CJ exclusive: Shatner reflects on legacy ahead of NC appearances

William Shatner has never been one to let his inhibitions get the better of him.

From making television history as Captain James T. Kirk on the original Star Trek series, to his avant garde contributions to popular music, the 95-year-old living legend has consistently marched to his own drumbeat.

Now, in his golden years, Shatner continues forging his own path in cyberspace, with an unfiltered presence on social media that has found him reminding the next generation of Trekkies what the trailblazing science-fiction series was all about.

In a recent phone interview, Shatner told the Carolina Journal that “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry would be “turning in his grave” over new entries into the franchise’s canon — including the controversial, recently canceled “Starfleet Academy.”

“He’s flipping around; he’s whirligig: ‘What are you doing to my show?’” Shatner said of Roddenberry, who died in 1991.

“‘It was supposed to be a five-year voyage to an unknown — and now there’s all this romance and different people and the Academy. That’s not what I had in mind!’” Shatner mused.

The USS Enterprise’s original captain felt compelled to weigh in after “Starfleet Academy” showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau claimed its progressive virtue-signaling, which soured many longtime Trek fans, was baked into the entire concept of the show.

“I think entertainment should be entertaining, and you don’t need to be educating the audience,” Shatner said.

“On the other hand, great entertainment is conflict, and so if you can conflict a point of view that’s humanity, that’s entertaining, then I’m all for it,” he added. “But sending a message — to go to the theater and get a message from me — I am not worthy. You have your own message; you have your own belief system, and you should adhere to it until you decide to change it when education, experience, and knowledge interfere with your thought process.”

Shatner defended the messaging in the original show, which famously featured TV’s first interracial kiss, between Kirk and Lt. Uhura, played by black actress Nichelle Nichols.

Nichols was encouraged by none other than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to persevere with the show when its pressures made her think of quitting.

As Shatner noted, however, the social change that the original “Star Trek” sought to effect wasn’t wokeness for the sake of wokeness but was more purpose-driven, and always mindful of its audience above all else.

“Although we had shows that were, you know, about racism, it was entertaining,” he said.

Shatner said one guy would be black and another white, or one right and the other left, but they provided different perspetives. “And they were at each other because they look differently. And the stupidity of racism is dramatized — but no lessons to be learned, just drama.”

Shatner’s continuing mission to boldly entertain audiences will bring him to North Carolina next week, where he will participate in two screening events for “Star Trek’s” second — and often considered its most popular — feature film, “The Wrath of Khan.”  

On Wednesday, April 15, he will visit Greensboro’s Tanger Center; and on Friday, April 17, he will head to Charlotte’s Ovens Auditorium.

Attendees will get to see the 1982 film “refurbished in sight, in color, and in sound” and then be regaled with exclusive insights from the star himself. VIP tickets also are available, which include a post-show photo-op with Shatner.

“It’s a terrific film and one of the best made [of the 13 feature-length Trek films], and then I come out onstage after the film, and I’ll answer questions, and I’ll tell stories, and I’ll try to be as informative and as amusing as I can,” he said.

“… I guarantee you, you’re not going to regret having spent the evening with me, because when you emerge from the theater, you’re going to say, ‘That was fun. I had a great time, and I got my money’s worth.’”

With no backing band, Shatner is unlikely to be taking any song requests — but he has been known to do them in the past. 

While his songbook, including a spoken-word 1978 cover of Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” has elicited a wide range of critical reactions, few would dispute that they are quintessentially Shatner, giving it his all to present a unique experience.

After being asked to perform the song at the first-ever Jupiter Awards ceremony in 1979, his Frank Sinatra-inspired version went viral, long before the internet made pop-culture virality a common phenomenon.

“It wasn’t supposed to be broadcast, but somebody was filming, and it’s haunted me all these years,” Shatner laughed.

Fortunately, he finally had a shot at redemption during the most recent Jupiter Awards ceremony.

“This year I was asked to come back to that same — now it’s an international show — and they gave me another award, and they said, ‘Would you sing Rocket Man?’” Shatner recalled.

“Well, I had done research on ‘Rocket Man,’ and there was a seven-piece band that was assigned to me,” Shatner said. “So, I did a whole different version of ‘Rocket Man.’ … I did that song, the new version of the song, twice in front of 4,000 people, and each time I got a standing ovation, and they wouldn’t let me off the stage.”

Shatner may have a deeper understanding of the tune, about an astronaut adrift in the solitude of space, since venturing there himself five years ago. In October 2021, he was part of the second manned voyage for Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin project.

He told Variety magazine that gazing into the cold abyss on one side and the nurturing warmth of Earth on the other filled him with a profound sadness.

As a longtime conservationist, Shatner now says that he was overcome by the beauty of his home planet.

“It’s a dust mote in the sky compared to everything else in the universe, but I saw how dramatically, how tiny it is, and I saw… it’s filled with beautiful things — not just poisonous snakes, but human beings who believe, have belief systems,” Shatner said.

“And there’s great beauty in our planet. And we — as everybody knows — have messed it up. We’ve polluted it almost to death, almost to an existential point,” he added. “… And I saw it so dramatically, but I didn’t realize it until I landed and began to cry. And I thought, ‘Why am I crying in front of national television?’ And I went and sat down, and I thought, ‘Oh, my Lord, I’m in grief for the destruction of our planet.’”

As one of the few people alive to have seen Earth from that vantage point, Shatner had a message for the crew of the Artemis II, which is now on its return trip after going the farthest into space that mankind has been thus far.

The crew included one of Shatner’s Canadian countrymen, Jeremy Hansen, who became the first non-US citizen to travel beyond the Earth’s orbit, as well as North Carolinian Christina Koch, the first woman to do so.

“Hey guys, folks up there, you’ve done an extraordinary job, the last part of which is the most difficult,” Shatner said, addressing the four-person crew who are due to return home on Friday.

“You’ve got to return safely,” Shatner added. “And I know all about the apprehensions — about the heat shield and the variation in the attack orbit. And this time coming up is the most dangerous of all — well, as dangerous as the takeoff  — and everybody alive is wishing you well. Be well, come back safely. That’s my message.”

“CJ exclusive: Shatner reflects on legacy ahead of NC appearances” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.