Starlog Magazine Issue # by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

WILLIAM SHATNER

Shakespeare to the Stars

"W.

By Kirsten Russell

hile Star Trek is science fiction," said Gene Roddenberry when the series was launched, "our stories are basically about people. This is not a series where you invent a machine and then fit a story around it. Our stories will always involve believable people in believable conflict,

Motorcycling and archery are just two of Shatner's many activities outside show business. Other sports activities include skiing, swimming, scuba diving, sky diving, car racing, tennis, boxing, fencing and karate. He insisted on doing his own fight scenes for Star Trek.

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but with outer space as a background."

The stress on human drama in Star Trek necessarily led to a stress on characterization—especially on the characterization of the commander of the space ship Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk. While Kirk is a science fiction hero, he is no stock figure: he is an intelligent, sensitive, strong-willed, fallible human being shouldering the responsibility for a risk-filled operation involving a crew of over four hundred members.

Not surprisingly, a Shakespearian actor was chosen to play him.

Had it been offered to him a few years earlier, William Shatner might have refused the starring role in Star Trek. He was bent on a career as a classical actor, and he wasn't apt to tie himself down to a TV series. Yet he had always had a certain affinity for space adventure; one of his boyhood heroes had been Buck Rogers, whom the young Shatner had often pretended to be while playing on rooftops. At times he had gone so far as to leap off a roof into space—landing in a snowdrift.

Canadian-born, Shatner attended McGill University in Montreal, majoring in business administration but becoming so active in campus theatrical groups that by the time he graduated with a B.A., in 1952, there was little doubt as to his choice of a career. His voice was already known on the Canadian airwaves; in his absorption with his professional goal, he had done numerous radio shows.

But his standards were high and exacting, and he chose the most difficult route to becoming a professional actor. He first went to work with the National Repertory Theatre of Ottawa, gaining plenty of experience—and earning roughly 31 Canadian dollars a week. He doesn't remember those days fondly: "They were hell. I got through them only because I had a dream in front of me: I hoped to become as fine an actor as Laurence Olivier."

Eventually, Shatner joined the Stratford, Ontario, Shakespeare Festival as an understudy. His big break came when he was pressed into the lead of Henry V one night and went on cold, without rehearsal. "It was fantastic," he recalls. "After the show, the audience and the cast cheered."

In Tamburtpine, the (300-year-old J Christopher Marlowe classic, Shatner was given the role of the second male lead. The play was so well-received that the company took it to Broadway, where it lasted through only 21 performances and Shatner nevertheless received rave reviews. He also received numerous job offers, including an offer for a seven-year contract with Twentieth Century Fox at a salary of $500 a week.

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