“Risk is our business,” James T. Kirk once said. “That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”
More than a half-century later, the performer who breathed life into the fabled Enterprise captain is, at age 90, making that kind of risk his own business and heading toward the stars under dramatically different circumstances than his fictional counterpart. And in doing so, William Shatner is causing worlds to collide, or at least permitting parallel universes to coexist—the utopian spacefaring vision of “Star Trek” and the evolving, increasingly commercial spot that “space” holds in the American psyche.
When Shatner boards Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin NS-18 in Texas at around dawn Wednesday, his one small step into the craft creates one of the ultimate crossover stories of our era.
It’s about space and exploration, sure. But it’s also about popular culture and marketing and entertainment and nostalgia and hope and Manifest Destiny and, and, and … well, you get the idea.
“What will I see when I’m out there?” Shatner wondered last week, talking to Anderson Cooper on CNN. An equally valid question is this: What will WE see when he’s out there?
It will be a complex blend of human dreams superimposed upon technology and hope, braggadocio, and cash, and the notion that space travel elevates us—all orchestrated by a company under criticism for what some call the decidedly un-utopian, tech-bro ways that it operates.
The World of ‘Star Trek’
Since its 1966 premiere with one of the most diverse casts TV had ever seen, “Trek” has grown from Gene Roddenberry’s fever dream of a “‘Wagon Train’ to the stars” into an intricate transmedia universe full of subtleties and traditions and rules.Among them: Human beings avoid killing each other. Money is generally outdated, as are hunger and poverty. Greed is aberrant. Noninterference in other cultures is the most sacred principle of all. And within the United Federation of Planets, the spacefaring United Nations of “Star Trek,” exploration, not domination, is the coin of the realm.
That 1966–69 original series used allegory to evade network censors and tell stories about racism and xenophobia and even the Vietnam War. How could they get away with all that? Because the adventures of Kirk’s Enterprise took place against a backdrop of 23rd-century space travel—something directly relevant to the world as well, given that humans first set foot on the moon 47 days after the original series’ final episode.
Over the next half-century, backed by a vocal fan base, “Star Trek” roared back for more and, in the process, led the way in cementing space travel as an ideal canvas for relevant storytelling.
Even as NASA’s Apollo-era ebbed into the space shuttle program (where an early craft was named “Enterprise”) and eventually into uncertainty, “Trek” remained one of the culture’s central vehicles for a spacefaring future.
In the 1980s, movies about the original crew dealt with aging and regret. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” offered a more cerebral but still utopian vision. Another spinoff, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” set at an outpost preserving a delicate detente, presented a darker take—but still one in which avarice was anomalous and worthy of scorn. And “Enterprise,” a 2001–2005 prequel, offered a season-long arc about the aftermath of a 9/11-style extraterrestrial attack on Earth.
Two of the latest iterations of the myth, “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Star Trek: Picard,” have dipped deeper into the darkness than their predecessors and have toyed with the notion that not all humanity wants to be quite that utopian.
The Profitable Frontier
This brings us to companies like Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic—endeavors that build their brands not upon countries but corporations.They offer the culture a variation on the theme—a narrative that space travel isn’t just for scientists and diplomats but for you and me, too.
“The United States always has had private people working for the public purpose,” says Ravi S. Rajan, president of the California Institute for the Arts and a “Trek” fan since childhood. “But how much is done privately and how much is done publicly, that changes.”
The motives of the Amazon founder himself remain unclear. It is evident, though, that the popular culture of space travel has influenced him deeply.
Bezos, who tells a story of exploring space to help ensure Earth’s continued prosperity, is a longtime “Trek” fan. He made a cameo as an alien Starfleet official in the 2016 movie “Star Trek Beyond.” And according to biographer Brad Stone, Bezos even fleetingly considered calling Amazon “Makeitso.com,” after Capt. Jean-Luc Picard’s favorite command in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
That kind of storyline—hope, heroism, competitive dominance, and an unerring sense of competence that can at times overlap with testosterone—could be one key reason why the commercial space outfits are thriving. At a moment when NASA and nation-focused space travel lacks a compelling Hollywood narrative, the entrepreneurs and their marketers step right in.
“American dominance in space, nobody cares about it. It’s Bezos who says: ‘We can’t go on living like this. We have to save the planet,’” says Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a professor of religion and science in society at Wesleyan University. What results, she says, is “a kinder, gentler colonialism” in which humans take to orbit under premises that seem justifiable but require closer scrutiny.
“It’s the billionaires who have the utopian visions,” says Rubenstein, author of the upcoming book “Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race.”
“The states can’t muster them,” she says. “They have no story.”
Launching Shatner
We live in an era where the fictional and the real have an intricate relationship, and sometimes it’s hard to separate them. Something like this, a collision of dreams and real-life ambition and achievement, couldn’t have a more effective ambassador than the outsized personality that is William Shatner.“I was there last week rehearsing, whatever they call it,” Shatner told Anderson Cooper.
“Training I think is what they call it,” Cooper said, to which Shatner responded, “I think of it as a rehearsal.”
In the meantime, consider the autobiographical song called “Real” that Shatner recorded in 2004 with country singer Brad Paisley.
“I’d love to help the world and all its problems. But I’m an entertainer, and that’s all,” he says in it. “So the next time there’s an asteroid or a natural disaster, I’m flattered that you thought of me—but I’m not the one to call.”
Turns out, he is—this time. But next time? In the future of the final frontier and the culture that has grown up around it—in this unusual realm where risk IS the business—that’s eventually going to have to be addressed.
