Shatner’s ultimate voyage
William Shatner discusses the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, his friendship with colleague Leonard Nimoy and life on other planets
Star Trek actor boldly goes on a nostalgic adventure.
William Shatner still has starry eyes. The 85-year-old actor who made his name as Captain James T. Kirk is celebrating, like the fans of the enduring TV and film series, the 50th anniversary of Star Trek this year. To mark the occasion, a multimedia tour dubbed Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage, featuring a live orchestra performing some of Star Trek’s iconic music and showing classic scenes on screen is travelling across Canada, stopping on April 9 at the Centre in Vancouver.
As the tour spokesman, Shatner gave Postmedia an interview to discuss the continued popularity of Star Trek, the music, life in space and what really needs to happen right here on Earth before humanity ventures out where no man has gone before.
Q What can you tell us about the music of Star Trek and the concert tour?
A Movies contain some of the great music of modern day. And it’s unrecognized generally because the music has been written to be subtle and not intrude on the actors and the story being told on film. But it’s a critical element to film. Here in Star Trek, some great music has been written, including by Jerry Goldsmith who in any other age would have been recognized as a great composer. Now he’s recognized as a great composer in movies. In this concert tour, onstage, live, with 35 symphonic musicians in the orchestra — if it was only the music, that alone would be worthwhile to hear. But in addition to that, they have a 40-foot screen upon which is projected the scenes from Star Trek from which the music has been taken. It’s a multimedia experience, but it’s also an intellectual experience. If there was a theme we were looking at — man against machine, for example — those scenes have been put together. So the audience’s eye is occupied by the screen, their ear by the music, and then their intellect begins to understand how critical music is to movies and how music can enhance a scene and the magic that music has with movies.
Q You’re not singing, are you?
A Haha. I’m not there, so you can go! No, I’m not singing. I’m talking to you about getting your readership to go. Another thing I want to talk about is that I’ve written a book. Leonard Nimoy died this past year and he was a dear friend of mine. I write about that friendship — I’m calling it Leonard: A Remarkable Friendship with a Remarkable Man. I talk about friendship in general and male friendship — how difficult it is for men to make friends and sustain a friendship, and how fleeting friendships are in show business by necessity because we’re always doing another show and we leave the arms of that show to do something else.
Q When shooting some of those classic Star Trek scenes, did you have music in mind? Was there a sense of how the flow of a scene would be dictated by the music in the final product? Let’s say, for example, the classic Kirk and Spock fighting scene?
A I think that’s one of the scenes that have been chosen (for the tour). But no, of course not. You’re so busy trying to remember what the next word is and doing publicity and realizing your stomach hurts because you had too much to drink last night, and the only music you hear is the ringing in your ears (Shatner has been suffering from tinnitus since an accident on the shooting of the Arena episode from the original Star Trek series). As an actor, you’re not conscious of the potential music that has yet to be written and that will make you look good. None of that takes place. What does take place as a director is that good directors keep in mind that music will be heard — you construct a film montage that you think music will enhance.
Q Do you have a favourite scene or sequence?
A Seeing the new starship for the first time (in Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture), I remember that. Therein lies the majesty of that music, when the special effects people constructed this monumental ship and the music reflects that majesty, that awe and wonder.
Q Why do you think Star Trek endures?
A I wrote a book called Get a Life, in which I thought I would answer the question: Why do these people keep coming back to these conventions? I did my due diligence and what I concluded in my book was that they come see each other. They form friendships and they see each other. Some years later, I did a documentary with the same title in which I discovered something much deeper, and that is that science fiction is mythology. These wonderful writers who take these laboratory possibilities and make them into a reality some time in the distance, they construct a whole scenario of what life will be like in the future. What will it be like after I die? What kind of world will my children and my children’s children inhabit? That forms a mythology and that mythology, like religion, is something you want to believe in — Yes, there are UFOs. Yes, they’re coming from another planet. Yes, they’ll come and solve our problems and seas won’t rise. Star Trek and the conventions are part of the ritual.
Q It’s a little bit like church.
A It is exactly like church.
Q You’re still pushing for mankind to go into space. You recently made a presentation in the House of Lords with the Scottish National Party — George Takei did the same thing — advocating for increasing the European Union’s role in space. Why now?
A Who am I to fly in the face of Kennedy, who said we needed a goal? But it’s true: We all look into the sky and wonder. We’ve recently found out that the moon has the same elements as Earth, and we’ve concluded that the moon was once a part of Earth, that something crashed into the Earth and scattered a part of Earth up there that eventually formed the moon. And the Earth and the moon are the same composition. They’re twins. How magical is that? These tantalizing questions are all out there. And now, more practically, is there water frozen under the ground on Mars? We seem to believe it. I’ve been to (NASA’s) Jet Propulsion Laboratory and they think there is frozen water beneath the dust of Mars. Well, that means it’s inhabitable.
Q Do you feel we’ll be able to establish a base, permanently, on the moon or even Mars?
A I think the moon would be more easily achieved. But yes, I do. The 800-pound gorilla in the room is having mankind exist until that can take place, and that means all those Paris accords need to be lived up to because we’re losing the world rapidly. Our species is about to go extinct along with so many others that we’re forcing to go extinct unless we do something rapidly.