‘I suggested maybe a lighter touch’: William Shatner on Star Trek at 60 — SkimNews
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- William Shatner, a sprightly 95, reflects on Star Trek ahead of its 60th anniversary on 8 September, musing on 'the mystery of time' and the death of Dolly Parton as a marker of its passage
- Shatner says he suggested 'a lighter touch' for the 1965 pilot after NBC rejected Jeffrey Hunter's dour performance as Captain Pike — that second pilot, he recalls, 'sold' the series
- Paramount, merged with Skydance Media for $8bn, cancelled the latest Star Trek series amid 'woke' complaints, prompting deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller to post: 'It's not too late for @paramountplus to save the franchise. Step 1: Reconcile with @WilliamShatner and give him total creative control'
- Shatner dismisses the idea that Star Trek's inclusiveness has gone too far, asking: 'Where should I have stopped? And by the way, what is woke?'
- In 1968, Shatner and Nichelle Nichols shared television's first high-profile scripted interracial kiss in 'Plato's Stepchildren' — a moment he says he was simply 'told' about, reluctant to be cast as a civil rights activist
- Peter Thiel told the New York Times in 2017 that 'Star Trek is the communist one' because there is no money, while 'Star Wars is the capitalist show' driven by Han Solo's debt — a framing Shatner, who actually flew to space at age 90, says he'd love to debate
- Star Trek creators Gene Roddenberry, a WWII bomber pilot and plane crash survivor, and Gene Coon, a Korean War-era marine, 'had seen war up close and didn't romanticise it,' according to Mark Altman, director of the new documentary The 60-Year Mission
Why it matters: Shatner's gentle mockery of Stephen Miller's crusade exposes the contradiction at the heart of right-wing Star Trek fandom: a franchise built on 1960s idealism, anti-war conviction, and a meritocracy that put a Black woman and a Japanese-American at the helm is now being reclaimed by the very politics it was designed to oppose. The cancellation of the latest series — and Paramount's $8bn Skydance merger — mean the franchise's future direction is up for grabs precisely at its 60-year peak.
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