The “Star Trek” actor and three fellow passengers hurtled to an altitude of 66.5 miles over the west Texas desert in the fully automated capsule, then safely parachuted back to Earth.
It was just ten minutes of flight this time and not the half-hour the TV series lasted
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"That was unlike anything they described," Shatner could be heard saying on the flight livestream just before landing.
Shatner took off onboard a New Shepard spacecraft — the one developed by Jeff Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin, and the same vehicle that took Bezos himself to space this summer. Bezos, a lifelong "Star Trek" fan, flew Shatner as a comped guest. With him were three crewmates: Chris Boshuizen, a co-founder of satellite company Planet Labs, and software executive Glen de Vries, who're both paying customers, and Audrey Powers, Blue Origin's vice president of mission and flight operations.
"What you have given me is the most profound experience, I am so filled with emotion, just extraordinary," a visibly overcome Shatner told Bezos, immediately after emerging from the capsule. "I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now."
If only Mr. Spock could have tagged along.
Their trip did not go exactly as the interplanetary jaunts Shatner captained during his acting career. New Shepard's flight lasted just ten minutes from takeoff to landing, and gave the passengers about three minutes of weightlessness.
The group strapped into a capsule that sits atop the 60-foot-tall New Shepard rocket Wednesday morning after a series of wind-related delays. At 9:51 am central time, the rocket fired up its engines and roared past the speed of sound, vaulting the capsule up past the Karman Line, which, at 62 miles high, is one line used to demarcate the beginning of outer space.
A few minutes into the flight, the capsule separated from the booster and continued on to suborbital space, where the crew experienced weightlessness and an epic view of Earth before reentering the atmosphere for a parachute-assisted soft landing in the desert. The whole experience lasted just over 10 minutes.
During the flight, Shatner's Twitter account posted a quote from Isaac Newton:
"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."
The crew was greeted by Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos as they exited the crew capsule on the valley floor of the Texas desert. Shatner choked up as he thanked the billionaire entrepreneur.
"What you have given me is the most profound experience... I'm so filled with emotion about what just happened. It's extraordinary. I hope I never recover from this," he said.
After separation early in the flight, the New Shepard booster returned for an autonomous landing on the ground to be reused in the future.
This is the second crewed flight ever for the space tourism company. The first flight of a New Shepard rocket with humans aboard launched July 20 and carried company founder and mega-rich guy Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk and student Oliver Daemen on a quick trip to space.
Shatner now takes the title of oldest person ever in space from the 82-year-old Funk, who held the crown for under three months.
The mission, dubbed NS18, was streamed live.
Shatner, who has also released over 10 albums as a recording artist, says he plans to write a song about the experience for his next album.
"I want to write about my love of Earth," Shatner said in an interview posted to Twitter.
The launch was originally scheduled for Oct. 12 but got bumped to the following day because of winds in the forecast. Liftoff was also delayed Wednesday morning by over 30 minutes, but New Shepard was finally able to get off the ground.
Later, Shatner must have thought, "And now back to the Pandemic ..."
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STAR TREK - The Original TV Series
The show is set in the Milky Way galaxy, circa 2266-69. The ship and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk , First Officer and Science Officer Spock , and Chief Medical Officer Leonard H. 'Bones' McCoy . Shatner's voice-over introduction during each episode's opening credits stated the starship's purpose:
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Norway Productions and Desilu Productions produced the series from September 1966 to December 1967. Paramount Television produced the show from January 1968 to June 1969. Star Trek aired on NBC from September 8, 1966, to June 3, 1969. It was first broadcast on September 6, 1966, on Canada's CTV network. Star Trek's Nielsen ratings while on NBC were low, and the network cancelled it after three seasons and 79 episodes. Several years later, the series became a hit in broadcast syndication, remaining so throughout the 1970s, achieving cult classic status and a developing influence on popular culture. Star Trek eventually spawned a franchise, consisting of eight television series, 13 feature films, and numerous books, games, and toys, and is now widely considered one of the most popular and influential television series of all time.
Creation On March 11, 1964, Gene Roddenberry, a long-time fan of science fiction, drafted a short treatment for a science-fiction television series that he called Star Trek. This was to be set on board a large interstellar spaceship named S.S. Yorktown in the 23rd century bearing a crew dedicated to exploring the Milky Way galaxy.
Roddenberry noted a number of influences on his idea, some of which includes A. E. van Vogt's tales of the spaceship Space Beagle, Eric Frank Russell's Marathon series of stories, and the film Forbidden Planet . Some have also drawn parallels with the television series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger , a space opera that included many of the elements integral to Star Trek—the organization, crew relationships, missions, part of the bridge layout, and some technology.:?24? Roddenberry also drew heavily from C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels that depict a daring sea captain who exercises broad discretionary authority on distant sea missions of noble purpose. He often humorously referred to Captain Kirk as 'Horatio Hornblower in Space'.
Roddenberry had extensive experience in writing for series about the Old West that had been popular television fare in the 1950s and 1960s. Armed with this background, the first draft characterized the new show as 'Wagon Train to the stars.' Like the familiar Wagon Train, each episode was to be a self-contained adventure story, set within the structure of a continuing voyage through space. Most future television and movie realizations of the franchise adhered to the 'Wagon Train' paradigm of the continuing journey, with the notable exception of the serialized Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, and the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise.
In Roddenberry's original concept, the protagonist was Captain Robert April of the starship S.S. Yorktown. This character was developed into Captain Christopher Pike, first portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter. April is listed in the Star Trek Chronology, The Star Trek Encyclopedia, and at startrek.com as the Enterprise's first commanding officer, preceding Captain Pike. The character's only television/movie appearance is in the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode 'The Counter-Clock Incident'.
Development In April 1964, Roddenberry presented the Star Trek draft to Desilu Productions, a leading independent television production company. He met with Herbert F. Solow, Desilu's director of production. Solow saw promise in the idea and signed a three-year program-development contract with Roddenberry. Lucille Ball, head of Desilu, was not familiar with the nature of the project, but she was instrumental in getting the pilot produced.
The idea was extensively revised and fleshed out during this time—'The Cage' pilot filmed in late 1964 differs in many respects from the March 1964 treatment. Solow, for example, added the 'stardate' concept.
Desilu Productions had a first-look deal with CBS. Oscar Katz, Desilu's Vice President of Production, went with Roddenberry to pitch the series to the network. They refused to purchase the show, as they already had a similar show in development, the 1965 Irwin Allen series Lost in Space.
In May 1964, Solow, who had previously worked at NBC, met with Grant Tinker, then head of the network's West Coast programming department. Tinker commissioned the first pilot—which became 'The Cage'. NBC turned down the resulting pilot, stating that it was 'too cerebral'. However, the NBC executives were still impressed with the concept, and they understood that its perceived faults had been partly because of the script that they had selected themselves.
NBC made the unusual decision to pay for a second pilot, using the script called 'Where No Man Has Gone Before'. Only the character of Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, was retained from the first pilot, and only two cast members, Majel Barrett and Nimoy, were carried forward into the series. This second pilot proved to be satisfactory to NBC, and the network selected Star Trek to be in its upcoming television schedule for the fall of 1966.
The second pilot introduced most of the other main characters: Captain Kirk , Chief Engineer Lt. Commander Scott and Lt. Sulu , who served as a physicist on the ship in the second pilot, but subsequently became a helmsman throughout the rest of the series. Paul Fix played Dr. Mark Piper in the second pilot; ship's doctor Leonard McCoy joined the cast when filming began for the first season, and he remained for the rest of the series, achieving billing as the third star of the series. Also joining the ship's permanent crew during the first season were the communications officer, Lt. Nyota Uhura , the first African-American woman to hold such an important role in an American television series; the captain's yeoman, Janice Rand , who departed midway through the first season; and Christine Chapel , the ship's nurse and assistant to McCoy. Walter Koenig joined the cast as Ensign Pavel Chekov in the series' second season.
In February 1966, before the first episode was aired, Star Trek was nearly cancelled by Desilu Productions. Desilu had gone from making just one half-hour show to deficit-financing a portion of two expensive hour-long shows, Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. Solow was able to convince Lucille Ball that both shows should continue.
Production
The original starship Enterprise Once the series had been picked up by NBC, the production moved to what was then Desilu Productions' Gower Street location. It had previously been the main studio complex used by RKO Pictures, and is now part of the Paramount Pictures lot. The series used what are now stages 31 and 32. The sho'ws production staff included art director Matt Jefferies, who designed the starship Enterprise and most of its interiors. His contributions to the series were honored in the name of the 'Jefferies tube', an equipment shaft depicted in various Star Trek series. In addition to working with his brother, John Jefferies, to create the hand-held phaser weapons of Star Trek, Jefferies also developed the set design for the bridge of the Enterprise . Jefferies used his practical experience as an airman during World War II and his knowledge of aircraft design to devise a sleek, functional, and ergonomic bridge layout.
The costume designer for Star Trek, Bill Theiss, created the striking look of the Starfleet uniforms for the Enterprise, the costumes for female guest stars, and for various aliens, including the Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Tellarites, Andorians, and Gideonites, among others.
Artist and sculptor Wah Chang, who had worked for Walt Disney Productions, was hired to design and manufacture props: he created the flip-open communicator, often credited as having influenced the configuration of the portable version of the cellular telephone. Chang also designed the portable sensing-recording-computing 'tricorder' device, and various fictitious devices for the starship's engineering crew and its sick bay. As the series progressed, he helped to create various memorable aliens, such as the Gorn and the Horta.
Season 1 Main article: Star Trek: The Original Series
William Shatner as Kirk in action, from the episode 'Where No Man Has Gone Before', 1966 NBC ordered 16 episodes of Star Trek, besides 'Where No Man Has Gone Before'. The first regular episode of Star Trek, 'The Man Trap', aired on Thursday, September 8, 1966, from 8:30 to 9:30 as part of an NBC 'sneak preview' block. Reviews were mixed; while The Philadelphia Inquirer and San Francisco Chronicle liked the new show, The New York Times and The Boston Globe were less favorable, and Variety predicted that it 'won't work', calling it 'an incredible and dreary mess of confusion and complexities'. Debuting against mostly reruns, Star Trek easily won its time slot with a 40.6 share. The following week against all-new programming, however, the show fell to second behind CBS. It ranked 33rd over the next two weeks, then the following two episodes ranked 51st in the ratings.
I am an avid fan of Star Trek, and would simply die if it was taken off the air. In my opinion it is the best show on television.
—M.P., Oswego, New York, February 20, 1967
Title used for the first season Frederik Pohl, editor of Galaxy Science Fiction, wrote in February 1967 of his amazement that Star Trek's 'regular shows were just as good' as the early episodes that won an award at Tricon in September. Believing that the show would soon be cancelled because of low ratings, he lamented that it 'made the mistake of appealing to a comparatively literate group', and urged readers to write letters to help save the show. Star Trek's first-season ratings would in earlier years likely have caused NBC to cancel the show. The network had pioneered research into viewers' demographic profiles in the early 1960s, however, and by 1967, it and other networks increasingly considered such data when making decisions; for example, CBS temporarily cancelled Gunsmoke that year because it had too many older and too few younger viewers. Although Roddenberry later claimed that NBC was unaware of Star Trek's favorable demographics, awareness of Star Trek's 'quality audience is what likely caused the network to retain the show after the first and second seasons.:?115? NBC instead decided to order 10 more new episodes for the first season, and order a second season in March 1967. The network originally announced that the show would air at 7:30–8:30 pm Tuesday, but it was instead given an 8:30–9:30 pm Friday slot when the 1967–68 NBC schedule was released, making watching it difficult for the young viewers that the show most attracted.
Season 2 Main article: Star Trek: The Original Series
Spock, Kirk and the Enterprise, 1968. Star Trek's ratings continued to decline during the second season. Although Shatner expected the show to end after two seasons and began to prepare for other projects, NBC nonetheless may have never seriously considered cancelling the show. As early as January 1968, the Associated Press reported that Star Trek's chances for renewal for a third season were 'excellent'. The show had better ratings for NBC than ABC's competing Hondo, and the competing CBS programs were in the top 15 in the Nielsen ratings. Again, demographics helped Star Trek survive.:?116? Contrary to popular belief among its fans, the show did not have a larger audience of young viewers than its competition while on NBC. The network's research did indicate that Star Trek had a 'quality audience' including 'upper-income, better-educated males', however, and other NBC shows had lower overall ratings.:?116?
Look! Look! It doesn't stop! They're lined up all the way down the street!
—Norman Lunenfeld, NBC executive, on the mail trucks delivering Star Trek fans' letters The enthusiasm of Star Trek's viewers surprised NBC. The show was unusual in its serious discussion of contemporary societal issues in a futuristic context, unlike Lost in Space which was more campy in nature. The network had already received 29,000 fan letters for the show during its first season, more than for any other except The Monkees. When rumors spread in late 1967 that Star Trek was at risk of cancellation, Roddenberry secretly began and funded an effort by Bjo Trimble, her husband John, and other fans to persuade tens of thousands of viewers to write letters of support to save the program.:?377–394? Using the 4,000 names on a mailing list for a science-fiction convention, the Trimbles asked fans to write to NBC and ask 10 others to also do so.:?128? NBC received almost 116,000 letters for the show between December 1967 and March 1968, including more than 52,000 in February alone; according to an NBC executive, the network received more than one million pieces of mail but only disclosed the 116,000 figure. Newspaper columnists encouraged readers to write letters to help save what one called 'the best science-fiction show on the air'. More than 200 Caltech students marched to NBC's Burbank, California studio to support Star Trek in January 1968, carrying signs such as 'Draft Spock' and 'Vulcan Power'. Berkeley and MIT students organized similar protests in San Francisco and New York City.
The letters supporting Star Trek, whose authors included New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller, were different in both quantity and quality from most mail that television networks receive:
The show, according to the 6,000 letters it draws a week, is watched by scientists, museum curators, psychiatrists, doctors, university professors, and other highbrows. The Smithsonian Institution asked for a print of the show for its archives, the only show so honored.
In addition:
Much of the mail came from doctors, scientists, teachers, and other professional people, and was for the most part literate–and written on good stationery. And if there is anything a network wants almost as much as a high Nielsen ratings, it is the prestige of a show that appeals to the upper middle class and high-brow audiences.
And now an announcement of interest to all viewers of Star Trek. We are pleased to tell you that Star Trek will continue to be seen on NBC Television. We know you will be looking forward to seeing the weekly adventure in space on Star Trek.
—NBC announcer, March 1, 1968 NBC—which used such anecdotes in much of its publicity for the show—made the unusual decision to announce on television, after the episode 'The Omega Glory on March 1, 1968, that the series had been renewed. The announcement implied a request to stop writing—NBC's policy of replying to each viewer mail meant that the campaign cost the network millions of dollars—but instead caused fans to send letters of thanks in similar numbers.
Season 3 Main article: Star Trek: The Original Series
'Spock's Brain' was the first episode of the third season. NBC at first planned to move Star Trek to Mondays for the shows third season, likely in hopes of increasing its audience after the enormous letter campaign that surprised the network. In March 1968, though, NBC instead moved the show to 10:00 pm Friday night, an hour undesirable for its younger audience, so as not to conflict with the highly successful Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In on Monday evenings, from whose time slot Laugh-In producer George Schlatter had angrily demanded it not be rescheduled. In addition to the undesirable time slot, Star Trek was now being seen on only 181 of NBC's 210 affiliates.
Roddenberry was frustrated, and complained, 'If the network wants to kill us, it couldn't make a better move.' He attempted to persuade NBC to give Star Trek a better day and hour, but was not successful. As a result of this and his own growing exhaustion, he chose to withdraw from the stress of the daily production of Star Trek, though he remained nominally in charge as its 'executive producer'. Roddenberry reduced his direct involvement in Star Trek before the start of the 1968–69 television season, and was replaced by Fred Freiberger as the producer of the television series. NBC next reduced Star Trek's budget from $185,000 per episode in season 2 to $175,000 per episode in season 3 . This caused what some perceive as a decline in quality for the 1968–69 season, although there was a trade off in some lower production costs since the special FX technology was perfected by this time. The best of the series and improved over the first 2 seasons. By season 3 William Shatner felt that the main characters became increasingly compromised or exaggerated while being involved in increasingly improbable story lines. Leonard Nimoy added that mercenary concerns came to predominate. Associate Producer Bob Justman, who left during the third season, says that the budget cuts caused the crew to become necessarily limited in the type of filming that could be done, such as outdoor work, with only one episode, 'The Paradise Syndrome', shot largely outdoors. Nichelle Nichols described the budget-cutting during the final year as an intentional effort to kill off Star Trek:
While NBC paid lip service to expanding Star Trek's audience, it slashed our production budget until it was actually 10% lower than it had been in our first season ... This is why in the third season you saw fewer outdoor location shots, for example. Top writers, top guest stars, top anything you needed was harder to come by. Thus, Star Trek's demise became a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I can assure you, that is exactly as it was meant to be.
The last day of filming for Star Trek was January 9, 1969, and after 79 episodes NBC cancelled the show in February despite fans' attempt at another letter-writing campaign. One newspaper columnist advised a protesting viewer:
You Star Trek fans have fought the 'good fight,' but the show has been cancelled and there's nothing to be done now.
In 2011, the decision to cancel Star Trek by NBC was ranked number four on the TV Guide Network special, 25 Biggest TV Blunders 2.
Syndication Surprisingly, one show no longer programmed by a network but syndicated to local television stations sometimes appeared among the top-five favorites in areas where the show is carried.
—'Students rate television', 1971 Although some of the third season's episodes were considered of poorer quality, it gave Star Trek enough episodes for television syndication. Most shows require at least four seasons for syndication, because otherwise not enough episodes are available for daily stripping. Kaiser Broadcasting, however, purchased syndication rights for Star Trek during the first season for its stations in several large cities. The company arranged the unusual deal because it saw the show as effective counterprogramming against the Big Three networks' 6 pm evening news programs.:?138? Paramount began advertising the reruns in trade press in March 1969; as Kaiser's ratings were good, other stations, such as WPIX in New York City and WKBS in Philadelphia, also purchased the episodes:?91–92? for similar counterprogramming.:?121?
Through syndication, Star Trek found a larger audience than it had on NBC, becoming a cult classic.:?138–139? Airing the show in the late afternoon or early evening attracted many new viewers, often young. By 1970, Paramount's trade advertisements claimed that the show had significantly improved its stations' ratings, and the Los Angeles Times commented on Star Trek's ability to 'acquire the most enviable ratings in the syndication field'.:?121? By 1972, what the Associated Press described as 'the show that won't die' aired in more than 100 American cities and 60 other countries; and more than 3,000 fans attended the first Star Trek convention in New York City in January 1972.
Since that dark day in 1969 when NBC brought the programming hammer down on Star Trek, there probably hasn't been a 24-hour period when the original program, one of the original episodes, wasn't being aired somewhere.
—Chicago Tribune, 1987 Fans of the show became increasingly organized, gathering at conventions to trade merchandise, meet actors from the show, and watch screenings of old episodes. Such fans came to be known as 'trekkies', who were noted for their extreme devotion to the show and their encyclopedic knowledge of every episode. Because fans enjoyed re-watching each episode many times, prices for Star Trek rose over time, instead of falling like other syndicated reruns. People magazine commented in 1977 that the show 'threatens to rerun until the universe crawls back into its little black hole'. By 1986, 17 years after entering syndication, Star Trek was the most popular syndicated series; by 1987, Paramount made $1 million from each episode; and by 1994, the reruns still aired in 94% of the United States.
From September 1 to December 24, 1998, the Sci-Fi Channel broadcast a 'Special Edition' of all the original series episodes in an expanded 90-minute format hosted by William Shatner. Now titled Star Trek: The Original Series, these broadcasts restored scenes that had been edited out of the syndicated episodes. In addition to introductory and post-episode commentary by Shatner, the episodes included interviews with members of the regular production team and cast, writers, guest stars, and critics . The episodes were broadcast in the original broadcast sequence, followed by 'The Cage', to which a full 105-minute segment was devoted. Leonard Nimoy hosted a second run from December 28, 1998 to March 24, 1999, but not all the episodes were broadcast because the show was abruptly cancelled before completion.
Remastered edition In September 2006, CBS Domestic Television began syndication of an enhanced version of Star Trek: The Original Series in high definition with new CGI visual effects.
Under the direction of Star Trek producer David Rossi, who consulted with Mike and Denise Okuda, the visual and special effects were recreated to give Star Trek: The Original Series a more modern look. Special attention was given to such elements as the Enterprise, alien planets and their images depicted from space, planets seen from orbit, alien spacecraft, and technology such as computer readouts, viewscreen images, and phaser beams.
The restoration and enhancement was performed by CBS Digital. All live-action footage was scanned in high definition from its first-generation 35 mm film elements. While it was possible to retouch and remaster some visual effects, all new exterior ship, space, and planet shots were recreated under the supervision of Niel Wray, a recent visual-effects Emmy nominee.
As noted in the 'making of' DVD feature, first-generation 'original camera negatives' were used for all live-action footage, but not for external shots of the ship and planets. Notable changes include new space shots with a CGI Enterprise, and other new models , redone matte background shots, and other minor touches such as tidying up viewscreens.
A small number of scenes were also recomposed, and sometimes new actors were placed into the background of shots. The opening theme music was also re-recorded in digital stereo.
The first episode to be released to syndication was 'Balance of Terror' on the weekend of September 16, 2006. Episodes were released at the rate of about one a week and broadcast in a 4:3 aspect ratio. Despite the HD remastering, CBS chose to deliver the broadcast syndication package in Standard Definition . The HD format was made commercially available through Blu-ray, or by streaming and download such as iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox Live.
While the CGI shots were mastered in a 16:9 aspect ratio for future applications, they were initially broadcast in the U.S. and Canada—along with the live-action footage—in a 4:3 aspect ratio to respect the shows original composition. If the producers were to choose to reformat the entire show for the 16:9 ratio, live-action footage would be cropped, significantly reducing the height of the original image.
On July 26, 2007, CBS Home Entertainment announced that the remastered episodes of TOS would be released on an HD DVD/DVD hybrid format. Season one was released on November 20, 2007. Season two had been scheduled for release in the summer of 2008, but it was cancelled when Toshiba pulled out of the HD DVD business. On August 5, 2008, the remastered season two was released on DVD only. For this release, CBS and Paramount used discs without any disc art, making them look like the 'Season 1 Remastered' HD DVD/DVD combo discs, despite having content only on one side. Season 3 was released on DVD only on November 18, 2008. On February 17, 2009, Paramount announced the season one of TOS on Blu-ray Disc for a May release to coincide with the new feature film coming from Paramount. The second season was released in a seven disc set on Blu-ray in the U.S. on September 22, 2009. The third season was released on Blu-ray in the U.S. on December 15. With the release of the 'Alternate Realities' box set, remastered Original Series episodes were included in a multi-series compilation for the first time. If future compilation releases would exclusively use the remastered episodes or not was unknown.
In regions two and four, all three seasons of the remastered Original Series became available on DVD in the slimline edition on April 27, 2009, as well as the first season in Blu-ray.
William Shatner
William Shatner OC is a Canadian actor, author, producer, director, screenwriter, and singer. In his seven decades of acting, he is best known for his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek franchise.
He has written a series of books chronicling his experiences playing Captain Kirk, being a part of Star Trek, and life after Star Trek. He has also co-written several novels set in the Star Trek universe and a series of science fiction novels called TekWar that were adapted for television. Shatner also played the eponymous veteran police sergeant in T. J. Hooker and hosted the reality-based television series Rescue 911 , which won a People's Choice Award for Favorite New TV Dramatic Series. Shatner also appeared in two episodes of the television detective series Columbo almost two decades apart. He also appeared in seasons 4 and 5 of the NBC series 3rd Rock from the Sun as the alien 'Big Giant Head' to which the main characters reported.
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From 2004 until 2008, he starred as attorney Denny Crane both in the final season of the legal drama The Practice and in its spinoff series Boston Legal, a role that earned him two Emmy Awards, one on each series. He appeared in both seasons of the comical NBC real-life travelogue with other male companions 'of a certain age' in Better Late Than Never, from 2016 to 2018. Shatner has also pursued a career in music and spoken word recordings since the late 1960s, having released eight albums.
In 2021, Shatner flew to space aboard a Blue Origin sub-orbital capsule. At 90 years, he became the oldest person to fly to space, became one of the first 600 to do so, and articulated experiencing the overview effect.
Early life
Shatner was born in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood of Montréal, Québec, Canada, to a Conservative Jewish household. His parents were Ann and Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacturer. He has two sisters, Joy and Farla. His paternal grandfather, Wolf Schattner, anglicized the family name to 'Shatner'.
All four of Shatner's grandparents were Jewish immigrants. They came from Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire .
Shatner attended two schools in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Willingdon Elementary School and West Hill High School, and is an alumnus of the Montreal Children's Theatre. He studied Economics at the McGill University Faculty of Management in Montreal, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1952. In June 2011, McGill University awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Letters. Shatner was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from New England Institute of Technology in May 2018.
Acting career
Early stage, film, and television work
After graduating from McGill University in 1952, Shatner became the business manager for the Mountain Playhouse in Montreal before joining the Canadian National Repertory Theatre in Ottawa, where he trained as a classical Shakespearean actor.
Shatner began performing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, in 1954. He played a range of roles at the Stratford Festival in productions that included a minor role in the opening scene of a renowned and nationally televised production of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex directed by Tyrone Guthrie, Shakespeare's Henry V, and Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, in which Shatner made his Broadway debut in 1956. Shatner was an understudy to Christopher Plummer in Henry V, which afforded him the opportunity to distinguish himself for a performance when Plummer could not go on due to illness.
With that performance, Plummer was impressed how Shatner decided not to simply imitate the main actor's mannerisms, but did the opposing move for most of them, thus showing considerable artistic initiative and potential to become a success in his own right. The two actors would later appear as adversaries in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
His film debut was in the Canadian film Butler's Night Off . His first feature role came in the MGM film The Brothers Karamazov with Yul Brynner, in which he starred as the youngest of the Karamazov brothers, Alexei. In December 1958, he appeared opposite Ralph Bellamy, playing Roman tax collectors in Bethlehem on the day of Jesus' birth in a vignette of a Hallmark Hall of Fame live television production entitled The Christmas Tree directed by Kirk Browning, which featured in other vignettes such performers as Jessica Tandy, Margaret Hamilton, Bernadette Peters, Richard Thomas, Cyril Ritchard, and Carol Channing. Shatner had a leading role in an Alfred Hitchcock Presents third-season episode titled 'The Glass Eye', one of his first appearances on American television.
In 1959, he received good reviews when he played the role of Lomax in the Broadway production of The World of Suzie Wong. In March 1959, while performing on stage in Suzie Wong, Shatner was also playing detective Archie Goodwin in what would have been television's first Nero Wolfe series, had it not been aborted by CBS after shooting a pilot and a few episodes. He appeared in a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone, 'Nick of Time'. He appeared twice as Wayne Gorham in NBC's Outlaws Western series with Barton MacLane, and then in another Alfred Hitchcock Presents 5th-season episode titled 'Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?' In 1961, he starred in the Broadway play A Shot in the Dark with Julie Harris and directed by Harold Clurman. Walter Matthau and Gene Saks were also featured in the play. Shatner was featured in two episodes of the NBC television series Thriller and the film The Explosive Generation .
Guthrie called the young Shatner the Stratford Festival's most promising actor, and he was seen as a peer to contemporaries like Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford. Shatner was not as successful as the others, but during the 1960s he 'became a working actor who showed up on time, knew his lines, worked cheap and always answered his phone.' His motto was 'Work equals work', however, Shatner's willingness to take any role, no matter how 'forgettable', likely hurt his career.
He took the lead role in Roger Corman's movie The Intruder and received very good reviews for his significant role in the Stanley Kramer film Judgment at Nuremberg . He starred in an episode of the science fiction anthology series The Twilight Zone, titled 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet'. In the 1963–64 season, he appeared in an episode of the ABC series Channing. In 1963, he starred in the Family Theater production called 'The Soldier' and received credits in other programs of The Psalms series. That same year, he guest-starred in Route 66, in the episode 'Build Your Houses with Their Backs to the Sea'.
In 1964, Shatner guest-starred in Season 2, Episode 2 of the ABC sci-fi anthology series The Outer Limits. Also that year, he appeared in an episode of the CBS drama The Reporter and co-starred with Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Newman, and Edward G. Robinson in the Western feature film The Outrage. 1964 also saw Shatner cast in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. that also featured Leonard Nimoy, with whom Shatner would soon be paired in Star Trek. 1964 also saw him as the titular Alexander in the pilot for a proposed series called Alexander the Great alongside Adam West as Cleander. The series was not picked up and the pilot wasn't broadcast until 1968 when it was repackaged as a TV movie to capitalize on West and Shatner's later fame. Shatner hoped that the series would be a major success but West was apparently unsurprised by the rejection, later noting that 'It turned out to be one of the worst scripts I have ever read and it was one of the worst things I've ever done.'
In 1965, Shatner guest-starred in 12 O'Clock High as Major Curt Brown in the segment 'I Am the Enemy. He also starred in the critically acclaimed drama For the People in 1965, as an assistant district attorney, co-starring with Jessica Walter. The program lasted only 13 episodes. Shatner starred in the 1966 gothic horror film Incubus the second feature-length movie ever made with all dialogue spoken in Esperanto. He also starred in an episode of Gunsmoke in 1966 as the character Fred Bateman. He appeared as attorney-turned-counterfeiter Brett Skyler in a 1966 episode of The Big Valley, 'Time to Kill'. In 1967, he starred in the little known film White Comanche starring as two characters: Johnny Moon, a virtuous half-Comanche gunslinger, and his twin brother Notah, a bloodthirsty warlord.
Star Trek
Shatner was cast as Captain James T. Kirk for the second pilot of Star Trek, titled 'Where No Man Has Gone Before'. He was then contracted to play Kirk for the Star Trek series and held the role from 1966 to 1969. During its original run on NBC, the series achieved only modest ratings and was cancelled after three seasons and seventy-nine episodes. In his role as Kirk, Shatner famously kissed actress Nichelle Nichols in the November 22, 1968 Star Trek episode 'Plato's Stepchildren'. The episode is popularly cited as the first example of a kiss between a white man and a black woman on scripted television in the United States. In 1973, he returned to the role of Captain Kirk, albeit only in voice, in the animated Star Trek series, which ran for two seasons and twenty-two episodes.
After the cancellation of Star Trek in early 1969, Shatner experienced difficulty in finding work in the early 1970s, having become somewhat typecast from his role as Kirk. With very little money and few acting prospects, Shatner lost his home and lived in a truck-bed camper in the San Fernando Valley until small roles turned into higher-paying jobs. Shatner refers to this part of his life as 'that period', a humbling time during which he would take any odd job, including small party appearances, to support his family.
Shatner again appeared in various movies, such as Corman's Big Bad Mama and the horror film The Devil's Rain, Kingdom of the Spiders, and the TV movie The Horror at 37,000 Feet. Shatner received good reviews as the lead prosecutor in a 1971 PBS adaptation of Saul Levitt's play The Andersonville Trial. Other television appearances included a starring role in the western-themed secret agent series Barbary Coast during 1975 and 1976, and guest roles on many 1970s series such as The Six Million Dollar Man, Columbo, The Rookies, Kung Fu, Ironside and Mission: Impossible. A martial arts enthusiast, Shatner studied American Kenpo karate under black belt Tom Bleecker . Shatner was an occasional celebrity guest on The $10,000 Pyramid and The $20,000 Pyramid in the 1970s, once appearing opposite Leonard Nimoy in a week-long match-up billed as 'Kirk vs. Spock'.
In a notable 1977 appearance, he gave an illegal clue at the top of the pyramid, which deprived the contestant of a big money win. He reacted strongly, throwing his chair out of the Winner's Circle. Other shows included The Hollywood Squares, Celebrity Bowling, Beat the Clock, Tattletales, Mike Stokey's Stump the Stars and Match Game. Richard Dawson, during an Archive of American Television interview, mentioned that Shatner was Mark Goodson's first choice to host the Family Feud pilot in 1976, but gave the job to Dawson instead. He did a number of television commercials for Ontario-based Loblaws and British Columbia-based SuperValu supermarket chains in the 1970s, and finished the Loblaws ad spots by saying, 'At Loblaws, more than the price is right. But, by Gosh, the price is right.' He also did a number of television commercials for General Motors, endorsing the Oldsmobile brand, and Promise margarine.
Kirk's return and T. J. Hooker
After its cancellation, Star Trek engendered a cult following during the 1970s from syndicated reruns, and Captain Kirk became a cultural icon. Shatner began appearing at Star Trek conventions organized by Trekkies. In the mid-1970s, Paramount began pre-production for a revised Star Trek television series, tentatively titled Star Trek: Phase II. However, the phenomenal success of Star Wars led the studio to instead consider developing a Star Trek motion picture. Shatner and the other original Star Trek cast members returned to their roles when Paramount produced Star Trek: The Motion Picture, released in 1979. He would play Kirk in seven Star Trek films, to include Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , Star Trek V: The Final Frontier , Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , and ending with the character's death in Star Trek Generations .
Some later appearances in the role of Kirk are in the movie sequences of the video game Starfleet Academy , briefly for a DirecTV advertisement using footage from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country running from late summer 2006, and the 2013 Academy Awards, in which he reprised the role for a comedic interlude with host Seth MacFarlane.
Although Trekkies resurrected Star Trek after cancellation, in a 1986 Saturday Night Live sketch about a Star Trek convention, Shatner advised a room full of fans to 'get a life'. The much-discussed sketch accurately portrayed his feelings about Trekkies, which the actor had previously discussed in interviews. Shatner was their unwilling subject of adoration for years; as early as April 1968, a group attempted to rip his clothes off as the actor left 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Shatner also appeared in the film Free Enterprise in 1998, in which he played himself and tried to dispel the Kirk image of himself from the view of the film's two lead characters. He also has found an outlet in spoofing the cavalier, almost superhuman, persona of Captain Kirk in films such as Airplane II: The Sequel and National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 . In 1994, he starred as the murderer in the Columbo episode 'Butterfly in Shades of Grey.
Besides the Star Trek films, Shatner landed a starring role on television as the titular police officer T. J. Hooker, which ran for five seasons and ninety-one episodes from 1982 to 1986. He then hosted the popular dramatic re-enactment series Rescue 911 from 1989 to 1996. During the 1980s, Shatner also began directing film and television, directing both numerous episodes of T. J. Hooker and the feature film Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, though The Final Frontier was not well-received by many Trek fans.
Subsequent acting and media career
Shatner has enjoyed success with a series of science fiction novels published under his name, though most are widely believed to have been written by uncredited co-writers such as William T. Quick and Ron Goulart. The first, published in 1989, was TekWar, which Shatner claims he developed initially as a screenplay during a Writers Guild strike that delayed production of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The series of books led to four TekWar television movies, in which Shatner played the role of Walter Bascom, the lead character's boss. A short-lived television series followed, airing on USA Network and Sci-Fi Channel in the United States and CTV in Canada, in which Shatner made several appearances in the Bascom role and directed some of the episodes.
He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1989, when he was surprised by Michael Aspel on the set of the Starship Enterprise at Universal Studios in Hollywood.
In 1995, a first-person shooter game called William Shatner's TekWar was released. He also played as a narrator in the 1995 American documentary film Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie directed by Peter Kuran. He narrated a television miniseries shot in New Zealand A Twist in the Tale . In the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun, Shatner appeared in several 1999–2000 episodes as the 'Big Giant Head', a high-ranking officer from the same alien planet as the Solomon family who becomes a womanizing party-animal on Earth. The role earned Shatner an Emmy Award nomination.
Shatner has appeared in advertisements for many companies and products. In the early 1980s, he appeared in print and television ads endorsing the Commodore VIC-20 home computer. Since the late 1990s, he has done a series of commercials for the travel web site priceline.com, in which Shatner plays a pompous, fictionalized version of himself. Although he received stock options for the commercials, Shatner says that reports that they are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars are exaggerated. Shatner was also the CEO of the Toronto, Ontario-based C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, a special effects studio that operated from 1994 to 2010.
In May 1999, Simon & Schuster published Shatner's book Get a Life!, which details his experiences with Star Trek fandom, anecdotes from Trek conventions, and his interviews with dedicated fans, in particular those who found deeper meaning in the franchise.
Shatner appeared in the movie Miss Congeniality as Stan Fields, playing the role of co-host of the Miss United States Pageant alongside future Boston Legal co-star Candice Bergen. He reprised the role in the sequel Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous , in which Stan Fields was kidnapped in Las Vegas along with the winner of the pageant of the previous year. . In the live-action/animated film Osmosis Jones , he voiced Mayor Phlegmming, the self-centred head of the 'City of Frank', a community comprising all the cells and microorganisms of a man's body, who is constantly preoccupied with his reelection and his own convenience, even to the detriment of his 'city and constituents. In 2003, Shatner appeared in Brad Paisley's 'Celebrity and 'Online' music videos along with Little Jimmy Dickens, Jason Alexander, and Trista Rehn. Shatner also had a supporting role in the comedy DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story , which starred Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. Star Trek: Enterprise producer Manny Coto stated in Star Trek Communicator's October 2004 issue that he was preparing a three-episode story arc for Shatner. Shortly thereafter, Enterprise was cancelled.
After David E. Kelley saw Shatner's commercials, he brought Shatner on to the final season of the legal drama The Practice. His Emmy Award-winning role, the eccentric but highly capable attorney Denny Crane, was essentially 'William Shatner the man ... playing William Shatner the character playing the character Denny Crane, who was playing the character William Shatner.' Shatner took the Crane role to Boston Legal, and won a Golden Globe, an Emmy in 2005, and was nominated again in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 for his work. With the 2005 Emmy win, Shatner became one of the few actors to win an Emmy Award while playing the same character in two different series. Even rarer, Shatner and Spader each won a second consecutive Emmy while playing the same character in two different series. Shatner remained with the series until its end in 2008 after five seasons and one hundred and one episodes.
Shatner made several guest appearances on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, including cameos reciting Sarah Palin's resignation speech, Twitter posts, and autobiography. He has also recited Twitter posts by Levi Johnston, father of Palin's grandson. He also appears in the opening graphics of the occasional feature 'In the Year 3000', with his disembodied head floating through space, announcing, 'And so we take a cosmic ride into that new millennium; that far off reality that is the year 3000', followed by the tag line, 'It's the future, man'. He also played the voice of Ozzie the opossum in DreamWorks' 2006 feature Over the Hedge.
In January 2007, Shatner launched a series of daily vlogs on his life called ShatnerVision on the LiveVideo.com website. In 2008, he launched his video blogs on YouTube in a project renamed 'The Shatner Project'. Shatner also starred as the voice of Don Salmonella Gavone on the 2009 YouTube animated series The Gavones.
Shatner was not 'offered or suggested' a role in the 2009 film Star Trek. Director J. J. Abrams said in July 2007 that the production was 'desperately trying to figure out a way to put him in' but that to 'shove him in ... would be a disaster', an opinion echoed by Shatner in several interviews. At a convention held in 2010, Shatner commented on the film by saying 'I've seen that wonderful film'. Shatner had invented his own idea about the beginning of Star Trek with his 2007 novel Star Trek: Academy — Collision Course. His autobiography Up Till Now: The Autobiography was released in 2008. He was assisted in writing it by David Fisher. Shatner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard. He also has a star on the Canada's Walk of Fame. Shatner was the first Canadian actor to star in three successful television series on three different major networks . He also starred in the CBS sitcom $ *! My Dad Says, which is based on the Twitter feed Shit My Dad Says created by Justin Halpern. The series premiered in late 2010 and was cancelled May 2011. Shatner is also the host of the interview show Shatner's Raw Nerve on The Biography Channel, and the Discovery Channel television series Weird or What? Also in 2011, Shatner appeared in the episode of Psych titled 'In For a Penny on the USA Network as the estranged father of Junior Detective Juliet O'Hara . He reprised the role in an episode of the 2012 season.
In 2011, Shatner starred in The Captains, a feature-length documentary that he also wrote and directed. The film follows Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have portrayed starship captains within the Star Trek franchise. Shatner's interviewees included Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula, and Chris Pine. In the film, Shatner also interviews Christopher Plummer, who is an old friend and colleague from Shatner's days with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. 3333R
In February 2012, Shatner performed in a new one-man show on Broadway called Shatner's World: We Just Live in It. After a three-week run at the Music Box Theatre, the show toured throughout the United States.
In May 2012, Shatner was the guest presenter on the British satirical television quiz show Have I Got News for You, during which he coined the portmanteau 'pensioneer', combining the words 'pensioner' and 'pioneer'.
On July 28, 2012, the premium cable TV channel Epix premiered Get a Life!, a documentary on Star Trek fandom starring Shatner that takes its title from his infamous Saturday Night Live line and his 1999 book on the topic.
On September 25, 2012, Shatner portrayed the home plate umpire in the music video 'At Fenway, which was written and recorded by crooner Brian Evans.
On April 24, 2014, he performed for one night only an autobiographical one-man show on Broadway, which was later broadcast in over 700 theatres across Canada, Australia, and the United States. A large portion of the revenue went to charity.
In 2015, he played Mark Twain in an episode of the Canadian historical crime drama series Murdoch Mysteries. Also in 2015, he played Croatoan—main character Audrey Parker's interdimensional, dangerous father—in the last episodes of the fifth and final season of SyFy channel's fantasy series Haven.
In August 2015, he appeared in William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge, a documentary uncovering the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation, featuring cast interviews from the original series which he also wrote, produced and directed.
Premiering August 23, 2016, Shatner appeared in the NBC reality miniseries Better Late Than Never, which documented the adventures of Shatner and three other aging celebrities as they travel to Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. That same year, he cofounded the comic-book company Shatner Singularity, whose titles include the graphic novel Stan Lee's 'God Woke' by Stan Lee and Fabian Nicieza. It won the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards' Outstanding Books of the Year Independent Voice Award. Better Late Than Never was renewed for a second season on NBC with a 'preview episode on December 11, 2017 and an 'official' season premiere on New Year's Day, January 1, 2018. Shatner later joked that legendary Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw was 'putty in my hands'.
In 2017, Shatner again appeared in a music video with Brian Evans, whom he previously appeared with in the 2012 music video 'At Fenway, in the singer's cover of the Dolly Parton song 'Here You Come Again'.
In 2017, Shatner appeared in the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic as the voice of Grand Pear, the estranged maternal grandfather of Applejack and her siblings, in the seventh season episode 'The Perfect Pear'. Shatner noted himself as a 'brony, a member of the Friendship Is Magic fan base; he confirmed his involvement in the series via his Twitter account following a post where he recited one of the shows catch phrases.
Shatner's show I Don’t Understand is due to be broadcast on RT, formerly known as Russia Today, from July 12, 2021. In tweets, Shatner said the station had merely bought the shows distribution rights, while RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said 'Captain Kirk has come over to the good side.'
Music and spoken word work
Shatner began his musical career with the spoken word 1968 album The Transformed Man, delivering exaggerated, interpretive recitations of popular songs like 'Mr. Tambourine Man' and 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' paired with readings from famous plays. He performed a reading of the Elton John song 'Rocket Man' during the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards that has been widely parodied. Ben Folds, who has worked with him several times, produced and co-wrote Shatner's well-received second studio album, Has Been, in 2004. His third studio album, Seeking Major Tom, was released on October 11, 2011. The fourth, Ponder the Mystery, was released in October 2013 on Cleopatra Records, produced and composed by musician Billy Sherwood . Shatner also has done a concert tour with Circa, which includes an ex and current member of Yes, Tony Kaye and Billy Sherwood.
In August 2018, Shatner released Why Not Me, his first country music album and fifth album overall, with Jeff Cook, who is best known as a founding member of the American band Alabama. The album, on the Heartland Records Nashville label, also includes guest vocals by Neal McCoy, Home Free and Cash Creek. In October, he released Shatner Claus, a Christmas album composed of duets with established musical artists including Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Todd Rundgren, Billy Gibbons, and others. In January 2019, it was announced that Shatner would make his debut at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, with Jeff Cook, on February 15, to promote Why Not Me.
On February 15, 2019, Shatner made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, with Jeff Cook, performing the title track to Why Not Me. They were introduced by Fred LaBour , a member of the cowboy singing and comedy group Riders in the Sky, who were among the other guest performers that evening.
His album The Blues peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Chart on October 17, 2020. On August 26, 2021, Shatner announced he would be releasing a new album, Bill, on September 24. Space Shuttle Discovery Shatner recorded a wake-up call that was played for the crew of STS-133 in the Space Shuttle Discovery on March 7, 2011, its final day docked to the International Space Station. Backed by the musical theme from Star Trek, it featured a voice-over based on his spoken introduction from the series' opening credits: '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.'
Spaceflight
Shatner flew to space on Blue Origin's second sub-orbital human spaceflight, Blue Origin NS-18, on October 13, 2021. He was accompanied by Chris Boshuizen, Glen De Vries, and Audrey Powers aboard the RSS First Step, the New Shepard suborbital rocket capsule, from Blue Origin's Launch Site One in West Texas. Aged 90 years, 6 months and 22 days, Shatner became the oldest person to fly to space, surpassing Wally Funk, who flew on Blue Origin's first human spaceflight at the age of 82 in July 2021.
In a televised post-flight conversation with Blue Origin's founder Jeff Bezos, who had invited him to join the flight, Shatner articulated experiencing what is called the overview effect, a deep awareness of the fragility of planet Earth and its relatively thin-atmosphere.
Personal life
Shatner dislikes watching himself perform. He claims to have never watched all the episodes of Star Trek or Boston Legal, or any of the Star Trek movies, except while editing Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which he directed. However, his 1993 book Star Trek Memories says he attended the premiere of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.:?201? A longtime U.S. resident, he holds a green card.
Shatner has been married four times, first to Canadian actress Gloria Rand on August 12, 1956. The marriage produced three daughters: Leslie , Lisabeth , and Melanie . Shatner left Rand while acting in Star Trek: The Original Series, after which she divorced him in March 1969.
Shatner's second marriage was to Marcy Lafferty, the daughter of producer Perry Lafferty, and lasted from 1973 to 1996.
His third marriage was to Nerine Kidd, from 1997 until her death in 1999. On August 9, 1999, Shatner returned home around 10 p.m. to discover Nerine's body at the bottom of their backyard swimming pool. She was 40 years old. An autopsy detected alcohol and Valium in her blood, and the coroner ruled the cause of death as accidental drowning. The LAPD ruled out foul play, and the case was closed. Speaking to the press shortly after his wife's death, a clearly shaken and emotional Shatner said that she 'meant everything' to him, and called her his 'beautiful soulmate'. Shatner urged the public to support Friendly House, a nonprofit organization that helps women reestablish themselves after suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction. He later told Larry King in an interview that 'my wife, whom I loved dearly, and who loved me, was suffering with a disease that we don't like to talk about: alcoholism. And she met a tragic ending because of it.'
In his 2008 book Up Till Now: The Autobiography, Shatner discusses how Leonard Nimoy helped take Nerine to treatment for her alcoholism. Shatner writes in an excerpt from his book:
Leonard Nimoy's personal experience of alcoholism now came to play a central role in my life and it helped us bond together in a way I never could have imagined in the early days of Star Trek. After Nerine and I had been to dinner with Leonard and Susan Nimoy one evening, Leonard called and said: 'Bill, you know she's an alcoholic?' I said I did. I married Nerine in 1997, against the advice of many and my own good sense. But I thought she would give up alcohol for me. We had a celebration in Pasadena, and Leonard was my best man. I woke up about eight o'clock the next morning and Nerine was drunk. She was in rehab for 30 days three different times. Twice she almost drank herself to death. Leonard took Nerine to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but she did not want to quit.
In 2000, a Reuters story reported that Shatner was planning to write and direct The Shiva Club, a dark comedy about the grieving process inspired by his wife's death. Shatner's 2004 album Has Been included a spoken word piece, 'What Have You Done', that describes his anguish upon discovering Nerine's body.
In 2001, Shatner married Elizabeth Anderson Martin. In 2004, she co-wrote the song 'Together' on Shatner's album Has Been. Shatner filed for divorce from Elizabeth in 2019. The divorce was finalized in January 2020.
Relationships with other actors
Shatner first appeared on screen with Leonard Nimoy in 1964 when both actors guest-starred in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., 'The Project Strigas Affair'. Much like their characters on Star Trek, Shatner and Nimoy had a professional rivalry that developed into a close friendship. After the shows cancellation in 1969, Shatner and Nimoy reunited in the production of Star Trek: The Animated Series, as well as The $20,000 Pyramid, where 'Kirk vs. Spock' appeared on two different tables. Nimoy also guest-starred on T. J. Hooker, in which Shatner played the title role. Despite their decades-long friendship, in 2016 Shatner revealed that he and Nimoy had not spoken in the five years before his death the year before.
Shatner's bereavement following his wife Nerine's death strengthened his friendship with Nimoy. Nimoy also appeared alongside Shatner at the TV Land Awards .
Nimoy spoke about their mutual rivalry during the Star Trek years: Bill's energy was very good for my performance, because Spock could then be the cool individual. Our chemistry was successful right from the start. very competitive, with a sibling rivalry up to here, and after the show had been on the air a few weeks and they started to get a lot of mail about Spock, then the dictum came down from NBC: 'Oh, give us more of that guy! They love that guy!' Well, that can be a problem for a leading man who's hired as the star of the show.
Leonard Nimoy
On an episode of the A&E series Biography, where it was also divulged that Nimoy was Shatner's best man at his wedding with his fourth wife Elizabeth, Nimoy said, 'Bill Shatner hogging the stage? No. Not the Bill Shatner I know.' When Nimoy died in 2015, Shatner said, 'I loved him like a brother. We will all miss his humor, his talent, and his capacity to love.' Although Shatner was unable to attend Nimoy's funeral due to other commitments, his daughters attended in his place, and Shatner created his own online memorial for Nimoy.
Shatner has been friends with actress Heather Locklear since 1982 when she began co-starring with him on T. J. Hooker. As she was also appearing in a semi-regular role in another Aaron Spelling production, Dynasty, Locklear was asked by Entertainment Tonight whether her schedule was difficult. She replied, 'I'd get really nervous and want to be prepared' for Shatner and for the experienced cast of Dynasty. After T.J. Hooker ended, Shatner helped Locklear get other roles. She supported Shatner in 1999 when he was mourning Nerine's death. In 2005, Locklear appeared in two episodes of Shatner's Boston Legal as Kelly Nolan, a woman being tried for killing her much older, wealthy husband. Shatner's character is attracted to Nolan and tries to insert himself into her defence. Asked how she came to appear on Boston Legal, Locklear said, 'I love the show. It's my favorite show, and I sorta kind of said, 'Shouldn't I be William Shatner's illegitimate daughter, or his love interest?'
—Shatner, on having to work again with two of his Star Trek co-stars in the 1994 movie, Star Trek Generations For years, some of Shatner's Star Trek co-stars accused him of being difficult to work with, particularly George Takei, Walter Koenig, and James Doohan, the latter two of whom Shatner acknowledges in his autobiography Star Trek Movie Memories. In 2011, Koenig appeared on Shatner's interview series Shatner's Raw Nerve, and made clear that the animosity he once held was long over. His feud with Takei was mentioned in Takei's 2004 memoir, To the Stars.
In the 1990s, Shatner made numerous attempts to reconcile with Doohan, but was unsuccessful for some time, Doohan being the only former Star Trek co-star refusing to be interviewed by Shatner for his 1993 memoir Star Trek Memories. Doohan did participate in the 1994 follow-up, Star Trek Movie Memories, and an Associated Press article published at the time of Doohan's final convention appearance in August 2004 stated that Doohan, already suffering from severe health problems, forgave Shatner and they mended their relationship. At a convention directly preceding Doohan's last one, Sky Conway, the convention's head, stated, 'At our show: 'The Great Bird of the Galaxy' in El Paso, Texas in November 2003, a celebration of Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek, Bill and Jimmy went on stage together. Behind the scenes and before they went on stage, they hugged each other, apologized and expressed their love and admiration for each other. Bill specifically asked me to get them together so he could make amends and clear the air between the two of them before it was too late.'
Health
Shatner suffers from tinnitus, which he believes might be the result of a pyrotechnical accident on set while shooting the Star Trek episode 'Arena', though he did not begin to suffer symptoms until the early 1990s, about a quarter century later. Shatner is involved in the American Tinnitus Association. His treatment for this condition involved wearing a small electronic device that generated low-level, broadband white noise that 'helped his brain put the tinnitus in the background', a process known as habituation.
Shatner revealed in 2020 that he suffers from swollen joints and various age-related 'aches and pains'. He uses CBD oil to treat his pain.
Hobbies and charity work In 2006, Shatner sold his kidney stone for $25,000 to GoldenPalace.com. In an appearance on The View on May 16, 2006, Shatner said the $25,000 and an additional $20,000 raised from the cast and crew of Boston Legal paid for the building of a house by Habitat for Humanity.
In his spare time, Shatner enjoys breeding and showing American Saddlebreds and Quarter Horses. He rode one of his own mares, Great Belles of Fire, in Star Trek.