William Shatner Lost Patience With a Certain "Bitter" Star Trek Co-Star
William Shatner's main claim to fame is the 30 years he spent as James T. Kirk, the swaggering and boisterous captain who led the intrepid crew of the Starship Enterprise for three seasons on television in the 1960s and in seven Star Trek movies thereafter.
Though he's no longer acting at the age of 91, he still leads an active life. He is currently busy promoting his new memoir, Boldly Go. He's got a documentary coming out, and he just announced dates for a series of live Star Trek Tour appearances for 2023, as he intends to go on tour doing live events with screenings of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Recently, he talked to Times about Star Trek and his continuing activities in a new interview, and also responded to some of the criticism he heard from his former co-stars:
The reason why Star Trek continues to be an iconic sci-fi franchise is as follows, he said:
"Here is a group of people you get to love going on an adventure that, although unusual, harkens back to things that happen on Earth. The futurist stories we told were really human stories with a twist. People loved the stories, they loved the characters."
Shatner attends Star Trek and other sci-fi conventions to this day, and he explained why: "I enjoy the conventions when I am on stage fielding questions. I have acquired a way of doing this hour so that it becomes a kind of mutual distribution of information. The fans are interesting, it's part of the reason why I go."
However, while Shatner's love for Star Trek has endured, his relationships with some of the show's cast members have deteriorated over time. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (Spock) remained friends long after their Star Trek collaboration ended, but stopped communicating years before Nimoy's death in 2015, and Shatner now deeply regrets his failure to reconnect with his friend in time, but there is no indication that bad feelings existed between them at any point. Not so with George Takei (Sulu), who has a long history of animosity towards Shatner, and recently even took a swipe at Shatner's trip into space.
So, Shatner has some choice words about Takei and people like him:
"I began to understand that they were doing it for publicity. Sixty years after some incident they are still on that track. Don't you think that's a little weird? It's like a sickness. George has never stopped blackening my name. These people are bitter and embittered. I have run out of patience with them. Why give credence to people consumed by envy and hate?"