To Boldly Go On TV— My Experience (Kinda) Working With William Shatner

So a few weeks ago I got an email from the producers of a TV show on the History Channel. I don’t really watch TV much these days, so I have to admit that the show (“The UnXplained”) was one I wasn’t familiar with but they mentioned the name of the host, a name I had heard… William Shatner.

Needless to say, I agreed. This is me enthusiastically agreeing to be on the show:

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m not sure I’d say I’m a Trekkie, but I genuinely enjoyed the original series a few years back when I watched the first two seasons. Obviously the special effects don’t hold up these days, but the drama does, and the performances, it’s got heart and soul and a philosophical bent. I like how it makes space travel feel adventurous, and the universe dangerous.

The Next Generation has its moments (the Borg, one of the great villains of all time, and obviously, Patrick Stewart’s Picard is a wonderful character and performance).  But in TNG, space travel feels more mundane, piloting the Enterprise-D feels like taking a minivan to the store for groceries, reflecting the way the Space Shuttle made space travel feel more routine. And the Federation is ascendant over the Klingons in TNG, which reflects the way the balance of power had pretty clearly shifted towards America and the West at the end of the Cold War, with the Soviet Union collapsing midway through the series. Whereas the Original Series is written at the height of the Space Race, and  just a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when western supremacy (or even survival) seemed more up in the air.

And of course Shatner is legendarily a bit over-the-top as Kirk and yet he and Nimoy play so well off each other, it’s one of the great dramatic pairings of all time.

Meanwhile Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan is one of my favorite movies ever It’s just a movie that has a huge amount to say about life— about failure and resilience, relationships and loss.

The moment where Kirk and the Enterprise finally gets the drop on Khan and the Reliant is one of my favorite moments in science fiction, and for that matter, all cinema, ever. Kirk and the Enterprise are on the run from Khan the whole movie and outgunned by Reliant, but refuse to surrender. Khan’s megalomania means he’s unable to listen to his crew and vulnerable to Kirk’s taunts. Kirk has a huge ego, but it’s his ability to swallow his pride and to lean on Spock for advice and help that allow him to win in the end. Kirk is the captain but it’s his ability to get the best out of his crew that saves the day. Khan is a dictator, but Kirk is a leader.

They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

The Enterprise versus the Reliant in the Battle of the Mutara Nebula, from Star Trek II, Wrath of Khan

Unfortunately I do not actually get to meet Shatner, instead they have a film crew film me on set while he’s in Hollywood, and I suppose they splice and dub the film in such a way that all the pieces come together.

Still, in some sort of way I suppose I can say I have worked with him, and I guess I get listed next to him on IMDB as part of the cast of the episode? Now I have basically fulfilled all my career objectives. I have entered an elite.

I mean yeah, maybe Charles Darwin discovered evolution… did he work with William Shatner? No. Othniel Charles Marsh? Edward Drinker Cope? Baron Georges Cuvier? Comte Buffon? Mary Anning? Obviously not.

None of them can claim to have worked with William Shatner. None of them are even listed on IMDB.

Historians agree that Charles Darwin did not appear on a TV program with William Shatner

Anyway if it was the other big History Channel show, the one with the aliens, I would’ve had to say no. This one… well it seems to sort of straddle the line between serious science and the slightly more fringe or popular stuff which I think is interesting.

Like, I’m happy to talk on camera about the Loch Ness monster, for example, but in a purely scientific way.  which is to say I’ll have to say that the Loch Ness Monster almost certainly doesn’t exist, but it’s fun to imagine if it did, and ultimately pretty harmless. But no producer can twist my arm into saying it’s real (nor did they try).

Dale Russell’s Dinosauroid meanwhile (which we discussed) is one of those things that actually has a really interesting evolutionary thought problem at its heart— would dinosaurs evolve into anything like us? I suspect not, but it’s really interesting to wonder why they might or might not.

The Dinosauroid seems a bit silly, but at the heart of it is a far more interesting and profound question than “is this evolutionary tree recovered with this algorithm more accurate than this slightly different tree recovered with a different algorithm” or “is Stygimoloch a distinct species?*” and is sort of a relict of an era where paleontologists seemed more willing to think in terms of big ideas and not just trivial taxonomic quibbles.

Some of the stuff was more straight-up science, e.g. how are dinosaurs related to birds? How do we know?

It was more fun than I thought it would be. I have no idea how much of this makes it onto the show versus the cutting-room floor.

Anyway, maybe it seemed a bit of a stretch but we talked about the public’s fascination with dinosaurs and how I think it sort of connects to the theme of the original show— “to seek out strange new worlds, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” At its best paleontology is about that- about seeking out strange new worlds, but worlds that really existed, and seeing things that no one has ever seen before. It’s about exploration, and wonder.

(*yes, of course Stygimoloch is a distinct species. It’s as obvious as the ears on a Vulcan.)