IT'S STAR TREK BIRTHDAY WEEK!

 

 Nimoy, b. 3/26/31, d. 2/27/2015, and Shatner, b. 3/22/31.

It’s Star Trek OG heroes’ week here on the blog, a time for those of us who are fans of The Original Series to honor two actors who made the franchise the success it was. Both William Shatner (who played Captain James T. Kirk) and Leonard Nimoy (who played Lieutenant Commander Spock) were born during this week in 1931—Shatner on March 22, Nimoy on March 26. Shatner celebrated his 91^st birthday Tuesday in his usual flamboyant style. Nimoy, of course, passed away in 2015 from COPD.

Both men had a huge impact on hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of fans, myself included. As Spock, Nimoy spoke for many who felt alienated from the society they had been raised in, for the introverted, the nerdy, the conflicted. The actor had been born in Boston to Jewish immigrants who had made a harrowing escape from—wait for it—Ukraine. He recognized early on that acting was the only thing he wanted to do and, despite a three-year detour in the Army Reserve, he pursued that career with dedication through drama classes, bit parts in B-movies and TV shows and roles as villains and heavies. His Star Trek role as the Vulcan Spock was his breakout role.

Shatner was born to middle-class Jewish parents in Montreal (his father was a clothing manufacturer). He’s always said he knew he would be an actor when he made the audience cry during a summer camp performance about Jewish refugees when he was only six. His family, too, has a connection to Ukraine, though it’s another generation back; his grandparents on one side were immigrants from that country.

In some ways, Shatner’s career started on a more formal footing, with Shakespearean training at the Canadian National Repertory Theater in Ottawa and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario. He was understudy to the great Christopher Plummer, and got his chance when Plummer fell ill, and Shatner took the stage. From there it was Broadway (in THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG) and Hollywood (in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, JUDGMENT AT NUREMBURG) before notable appearances in THE TWILIGHT ZONE and THE OUTER LIMITS.

As Kirk, Shatner may have been typecast, but it was largely because he made the character his own—resourceful, energetic, able to make quick, decisive judgments in the face of chaos, and, most of all, compassionate. Kirk, like all the best heroes, was not afraid to show his emotions, because he realized the value of human feeling. In the end, he even convinced his friend Spock of that value.

So, let’s lift a glass of Romulan ale or Saurian brandy or plain old Terran beer or wine or what-have-you, to the actors who helped create one of the greatest science fiction franchises of all time.

Happy birthday, Bill and Leonard!

Cheers, Donna

OH, CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN!

We all know that Captain James T. Kirk died (rather ignominiously, IMHO, but that’s another post) in STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, the seventh in the original film series of the TREK franchise. But William Shatner, the actor who played him in The Original Series and most of those films, just turned 90 years old this week (on March 22). That’s right, count the years, 90.

Even he can’t quite believe it. “It’s a bit embarrassing,” he said in an interview on Fox News. “Who wants to be 90? I don’t want to be 90, but I’m 90!”

Not that his age has slowed him down any. He has a new movie out, SENIOR MOMENT, about a former NASA test pilot who loses his driver’s license after drag racing around town, and, forced onto public transportation, meets a new love. The film is packed with star power—Christopher Lloyd, Jean Smart, Esai Morales—and a certain kind of corny charm, judging by the trailer. It debuts today both in theaters and on demand.

You have to admire a guy who just won’t give up what he loves no matter what the calendar says. Now that James Brown has passed on, Shatner is surely the hardest working man in show business. Or at least the most visible one.

I’ve been a fan of the actor since before I even knew who Shatner was. He attracted my attention when I was a mere youngster (and had the bejeesus scared out of me) in that famous episode of The Twilight Zone in which he battles the gremlin on the plane’s wing that only he can see, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” He was in an earlier Zone episode, “Nick of Time,” about a fortune-telling bobblehead in a small-town diner that almost traps a newlywed couple in a web of fear. When I look back at the most memorable episodes of one of my favorite series, that one stands out, too.

But then Shatner donned the uniform of Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and I was hooked. There are times when the casting of actor with character just matches perfectly, and this was so clearly one of those times. We know it, because the first pilot of Star Trek, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Jim Kirk, demonstrates just how badly the character could have been portrayed—as a wooden, by-the-book flyboy straight out of the Hollywood mold.

But Kirk as Shatner plays him is smart, quick-thinking, intuitive, action-oriented but not impulsive. He is compassionate to those in need and loyal to his friends and crew. He seeks the opinions of his senior officers, but makes his own decisions, often synthesizing the disparate notions of the logical Spock and the emotional McCoy into a reasonable solution to the problem at hand.

William Shatner as James T. Kirk: in command.

And Kirk is human. So human. Passionate. Full of doubt. Willing to take risks and break rules. Sometimes wrong. And given the chance to attain a Paradise of peace and serenity without challenges, he passes, every time. As he tells the renegade Vulcan Sybok in STAR TREK V: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, “I need my pain!”

Kirk is a complex character that draws on deep reserves of light and dark within himself to command his ship. The classic episode “The Enemy Within,” in which a transporter malfunction splits him into his “dominating” half and his “compassionate” half provides the perfect example. Neither half can command without the other. “Meek” Kirk hates his darker self but must embrace him to become fully integrated again and save the ship.

In fact, I believe the writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation needed three characters to replace Kirk—the cerebral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart); his action-oriented Number One, Cmdr. William Riker (Jonathan Frakes); and the intuitive Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis). I recently watched the first season of Picard, the Paramount+ series about that captain’s post-Enterprise adventures and found it only mildly entertaining. I love Patrick Stewart as a person and an actor, but Picard just doesn’t do it for me as a captain. He thinks too much.

A few posts back, my fellow blogger K.M. Fawcett challenged us to name our favorite starship captains. As for other Starfleet captains, I enjoyed watching Voyager’s Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), but had no particular emotional attachment to her or her crew. I couldn’t get into other older iterations of TREK, for various reasons, so their captains are lost to history. Now, Christopher Pike (as played by Anson Mount in Star Trek: Discovery) has some real potential. He has the presence (and the looks—wowza!), and the powers-that-be have hinted that a series may be in store for him and Ethan Peck as Spock in a prequel to the five-year mission of Kirk’s Enterprise. I’d definitely watch that!

I love Mal Reynolds of the Serenity and James Holden of the Rocinante, but their ships and crews are small and independent. You can’t really compare them to Kirk, who acts on behalf of the Federation and whose actions have galactic scope. (Well, Holden’s affect the solar system, but, too often in the wrong direction because the boy doesn’t think!)

Han Solo, too, is an indie operator. He doesn’t command a crew. (Chewie is a partner.) I doubt that anyone would ever follow him, even if he deigned to lead them.

No, Kirk is my captain. He has always been my captain—my first hero in the TREK fanzines I wrote and the model (at least a little) for Sam Murphy, the space pirate captain of the Shadowhawk, hero of Fools Rush In, Interstellar Rescue Series Book 3.

So, happy birthday, Bill, and thanks for giving us this character for the ages.

Cheers, Donna

 

Imagination and Science

I heart The History Channel. I heart Nova, too.

Unless new episodes of Grey's Anatomy are airing, I don't watch much network television. Too often, however, I catch myself with rear end firmly planted on couch, gazing at some scientific documentary when I should be writing or revising. I can't help it. I love to look at science. I have little talent for "doing" science, but understanding how these brilliant minds develop theories and make hypotheses often captures my imagination and jump starts my muse.

Recently, I saw a documentary on History Channel with the unlikely title "How William Shatner Changed the World." I was quite sure I'd be making a face and reaching for the remote in moments. Instead, I found myself staring, wide-eyed, and nodding my head.

You could call the general theme "life imitating art" but it's more than that. The documentary illustrated how Star Trek, through sheer imagination, created a destination for Science to follow in developing some of our current technology. As early as the mid-1960s, Star Trek showed us sophisticated devices and systems. Many of the kiddos who were uttering "Cool stuff!" and "Neato!" started thinking about how those things could be achieved.

As a result, many of the top scientists and physicists today were those who cut their teeth on Star Trek episodes. They saw interstellar travel, communicators, tricorders, transporters, photon torpedos, worm holes...and it inspired them. They wanted to start building roads to those "shining destinations" that the Star Trek universe revealed. They sought education and careers that would take them where they wanted to travel, "to boldly go where no man has gone before" in the real world.

Today we have technology like cell phones, wireless communications, PCs, the internet, space exploration, and advances in the medical field that have brought Bones McCoy's futuristic sick bay much closer to reality. What if there had never been a Star Trek to set that course? What if some of today's brilliant minds hadn't had a low-budget television series as a guide to spur their ambition? Would we be living in a very different world? Could be.

As a writer of Science Fiction and Futuristic Fantasy, I was delighted with the documentary's theme: Imagination and science are powerful allies. Imagination creates castles in the air, then Science strives to build the foundations under them. As a species, we are obsessed with creating roads to the shiny empires we see on imagination's horizon.