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William Shatner reflects on being Kirk, in 1976 and 2004
One of William Shatner’s most intriguing aspects is his introspection. He is genuinely interested in how humans work and how he works.
He has examined human nature in many interviews and autobiographical books, but two pieces of audio separated by almost three decades also provide compelling musings about the actor and the individual.
The first comes from Inside Star Trek, a fascinating album of interviews and character sketches Gene Roddenberry recorded in 1976. The opening track is a chat with Shatner, and here is their first exchange.
Roddenberry: There are some questions I have been wanting to ask you for 10 years. One of them is, how much of Bill Shatner is Captain Kirk?
Shatner: Well, Gene, the act of putting on a…television series is such a backbreaking, all-encompassing task, the hours we put in are so enormous, that to be able to make up a character and sustain that for the years that we did it would be impossible I think for anyone, but certainly impossible for me, so what essentially comes out is William Shatner himself, as himself, saying the lines that were written for me to say… I think that the people you see on television, playing leads in television series, that’s what they’re like. When people ask ‘What is so-and-so really like?’…what you’re seeing is what you’re getting.”
Roddenberry: How did Captain Kirk, the character, the strong, the usually wise commander of the vessel, how much of that influenced you and your personality?
Shatner: I don’t think I carried home any of the characteristics of Captain Kirk, other than as I’ve just said those characteristics that were me. But the wisdom, and the sagacity, and the courage that Captain Kirk evidenced in the play of the week was written as fiction, and I often wished that I could be able to do that in my own personal life, but fallible me is…fallible me.
“I often wished that I could be able to do that in my own personal life.” Shatner revisited that conclusion on 2004’s Has Been, easily his greatest album. And if you think I’m grading on a curve anchored on one end by Mr. Tambourine Man and on the other by Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, you haven’t listened to Has Been. It’s truly excellent.
The second piece of audio is the last track on the album, called Real and performed with Brad Paisley and written by him for Shatner. The song neatly sums up Shatner’s feelings about himself.
And while there’s a part of me
In that guy you’ve seen
Up there on the screen
I am so much more
And I wish I knew the things you think I do
I would change this world for sure
But I eat and sleep and breathe and bleed and feel
Sorry to disappoint you
But I’m real
I’d love to help the world and all its problems
But I’m an entertainer, and that’s all
So the next time there’s an asteroid or a natural disaster
I’m flattered that you thought of me
But I’m not the one to call
Leonard Nimoy obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this same issue; he wrote two books — I am Not Spock and I Am Spock — to work out where he and the character stood. In an interview recorded in 1976, the same year as Shatner’s discussion with Roddenberry, Nimoy said about his first book:
The title is really a simple statement of fact, I am not Spock. In the sense that I am the actor who played the role, of course I am Spock, but in the sense of true identity, I am not. I am someone else.
Shatner would agree, and it’s so interesting that two men with such different approaches to the craft would also be caught up in the meaning of character.
The persona we see on screen is Bill Shatner, because it was simply too much work to do otherwise on a weekly series, but Shatner is not Kirk. Fallible me is…fallible me, he said. Not a hero.
But he is certainly a thoughtful artist who spent decades pondering some big questions, and still does.
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Giant Poster Book two: insights into those amazing special effects
The Star Trek Giant Poster Books were the first professionally published Trek magazines. Seventeen issues were produced between September 1976 and April 1978, plus a 1979 “Collectors Issue” devoted to The Motion Picture. Each delivered six pages of content plus the cover and back cover and folded out into a large poster.
I own the complete set and will cover each issue. The story of the magazine’s genesis is told here.
Here are highlights from issue two, published in October 1976, plus a scan of the magazine.
A personal note: Allan Asherman died in September of 2023. Asherman was a foundational member of Star Trek fandom, a collector of renown, an author, and one of the original team on the Star Trek Giant Poster Books. I had tried for months to get in touch; he had mostly withdrawn from fandom and I hoped we could again hear his voice. I am sad I did not get to speak with him.
How did they do that?
Issue 2 offers an in-depth and fascinating article on how the original series special effects were created. Asherman tells us how Charlie was made to fade away, how Kirk could kneel beside his duplicate, and that Spock beaming down to a planet began with a dissolve, deployed a matte, added in a sparkle of powdered aluminum, and that the effect was completed by combining these elements.
Asherman ends the piece with “The special photographic effects of Star Trek were usually beautifully done,” and it is fun to know how they were accomplished.
The story behind The City on the Edge of Forever
This issue features the first Star Trek Critique, a series of in-depth episode essays. The series began, just as the Fotonovels would do a year later, with Harlan Ellison’s classic episode.
Except that the screened episode was not really Ellison’s story. Author Mitch Green tells readers about the significant changes made to the script, and that “It’s Ellison’s contention that the final aired version is only a ‘watered down’ remnant of the original, the love story having lost much of its intended impact.”
That take is familiar today to serious fans but was likely news to many in 1976. The best way to experience the original story today is in the excellent IDW graphic novel of Ellison’s teleplay.
Exploring the triumvirate
The third article in this issue is a bit of a disappointment. Ostensibly an examination of the most important interpersonal relationship in TOS, most of the article is simply a recap of scenes in which the Kirk-Spock-McCoy friendship is explored, with little analysis of those moments. To be fair, this was written before streaming and Blu-rays, so simply revisiting pivotal scenes may have made an interesting read.
The best bit of the article is the conclusion:
Years after Star Trek’s original airings we are still concerned enough about the relationship for me to write this article, and for you to read it. Why? Because there’s a little of Kirk, Spock and McCoy in every one of us. Which makes them as real as we are!
The poster
The trio confronts The Spectre of the Gun.
Read the other articles in this series.
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Has the three-foot shooting model been found?
The three foot model of the Enterprise — the original shooting model, seen in The Cage and in stock footage in other episodes — has reportedly been found. And it looks like the real thing.
The ship popped up in an eBay listing and the auction was taken down shortly after. The opening price was set at $1,000 and two bids were placed, for $1,500 and $2,500, but they were both cancelled by the seller.
At time of writing, it is unclear why the auction was cancelled but I suspect someone told the new owner that there is big money to be had. Really big. At the recent auction of Greg Jein’s collection, the Galileo model sold for $225,000 and the X-Wing model for more than $3 million. The original Enterprise would come in somewhere in the upper end of that range.
Here is every photo from the short-lived eBay appearance. Click on the photos for larger versions.
The model looks like the real thing and, while no one yet knows for sure, the consensus of the knowledgeable folks at the Replica Prop Forum is that this is legit.
The rumour on the Internet is that the Enterprise was found in an abandoned storage locker, but that is not actually stated in the auction, which said only:
Item description from the seller
This ship is a custom made spaceship by Richard Datin jr
Made by wood and hand painted
It’s a 1 in 1 very rare and very old
It will have its aging like wooden cracks and sticker pealing off
Very nice for a collection
32 inches long
A fuller story will come out soon, but for now it seems that the greatest missing piece of Star Trek history has been found.
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Did you play the Star Trek V phone game in 1989?
Star Trek fan David Penn recently shared with me a VHS tape crammed with vintage Trek videos. One of the gems is a commercial for a 1989 phone game based on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. I consider it a gem because I had never heard of the game.
Here is the commercial:
Photo from WorthPoint.com And just to be clear: if you’re picturing gamers pulling out smartphones for this, nope. It would have been old-timey landline phones almost exclusively.
There is no information on this game online and certainly no recording of the audio. Until I posted the video above, even the commercial did not exist on YouTube. Which means fandom has forgotten about this little Trek past time.
Players were presented with “six interactive Star Trek adventures” and, being a phone game, the interaction was of the “Press three to raise shields” variety. At $2.50 per call, the phone bill could deliver a nasty surprise at the end of the month.
Luckily, Penn played the game and shared some memories.
A narrator (not a recognizable actor) would quickly introduce a scenario. As the story progressed, you were given a choice and made your decision by pressing a button on the phone. If you scored high enough, you would be mailed a prize. I got a USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A ensign patch, which was about the size of a US half-dollar. Obviously, I wasn’t good enough at the game to be command material.
I can’t remember if there was more than one dilemma per game. I’m afraid I don’t remember anything really specific about the scenarios, other than one I played involved an encounter in space and the option of firing phasers or photon torpedoes. I do remember being delighted that they used actual TOS sound effects in the story and game play.
I don’t think I could have played it more than eight times total. I wouldn’t have had more than $20 to throw away at the time.
@joebailey64 on
TwitterX told me he was also a winner: “I was sent a small delta pin that was about a centimetre in height.”I am glad I could post the commercial and a little information on the game, but I really wish I could have located more details. I like to think that someone out there has audio recordings or scripts of the scenarios.
And remember kids: check with your parents before calling.
I also published a post about the seasons one, two, and three bloopers that were on Penn’s tape. More videos are coming.
Postscript
MeTV.com posted an article about other 1-900 game lines (and some that peddled gossip and teen heartthrob dreams). It seems Hulk Hogan was plying a similar game back in the ’80s. From the article:
Hulk Hogan gave his Hulkamaniacs a little interactivity with his hotline. The WWF superstar had a game built into his 1-900 number that allowed you to “wrestle” opponents like the Mountie by pressing buttons on your phone to perform moves.
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Check out the definitive reference work on Trek signatures
I own a lot of Star Trek autographs. More than 150, some quite rare. And I am in awe of the collection assembled by lifelong Trek fan Gerald Gurian. He has hundreds of signatures, and he decided to share them with fandom by publishing the 468-page masterwork Autographs of the Final Frontier.
The book presents more than 450 autographs, but what’s really impressive is the breadth of the coverage. No one picking up a book like this would be surprised to see examples from William Shatner, George Takei or Gene Roddenberry, or even William Campbell, DC Fontana, or Ralph Senensky, but Gurian goes well beyond that. He has Max Kleven, a gladiator in Bread and Circuses; Arthur Batanides, D’Amato from That Which Survives; propmaster Irving Feinberg; Linwood G. Dunn, special effects photographer; matte painter Albert Whitlock; and hundreds of others.
The autograph book is actually Gurian’s fourth. His first published works are the three-volume To Boldly Go set, which presents rare production photos.
The autograph and production photos in this article were supplied by Gerald Gurian and used with his permission. “I never thought I would author a book on Star Trek,” Gurian told me. “I posted some rare photos on my site (Star Trek prop, costume and auction authority) and that attracted the attention of Marc Cushman and his publishing team and they contacted me to ask if they could use some photos for his book series, These Are The Voyages.” Gurian was happy to have Cushman use his images but they were reproduced in black-and-white and mostly in a fairly small size, and “I thought it was a shame no one could see the colour versions.
“That led me to create the original three books, and then I thought it’s a shame I have not used the autograph material, and so that led to this book.”
About a dozen autographs in the fourth book come from other people but Gurian owns the rest. And he also included 500 of those rare behind-the-scenes photos.
I think of the book as a tribute to the cast and production crew and all of the guest and supporting actors of TOS. It’s a series that I literally grew up with and [it has given] me so much inspiration and enjoyment over the years. So the book not only provides some biographical information on all those key folks but also provides fans with a little greater insight into their personal sides, through some of their behind-the-scenes writings and interactions, like a Fred Phillips Christmas card to Bob Justman or the Nimoy Deadly Years memo.
And, from a fan perspective, I think it’s cool to see many of those handwritten accounts from the guest stars that elaborate on some of their TOS filming experiences, and, in general, the book is a good reference. Plus, the inclusion of quite a large number of rare, behind-the-scenes photographs from the filming of the episodes hopefully makes the volume even more enjoyable for fans.
What is it about autographs?
I asked Gurian why fans collect autographs. He says it’s all about a personal connection to the celebrity.
Even a simple signature allows a fan to feel a more intimate bond of association with a much admired actor or athlete or historical figure than, say, owning a mass-market trading card or photograph or figurine, since the signature was actually created directly by the person. And if it was obtained in-person, then there are all of those additional memories of personally interacting with the individual and obtaining the autograph. For more sophisticated items such as handwritten letters or other correspondence and documents, there is of course further valuable historical insights that could be derived.
Gurian is right. James Doohan was a guest at one of the first conventions I attended, and I decided not to get his autograph. I didn’t want to hand over the few dollars I had for a scrawled signature. Then, watching the fans, I realized they weren’t paying for the actual signature; they were getting a few minutes to chat, and the signed photo was a reminder of that time. I bought a 5×7 from Doohan (because it was $2 cheaper than an 8×10) and I have always been glad I did. See also my chat with Nichelle Nichols over her Ebony magazine cover.
The book was published in 2018 and at that time Gurian already owned perhaps the most extensive collection of Star Trek autographs. But a lot is not always enough. “I have acquired some additional ones since publishing the book,” he told me. Because collectors collect. We can’t help it.
Autographs of the Final Frontier and the three To Boldly Go photo collections are available from Amazon and elsewhere.
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Ponder the mystery of the F-104s sculpture
Much of the action in the episode Tomorrow is Yesterday is set in a US Air Force base in 1969. As the episode was filmed in the US in 1966, it presented relatively few challenges for Art Director Matt Jefferies. But he still had some work to do, including designing and crafting (or commissioning) a small sculpture of three Lockheed F-104 fighter jets. Here is Jefferies’ design sketch.
You can glimpse the sculpture a couple of times. At 23 minutes into the episode, a guard strolls past a cabinet in a hallway, and a half minute later Kirk and Sulu walk through the same area. The sculpture sits among a number of trophies near the middle.
The odd thing about this is the piece is on screen for only a few seconds. For a series that was always strained for both dollars and time, why expend resources on such a small detail? It is not like an early draft of the script had Captain Kirk pick up the sculpture and say “Ah, here is the answer to our time-travel dilemma.”
It seems to me that this is an example of what made Star Trek great at the time and explains its ongoing popularity: the people who made it all valued quality. Desilu paid de Forest Research to vet every script. Leonard Nimoy cared about the verisimilitude of his character. Roddenberry pursued heavy hitters to write for the series. And Jefferies put effort into even small elements that our characters would just stroll past.
About that boomerang
The on-screen sculpture looks a lot like Jefferies’ design, except that the back piece became more elaborate between drafting table and set. It took on the boomerang shape that we often see in other episodes, as in this screencap from Court Martial. Again, this attention to detail adds a richness to the universe that was rarely, if ever, seen in other TV programs of the time.
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Laugh along with the rare season three blooper reel
I recently wrote an article about the wonderful Trek Bloopers album in which I mentioned that the blooper reel from the third season is rarely seen. Then I heard from Star Trek fan David Penn, who has an old video tape packed with vintage ads, interviews, TV features — and all three blooper reels.
And David, who I have never met, was willing to mail the tape from Florida to Toronto, and trusted that I would send it back to him. Which, of course, I did, once I digitized all that old VHS goodness. I will post most of that content on this site.
About the bloopers
The blooper reels were not created for public consumption. The producers and editors collated flubbed scenes to show at season-end wrap parties, and the reels were apparently a hit.
But then Gene Roddenberry started screening the goofs at conventions and during his lectures in the 1970s, and reportedly some of the actors were not thrilled about this. Leonard Nimoy in particular. He felt that showing the clips diminished the craft of acting and the dignity of the characters. In a letter to Gene Roddenberry dated July 6, 1676, Nimoy wrote:
You must be aware that I have long held certain, very strong negative feelings about the use of the “blooper reel” in public. I personally expressed those feelings to you a year and a half ago…
My objections to its use are two-fold:
- The artistic question of the characters being exposed in less than an ideal light.
- The unauthorized use of an actor’s work without payment where there is a financial gain involved for the user.
Copies of the reels began to circulate, however, and became a standard feature of conventions in the 1970s and 1980s. Typically, though, fans like me who packed con screening rooms typically saw footage only from seasons one and two. Season three was rarely shown.
It’s also interesting to note that there are no official or authoritative versions of the bloopers. A quick look at YouTube shows different edits and even different clips.
On with the show
Here then are the doors that didn’t open, the words that got mixed up, and at least one wardrobe malfunction.
Season one
Season two
Season three
At time of writing, the video above is the only season three reel online. It was on YouTube but the service removed it for unspecified copyright reasons, so now it only exists on this site.
Thank you, David, for trusting me with your tape and for sharing this content with us. More videos are coming.
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The script said Lincoln bounced down the cliff. Matt Jefferies was all in
Abraham Lincoln’s death at the hands of the evil faction in The Savage Curtain was a little uninspired: he was stabbed with a spear after a somewhat noisy attempt to rescue Surak.
An early draft of the script also featured his death, but it was a far more dramatic demise: Lincoln was hurled from a cliff, and the audience saw his broken and bloodied body on the ground. Which meant that, at work one day, it fell to Matt Jefferies to envision that fatal plunge.
And I imagine the Art Director enjoyed the challenge, as the script said it was not enough that the poor president drop straight to his death: he was sent “bouncing down the rock slope.” So Jefferies had Lincoln bang into an outcropping on the way down and only then hit the ground.
I am sure the NBC Standards and Practices folks would have objected to that spectacle.
Also, Surak was Lvak
Another interesting piece of trivia from the first draft: the greatest of all who ever lived on Vulcan was originally called Lvak.
This was changed to Surak after the good people at de Forest Research, who checked all the TOS scripts, pointed out that the original moniker broke the Vulcan naming convention. In a memo dated December 3, 1968, they wrote:
…during three seasons, the precedent has been established of giving male Vulcans names beginning with the letter “S.” E.G.s: Spock, Sarek, Stonn, etc. To conform, suggest: Savak, Solak, Surak…
I think the producers picked the best of the three de Forest suggestions.
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Prevent a robot uprising with Peter Pan
The third Peter Pan comic and record set in my collection is The Robot Masters — and it’s a hit-and-miss outing. The Romulans are hilariously wrong and Uhura finally looks more like herself, but there are also weird oversights in the artwork and the story is really predictable, even for its intended kid audience.
Unlike the first two Peter Pan sets I covered (which you can experience here and here), this one contains only one story. The audio comes on a 45-RPM record and is accompanied by a standard-sized comic.
The tale centres on missing robots. Someone has been stealing robots in this area of space for almost a year and Mr. Scott angrily informs Captain Kirk that he placed an order two months ago but his “little friends” have disappeared. Scotty is really, really fed up. Humourously so, all through the story.
The plot follows Kirk, Spock, Chekov and a new guy named Tanka as they track down the scoundrels who have been grabbing the robots. I won’t spoil the rest of the story. Enjoy it for yourself; hit play and flip through the comic.
Side one
Side two This issue offers some weird lapses in illustration and storytelling. The tale opens with Kirk sitting in his captain’s chair on the bridge, and Uhura then calls Kirk from the bridge — and asks him to report to the bridge.
Kirk is told about the robot problem and immediately says finding an answer is “Why I’ve called a meeting” — but he’s still sitting on the bridge, just continuing the conversation. In both cases, it seems Peter Pan couldn’t be bothered to come up with new settings to draw.
Then there are two writing issues. The story is about Romulans but at one point Chekov exclaims “Only the Klingons would have the gall to make a robot attack army…” and Kirk replies “Yes, Mr. Chekov, curse those Romulans!” The mix-up is in both the audio and the comic, so it must have been in the script and no one caught it.
Similarly, at the end, Scotty brings the robot leader to the bridge to meet Spock, but the first officer was in the group that first found the robots. The leader already knows him.
Still, the artwork is fun even if the Enterprise is sometimes missing bits, the Romulans are enjoyably ridiculous, and it’s nice to see Uhura look a lot like Uhura. The rest can be forgiven. Maybe kids who got this in 1979 didn’t care about any of the odd bits.
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How fast is warp three?
The specifics of warp speed are never discussed on screen in the original series. We know that warp five is faster than warp four and that the Enterprise usually sticks to the lower end of the speedometer, even when time is short; consider Captain Kirk’s order from The Squire of Gothos: “Ahead warp factor three, Mister Sulu. Colony Beta Six wants their supplies. Let’s get across this void in a hurry.”
Other than that, we can’t make canonical statements about how fast each warp factor is. But we can cite the next-best thing: the TOS show bible and The Making of Star Trek, both written or approved by Gene Roddenberry. Those sources do specify speeds but they also contain what can only be a typo on warp factor three.
The show’s bible, third revision, has this to say about warp speed:
So warp factor one is the speed of light: 186,000 miles or 300,000 kilometres per second. Warp two is eight times the speed of light, and warp four is sixty-four times. That makes the formula speed = wf3 x c, where wf is warp factor and c is the speed of light.
Warp Multiple of c 1 1 2 8 3 27 4 64 5 125 6 216 7 343 8 512 9 729 But that means the show bible got warp three wrong. It should be 27c, not 24. That error also appears in The Making of Star Trek, by Stephen E. Whitfield. On page 191, Whitfield had the following, copying his numbers and some of the language from the show bible.
…greater problems result when it becomes necessary to express a speed many times faster than the speed of light. STAR TREK dialogue solves the problem by measuring all faster-than-light speeds in terms of “Warp Factors.” Warp Factor One is the speed of light. Warp Factor Three is 24 times the speed of light. Maximum safe cruising speed of the Enterprise is Warp Factor Six, or 216 times the speed of light. At Warp Factor Eight (512 times the speed of light) the ship’s structure begins to show considerable strain… Warp Factor Six is therefore exceeded only in instances of extreme emergency.
My often-read 4th, 6th and 22nd printings. The formula was changed for The Next Generation. The Star Trek Encyclopedia by Mike and Denise Okuda has a good explanation of the TNG math but, as this is a TOS blog, I won’t go into it here.
It’s interesting to note that Fotonovel 11, The Deadly Years, states correctly that warp 8 is 512 times the speed of light. Those books were gems when they were published almost 50 years ago and still are today.
Postcript
While Kirk typically kept his ship to the slower warp speeds, Captain Pike had no such compunction. In The Cage, he casually ordered Tyler to take the Enterprise to warp seven and no one looked surprised.
Collecting Trek
A TOS collection 40 years in the making
Collecting Trek 