William Shatner, a name synonymous with the Star Trek franchise, recently revealed a surprising fact: he hasn’t watched any of the Star Trek spinoffs since the original series. In an interview with ET, Shatner, who famously portrayed Captain Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series starting in 1966, admitted that he has seen very little of the franchise, including the episodes he starred in. Despite his love for Star Trek, Shatner confessed that he doesn’t watch much television at all.
“I’m gonna tell you something that nobody knows,” Shatner said. “I’ve never seen another Star Trek and I’ve seen as few Star Treks of the show I was on; I’ve seen as few as possible. I don’t like to look at myself and I’ve never seen any other. I love it, I think it’s great, I just don’t, you know, I don’t watch television per se. I’m watching documentaries. I’m watching the news. I’m watching sports, I’m watching things that were, documentaries that were made but I don’t watch television for some reason. I’ve been urged to watch certain shows by my family, ‘You’ll love this,’ and I just never get around to it.”
Shatner’s involvement with Star Trek extends beyond the original series. He also starred in and directed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, a film released in 1989 that was poorly received by both critics and audiences. Shatner considers this film the biggest regret of his career. “I wish that I’d had the backing and the courage to do the things I felt I needed to do,” Shatner explained earlier this year. “My concept was, ‘Star Trek goes in search of God,’ and management said, ‘Well, who’s God? We’ll alienate the nonbeliever, so, no, we can’t do God.’ And then somebody said, ‘What about an alien who thinks they’re God?’ Then it was a series of my inabilities to deal with the management and the budget. I failed. In my mind, I failed horribly. 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.”
Despite not watching much Star Trek, Shatner has expressed openness to returning to the franchise through the use of digital de-aging technology to portray a younger version of Captain Kirk. “It’s an intriguing idea,” he said. “It’s almost impossible but it was a great role and so well-written and if there were a reason to be there and not just to make a cameo appearance, but if there were a genuine reason for the character appearing, I might consider it.”
Shatner also had some ideas for how Captain Kirk could make an appearance, considering that the character’s last appearance was in 1994’s Star Trek Generations where Kirk was killed off. Shatner suggested that he could potentially portray a younger version of the character, citing digital de-aging technology that “takes years off of your face, so that in a film you can look 10, 20, 30, 50 years younger than you are.” He also proposed a scenario where the character could be resurrected. “A company that wants to freeze my body and my brain for the future might be a way of going about it,” he said. “We’ve got Captain Kirk’s brain frozen here. There’s a scenario. Let’s see if we can bring back a little bit of this, a little salt, a little pepper. Oh, look at that. Here comes Captain Kirk!”
In another interview with People magazine, Shatner revealed that watching the original show was just too painful. “I have never watched Star Trek,” he said to People. “There are many episodes I don’t know, there are some movies I don’t know.” Shatner, who just turned 90, hasn’t even watched any of the subsequent films, with one exception. “I directed one of the movies — No. 5 [Star Trek V: The Final Frontier] — I had to watch that one,” he shared. “But it’s all painful because I don’t like the way I look and what I do.”
Considering Kirk’s place in sci-fi history, it’s a shame that Shatner isn’t able to watch and enjoy his iconic performance. The early Star Trek captain is revered by fans for his emotive style and ability to get romantically entangled with many, many humanoids across the galaxy. Perhaps the first Kirk (aka Shatner) can stomach watching someone else in the role. It’s unclear whether he’s seen the relatively recent J.J. Abrams iterations of Star Trek, for example, where Chris Pine takes on the Kirk mantle. Captain Kirk is also rumored to make appearances in the Star Trek: Discovery spinoff, Strange New Worlds, which focuses on Captain Pike (Anson Mount), the U.S.S. Enterprise captain just before Kirk.
But even though Shatner won’t watch himself as Kirk, that doesn’t mean his performances do not exist. They more than exist, in fact — they have left an indelible mark on the Star Trek universe and pop culture at large. So much so, that many a fan continues to watch them repeatedly.
Source: ET, People
