in the 1968 Star Trek episode titled, "Plato's Stepchildren." The moment was very controversial because NBC – which aired "Star Trek" – was afraid of turning off their conservative Southern audience.

Network execs demanded the two actors never lock lips while they shot the scene, using instead a technique to suggest they were kissing by turning their heads away from the camera. But that's not how it went down in the end.

Bill dove into all the drama, first commending Shatner for being "brave about it" because Southern TV stations canceled programs that attempted to promote interracial relationships.

At first, Shatner made light of the situation, saying he puckered his lips before shaping his mouth into a fish for the laughing crowd.

Then he got a bit more serious, explaining that Nichelle – who died in 2022 – was a beautiful woman "in her lifetime."

Bill then turned to the big question ... Would the kiss have appeared in the scene if Shatner had not insisted on doing it?

Shatner didn't miss a beat, replying, "It would have not got done."

Bill heartily applauded along with the audience, acknowledging Shatner's boldness in breaking barriers during that period.

Mystery solved!

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Bill Maher Applauds William Shatner For Controversial ‘Star Trek’ Interracial Kiss

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Bill Maher highlighted a significant moment in television history during an interview with Star Trek icon William Shatner on Friday’s episode of Real Time .

Shatner, known for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the popular franchise, kissed black actress Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) in a 1968 episode titled “Plato’s Stepchildren.”

While this might not seem like a big deal to most, it was “a major moment in American culture,” according to Maher, who noted it was the first scripted kiss between a white man and a black woman.

At the time, southern TV stations were canceling shows that attempted to promote interracial relationships and NBC was worried about the audience reaction. Maher applauded Shatner however for being “brave about it” and insisting on doing it.

A modest Shatner, who first made light of the moment with a kiss face, acknowledged that he had something to do with it happening. “If you had not insisted,” Maher said…, “It would not have gotten done,” Shatner admitted.

Maher and the audience responded with applause. “For those who say nothing has changed, watch it, because things have changed a lot,” concluded the HBO host.

During the interview, the pair also discussed how Shatner fell from grace and ended up living in his truck after the first run of Star Trek was canceled after three seasons.

“How did you fall so fast?” Maher asked. “With great precision,” the now-93-year-old joked, adding that it was just “circumstances of life” which included a divorce and a lull in work.

These days, Shatner is the subject of the new documentary, You Can Call Me Bill , and releasing a digital album with the National Symphony Orchestra titled So Fragile, So Blue .

He’s also planning a trip to Antarctica to highlight his efforts in climate change, which he says has “an element of hope” since “there’s so much going on by science and scientists to correct global warming.”

“There’s a wave coming,” insisted Shatner, referring to technological developments that are in the works.

• Real Time With Bill Maher
• You Can Call Me Bill

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