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Star Trek icon William Shatner reflects on franchise’s past and future: “That concept is hopeful in many people’s cases”
He boldly went where no man had gone before. Now, six decades later, William Shatner looks back on the journey of a lifetime.
Mat Hayward/Getty Images
- Caroline Frost
Published: Tuesday, 1 September 2026 at 10:00 am
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This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
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William Shatner has always known not to count his chickens before they hatch. By 1966, when he took up position on the dock of the Starship Enterprise and sealed his place in cultural history as Star Trek’s Captain James T Kirk, he already knew the pitfalls of banking on a hit: He tells RT: “I’d been an actor for many years before, and there’s no telling when something will be successful. I’d been in a play in New York called The World of Suzie Wong which got seven bad notices when we opened. They wanted to close it but it had millions of dollars in advance sales, so they kept it on for three months, during which time everybody spoke faster and did things faster, it went from a turgid drama to a comedy and ran for two years. I was always aware that there is jeopardy around us.”
Fortunately, Star Trek knew no such wobbles. Instead, as it celebrates its 60th anniversary on 8 September, it remains a cultural phenomenon with hundreds of millions tuning in through the decades for various incarnations, sequels and spin-offs, including dedicated Trekkies everywhere hanging on to the show’s central message of curiosity and tolerance for our fellow beings.
William Shatner as Captain James T Kirk in Star Trek: the Original Series episode Space Seed CBS via Getty Images
During that time, Shatner has proved a unique Hollywood figure, with a personality large enough to accommodate the totem of Captain Kirk while leaving room for many other, equally distinctive projects – TV star, distinctive crooner, painter, author and, in 2021 aged 90, space traveller (at the time the oldest) after joining the Blue Origin NS-18 sub-orbital spaceflight.
Now, at 95, two things are clear – that there is plenty of creative juice still in the tank, and that he remains intensely grateful for it all: “I’ve had a wonderful career. I put three kids through college, and I’m speaking to you from a house that I own, so that’s something. I’ve got a podcast on now, two books coming out, new albums coming out. I’m going on tour… All of this is a result of the popularity of Star Trek. It’s been an engine in my life.”
It’s an engine that keeps running, with the 60th anniversary prompting a year-long schedule of celebratory events. What does its original star believe the show and its storylines have to offer the world in 2026?
He answers without hesitation: “The fiction of Star Trek suggests that 400 years from now, we’ll all be here. It’s the concept that mankind will still be on Earth, having the same trials and tribulations, but managing. That concept is hopeful in many people’s cases.”
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Finally, and more personally, if Star Trek continues to provide both hope and wonder in a world where both seem in short supply, what brings him these two things?
“I walk around filled with the awareness of the magic of life. Almost always. I’m looking around at anything that’s happening in my personal life, or in my external life, and I think of it with wonderment, that life has these qualities that we have to be aware of, the good and the bad, the hot and the cold, the magic of life, the mystery of life, and the pain, which is part of life.
“All of those are mysterious elements that we’ve never solved and will go to our death not having solved. We’re bound up in it, a mystery within a mystery.”
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Authors
Caroline Frost
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