In the 60 years since Captain James T. Kirk first took the helm of the USS Enterprise, a short-lived 1960s science fiction series has grown into one of the genre’s most enduring franchises. Star Trek fans have spent generations imagining the future, from the original crew’s voyages to the many captains, starships, and adventures that followed.
Actor William Shatner looked back at the rise and fall of the show during a MeTV appearance, where he was asked about his personal interest in space exploration.
Premiering on September 8, 1966, the series imagined a diverse crew traveling through space and searching for strange worlds and new civilizations, with alien crises never far behind. NBC cancelled the show after three seasons, with its final episode airing on June 3, 1969. But as the true Trekkers know, the real voyage was just beginning.
Throughout the 1970s, reruns introduced Star Trek to new audiences who packed early conventions and helped keep the universe alive long after its original network run ended. It returned first as an animated series, and then through a run of feature films that reunited the original crew. By the late 1980s, Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced a new USS Enterprise and a new captain, Jean-Luc Picard, played by Patrick Stewart.
From there, the final frontier expanded in every direction. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager followed in the 1990s, and in 2001, Star Trek: Enterprise explored the era before the original series began, with each series testing a different corner of the franchise’s universe. Most recently, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and Star Trek: Prodigy have shown that the franchise still knows how to reinvent itself. Even so, it continues to use distant worlds to make present-day questions feel newly strange. What do people owe one another? How should we meet the unknown? And what might a better future look like? As Shatner states in his MeTV appearance, “Star Trek is the story of man in the future, dealing with problems we have today that manifest themselves in the future.”
Shatner’s anniversary reflections arrive just ahead of his new project: Wisdom & Worries: Reflections on Life, Death, and Everything in Between.
Wisdom & Worries
Out October 27 and written with Robert Sharenow, the memoir of poems and lyrics looks beyond the Enterprise to Shatner’s childhood, career, relationships, mortality—proof that at 95, he’s still finding new frontiers to explore.
Kirk was neither the franchise’s only captain nor its last, but Shatner established a model later series would repeatedly revise, as a captain fiercely loyal to his crew. Six decades later, the role remains inseparable from the larger legacy of Star Trek.
Featured image: William Shatner / Facebook
