William Shatner on why he wept after space trip and the meaning of Kirk’s final words

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After becoming the oldest person to travel to space, William Shatner hears the same question a lot when he’s chatting with fans: “What was it like?”

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The 91-year-old Canadian-born Star Trek actor is quick with a one-word answer. “I tell them, ‘Empty,’ and then we go on about our business,” Shatner says with a smile in a video call from Los Angeles.

Shatner, whose decades-long career includes Miss Congeniality, T.J. Hooker, Boston Legal, $#*! My Dad Says, Better Late Than Never and The Unexplained, along with the original 1960s Star Trek TV series and films, took to the skies in billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin last October.

The thespian — who brought Captain James Kirk to life 56 years ago alongside Leonard Nimoy (Spock), DeForest Kelley (Bones), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), Walter Koenig (Chekov), James Doohan (Scotty) and George Takei (Sulu) on the USS Enterprise — was one of four passengers to journey for 10 minutes and 17 seconds to the edge of space aboard the 60-foot-tall New Shepard spacecraft.

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As he returned to Earth, Shatner experienced a range of emotions, some of which he’ll expound upon when he visits Fan Expo in Toronto this week for an onstage Q&A and photo op with passionate Trekkers and Trekkies.

But we caught up with him first, for a lively chat about why his space mission brought him to tears and ruminate on Kirk’s death in 1994’s Star Trek Generations — and the inescapable fate that awaits us all.

What’s it like for you to be back on the road meeting fans again after a little bit of a hiatus?

Well, I haven’t had a hiatus. I’m working hard, but it’s going to be a pleasure to come back to Toronto. I love it there. Now Toronto is changing rapidly, as you know. All those apartment buildings going up downtown are disconcerting. I haven’t been there in rush hour, but I imagine rush hour in downtown Toronto is worse than Los Angeles.

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Last fall, you became the oldest person to travel to space. What was that experience like for you?

I was aware that hydrogen was in the rocket, and I was aware that the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg burned because of the hydrogen. I was also aware of human error. The countdown stopped about 15 seconds before takeoff because of some anomaly. So there were a lot of tension-making elements that went into the actual takeoff.

Then there were the (G forces) on my body and those were disconcerting. Then I finally got up. We had practised weightlessness, but you can’t practise weightlessness. So I was baffled by that. But I knew I wanted to get to the window and see outside. I looked over my left shoulder, back at from where we came, and I could see the Earth and also the blue of the air that we were passing through … Then I turned and looked forward at the blackness of space.

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What I saw in that blackness was death and what I saw looking behind me was life … After I got off that rocket, I found myself weeping. I was in grief for the Earth and the planet. Things are going extinct at an enormous rate and I was weeping at the condition of the Earth … We’re these insignificant beings on this insignificant planet and we’re aware of how insignificant we are in this vast universe. Is there any other being as aware of that as we are? I don’t think so. What a marvellous gift that is when we can pay tribute to the awesomeness of nature. We showed a documentary about that trip to a group of scientists, and at the end of that documentary Bezos hugged me and I had a revelation at the end of that hug. We have love on Earth — that was my final revelation of that whole trip.

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We’ve spoken several times, and I’ve asked you about coming back as Kirk, which you told me you won’t do. But I’ve never asked you about Kirk’s death and his last line, ‘Oh my,’ in Star Trek Generations.

As you get older, as I’m sure you can imagine, you think of death — it becomes more and more present … So when this character was dying, I thought, ‘How do you die?’ I’ve heard of people weeping, my father was incapacitated, he had had a stroke and he had tears in his eyes and I wonder quite often what he was crying about. Was he crying about leaving? I loved him very much and he loved me. Was he weeping because of me and leaving this world? … So I thought, ‘How would Captain Kirk die?’ Captain Kirk, who has faced death so often. I thought he would look at death approaching with the same awe and wonder that he looked at these strange beings that he faced in the years I played him. I wanted him to look at death as something filled with the awe and wonder that he looked at the universe. So the, ‘Oh my,’ was supposed to be a ‘wow.’ What came out had an element of dread, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t play it exactly the way I wanted to, which was, ‘Oh my, the gorgeousness of death. What’s going to happen?’ That’s the way I feel about it. That’s the way I want to feel about it. I don’t want to feel fear, but I’m afraid I feel fear (laughing).

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Why do you think Star Trek has endured?

The charm and the fascination of Star Trek is in the stories. It’s stories about human beings facing these different, but really familiar challenges … It’s the writing. The beauty of how the writers were able to capture the human condition — that is the fascination of Star Trek.

William Shatner appears at Fan Expo in Toronto Thursday, Aug. 25 and Friday, Aug. 26. For tickets and info, visit fanexpohq.com/fanexpocanada.

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