Welcome to Star Trek Original Series

Eugene Wesley “Gene” Roddenberry (August 19, 1921 – October 24, 1991) was an American television screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for creating the original Star Trek television series. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, where his father was a police officer. Roddenberry flew eighty-nine combat missions in the Army Air Forces during World War II, and worked as a commercial pilot after the war. Later he followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Los Angeles Police Department where he also began to write scripts for television.
As a freelance writer, Roddenberry wrote scripts for Highway Patrol, Have Gun–Will Travel, and other series, before creating and producing his own television series The Lieutenant. In 1964, Roddenberry created Star Trek, which premiered in 1966 and ran for three seasons before being canceled. He then worked on other projects including a string of failed television pilots. The syndication of Star Trek led to its growing popularity; this in turn resulted in the Star Trekfeature films, which Roddenberry continued to produce and consult. In 1987, the sequel series Star Trek: The Next Generation began airing on television in first-run syndication; Roddenberry was heavily involved in the initial development of the series, but took a less active role after the first season due to ill health. He continued to consult on the series until his death in 1991.
In 1985, he became the first TV writer with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he was later inducted by both the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. Years after his death, Roddenberry was one of the first humans to have his ashes carried into earth orbit. The popularity of the Star Trek universe and films has inspired films, books, comic books, video games, and fan films set in the Star Trek universe.
 Early life and career
  Gene Roddenberry, during his senior year at high schoolRoddenberry was born on August 19, 1921 in his parents’ rented home in El Paso, Texas, the first child of Eugene Edward Roddenberry and Caroline “Glen” (née Goleman) Roddenberry. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1923 after Gene’s father passed the Civil Service test and was given a police commission there.[During his childhood, Roddenberry was interested in reading, especially pulp magazines,and was a fan of stories such as John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, and the Skylark series by E. E. Smith.
Roddenberry majored in police science at Los Angeles City College,where he began dating Eileen-Anita Rexroat and became interested in aeronautical engineering.He obtained a pilot’s license through the United States Army Air Corps-sponsored Civilian Pilot Training Program.He enlisted with the USAAC on December 18, 1941, and married Eileen on June 13, 1942.He graduated from the USAAC on August 5, 1942, when he was commissioned as a second lieutenant.
He was posted to Bellows Field, Oahu, to join the 394th Bomb Squadron, 5th Bombardment Group, of the Thirteenth Air Force, which flew the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.On August 2, 1943, while flying out of Espiritu Santo, the plane Roddenberry was piloting overshot the runway by 500 feet (150 m) and impacted trees, crushing the nose, and starting a fire, killing two men.The official report absolved Roddenberry of any responsibility.Roddenberry spent the remainder of his military career in the United States,and flew all over the country as a plane crash investigator. He was involved in a further plane crash, this time as a passenger.He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.
In 1945, Roddenberry began flying for Pan American World Airways,including routes from New York to Johannesburg or Calcutta, the two longest Pan Am routes at the time.Listed as a resident of River Edge, New Jersey, he experienced his third crash while on the Clipper Eclipse on June 18, 1947.The plane landed in the Syrian desert, and Roddenberry dragged injured passengers out of the burning plane and led the group to get help.Fourteen people died in the crash; eleven passengers needed hospital treatment, and eight were unharmed.He resigned from Pan-Am on May 15, 1948, and decided to pursue his dream of writing, particularly for the new medium of television.
Roddenberry applied for a position with the Los Angeles Police Department on January 10, 1949,and spent his first sixteen months in the traffic division before being transferred to the newspaper unit.This became the “Public Information Division” and Roddenberry became the Chief of Police’s speech writer.He became technical advisor for a new television version of Mr. District Attorney, which led to him writing for the show under his pseudonym “Robert Wesley”.He began to collaborate with Ziv Television Programs,[and continued to sell scripts to Mr. District Attorney, in addition to Ziv’s Highway Patrol. In early 1956, he sold two story ideas for I Led Three Lives, and he found that it was becoming increasingly difficult to be a writer as well as a policeman.On June 7, 1956, he resigned from the force to concentrate on his writing career.

Personal life
 
 Majel Barrett-Roddenberry and Rod Roddenberry in 2008While at Los Angeles City College, Roddenberry began dating Eileen-Anita Rexroat.[4They became engaged before Roddenberry left Los Angeles during his military service,and married in June 1942 at the chapel at Kelly Field.They had two children together, Darleen Anita,and Dawn Allison.During his time in the LAPD, Roddenberry was known to have had affairs with secretarial staff. Before his work on Star Trek, he began relationships with both Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett.Nichols only wrote about their relationship in her autobiography Beyond Uhura after Roddenberry’s death.At the time, Roddenberry wanted to remain in an open relationship with both women,but Nichols, recognising Barrett’s devotion to him, ended the affair as she did not want to be “the other woman to the other woman”.
He and Barrett had an apartment together by the opening weeks of Star Trek.He had planned to divorce Eileen after the first season of the show, but when it was renewed, he delayed doing so fearing that he would not have enough time to deal with both the divorce and Star Trek. He moved out of the family home on August 9, 1968, two weeks after the marriage of his daughter Darleen.In 1969, while scouting locations in Japan for MGM for Pretty Maids all in a Row,he proposed to Barrett by telephone.They were married in a Shinto ceremony as Roddenberry had considered it “sacrilegious” to use an American minister in Japan.Roddenberry and Barrett had a son together, Eugene Jr., commonly referred to as Rod Roddenberry, in February 1974.
Religious views
Roddenberry was raised a Southern Baptist;however, as an adult Roddenberry rejected religion, and considered himself a humanist.[28] He began questioning religion around the age of fourteen, and came to the conclusion that it was “nonsense”.As a child, he served in the choir at his local church, but often substituted lyrics as he sang hymns.Early in his writing career, he received an award from the American Baptist Convention for “skillfully writing Christian truth and the application of Christian principles into commercial, dramatic TV scripts”.For several years he corresponded with John M. Gunn of the National Council of Churches regarding the application of Christian teachings in television series. However, Gunn stopped replying after Roddenberry wrote in a letter: “But you must understand that I am a complete pagan, and consume enormous amounts of bread, having found the Word more spice than nourishment, so I am interested in a statement couched in dollars and cents of what this means to the Roddenberry treasury.”
Roddenberry said of Christianity, “How can I take seriously a god-image that requires that I prostrate myself every seven days and praise it? That sounds to me like a very insecure personality.”[148] At one point, he worked a similar opinion, which was to have been stated by a Vulcan, into the plot for Star Trek: The God Thing.Before his death, Roddenberry became close friends with philosopher Charles Musès, who said that Roddenberry’s views were “a far cry from atheism“.Roddenberry explained his position thusly: “It’s not true that I don’t believe in God. I believe in a kind of god. It’s just not other people’s god. I reject religion. I accept the notion of God.”He had an ongoing interest in other people’s experiences with religion,and called Catholicism “a very beautiful religion. An art form.”However, he said that he dismissed all organized religions, saying that for the most part, they acted like a “substitute brain… and a very malfunctioning one”.Roddenberry was also critical of how the public looked at certain religions, noting that when the King David Hotel bombing took place in 1946, the American public accepted it as the action of freedom fighters, whereas a car bombing by a Muslim in Beirut is condemned as a terrorist act. While he agreed that both parties were wrong in their use of violence, he said that the actions of both were undertaken because of their strong religious beliefs.
According to Ronald D. Moore, Roddenberry “felt very strongly that contemporary Earth religions would be gone by the 23rd century”.Brannon Braga said that Roddenberry made it known to the writers of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation that religion, superstition, and mystical thinking were not to be included.Even a mention of marriage in a script for an early episode of The Next Generation resulted in Roddenberry’s chastising the writers.Nicholas Meyer said that Star Trek had evolved “into sort of a secular parallel to the Catholic Mass“.Roddenberry compared the franchise to his own philosophy by saying: “Understand that Star Trek is more than just my political philosophy, my racial philosophy, my overview on life and the human condition.”He was awarded the 1991 Humanist Arts Award from the American Humanist Association.
Health decline and death
In the late 1980s, Roddenberry was likely afflicted by the first manifestations of cerebral vascular disease and encephalopathy as a result of his longstanding recreational use of legal and illicit drugs, including alcohol,cannabis, diazepam, secobarbital, methylphenidate, Dexamyl, and cocaine (which he had used regularly since the production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture).Throughout much of his career, he had routinely used stimulants to work through the night on scripts, especially amphetamines.The effects of these substances were compounded by deleterious interactions with diabetes,high blood pressure, and antidepressant prescriptions.
Following a stroke at a family reunion in Tallahassee, Florida, in September 1989,Roddenberry’s health declined further, ultimately requiring him to use a wheelchair.Following another stroke in early October 1991, his right arm was paralyzed, causing him ongoing pain as the muscles began to atrophy. It also caused problems with the sight in his right eye and he found communicating in full sentences difficult.At 2:00 pm, on October 24, he attended an appointment with his doctor, Dr. Ronald Rich.He arrived in the building with his staff, and began to travel up to the ninth floor in the elevator. As they reached the fifth floor, he began struggling for breath, and was wheeled into the doctor’s office, where he was reclined and a nurse administered oxygen. Barrett was sent for. Upon her arrival, she held Roddenberry while encouraging him to breathe. He had a cardiopulmonary arrest, and he died in the doctor’s office shortly afterwards.Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was attempted with no effect, and paramedics arrived to take him across the road to the Santa Monica Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The funeral was arranged for November 1, with the public invited to the memorial service at the Hall of Liberty, within the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Hollywood Hills.It was a secular service; Roddenberry had been crematedbefore the event. More than three hundred Star Trek fans attended, and stood in the balcony section of the hall, while the invited guests were on the floor level. Nichols sang twice during the ceremony, first “Yesterday” and then a song she wrote herself titled “Gene”.Both songs had been requested by Barrett.Several people spoke at the memorial, including Ray Bradbury, Whoopi Goldberg, Christopher Knopf, E. Jack Newman,and Patrick Stewart. The ceremony was closed by two kilted pipers playing “Amazing Grace” as a pre-recorded message by Roddenberry was broadcast. A four-plane flypast, in the missing man formation, followed some thirty minutes later.After his death, Star Trek: The Next Generation aired a two-part episode of season five, called “Unification“, which featured a dedication to Roddenberry.
Roddenberry’s will left the majority of his $30 million estate to Barrett, in a trust. He also left money to his children and his first wife Eileen. However, his daughter Dawn contested the will based upon the grounds that Barrett had undue influence on her father.In a hearing held in 1993, the Los Angeles Superior Court ruled that there were improprieties in the management of the trust and removed Barrett as executor. In another decision, the court found that Roddenberry had hidden assets from Star Trek in the Norway Corporation in order to keep funds away from his first wife, and ordered the payment of fifty percent of those assets to Eileen as well as punitive damages.In 1996, the California Court of Appeals ruled that the original will, which stated that anyone who contested it would be disinherited, would stand. As a result, Dawn lost $500,000 from the estate, as well as a share of the trust upon Barrett’s death.The appellate court also overturned the earlier decision to award Roddenberry’s first wife, Eileen, fifty percent of his assets. The judge called that case one “that should never have been”.
Spaceflight
In 1992, some of Roddenberry’s ashes were flown into space, and returned to Earth, on the Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-52. On April 21, 1997,[a Celestis spacecraft with 7 grams (a quarter of an ounce) of the cremated remains of Roddenberry,[along with those of Timothy Leary, Gerard K. O’Neill and twenty-one other people, was launched into Earth orbit aboard a Pegasus XL rocket from a site near the Canary Islands. On May 20, 2002, the spacecraft’s orbit deteriorated and it disintegrated in the atmosphere. Another flight to launch more of his ashes into deep space, along with those of Barrett, who died in 2008, was initially planned to take place in 2009. Unlike previous flights, the intention was that this flight would not return to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.This flight was delayed and is now planned for launch in 2016. It will also include the ashes of James Doohan in addition to the Roddenberrys’ and several others.

Career as full-time writer and producer
Early career
 
Roddenberry was promoted to head writer for The West Point Story, and wrote ten scripts for the first season, about a third of the total episodes.While working for Ziv, he pitched a series to CBS set on board a cruise ship, but they did not buy it as he wanted to become a producer and have full creative control. He wrote another script for Ziv’s series “Harbourmaster” titled “Coastal Security”, and signed a contract with the company to develop a show called Junior Executivewith Quinn Martin. Nothing came of the series.
 
 Roddenberry and Leonard Nimoy (pictured) first worked together on The Lieutenant.He wrote scripts for a number of other series in his early years as a professional writer including Bat Masterson and Jefferson Drum.Roddenberry’s episode of the series Have Gun – Will Travel, “Helen of Abajinan”, won the Writer’s Guild of America award for Best Teleplay in 1958.He also continued to create series of his own, including a series based on an agent for Lloyd’s of London called The Man from Lloyds. He pitched a police-based series called Footbeat to CBS, Hollis Productions and Screen Gems. It nearly made it into ABC‘s Sunday-night line-up but they opted to show only western genre series that night.
Roddenberry was asked to write a series called Riverboat, set in 1860s Mississippi. When he discovered that the producers wanted no black people on the show, he argued so much with them that he lost the job.He was also considered moving to England around this time, as Sir Lew Grade of Associated Television wanted Roddenberry to develop series and set up his own production company.Though he did not move, he leveraged the deal to land a contract with Screen Gems that included a guaranteed $100,000, and became a producer for the first time on a summer replacement for the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show titled The Wrangler.
Screen Gems backed Roddenberry’s first attempt at creating a pilot. His series, The Wild Blue, went to pilot but was not picked up. The three main characters had names that would later appear in the Star Trek franchise: Philip Pike, Edward Jellicoe, and James T. Irvine.While working at Screen Gems an actress, new to Hollywood, wrote to him asking for a meeting. They quickly became friends and would meet every few months; the woman was Majel Leigh Hudec, later known as Majel Barrett.He created a second pilot called 333 Montgomeryabout a lawyer, played by DeForest Kelley.It was not picked up by the network, but was later re-written as a new series called Defiance County. His career with Screen Gems ended in late 1961 and shortly afterward he had issues with his old friend Erle Stanley Gardner. The Perry Mason creator claimed that Defiance County had infringed his character Doug Selby.The two writers fell out via correspondence and stopped contacting one another, even though Defiance County never proceeded past the pilot stage.
 Gene Roddenberry appearing in an advertisement for MONY in 1961In 1961, he agreed to appear in an advertisement for MONY (Mutual of New York), as long as he had final approval.With the money from Screen Gems and other works, he and Eileen moved to 539 South Beverly Glen, near Beverly Hills.He discussed an idea about a multi-ethnic crew on an airship travelling the world, based on the 1961 film Master of the World, with fellow writer Christopher Knopf at MGM. As the time was not right for science fiction, he began work on The Lieutenant for Arena Productions. This made it to the NBCSaturday night line-up at 7:30 pm,and premiered on September 14, 1963. The show set a new ratings record for that time slot.Roddenberry worked with several cast and crew who would later join him on Star Trek, including: Gene L. Coon, star Gary Lockwood, Joe D’Agosta, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, and Majel Barrett.The Lieutenant was produced with the co-operation of the Pentagon, which allowed them to film at an actual Marine base. During the production of the series, Roddenberry clashed regularly with the Department of Defense over potential plots.The department withdrew its support after Roddenberry pressed ahead with a plot titled “To Set It Right” in which a white and a black man find a common cause in their roles as Marines.”To Set It Right” was the first time he worked with Nichols, and it was her first television role. The episode has been preserved at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City.The show was not renewed after its first season. Roddenberry was already working on a new series idea. This included his ship location from Hawaii Passage and added a Horatio Hornblower character, plus the multi-racial crew from his airship idea. He decided to write it as science fiction, and by March 11, 1964, he brought together a sixteen-page pitch. On April 24, he sent three copies and two dollars to the Writers Guild of America to register his series. He called it Star Trek.
Star Trek
When Roddenberry pitched Star Trek to MGM, it was warmly received but no offer was made.He then went to Desilu Productions, but rather than being offered a one-script deal, he was hired as a producer and allowed to work on his own projects. His first was a half-hour pilot called Police Story (not to be confused with the anthology series created by Joseph Wambaugh), which was not picked up by the networks.Having not sold a pilot in five years, Desilu was having financial difficulties; its only success was I Love Lucy.Roddenberry took the Star Trek idea to Oscar Katz, head of programming, and the duo immediately started work on a plan to sell the series to the networks. They took it to CBS, which ultimately passed on it. The duo later learned that CBS had been eager to find out about Star Trek because it had a science fiction series in development—Lost in Space. Roddenberry and Katz next took the idea to Mort Werner at NBC,this time downplaying the science fiction elements and highlighting the links to Gunsmoke and Wagon Train.The network funded three story ideas, and selected “The Menagerie,” which was later known as “The Cage,” to be made into a pilot. (The other two later became episodes of the series.) While most of the money for the pilot came from NBC, the remaining costs were covered by Desilu.Roddenberry hired Dorothy Fontana, better known as D. C. Fontana, as his assistant. They had worked together previously on The Lieutenant, and she had eight script credits to her name.
 William Shatner and Sally Kellerman, from “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” the second pilot of Star TrekRoddenberry and Barrett had begun an affair by the early days of Star Trek,and he specifically wrote the part of the character Number One in the pilot with her in mind; no other actresses were considered for the role. Barrett suggested Nimoy for the part of Spock. He had worked with both Roddenberry and Barrett on The Lieutenant, and once Roddenberry remembered the thin features of the actor, he did not consider anyone else for the part.The remaining cast came together; filming began on November 27, 1964, and was completed on December 11.After post-production, the episode was shown to NBC executives and it was rumored that Star Trek would be broadcast at 8:00 p.m. on Friday nights. The episode failed to impress test audiences,and after the executives became hesitant, Katz offered to make a second pilot. On March 26, 1965, NBC ordered a new episode.
Roddenberry developed several possible scripts, including “Mudd’s Women“, “The Omega Glory“, and with the help of Samuel A. Peeples, “Where No Man Has Gone Before“. NBC selected the last one, leading to later rumors that Peeples created Star Trek, something he has always denied.Roddenberry was determined to make the crew racially diverse, which impressed actor George Takei when he came for his audition.The episode went into production on July 15, 1965, and was completed at around half the cost of “The Cage” since the sets were already built.Roddenberry worked on several projects for the rest of the year. In December, he decided to write lyrics to the Star Trek theme; this angered the theme’s composer, Alexander Courage, as it meant that royalties would be split between them. In February 1966, NBC informed Desilu that they were buying Star Trek and that it would be included in the fall 1966 television schedule.On May 24, the first episode of the Star Trek series went into production;Desilu was contracted to deliver thirteen episodes.Five days before the first broadcast, Roddenberry appeared at the 24th World Science Fiction Convention and previewed “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. After the episode was shown, he received a standing ovation. The first episode to air on NBC was “The Man Trap“, on September 8, 1966, at 8:00 pm.Roddenberry was immediately concerned about the series’ low ratings and wrote to Harlan Ellison to ask if he could use his name in letters to the network to save the show. Not wanting to lose a potential source of income, Ellison agreed and also sought the help of other writers who also wanted to avoid losing potential income.Roddenberry corresponded with science fiction writer Isaac Asimov about how to address the issue of Spock’s growing popularity and the possibility that his character would overshadow Kirk.Asimov suggested having Kirk and Spock work together as a team “to get people to think of Kirk when they think of Spock.”The series was renewed by NBC, first for a full season’s order, and then for a second season. An article in the Chicago Tribune quoted studio executives as stating that the letter-writing campaign had been wasted because they had already been planning to renew Star Trek.
Some of the main cast of Star Trek during the third seasonRoddenberry often rewrote submitted scripts, although he did not always take credit for these.Roddenberry and Ellison fell out over “The City on the Edge of Forever” after Roddenberry rewrote Ellison’s script to make it both financially feasible to film and usable for the series context.Even his close friend Don Ingalls had his script for “A Private Little War” altered drastically,and, as a result, Ingalls declared that he would only be credited under the pseudonym “Jud Crucis” (a play on “Jesus Christ”), claiming he had been crucified by the process.Roddenberry’s work rewriting “The Menagerie“, based on footage originally shot for “The Cage”, resulted in a Writers’ Guild arbitration board hearing. The Guild ruled in his favor over John D. F. Black, the complainant.The script won a Hugo Award, but the awards board neglected to inform Roddenberry, who found out through correspondence with Asimov.As the second season was drawing to a close, Roddenberry once again faced the threat of cancellation. He enlisted the help of Asimov,[72] and even encouraged a student-led protest march on NBC. On January 8, 1968, a thousand students from twenty different schools across the country marched on the studio.[73]Roddenberry began to communicate with Star Trek fan Bjo Trimble, who led a fan writing campaign to save the series. Trimble later noted that this campaign of writing to fans who had written to Desilu about the show, urging them to write NBC, had created an organized Star Trek fandom.The network received around 6,000 letters a week from fans petitioning it to renew the series.On March 1, 1968, NBC announced on air, at the end of “The Omega Glory”, that Star Trek would return for a third season.
The network had initially planned to place Star Trek in the 7:30 pm Monday-night time slot freed up by The Man from U.N.C.L.E. completing its run. Instead, the enraged George Schlatter forced the network to insert Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In into the slot, and Roddenberry’s series was moved to 10:00 p.m. on Fridays. Realizing the show could not survive in that time slot and burned out from arguments with the network, Roddenberry resigned from the day-to-day running of Star Trek, although he continued to be credited as executive producer.Roddenberry cooperated with Stephen Edward Poe, writing as Stephen Whitfield, on the 1968 nonfiction book The Making of Star Trek for Ballantine Books, splitting the royalties evenly. Roddenberry explained to Whitfield: “I had to get some money somewhere. I’m sure not going to get it from the profits of Star Trek.” Herbert Solow and Robert H. Justman observed that Whitfield never regretted his fifty-fifty deal with Roddenberry since it gave him “the opportunity to become the first chronicler of television’s successful unsuccessful series.”.Whitfield had previously been the national advertising and promotion director for model makers Aluminum Model Toys, better known as “AMT”, which then held the Star Trek license, and moved to run Lincoln Enterprises, Roddenberry’s company set up to sell the series’ merchandise.
Having stepped aside from the majority of his Star Trek duties, Roddenberry sought instead to create a film based on Asimov’s “I, Robot” and also began work on a Tarzan script for National General Pictures.After initially requesting a budget of $2 million and being refused, Roddenberry made cuts to reduce costs to $1.2 million. When he learned they were being offered only $700,000 to shoot the film, which by now was being called a TV movie, he cancelled the deal.Meanwhile, NBC announced Star Trek’s cancellation in February 1969. A similar but much smaller letter-writing campaign followed news of the cancellation.Because of the manner in which the series was sold to NBC, it left the production company $4.7 million in debt.The last episode of Star Trek aired forty-seven days before Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission,and Roddenberry declared that he would never write for television again.
1970s projects
Following the cancellation of Star Trek, Roddenberry felt typecast as a producer of science fiction, despite his background in westerns and police stories.He later described the period, saying, “My dreams were going downhill because I could not get work after the original series was cancelled.”He felt that he was “perceived as the guy who made the show that was an expensive flop.”Roddenberry had sold his interest in Star Trek to Paramount Studios in return for a third of the ongoing profits. However, this did not result in any quick financial gain; the studio was still claiming that the series was $500,000 in the red in 1982.He wrote and produced Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971), a sexploitation film directed by Roger Vadim, for MGM. The cast included Rock Hudson, Angie Dickinson, Telly Savalas, and Roddy McDowall alongside Star Trek regular James Doohan, and William J. Campbell, who had appeared as a guest in two Star Trek episodes, “The Squire Of Gothos” and “The Trouble With Tribbles.” Variety magazine was unimpressed: “Whatever substance was in the original [novel by Francis Pollini] or screen concept has been plowed under, leaving only superficial, one-joke results.” Herbert Solow had given Roddenberry the work as a favor, paying him $100,000 for the script.
Gene Roddenberry at a Star Trek convention in 1976Faced with a $2,000 per month alimony obligation as a result of his 1969 divorce, and a mortgage, he began to support himself largely by giving college lectures and appearances at science fiction conventions.These presentations included screenings of “The Cage” and blooper reels from the production of Star Trek.He was paid $25,000 to write a script called The Nine, which was meant to be about paranormal experiences, but ended up being based on his experiences attempting to earn a living attending science fiction conventions.[96] At the time, he was close to losing his house because of the lack of income.[95] These conventions began to build the fan support to bring back Star Trek, leading TV Guide to describe it, in 1972, as “the show that won’t die.”[97]
In 1972 and 1973, Roddenberry made a comeback to science fiction, selling ideas for four new series to a variety of networks. Roddenberry’s Genesis II was set in a post-apocalyptic Earth. He had hoped to recreate the success of Star Trekwithout “doing another space-hopping show.” He created a 45-page writing guide, and proposed several story ideas based on the concept that pockets of civilisation had regressed to past eras or changed altogether.The pilot aired as a TV movie in March 1973, setting new records for the Thursday Night Movie of the Week. Roddenberry was asked to produce four more scripts for episodes, but before production could begin again, CBS aired the film Planet of the Apes. It was watched by an even greater audience than Genesis II. CBS scrapped Genesis IIand replaced it with the Apes television series; the results were disastrous ratings-wise, and Planet Of The Apes was quickly canceled.
The Questor Tapes was a project that reunited him with his Star Trekcollaborator, Gene L. Coon, who was in failing health at the time. NBC ordered sixteen episodes, and tentatively scheduled the series to follow The Rockford Files on Friday nights; the pilot launched on January 23, 1974,to positive critical response. But Roddenberry balked at the substantial changes requested by the network and left the project, leading to its immediate cancellation. During 1974, Roddenberry reworked the Genesis II concept as a second pilot, Planet Earth, for rival network ABC, with similar less-than-successful results. The pilot was aired on April 23, 1974. While Roddenberry wanted to create something that could feasibly exist in the future, the network wanted stereotypical science fiction women and were unhappy when that was not delivered. Roddenberry was not involved in a third reworking of the material by ABC that produced Strange New World.He began developing MAGNA I, an underwater science fiction series, for 20th Century Fox Television. But by the time the work on the script was complete, those who had approved the project had left Fox and their replacements were not interested in the project. A similar fate was faced by Tribunes, a science fiction police series, which Roddenberry attempted to get off the ground between 1973 and 1977. He gave up after four years;the series never even reached the pilot stage. The pilot for the series Spectre, Roddenberry’s 1977 attempt to create an occult detective duo similar to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson,[104] was released as a television movie within the United States and received a limited theatrical release in the United Kingdom.
Star Trek revival
 Gene Roddenberry (third from the right) in 1976 with most of the cast of Star Trek at the rollout of the Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Rockwell Internationalplant at Palmdale, CaliforniaLacking funds in the early 1970s, Roddenberry was unable to buy the full rights to Star Trek for $150,000 from Paramount. Lou Scheimer approached Paramount in 1973 about creating an animated Star Trek series.Credited as “executive consultant,” and paid $2,500 per episode, Roddenberry was granted full creative control of Star Trek: The Animated Series. Although he read all the scripts and “sometimes [added] touches of his own”, he relinquished most of his authority to de facto showrunner/associate producer D. C. Fontana.
Roddenberry had some difficulties with the cast. To save money, he sought not to hire George Takei and Nichelle Nichols. He neglected to inform Leonard Nimoy of this and instead, in an effort to get him to sign on, told him that he was the only member of the main cast not returning. After Nimoy discovered the deception, he demanded that Takei and Nichols play Sulu and Uhura when their characters appeared on screen. Roddenberry acquiesced. He had been promised five full seasons of the new show, but ultimately, only one and a half were produced.
However, the groundswell of vociferous fan support (6,000 attended the second New York Star Trek convention in 1973 and 15,000 attended in 1974, much larger figures than at older events like the 4,500 at the 32nd World Science Fiction Convention in 1974) led Paramount to hire Roddenberry to create and produce a feature film based on the franchise in May 1975.The studio was unimpressed with the ideas being put forward; John D. F. Black’s opinion was that their ideas were never “big enough” for the studio, even when one scenario involved the end of the universe.[111] At the time, several ideas were partly developed including Star Trek: The God Thing and Star Trek: Planet of the Titans.[112][113]Following the commercial reception of Star Wars, in June 1977, Paramount instead green-lit a new series set in the franchise titled Star Trek: Phase II,with Roddenberry and most of the original cast, except Nimoy, set to reprise their respective roles. It was to be the anchor show of a proposed Paramount-owned “fourth network”,but plans for the network were scrapped and the project was reworked into a feature film. The result, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, troubled the studio because of budgetary concerns, but was a box office hit. Adjusted for inflation, it was the third highest grossing Star Trek movie, with the 2009 filmcoming in first and the 2013 film second.
In 1980, Roddenberry submitted a treatment for a proposed sequel about the crew preventing the alien Klingons from thwarting the John F. Kennedy assassination. Paramount rejected it and he was replaced on the project by television producer Harve Bennett. Roddenberry was named executive consultant for the project, and was compensated with a producer’s fee and a percentage of the net profits of any film projects in exchange for proffering non-binding story notes and corresponding with the fan community. Although Roddenberry’s memos were largely disregarded by Bennett and other producers, this arrangement persisted on future installments of the film series for the remainder of his life.An initial script for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was circulated to eight people; Bennett attributed the subsequent plot leak of the death of Spock to Roddenberry. Twenty percent of the plot was based on Roddenberry’s ideas.
Roddenberry was involved in creating the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, which premiered with “Encounter at Farpoint” on September 28, 1987.He was given a bonus of $1 million in addition to an ongoing salary to produce the series, and celebrated by purchasing a new Rolls-Royce for $100,000.This did not entitle him to be executive producer of the series. However, Paramount was already concerned about the original cast not returning, and fearing fan reaction if Roddenberry was not involved, agreed to his demand for control of the show.Roddenberry rewrote the series bible from an original version by David Gerrold, who had previously written The Original Series episode “The Trouble with Tribbles“, and The Animated Series follow-up, “More Tribbles, More Troubles“
 
.Majel Barrett at a Star Trek convention in 2007According to producer Rick Berman, “Gene’s hands-on involvement in The Next Generation diminished greatly after the first season”,but the nature of his increasingly peripheral role was not disclosed because of the value of his name to fans.While Berman said that Roddenberry had “all but stopped writing and rewriting” by the end of the third season, his final writing credit on the show (a co-teleplay credit) was on “Datalore“, the thirteenth episode of the first season.
Although commercially successful from its inception, the series was initially marred by Writers Guild of America grievance claims from long time franchise writers Fontana and David Gerrold, both of whom left the series under acrimonious circumstances; frequent turnover among the writing staff (twenty-four staff writers left the show during its first three seasons, triple the average attrition rate for such series); and allegations that Roddenberry’s attorney Leonard Maizlish had become the former’s “point man and proxy”,ghostwriting memos, sitting in on meetings, and contributing to scripts despite not being on staff.Writer Tracy Tormé described the first few seasons of The Next Generation under Roddenberry as an “insane asylum”.
In 1990, Nicholas Meyer was brought in to direct the sixth film in the series: Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. He and Roddenberry clashed creatively, as Roddenberry felt that having the Enterprise crew hold prejudices against the Klingons did not fit with his view of the universe. Meyer described a meeting he later regretted with Roddenberry, saying:
His guys were lined up on one side of the room, and my guys were lined up on the other side of the room, and this was not a meeting in which I felt I’d behaved very well, very diplomatically, I came out of it feeling not very good, and I’ve not felt good about it ever since. He was not well, and maybe there were more tactful ways of dealing with it, because at the end of the day, I was going to go out and make the movie. I didn’t have to take him on. Not my finest hour.
Roddenberry watched The Undiscovered Country alongside the producers of the film, at a private screening two days before his death, and told them they had done a “good job”.
In addition to his film and television work, Roddenberry wrote the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, although it has been attributed to several other authors. It was the first in a series of hundreds of Star Trek-based novels to be published by the Pocket Books imprint of Simon & Schuster, whose parent company also owned Paramount Pictures Corporation.Previously, Roddenberry worked intermittently on a novel The God Thing that he had based upon his rejected 1975 screenplay for a proposed low-budget ($3 to $5 million) Star Trekfilm preceding the development of Phase II throughout 1976. Attempts to complete the project by Walter Koenig,Susan Sackett, Fred Bronson,and Michael Jan Friedman have proven to be unfeasible for a variety of legal and structural reasons.

Legacy
 
 Roddenberry’s star on the Hollywood Walk of FameIn 1985, Gene Roddenberry was the first television writer to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.When the Sci-Fi Channel was launched, the first broadcast was a dedication to two “science fiction pioneers”:Isaac Asimov and Roddenberry.The Roddenberry crater on Mars is named after him,as is the asteroid 4659 Roddenberry.Roddenberry and Star Trek have been cited as inspiration for other science fiction franchises, with George Lucas crediting the series for enabling Star Wars to be produced.J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the Babylon 5 franchise, appreciated Star Trek amongst other science fiction series and “what they had to say about who we are, and where we are going.”]
David Alexander collaborated with Roddenberry on a biography over two decades.Titled Star Trek Creator, it was published in 1995.Yvonne Fern’s book, Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation, detailed a series of conversations she had with Roddenberry over the last months of his life.In October 2002, a plaque was placed at Roddenberry’s birthplace in El Paso, Texas.The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Roddenberry in 2007,and the Television Academy Hall of Famein January 2010.
Posthumous television series
 Kevin Sorbo, executive producer and lead actor in Gene Roddenberry’s AndromedaStar Trek: Deep Space Nine was already in development when Roddenberry died. Berman said that while he never discussed the ideas for the season, he was given a blessing by Roddenberry to pursue it.Berman later stated that “I don’t believe the 24th century is going to be like Gene Roddenberry believed it to be, that people will be free from poverty and greed. But if you’re going to write and produce for Star Trek, you’ve got to buy into that.”In early 1996, Majel Barret-Roddenberry uncovered scripts for a series called Battleground Earth. The project was sent to distributors by the Creative Artists Agency, and it was picked up by Tribune Entertainment who set the budget at over $1 million per episode.The series was renamed Earth: Final Conflict before launch.
Two further series ideas were developed from Roddenberry’s notes, Genesis and Andromeda.After an initial order for two seasons, 110 episodes of Andromedawere aired over five seasons.Tribune also worked on another Roddenberry series. Titled Starship; they aimed to launch it via the network route rather than into syndication.Rod Roddenberry, president of Roddenberry Productions, announced in 2010, at his father’s posthumous induction into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame, that he was aiming to take The Questor Tapes to television.Rod was developing the series alongside Imagine Television.Rod would go on to create the two-hour television movie Trek Nationregarding the impact of his father’s work.
Awards and nominations
Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Gene RoddenberryThe majority of the awards and nominations received by Roddenberry throughout his career were related to Star Trek. He was credited for Star Trekduring the nominations for two Emmy Awards,and won two Hugo Awards.One Hugo was a special award for the series, while another was for “The Menagerie”, the episode which used footage from the original unaired pilot for Star Trek, “The Cage”.In addition, he was awarded the Brotherhood Award by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for his work in the advancement of African American characters on television.Following the end of Star Trek, he was nominated for Hugo Awards for Genesis II and The Questor Tapes.Following his death in 1991,he was posthumously awarded the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award by the National Space Society and the The George Pal Memorial Award at the Saturn Awards as well as the Exceptional Public Service Medal by NASA.

After Roddenberry
Following Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Roddenberry’s role was changed from producer to creative consultant with minimal input to the films while being heavily involved with the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Roddenberry died on October 24, 1991, giving executive producer Rick Bermancontrol of the franchise. Star Trek had become known to those within Paramount as “the franchise”, because of its great success and recurring role as a tent pole for the studio when other projects failed. TNG had the highest ratings of any Star Trek series and became the #1 syndicated show during the last years of its original seven-season run. In response to TNG’s success, Paramount released a spin-off series Deep Space Nine in 1993. While never as popular as TNG, the series had sufficient ratings for it to last seven seasons.
In January 1995, a few months after TNG ended, Paramount released a fourth TV series, Voyager. Star Trek saturation reached a peak in the mid-1990s with DS9and Voyager airing concurrently and three of the four TNG-based feature films released in 1994, 1996, and 1998. By 1998, Star Trek was Paramount’s most important property; the enormous profits of “the franchise” funded much of the rest of the studio’s operations.Voyager became the flagship show of the new United Paramount Network (UPN) and thus the first major network Star Trekseries since the original.
After Voyager ended, UPN produced Enterprise, a prequel TV series to the original show. Enterprise did not enjoy the high ratings of its predecessors and UPN threatened to cancel it after the series’ third season. Fans launched a campaign reminiscent of the one that saved the third season of the Original Series. Paramount renewed Enterprise for a fourth season,but moved it to the Friday night death slot.Like the Original Series, Enterprise ratings dropped during this time slot, and UPN cancelled Enterprise at the end of its fourth season. Enterprise aired its final episode on May 13, 2005.Fan groups, “Save Enterprise“, attempted to save the series and tried to raise $30 million to privately finance a fifth season of Enterprise.Though the effort garnered considerable press, the fan drive failed to save the series. The cancellation of Enterprise ended an eighteen-year continuous production run of Star Trek programming on television. The poor box office performance in 2002 of the film Nemesis, cast an uncertain light upon the future of the franchise. Paramount relieved Berman, the franchise producer, of control of Star Trek.

William Shatner OC (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor, author, producer, and director. In his seven decades of television, Shatner became a cultural icon for his portrayal of James T. Kirk, captain of the USS Enterprise, in the Star Trek franchise.[1] He has written a series of books chronicling his experiences playing Captain Kirk and being a part of Star Trek, and has co-written several novels set in the Star Trek universe. He has written a series of science fiction novels called TekWar that were adapted for television.
Shatner also played the eponymous veteran police sergeant in T.J. Hooker (1982–86) and hosted the reality-based television series Rescue 911 (1989–96), which won a People's Choice Award for the Favorite New TV Dramatic Series. Shatner also appeared in seasons 4 and 5 of the NBC series 3rd Rock from the Sun as the "Big Giant Head" that the alien characters reported to. From 2004 until 2008, he starred as attorney Denny Crane in the final season of the legal drama The Practice and its spinoff series Boston Legal, a role that earned him two Emmy Awards. As of December 2017, he is in his second season of the comical NBC real-life travelogue with other male companions "of a certain age" in Better Late Than Never.
Shatner has also worked as a musician; an author; screenwriter and director; celebrity pitchman; and a passionate owner, trader, breeder, rider, and aficionado of horses.

Early life[edit]
Shatner was born in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood of Montréal, Québec, Canada, to a Conservative Judaism household.[2] His parents are Anne (née Garmaise) and Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacturer.[3][4]He has two sisters, Joy and Farla.[5] His paternal grandfather, Wolf Schattner, anglicized the family name to "Shatner".[6]
All of Shatner's four grandparents were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Hungary, Ukraine, and Lithuania).[7][8]
Shatner attended two schools in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Willingdon Elementary School[9] and West Hill High School,[10] and is an alumnus of the Montreal Children's Theatre.[11] He studied Economics at the McGill UniversityFaculty of Management in Montreal, Canada, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree.[12] In June 2011, McGill University awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Letters.[13]
Acting career[edit]
Early stage, film, and television work[edit]
After graduating from McGill University in 1952, Shatner became the business manager for the Mountain Playhouse in Montreal before joining the Canadian National Repertory Theatre in Ottawa, where he trained as a classical Shakespearean actor.[14] Shatner began performing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, beginning in 1954. He played a range of roles at the Stratford Festival in productions that included a minor role in the opening scene of a renowned and nationally televised production of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex directed by Tyrone Guthrie, Shakespeare's Henry V, and Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, in which Shatner made his Broadway debut in 1956.[15]
Shatner publicity photo, 1958In 1954, he was cast as Ranger Bob on The Canadian Howdy Doody Show.[16] Shatner was an understudy to Christopher Plummer; the two would later appear as adversaries in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.His movie debut was in the Canadian film, Butler's Night Off (1951); Shatner's first feature role came in the MGM film The Brothers Karamazov (1958) with Yul Brynner, in which he starred as the youngest of the Karamazov brothers, Alexei. In December 1958, he appeared opposite Ralph Bellamy, playing Roman tax collectors in Bethlehem on the day of Jesus' birth in a vignette of a Hallmark Hall of Fame live television production entitled The Christmas Tree directed by Kirk Browning, which featured in other vignettes such performers as Jessica Tandy, Margaret Hamilton, Bernadette Peters, Richard Thomas, Cyril Ritchard, and Carol Channing. Shatner had a leading role in an Alfred Hitchcock Presents third-season (1957–58) episode titled "The Glass Eye," one of his first appearances on American television.
Shatner (Archie Goodwin, left) and Kurt Kasznar (Nero Wolfe) in the aborted 1959 CBS television series Nero WolfeIn 1959, he received good reviews when he played the role of Lomax in the Broadway production of The World of Suzie Wong. In March 1959, while performing on stage in Suzie Wong, Shatner was also playing detective Archie Goodwin in what would have been television's first Nero Wolfe series, had it not been aborted by CBS after shooting a pilot and a few episodes.[17]He appeared twice as Wayne Gorham in NBC's Outlaws (1960) Western series with Barton MacLane, and then in another Alfred Hitchcock Presents 5th-season episode titled "Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?" In 1961, he starred in the Broadway play A Shot in the Dark with Julie Harris and directed by Harold Clurman. Walter Matthau (who won a Tony Award for his performance) and Gene Saks were also featured in this play. Shatner featured in two episodes of the NBC television series Thriller ("The Grim Reaper" and "The Hungry Glass") and the film The Explosive Generation (1961).Guthrie had called the young Shatner the Stratford Festival's most promising actor, and he was seen as a peer to contemporaries like Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford. Shatner was not as successful as the others, however, and during the 1960s he "became a working actor who showed up on time, knew his lines, worked cheap and always answered his phone." His motto was "Work equals work," but Shatner's willingness to take any role, no matter how "forgettable," likely hurt his career.[15] He took the lead role in Roger Corman's movie The Intruder (1962) and received very good reviews for his significant role in the Stanley Kramer film Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and two episodes, "Nick of Time" and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," of the science fiction anthology series The Twilight Zone. In the 1963–64 season, he appeared in an episode of the ABC series Channing. In 1963, he starred in the Family Theater production called "The Soldier" and received credits in other programs of The Psalms series. That same year, he guest-starred in Route 66, in the episode "Build Your Houses with Their Backs to the Sea."In 1964, Shatner guest-starred in Season 2, Episode 2 (titled "Cold Hands, Warm Heart") of the ABC sci-fi anthology series The Outer Limits. That appearance may have been considered prescient in relation to his iconic, career-defining role of Captain James T. Kirk on NBC's series Star Trek two years later. He played an astronaut returning from a mission who was discussing a planned mission to Mars called "Project Vulcan"; on Star Trek, Kirk's first officer and best friend, Mr. Spock, was half-Vulcan and was born and raised on that planet. Also that year, he appeared in an episode of the CBS drama The Reporter ("He Stuck in His Thumb") and co-starred with Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Newman, and Edward G. Robinson in the Western feature film The Outrage.
In 1965, Shatner guest-starred in 12 O'Clock High as Major Curt Brown in the segment "I Am the Enemy" and in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in an episode that also featured Leonard Nimoy (who would soon portray the above-referenced Mr. Spock), with whom Shatner would soon be paired in Star Trek. He also starred in the critically acclaimed drama For the People in 1965, as an assistant district attorney, co-starring with Jessica Walter. The program lasted only 13 episodes. Shatner starred in the 1966 gothic horror film Incubus, the second feature-length movie ever made with all dialogue spoken in Esperanto. He also starred in an episode of Gunsmoke in 1966 as the character Fred Bateman. He appeared as attorney-turned-counterfeiter Brett Skyler in a 1966 episode of The Big Valley, "Time To Kill." In 1967, he starred in the little known film White Comanche starring as two characters: Johnny Moon and his twin brother Notah.
Star Trek[edit]
Shatner as Capt. Kirk in Star Trek(1966–69)Main article: Star Trek: The Original SeriesShatner was cast as Captain James T. Kirk for the second pilot of Star Trek, titled "Where No Man Has Gone Before". He was then contracted to play Kirk for the Star Trek series and held the role from 1966 to 1969. During its original run on NBC, the series pulled in only modest ratings and was cancelled after three seasons. In his role as Kirk, Shatner famously kissed actress Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) in the November 22, 1968, Star Trek episode, "Plato's Stepchildren". The episode is popularly cited as the first example of a kiss between a white man and a black woman on scripted television in the United States.[18][19][20] In 1973, he returned to the role of Captain Kirk, albeit only in voice, in the animated Star Trek series.1970s[edit]After the cancellation of Star Trek in early 1969, Shatner experienced difficulty in finding work in the early 1970s, having become somewhat typecast from his role as Kirk. With very little money and few acting prospects, Shatner lost his home and lived in a truck bed camper in the San Fernando Valley until small roles turned into higher-paying jobs. Shatner refers to this part of his life as "that period", a humbling time during which he would take any odd job, including small party appearances, to support his family.
Shatner again appeared in "schlock" films, such as Corman's Big Bad Mama (1974) and the horror film The Devil's Rain (1975),[15] and the TV movie The Horror at 37,000 Feet. Shatner received good reviews as the lead prosecutor in a 1971 PBS adaptation of Saul Levitt's play The Andersonville Trial. Other television appearances included a starring role in the western-themed secret agent series Barbary Coast during 1975 and 1976, and guest roles on many 1970s series such as The Six Million Dollar Man, Columbo, The Rookies, Kung Fu, Ironside and Mission: Impossible. A martial arts enthusiast, Shatner studied American Kenpo karate under black belt Tom Bleecker (who trained under the founder of American Kenpo Ed Parker).[citation needed] Shatner was an occasional celebrity guest on The $10,000 Pyramid and The $20,000 Pyramid in the 1970s, once appearing opposite Leonard Nimoy in a week-long match-up billed as "Kirk vs. Spock". In a notable 1977 appearance he gave an illegal clue ("the blessed" for Things That Are Blessed; he intended to say "the Virgin Mary") at the top of the pyramid ($200) which deprived the contestant of a big money win, and reacted strongly, throwing his chair out of the Winner's Circle.[21] Other shows included The Hollywood Squares, Celebrity Bowling,[15] Beat the Clock, Tattletales, Mike Stokey's Stump the Stars and Match Game. Richard Dawson, during an Archive of American Television interview, mentioned that Shatner was Mark Goodson's first choice to host the Family Feud pilot in 1976, but gave the job to Dawson instead.[22] He did a number of television commercials for Ontario-based Loblaws and British Columbia-based SuperValu supermarket chains in the 1970s,[23] and finished the Loblaws ad spots by saying, "At Loblaws, more than the price is right. But, by Gosh, the price is right."[24] He also did a number of television commercials for General Motors, endorsing the Oldsmobile brand, and Promise margarine.
Kirk returns and T. J. Hooker[edit]
After its cancellation, Star Trek engendered a cult following during the 1970s from syndicated reruns, and Captain Kirk became a cultural icon.[15] Shatner began appearing at Star Trek conventions organized by Trekkies.[25] In the mid-1970s, Paramount began pre-production for a revised Star Trek television series, tentatively titled Star Trek: Phase II. However, the phenomenal success of Star Wars (1977) led the studio to instead consider developing a Star Trek motion picture. Shatner and the other original Star Trek cast members returned to their roles when Paramount produced Star Trek: The Motion Picture, released in 1979. He played Kirk in the next six Star Trek films, ending with the character's death in Star Trek Generations (1994). Some later appearances in the role are in the movie sequences of the video game Starfleet Academy (1997), briefly for a DirecTV advertisement using footage from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country running from late summer 2006, and the 2013 Academy Awards, in which he reprised the role for a comedic interlude with host Seth MacFarlane.
Although Trekkies resurrected Star Trek after cancellation, in a 1986 Saturday Night Live sketch about a Star Trek convention, Shatner advised a room full of fans to "get a life".[26][15] The much-discussed sketch accurately portrayed his feelings about Trekkies, which the actor had previously discussed in interviews.[26] Shatner had been their unwilling subject of adoration for years; as early as April 1968, a group attempted to rip his clothes off as the actor left 30 Rockefeller Plaza,[27] and he stopped attending conventions for more than a decade during the 1970s and 1980s.[28] Shatner also appeared in the film Free Enterprise in 1998, in which he played himself and tried to dispel the Kirk image of himself from the view of the film's two lead characters. He also has found an outlet in spoofing the cavalier, almost superhuman, persona of Captain Kirk in films such as Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) and National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993). In 1994, he starred as the murderer in the Columbo episode "Butterfly in Shades of Grey".
Besides the Star Trek films, Shatner landed a starring role on television as the titular police officer T. J. Hooker, which ran from 1982 to 1986. He then hosted the popular dramatic re-enactment series Rescue 911 from 1989 to 1996. During the 1980s Shatner also began directing film and television, directing numerous episodes of T. J. Hooker and the feature film Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
Subsequent acting and media career[edit]
Shatner has enjoyed success with a series of science fiction novels published under his name, though most are widely believed to have been written by uncredited co-writers such as William T. Quick and Ron Goulart.[29] The first, published in 1989, was TekWar, which Shatner claims he developed initially as a screenplay during a Writers Guild strike that delayed production of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.[30] This popular series of books led to four TekWar television movies, in which Shatner played the role of Walter Bascom, the lead character's boss. A short-lived television series followed, airing on USA Network and Sci-Fi Channel in the United States and CTV in Canada, in which Shatner made several appearances in the Bascom role and directed some of the episodes.
In 1995, a first-person shooter game named William Shatner's TekWar was released. He also played as a narrator in the 1995 American documentary film Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie directed by Peter Kuran. He narrated a television miniseries shot in New Zealand A Twist in the Tale (1998). In the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun, Shatner appeared in several 1999–2000 episodes as the "Big Giant Head", a high-ranking officer from the same alien planet as the Solomon family who becomes a womanizing party-animal on Earth. The role earned Shatner an Emmy Award nomination.[31]
Shatner has appeared in advertisements for many companies and products. In the early 1980s he appeared in print and television ads endorsing the Commodore VIC-20 home computer. Since the late 1990s he has done a series of commercials for the travel web site priceline.com, in which Shatner plays a pompous, fictionalized version of himself.[15][32] Although he received stock options for the commercials, Shatner says that reports that they are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars are exaggerated.[33][34] Shatner was also the CEO of the Toronto, Ontario-based C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, a special effects studio that operated from 1994 to 2010.[35]
In May 1999, Simon & Schuster published Shatner's book, Get a Life!, which details his experiences with Star Trek fandom, anecdotes from Trek conventions, and his interviews with dedicated fans, in particular those who found deeper meaning in the franchise.[36]
Shatner co-starred in the movie Miss Congeniality (2000) as Stan Fields, playing the role of co-host of the Miss United States Pageant alongside future Boston Legal co-star Candice Bergen. He reprised the role in the sequel Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous(2004), in which Stan Fields was kidnapped in Las Vegas along with the winner of the pageant of the previous year. (Shatner hosted the Miss USA Pageant in 2001 as a real presenter in Gary, Indiana.) In the live-action/animated film Osmosis Jones (2001), he voiced Mayor Phlegmming, the self-centered head of the "City of Frank", a community comprising all the cells and microorganisms of a man's body who is constantly preoccupied with his reelection and his own convenience, even to the detriment of his "city" and constituents. In 2003, Shatner appeared in Brad Paisley's "Celebrity" and "Online" music videos along with Little Jimmy Dickens, Jason Alexander, and Trista Rehn. Shatner also had a supporting role in the comedy DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story (2004), which starred Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. Star Trek: Enterprise producer Manny Coto stated in Star Trek Communicator's October 2004 issue that he was preparing a three-episode story arc for Shatner. Shortly thereafter, Enterprise was cancelled.
After David E. Kelley saw Shatner's commercials,[15] he brought Shatner on to the final season of the legal drama The Practice. His Emmy Award-winning role, the eccentric but highly capable attorney Denny Crane, was essentially "William Shatner the man . . . playing William Shatner the character playing the character Denny Crane, who was playing the character William Shatner."[15] Shatner took the Crane role to Boston Legal, and won a Golden Globe, an Emmy in 2005, and was nominated again in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 for his work. With the 2005 Emmy win, Shatner became one of the few actors (along with co-star James Spader as Alan Shore) to win an Emmy Award while playing the same character in two different series. Even rarer, Shatner and Spader each won a second consecutive Emmy while playing the same character in two different series. Shatner remained with the series until its end in 2008.
Shatner made several guest appearances on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, including cameos reciting Sarah Palin's resignation speech, Twitter posts, and autobiography. (Palin herself made a cameo on the show in December 2009, reciting passages from Shatner's autobiography, Up Til' Now in front of Shatner himself.) He has also recited Twitter posts by Levi Johnston, father of Palin's grandson. He also appears in the opening graphics of the occasional feature "In the Year 3000", with his disembodied head floating through space, announcing, "And so we take a cosmic ride into that new millennium; that far off reality that is the year 3000", followed by the tag line, "It's the future, man." He also played the voice of Ozzie the opossum in DreamWorks' 2006 feature Over the Hedge.
Shatner's star on the Hollywood Walk of FameIn January 2007, Shatner launched a series of daily vlogs on his life called ShatnerVision[37] on the LiveVideo.com website. In 2008, he launched his video blogs on YouTube in a project renamed "The Shatner Project."[38] Shatner also starred as the voice of Don Salmonella Gavone on the 2009 YouTube animated series The Gavones.[39]Shatner was not "offered or suggested" a role in the 2009 film Star Trek.[40][41] Director J. J. Abrams said in July 2007 that the production was "desperately trying to figure out a way to put him in" but that to "shove him in ... would be a disaster",[42] an opinion echoed by Shatner in several interviews. At a convention held in 2010, Shatner commented on the film by saying "I've seen that wonderful film." Shatner had invented his own idea about the beginning of Star Trek with his 2007 novel, Star Trek: Academy — Collision Course.[43] His autobiography Up Till Now: The Autobiography was released in 2008. He was assisted in writing it by David Fisher. Shatner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (for television work) at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard. He also has a star on the Canada's Walk of Fame. Shatner was the first Canadian actor to star in three successful television series on three different major networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC). He also starred in the CBS sitcom $#*! My Dad Says, which is based on the Twitter feed Shit My Dad Says created by Justin Halpern. The series premiered in late 2010 and was canceled May 2011.[44]Shatner is also the host of the interview show Shatner's Raw Nerve on The Biography Channel, and the Discovery Channel television series Weird or What?[45] Also in 2011, Shatner appeared in the episode of Psych titled, "In For a Penny" on the USA Network as the estranged father of Junior Detective Juliet O'Hara (Maggie Lawson). He has signed on to continue the role into the 2012 season.In 2011, Shatner starred in The Captains, a feature-length documentary which he also wrote and directed. The film follows Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have portrayed starship captains within the Star Trek franchise. Shatner's interviewees included Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula, and Chris Pine. In the film, Shatner also interviews Christopher Plummer, who is an old friend and colleague from Shatner's days with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.[46]
Shatner's star on Canada's Walk of FameIn February 2012, Shatner performed in a new one-man show on Broadway, called Shatner's World: We Just Live in It. After a three-week run at the Music Box Theatre, the show toured throughout the United States.[47]In May 2012, Shatner was the guest presenter on the British satirical television quiz show Have I Got News for You, during which he coined the portmanteau "pensioneer", combining the words "pensioner" and "pioneer".[48][49]On July 28, 2012, the premium cable TV channel Epix premiered Get a Life!, a documentary on Star Trek fandom starring Shatner that takes its title from his infamous Saturday Night Live line and his 1999 book on the topic.[50][51]
On September 25, 2012, Shatner portrayed the home plate umpire in the music video "At Fenway", which was written and recorded by crooner Brian Evans.[52]
On April 24, 2014 he performed for one night only an autobiographical one-man show on Broadway, which was later broadcast in over 700 theaters across Canada, Australia, and the United States. A large portion of the revenue went to charity.[53]
In 2015, he played Mark Twain in an episode of the Canadian historical crime drama series Murdoch Mysteries.[54] Also in 2015, he played Croatoan—main character Audrey Parker's interdimensional, dangerous father—in the last episodes of the fifth and final season of SyFy channel's fantasy series Haven.[55]
Premiering August 23, 2016, Shatner appeared in the NBC reality miniseries Better Late Than Never, which documented the adventures of Shatner and three other aging celebrities (Henry Winkler, Terry Bradshaw and George Foreman) as they travel to Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.[56] That same year, he cofounded the comic-book company Shatner Singularity, whose titles include the graphic novel Stan Lee's 'God Woke' by Stan Lee and Fabian Nicieza.[57] That work won the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards' Outstanding Books of the Year Independent Voice Award.[58] The series was renewed for a second season on NBC with a "preview" episode on December 11, 2017, and an "official" season premiere on New Year's Day, January 1, 2018.
In 2017, Shatner appeared in the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic as the voice of Grand Pear, the estranged maternal grandfather of Applejack and her siblings, in the seventh season episode "The Perfect Pear". Shatner noted himself as a "brony", a member of the Friendship Is Magic fan base; he confirmed his involvement in the series via his Twitter account following a post where he recited one of the show's catch phrases.[59]
Music and spoken-word work[edit]
Main article: William Shatner's musical careerShatner began his musical career with the spoken-word 1968 album The Transformed Man,[60] delivering exaggerated, interpretive recitations of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." He performed a reading of the Elton John song "Rocket Man" during the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards that has been widely parodied. Ben Folds, who has worked with him several times, produced and co-wrote Shatner's well-received second studio album, Has Been, in 2004. His third studio album, Seeking Major Tom, was released on October 11, 2011. The fourth, Ponder the Mystery, was released in October 2013 on Cleopatra Records, produced and composed by musician Billy Sherwood (member of Yes). Shatner also has done a concert tour with CIRCA:, which includes an ex and current member of Yes, Tony Kaye and Billy Sherwood.
Space Shuttle Discovery[edit]
Shatner recorded a wake-up call that was played for the crew of STS-133 in the Space Shuttle Discovery on March 7, 2011, its final day docked to the International Space Station. Backed by the musical theme from Star Trek, it featured a voice-over based on his spoken introduction from the series' opening credits: "Space, the final frontier. These have been the voyages of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: To seek out new science. To build new outposts. To bring nations together on the final frontier. To boldly go, and do, what no spacecraft has done before."[61]
Discography[62][edit]

• The Transformed Man (1968) - Decca Records
• William Shatner Live (1977) – live double album - Lemli Records
• Captain of the Starship - William Shatner Live! (1978) – live double album - Imperial House (This is the William Shatner Live album rereleased under a different title with different cover artwork).
• Spaced Out: The Very Best of Leonard Nimoy & William Shatner (1996) – compilation album -Universal (Includes 7 tracks from The Transformed Man + 17 tracks by Leonard Nimoy)
• Has Been (2004) - Shout! Factory
• Exodus: An Oratorio in Three Parts (2008) - JMG/Jewish Music
• Seeking Major Tom (2011) - Cleopatra Records
• Ponder the Mystery (2013) - Cleopatra Records

Personal life[edit]
Shatner with Brent Spiner and LeVar Burton in July 2010Shatner dislikes watching himself perform, and says that he has never watched any Star Trek or Boston Legal television episodes nor any of the Star Trek movies except while editing Star Trek V: The Final Frontier which he directed,[63] although his book Star Trek Memories makes reference to his having re-watched episodes of Star Trek.[64]:201Family[edit]Shatner has been married four times. His first marriage, to Gloria Rand (née Rabinowitz),[65] produced three daughters: Leslie (b. 1958), Lisabeth (b. 1960), and Melanie (b. 1964). Rand was a Canadian actress.[66] Rand and Shatner married on August 12, 1956.[67][68] Shatner left Rand while he was acting in Star Trek: The Original Series, after which she divorced him in March 1969.[69][70] The divorce was finalized in 1969.[71] Shatner's second marriage to Marcy Lafferty (daughter of producer Perry Lafferty) lasted from 1973 to 1996.
His third marriage was to Nerine Kidd Shatner, from 1997 until her death in 1999. On August 9, 1999, Shatner returned home around 10 p.m. to discover Nerine's body at the bottom of their backyard swimming pool. She was 40 years old. An autopsy detected alcohol and Valium (diazepam) in her blood, but the coroner ruled the cause of death as an accidental drowning. The LAPD ruled out foul play, and the case was closed.
Speaking to the press shortly after his wife's death, a clearly shaken and emotional Shatner said that she "meant everything" to him, and called her his "beautiful soulmate".[72] Shatner urged the public to support Friendly House, a nonprofit organization that helps women re-establish themselves in the community after suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction.[73] He later told Larry King in an interview that "... my wife, whom I loved dearly, and who loved me, was suffering with a disease that we don't like to talk about: alcoholism. And she met a tragic ending because of it."[72]
In his 2008 book Up Till Now: The Autobiography, Shatner discusses how Leonard Nimoy helped take Nerine to treatment for her alcoholism. Shatner writes in an excerpt from his book:
Leonard Nimoy's personal experience of alcoholism now came to play a central role in my life and it helped us bond together in a way I never could have imagined in the early days of Star Trek. After Nerine [Kidd] and I had been to dinner with Leonard and Susan Nimoy one evening, Leonard called and said: "Bill, you know she's an alcoholic?" I said I did. I married Nerine in 1997, against the advice of many and my own good sense. But I thought she would give up alcohol for me. We had a celebration in Pasadena, and Leonard was my best man. I woke up about eight o'clock the next morning and Nerine was drunk. She was in rehab for 30 days three different times. Twice she almost drank herself to death. Leonard took Nerine to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but she did not want to quit.
In 2000, a Reuters story reported that Shatner was planning to write and direct The Shiva Club, a dark comedy about the grieving process inspired by his wife's death.[74] Shatner's 2004 album Has Been included a spoken-word piece titled "What Have You Done" that describes his anguish upon discovering his wife's body in the pool.
Since 2001, Shatner has been married to Elizabeth Anderson Martin. In 2004, she co-wrote the song "Together" on Shatner's album Has Been.[75]
Relationships with other actors[edit]
Shatner first appeared on screen with Leonard Nimoy in 1964, when both actors guest-starred in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. entitled "The Project Strigas Affair." However, Shatner states in his autobiography that he does not recall meeting Nimoy at that time.[citation needed] As co-stars on Star Trek, they interacted socially both on and off the set. After Star Trek's cancellation in 1969, Shatner and Nimoy reunited in the production of Star Trek: The Animated Series, as well as The $20,000 Pyramid, where "Kirk vs. Spock" appeared on two different tables. Nimoy also guest-starred on T. J. Hooker, a show in which Shatner played the title role.
Shatner's bereavement following the 1999 death of his third wife, Nerine, served to strengthen his friendship with Nimoy. Nimoy also appeared alongside Shatner at the TV Land Awards (hosted by John Ritter). Nimoy summarized his four-decade friendship with Shatner by remarking, "Bill's energy was good for my performance, 'cause Spock could be the cool individual, our chemistry was successful, right from the start."
Nimoy spoke about their mutual rivalry during the Star Trek years:
"Very competitive, sibling rivalry up to here. After the show had been on the air a few weeks and they started getting so much mail for Spock, then the dictum came down from NBC: 'Give us more of that guy, they love that guy, you know?' Well, that can be ... that can be a problem for the leading man who was hired as the star of the show; and suddenly, here's this guy with ears – 'What's this, you know?'"
On an episode of the A&E series Biography, where it was also divulged that Nimoy was Shatner's best man at his wedding with his fourth wife Elisabeth, Nimoy remarked, "Bill Shatner hogging the stage? No. Not the Bill Shatner I know." When Nimoy died in 2015, Shatner stated "I loved him like a brother. We will all miss his humor, his talent, and his capacity to love." Although Shatner was unable to attend Nimoy's funeral due to other commitments, his daughters attended in his place, and Shatner created his own online memorial for Nimoy.
Shatner has been a friend of actress Heather Locklear since 1982, when she began co-starring with him on T. J. Hooker. As she was also appearing in a semi-regular role in another Aaron Spelling production, Dynasty, Locklear was asked by Entertainment Tonightwhether this schedule was difficult. She replied "I'd get really nervous and want to be prepared" for Shatner and for the experienced cast of Dynasty. After T.J. Hooker ended, Shatner helped Locklear get other roles. Locklear supported a grieving Shatner in 1999 when he was mourning the death of his wife Nerine. In 2005, Locklear appeared in two episodes of Shatner's Boston Legal as Kelly Nolan, a woman being tried for killing her much older, wealthy husband. Shatner's character is attracted to Nolan and tries to insert himself into her defense.[clarification needed] Locklear was asked how she came to appear on Boston Legal. She explained "I love the show, it's my favorite show; and I sorta kind of said, 'Shouldn't I be William Shatner's illegitimate daughter, or his love interest?'"
I was a lot more worried about working with Walter Koenig and Jimmy Doohan, two men who have made it clear on any number of occasions that my name is generally near the top of their shit lists.
—Shatner, on having to work again with two of his Star Trek co-stars in the 1994 movie, Star Trek Generations[76]For years, Shatner was accused by some of his Star Trek co-stars of being difficult to work with, particularly by George Takei, Walter Koenig and James Doohan, the latter two of whom Shatner acknowledges in his autobiography Star Trek Movie Memories. In the 2004 Star Trek DVD sets, Shatner seemed to have made up with Takei, but their differences continue to resurface.[77]
In the 1990s, Shatner made numerous attempts to reconcile with Doohan, but was unsuccessful for some time, Doohan being the only former Star Trek co-star refusing to be interviewed by Shatner for his 1993 memoir Star Trek Memories and its 1994 follow-up, Star Trek Movie Memories. However, an Associated Press article published at the time of Doohan's final convention appearance in late August 2004 stated that Doohan, already suffering from severe health problems, had forgiven Shatner and they had mended their relationship. At a convention directly preceding Doohan's last one, Sky Conway, the convention's head, stated, "At our show: 'The Great Bird of the Galaxy' in El Paso Texas in November 2003, a celebration of Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek, Bill and Jimmy went on stage together. Behind the scenes and before they went on stage, they hugged each other, apologized and expressed their love and admiration for each other. Bill specifically asked me to get them together so he could make amends and clear the air between the two of them before it was too late."[78]
Health problems[edit]
Shatner suffers from tinnitus, which he has speculated might be the result of a pyrotechnical accident on set while shooting the Star Trek episode "Arena" – though he did not begin to suffer symptoms until the early 1990s, more than twenty years after the incident. Shatner is involved in the American Tinnitus Association. His treatment for this condition involved wearing a small electronic device that generated a low-level, broadband sound (white noise) that "helped his brain put the tinnitus in the background" – a process known as habituation.[79]
Hobbies and charity work[edit]
Shatner on horseback, wearing saddle seat attire at a horse show in 2011In 2006, Shatner sold his kidney stone for US$25,000 to GoldenPalace.com.[80] In an appearance on The View on May 16, 2006, Shatner said the $25,000 and an additional $20,000 raised from the cast and crew of Boston Legal paid for the building of a house by Habitat for Humanity.In his spare time, Shatner enjoys breeding and showing American Saddlebreds[15] and Quarter Horses.[81] Shatner rode one of his own horses, a mare named Great Belles of Fire, in Star Trek Generations.[82] Shatner has a 360-acre (150 ha) farm near Versailles, Kentucky, named Belle Reve Farm (from the French beau rêve, "Beautiful Dream"—Belle Reve was the name of Blanche Dubois' and her sister Stella's family home in A Streetcar Named Desire), where he raises American Saddlebreds. Three of his notable horses include Call Me Ringo, Revival, and Sultan's Great Day. The farm's activities help benefit the Central Kentucky Riding for Hope "Horses For Heroes" program.[83] Shatner also plays on the World Poker Tour in the Hollywood Home Games,[84] where celebrities play for their favorite charities. Since 1990, he has been a leading force behind the Hollywood Charity Horse Show, which raises money for children's charities.[85][86]Public appearances[edit]
On New Years Day 1994, Shatner was the Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, CA. Instead of riding in a classic car, he rode his horse down the parade route. For the 80th Rose Bowl game afterward, he participated in the pregame ceremonies including the coin toss between the University of Wisconsin Badgers, and University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) Bruins. Wisconsin would go onto win the game 21-16.
In 2014, Shatner was one of the Grand Marshals for the 102nd Calgary Stampede as he is an avid equestrian.[87][88][89]
In September 2016, Shatner attended the 2016 Salt Lake Comic Con as a special guest.[90]
In 2017, Shatner hosted as 'captain' of the maiden voyage of a Star Trek-themed cruise entitled "Star Trek: The Cruise". The cruise was the first licensed by CBS Productions to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the show.[91] Through PETA, Shatner asked that the 2018 cruise not offer any "swim with dolphins" experiences, explaining in a letter to the Norwegian Cruise Line's CEO that "The exploitation of any species for profit and entertainment would have violated the Prime Directive.”[92]

Jackson DeForest Kelley (January 20, 1920 – June 11, 1999), known to colleagues as "Dee",[2] was an American actor, screenwriter, poet and singer known for his roles in Westerns and as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of the USS Enterprise in the television and film series Star Trek.

Early life[edit]
Kelley was delivered by his uncle at his parents' home in Toccoa, Georgia,[3] the son of Clora (née Casey) and Ernest David Kelley, who was a Baptist minister. DeForest was named after the pioneering electronics engineerLee de Forest. He later named his Star Trek character's father "David" after his own father. Kelley had an older brother, Ernest Casey Kelley.[4] Kelley was immersed in his father's mission in Conyers and told his father that failure would mean "wreck and ruin".[citation needed] Before the end of his first year at Conyers, Kelley was regularly putting to use his musical talents and often sang solo in morning church services.[5] Eventually, this led to an appearance on the radio station WSB AM in Atlanta. As a result of Kelley's radio work, he won an engagement with Lew Forbes and his orchestra at the Paramount Theater.[4]
In 1934, the family left Conyers for Decatur, Georgia. He attended the Decatur Boys High School, where he played on the Decatur Bantams baseball team. Kelley also played football and other sports. Before his graduation in 1938, Kelley got a job as a drugstore car hop. He spent his weekends working in the local theaters.[4]
During World War II, Kelley served as an enlisted man in the United States Army Air Forces from March 10, 1943 to January 28, 1946, assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit. After an extended stay in Long Beach, California, Kelley decided to pursue an acting career and relocate to southern California permanently, living for a time with his uncle Casey. He worked as an usher in a local theater in order to earn enough money for the move. Kelley's mother encouraged her son in his new career goal, but his father disliked the idea. While in California, Kelley was spotted by a Paramount Pictures scout while doing a United States Navy training film.[4]
Career[edit]
Early roles[edit]
Kelley's acting career began with the feature film Fear in the Night in 1947.[6] The low-budget movie was a hit, bringing him to the attention of a national audience and giving Kelley reason to believe he would soon become a star. His next role, in Variety Girl, established him as a leading actor and resulted in the founding of his first fan club. Kelley did not become a leading man, however, and he and his wife, Carolyn, decided to move to New York City. He found work on stage and on live television, but after three years in New York, the Kelleys returned to Hollywood.
In California, he received a role in an installment of You Are There, anchored by Walter Cronkite. He played ranch owner Bob Kitteridge in the 1949 episode "Legion of Old Timers" of the television series The Lone Ranger. This led to an appearance in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as Morgan Earp (brother to Burt Lancaster's Wyatt Earp). This role led to three movie offers, including Warlock with Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn. In 1957, he had a small role as a Southern officer in Raintree County, a Civil War film directed by Edward Dmytryk, alongside Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Lee Marvin. He also starred in the lead role as a U.S. Navy submarine captain in World War II in The Silent Service. He appeared in both season 1, episode 5, "The Spearfish Delivers", as Commander Dempsey and in the first episode of season 2, "The Archerfish Spits Straight", as Lieutenant Commander Enright. Leonard Nimoy also appeared in two different episodes of the series at around the same time.
Kelley appeared three times on Gunfight at the O.K. Corral: first in 1955, where he portrayed Ike Clanton in the television series You Are There; again, two years later in the 1957 film of that name, playing Morgan Earp; and perhaps in an ironic salute, once again on October 25, 1968, in a third-season Star Trek episode titled "Spectre of the Gun", this time portraying Tom McLaury.
Kelley also appeared in episodes of The Donna Reed Show, Perry Mason, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Boots and Saddles, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater, Death Valley Days, Riverboat, The Fugitive, Lawman, Bat Masterson, Have Gun - Will Travel and Laredo. He appeared in the 1962 episode of Route 66, "1800 Days to Justice" and "The Clover Throne" as Willis. He had a small role in the movie The View from Pompey's Head.
For nine years, Kelley primarily played villains. He built up an impressive list of credits, alternating between television and motion pictures. However, he was afraid of typecasting, so he broke away from villains by starring in Where Love Has Gone and a television pilot called 333 Montgomery. The pilot was written by an ex-policeman named Gene Roddenberry, and a few years later Kelley would appear in another Roddenberry pilot, Police Story (1967), that was again not developed into a series.
Kelley also appeared in at least one radio drama, Suspense, where series producer William M. Robson introduced him as "a bright new luminary in the Hollywood firmament".
Star Trek[edit]
Kelley as Dr. McCoyIn 1956, nine years before being cast as Dr. McCoy, Kelley played a small supporting role as a medic in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit in which he utters the diagnosis "This man's dead, Captain" and "That man is dead" to Gregory Peck.[7] Kelley appeared as Lieutenant Commander James Dempsey in two episodes of the syndicated military drama The Silent Service, based on actual stories of the submarine section of the United States Navy. In 1962, he appeared in the Bonanza episode titled "The Decision", as a doctor sentenced to hang for the murder of a journalist. The judge in this episode was portrayed by John Hoyt, who later portrayed Dr. Phillip John Boyce, one of Leonard McCoy's predecessors, on the Star Trek pilot "The Cage". In 1963, he appeared in The Virginian episode "Man of Violence" as a "drinking" cavalry doctor with Leonard Nimoy as his patient. (Nimoy's character did not survive.) Perhaps not coincidentally, the episode was written by John D. F. Black, who went on to become a writer-producer on Star Trek. Just before Star Trek began filming, Kelley appeared as a doctor again, in the Laredo episode "The Sound of Terror".[8]After refusing Roddenberry's 1964 offer to play Spock,[9] Kelley played Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy from 1966 to 1969 in Star Trek. He reprised the character in a voice-over role in Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973–74), and the first six Star Trek motion pictures (1979 to 1991). In one of the Star Trek comic books it was stated that Dr. McCoy's father had been a Baptist preacher, an idea that apparently originated from Kelley's background. In 1987, he also had a cameo in "Encounter at Farpoint", the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as by-that-time Admiral Leonard McCoy, Starfleet Surgeon General Emeritus.[10] Several aspects of Kelley's background became part of McCoy's characterization, including his pronunciation of "nuclear" as "nucular".
Kelley became a good friend of Star Trek cast mates William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, from their first meeting in 1964. During Trek's first season, Kelley's name was listed in the end credits along with the rest of the cast. Only Shatner and Nimoy were listed in the opening credits. As Kelley's role grew in importance during the first season he received a pay raise to about $2,500 per episode, and received third billing starting in the second season after Nimoy. Despite the show's recognition of Kelley as one of its stars he was frustrated by the greater attention that Shatner received as its lead actor, and that Nimoy received because of "Spockamania" among fans.[citation needed]
Shy by his own admission, Kelley was the only cast member of the original Star Trek series program never to have written or published an autobiography; however, the authorized biography From Sawdust to Stardust (2005) was written posthumously by Terry Lee Rioux of Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Kelley regarded "The Empath" as his favourite Star Trek television episode.[11]
Later career[edit]
Hollywood Walk of FameAfter Star Trek, Kelley found himself a victim of the very typecasting he had so feared. In 1972, he was cast in the horror film Night of the Lepus. Kelley thereafter did a few television appearances and a couple of movies but essentially went into de facto retirement other than playing McCoy.[12] By 1978 he was earning up to $50,000 ($188,000 today) annually from appearances at Star Trek conventions.[13] Like other Star Trek actors, Kelley received little of the enormous profits that the franchise generated for Paramount, until Nimoy, as executive producer, helped arrange for Kelley to be paid $1 million for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) which would eventually be his final live-action film appearance. He also appeared in the very first Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Encounter at Farpoint", in which he portrayed a 137-year-old Dr. McCoy.[4]In a TLC interview done in the late 1990s, Kelley jokingly said one of his biggest fears was that the words etched on his gravestone would be "He's dead, Jim." Reflecting this, Kelley's obituary in Newsweek magazine began: "We're not even going to try to resist: He's dead, Jim."[14] On the other hand, he stated that he was very proud to hear from so many Star Trek fans who had been inspired to become doctors as a result of his portrayal of Dr. McCoy. For his final film, Kelley provided the voice of Viking 1 in the 2nd/3rd installment in the children's series The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars.Later in life, Kelley developed an interest in poetry, eventually publishing the first of two books in a series, The Big Bird's Dream and The Dream Goes On – a series he would never finish.
Death[edit]
Kelley died of stomach cancer on June 11, 1999, at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.[15]

Nichelle Nichols (born Grace Dell Nichols; December 28, 1932) is an American actress, singer and voice artist. She sang with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before turning to acting. Her most famous role is that of communications officer Lieutenant Uhura aboard the USS Enterprise in the popular Star Trek television series (1966–1969), as well as the succeeding motion pictures, where her character was eventually promoted in Starfleet to the rank of commander.
Nichols’ Star Trek character, one of the first African American female characters on American television not portrayed as a servant,[1] was groundbreaking in U.S. society at the time. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. personally praised her work on the show and asked her to remain when she considered leaving the series.[1][2]
Early life
Grace Dell Nichols was born in Robbins, Illinois, near Chicago, to Samuel Earl Nichols, a factory worker who was both the town mayor of Robbins and its chief magistrate, and his wife, Lishia (Parks) Nichols.[3] Later, the family moved into an apartment in Chicago.
She studied in Chicago as well as New York and Los Angeles. Her break came in an appearance in Kicks and Co., Oscar Brown‘s highly touted, but ill-fated 1961 musical.[4] In a thinly veiled satire of Playboy magazine, she played Hazel Sharpe, a voluptuous campus queen who was being tempted by the devil and Orgy Magazine to become “Orgy Maiden of the Month”. Although the play closed after its brief try-out in Chicago, in an ironic twist, she attracted the attention of Hugh Hefner, the publisher of Playboy, who was so impressed with her appearance that he booked her immediately at his Chicago Playboy Club.[5][6]While still in Chicago, she performed at the “Blue Angel”, and in New York, Nichols appeared at that city’s Blue Angel as a dancer and singer.[citation needed]She also appeared in the role of Carmen for a Chicago stock company production of Carmen Jones and performed in a New York production of Porgy and Bess. Between acting and singing engagements, Nichols did occasional modeling work.
In January 1967, Nichols also was featured on the cover of Ebony magazine,[7]and had two feature articles in the publication in five years.
Nichols toured the United States, Canada and Europe as a singer with the Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton bands.[8] On the West Coast, she appeared in The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd, For My People, and garnered high praise for her performance in the James Baldwin play Blues for Mister Charlie. Prior to being cast as Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek, Nichols was a guest actress on television producer Gene Roddenberry‘s first series The Lieutenant(1964) in an episode, “To Set It Right“, which dealt with racial prejudice.[9]
Star Trek
Nichols as Lieutenant UhuraOn Star Trek, Nichols gained popular recognition by being one of the first black women featured in a major television series not portraying a servant; her prominent supporting role as a bridge officer was unprecedented. During the first year of the series, Nichols was tempted to leave the show, as she wanted to pursue a Broadway career; however, a conversation with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. changed her mind. She has said that King personally encouraged her to stay on the show, telling her that he was a big fan of Star Trek. He said she “could not give up” because she was playing a vital role model for black children and young women across the country, as well as for other children who would see blacks appearing as equals.[1][2][10][11] In an interview she said that the day after she told Roddenberry she planned to leave the show, she was at a fund-raiser at the NAACP and was told there was a big fan who wanted to meet her. Nichols said:
I thought it was a Trekkie, and so I said, ‘Sure.’ I looked across the room, and there was Dr. Martin Luther King walking towards me with this big grin on his face. He reached out to me and said, ‘Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.’ He said that Star Trek was the only show that he, and his wife Coretta, would allow their three little children to stay up and watch. [She told King about her plans to leave the series.] I never got to tell him why, because he said, ‘You can’t. You’re part of history.’
When she told Roddenberry what King had said, he cried.[12]
Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison has cited Nichols’ role of Lieutenant Uhura as her inspiration for wanting to become an astronaut and Whoopi Goldberg has also spoken of Nichols’ influence.[13] Goldberg asked for a role on Star Trek: The Next Generation,[14] and the character of Guinan was specially created, while Jemison appeared in an episode of the series.
In her role as Lieutenant Uhura, Nichols famously kissed white actor William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk in the November 22, 1968, Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren“. The episode is popularly cited as the first example of an interracial kiss on U.S. television.[15][16][17] The Shatner/Nichols kiss was seen as groundbreaking, even though it was portrayed as having been forced by alientelekinesis. There was some praise and some protest. On page 197 of her 1994 autobiography Beyond Uhura, Star Trek and Other Memories, Nichols cites a letter from a white Southerner who wrote, “I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any time a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain’t gonna fight it.” During the Comedy Central Roast of Shatner on August 20, 2006, Nichols jokingly referred to the kiss and said, “Let’s make TV history again—and you can kiss my black ass!”
Despite the cancellation of the series in 1969, Star Trek lived on in other ways, and continued to play a part in Nichols’ life. She again provided the voice of Uhura in Star Trek: The Animated Series; in one episode, “The Lorelei Signal”, Uhura assumes command of the Enterprise. Nichols noted in her autobiography her frustration that this never happened in the original series. Nichols has co-starred in six Star Trek motion pictures, the last one being Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
NASA work
Nichelle Nichols (fourth from the left) in 1976 with most of the cast of Star Trekvisiting the Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Rockwell International plant at Palmdale, California, USAAfter the cancellation of Star Trek, Nichols volunteered her time in a special project with NASA to recruit minority and female personnel for the space agency.[18] She began this work by making an affiliation between NASA and a company which she helped to run, Women in Motion.[19][20][21][22][23][24]The program was a success. Among those recruited were Dr. Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, and United States Air Force Colonel Guion Bluford, the first African-American astronaut, as well as Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ronald McNair, who both flew successful missions during the Space Shuttle program before their deaths in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. Recruits also included Charles Bolden, the current NASA administratorand veteran of four shuttle missions, and Lori Garver, former deputy administrator.[24]
An enthusiastic advocate of space exploration, Nichols has served since the mid-1980s on the board of governors of the National Space Society, a nonprofit, educational space advocacy organization founded by Dr. Wernher von Braun.[22]
Always interested in space travel, Nichols flew aboard NASA’s C-141 Astronomy Observatory, which analyzed the atmospheres of Mars and Saturn on an eight-hour, high-altitude mission. She was also a special guest at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on July 17, 1976, to view the Viking 1 soft landing on Mars. Along with the other cast members from the original Star Trekseries, she attended the christening of the first space shuttle, Enterprise, at the North American Rockwell assembly facility in Palmdale, California.
On July 14, 2010, she toured the space shuttle simulator and Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center.[25]
Other acting roles
In 1994, Nichols published her autobiography Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories. In it, she claimed that the role of Peggy Fair in the television show Mannix was offered to her during the final season of Star Trek, but producer Gene Roddenberry refused to release her from her contract. Between the end of the original series and the Star Trek animated series and feature films, Nichols appeared in small television and film roles. She briefly appeared as a secretary in Doctor, You’ve Got to Be Kidding! (1967), and portrayed a foul-mouthed madam in Truck Turner (1974) opposite Isaac Hayes, her only appearance in a blaxploitation film.
Nichols appeared in animated form as one of Al Gore‘s Vice Presidential Action Rangers in the “Anthology of Interest I” episode of Futurama, and she provided the voice of her own head in a glass jar in the episode “Where No Fan Has Gone Before“. She voiced the recurring role of Elisa Maza‘s mother Diane Maza in the animated series Gargoyles, and played Thoth-Kopeira in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. In 2004, she provided the voice for herself in The Simpsonsepisode “Simple Simpson“.
In the 2002 comedy Snow Dogs, Nichols appeared as the mother of the male lead, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.
In 2006, she appeared as the title character in the film Lady Magdalene’s, the madam of a legal Nevada brothel in tax default. She also served as executive producer and choreographer, and sang three songs in the film, two of which she composed.
In addition to her acting skills, Nichols is an accomplished dancer and singer. She has twice been nominated for the Chicago theatrical Sarah Siddons Awardfor Best Actress. The first nomination was for her portrayal of Hazel Sharpe in Kicks and Co.; the second for her performance in The Blacks.
Nichols in September 2012
Nichols played a recurring role on the second season of the NBC drama Heroes. Her first appearance was on the episode “Kindred“, which aired October 8, 2007. She portrayed Nana Dawson, the matriarch of a New Orleans family financially and personally devastated by Hurricane Katrina, who cares for her orphaned grandchildren and her great-nephew, series regular Micah Sanders.
In 2008, she starred in the film The Torturer, playing the role of a psychiatrist.
In 2009, she joined the cast of The Cabonauts, a sci-fi musical comedy that debuted on the Internet. Playing CJ, the CEO of the Cabonauts Inc, Nichols is also featured singing and dancing.
On August 30, 2016, she is introduced as the aging mother of Neil Winters on the long standing soap opera The Young and the Restless.
Music
Nichols has released two music albums. Down to Earth is a collection of standards released in 1967, during the original run of Star Trek.[26] Out of This World, released in 1991, is more rock oriented and is themed around Star Trekand space exploration.
Personal life
Nichols’ brother, Thomas, was a member of the Heaven’s Gate cult. He died on March 26, 1997 in the cult’s mass suicide that purposely coincided with the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet.[27][28] A member for 11 years, he identified himself as the brother of Nichols in the group video tape prior to the event and left a final message saying: “I’m the happiest person in the world.”[29]
In her autobiography, Nichols stated that she was romantically involved with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry for several years in the 1960s. She said the affair ended well before Star Trek began, when she and Roddenberry realized he was in love with Majel Hudec, who coincidentally was an acquaintance of Nichols’.[30] When Roddenberry’s health was fading, Nichols co-wrote a song for him, entitled “Gene”, which she sang at his funeral.
Nichols has been married twice, first to dancer Foster Johnson (1917–1981). They were married in 1951 and divorced that same year. Foster and Nichols had one child together, Kyle Johnson, who was born August 14, 1951. She married Duke Mondy in 1968 and they were divorced in 1972.
On February 29, 2012, Ms. Nichols met with President Obama in the White House Oval Office. She later Tweeted about the meeting, “”Months ago Pres Obama was quoted as saying that he’d had a crush on me when he was younger,” Nichols also wrote. “I asked about that & he proudly confirmed it! President Obama also confirmed for me that he was definitely a Trekker! How wonderful is that?!”[31]
On June 4, 2015, Nichols’ booking agency announced that the 82-year-old had suffered a mild stroke at her Los Angeles home and had been admitted to a Los Angeles-area hospital. This was barely three months after the death of her friend and Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy. Doctors were conducting tests to determine the severity of the stroke. Nichols was reportedly awake and resting comfortably.[32][33] An online news article by Frazier Moore of the Associated Press, which cited news updates from the actress’s Facebook page, stated that, four days afterward, the still-hospitalized actress was feeling much better and was improving, remaining cheerful and alert and taking the time to read the messages from fans and well-wishers on her Facebook page, of which there were many. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan did reveal a small stroke, but she was able to begin inpatient therapy on June 5, 2015, for rehabilitation and recovery and to further evaluate her condition and determine the prognosis. Her fellow Star Trek actor George Takei, who played Hikaru Sulu, wished her well on his Twitter account page.
Recognition
Nichols is an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.
Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to her.[34]
On June 8, 2010, Nichols received an honorary degree from Los Angeles Mission College.
Asteroid 68410 Nichols is named in her honor.[35]
In 2016, she received The Life Career Award, from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films and it was presented as part of the 42nd Saturn Awards ceremony.

George Hosato Takei (武井 穂郷 Takei Hosato?, /təˈkeɪ/; born April 20, 1937) is a Japanese-American actor, director, author, and activist. Takei is best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise in the television series Star Trek.[2][3] He also portrayed the character in six Star Trek feature films and one episode of Star Trek: Voyager.
Takei’s involvement in social media has brought him new fame. As of February 2017 his Facebook page has over 10 million likes since he joined in 2011, and he frequently shares photos with original humorous commentary.[4][5]
Takei is a proponent of LGBT rights and is active in state and local politics. He has won several awards and accolades in his work on human rights and Japan–United States relations, including his work with the Japanese American National Museum.
 
Early life
Takei was born Hosato Takei[6] on April 20, 1937, in Los Angeles, California,[7] to Japanese-American parents, Fumiko Emily (née Nakamura;[6] born in Sacramento) and Takekuma Norman Takei, born in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan,[8] who worked in real estate.[9] His father was an Anglophile, and named him George after King George VI of the United Kingdom, whose coronation took place in 1937, shortly after Takei’s birth.[10][11] In 1942, the Takei family was forced to live in the converted horse stables of Santa Anita Park before being sent to the Rohwer War Relocation Center for internment in Rohwer, Arkansas.[12] The family was later transferred to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California.[13]
George Takei had several relatives living in Japan during World War II. Among them, he had an aunt and infant cousin who lived in Hiroshima who were both killed during the atomic bombing that destroyed the city. In Takei’s own words, “my aunt and baby cousin [were] found burnt in a ditch in Hiroshima.”[14]
At the end of World War II, Takei and his family returned to Los Angeles. He attended Mount Vernon Junior High School, where he served as student body president at Los Angeles High School. He was a member of Boy Scout Troop 379 of the Koyasan Buddhist Temple.[15][16] Upon graduation from high school, Takei enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley where he studied architecture. Later he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in theater in 1960 and a Master of Arts in theater in 1964.[17] He attended the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon in England, and Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. In Hollywood, he studied acting at the Desilu Workshop.[18]
Early career
Takei began his career in Hollywood in the late 1950s, providing voiceover for characters in the English dub of the Japanese monster films Godzilla Raids Again a.k.a. Gigantis the Fire Monster, for the latter of which he recalled, “[T]here was one word that we had tremendous difficulty getting the meaning of and finding an English word that fit the lip movement. The Japanese word was ‘bakayaro’, which means ‘stupid fool'”. The director, Takei said, had him use the phrase “banana oil.”[19] He went on to appear in the anthology television series Playhouse 90 and the Perry Mason episode The Case of the Blushing Pearls. He originated the role of George in the musical Fly Blackbird!, but when the show traveled from Los Angeles[20] to Broadway the west coast actors were forced to audition and the role went to William Sugihara instead. Eventually Sugihara had to give up the role and Takei closed out the show’s final months.[21]
Takei subsequently appeared alongside such actors as Frank Sinatra in Never So Few (uncredited), Richard Burton in Ice Palace, Jeffrey Hunter in Hell to Eternity, Alec Guinness in A Majority of One, James Caan in Red Line 7000 and Cary Grantin Walk, Don’t Run. He featured in a lead role in “The Encounter” (1964), an episode of The Twilight Zone in which he played the guilt-ridden son of a traitor who signaled Japanese pilots during the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
He had an uncredited role in the film PT-109 (1963) as the helmsman who steers the Japanese destroyer over John F. Kennedy‘s Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109. He guest-starred in an episode of Mission: Impossible (1966) during that show’s first season. He also appeared in two Jerry Lewis comedies, The Big Mouth and Which Way to the Front? In 1969 Takei narrated the award winning documentary The Japanese Sword as the Soul of the Samurai.
Star Trek
Takei as Lieutenant Hikaru SuluIn 1965, producer Gene Roddenberry cast him as Lt. Sulu in the second Star Trekpilot and eventually the Star Trek television series. It was intended that Sulu’s role be expanded in the second season, but Takei’s role as Captain Nim, a South Vietnamese Army officer alongside John Wayne‘s character in The Green Berets, took him away from Star Trek filming and he only appeared in half of that season. Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov substituted for him in the other episodes. When Takei returned, the two men had to share a dressing room and a single episode script.[22] Takei admitted in an interview that he initially felt threatened by Koenig’s presence, but later grew to be friends with him as the image of the officers sharing the ship’s helm panel side-by-side became iconic.[23]
Takei has since appeared in numerous TV and film productions, reprising his role as Sulu in Star Trek: The Animated Series from 1973-’74, and in the first six Star Trek motion pictures. Today, he is a regular on the science fiction convention circuit throughout the world. He has also acted and provided voice acting for several science fiction computer games, including Freelancer and numerous Star Trek games. In 1996, in honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Trek, he reprised his role as Captain Hikaru Sulu on an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, appearing as a memory of Lt. Tuvok, who served on the USS Excelsiorunder Sulu, during the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Takei is one of a number of Star Trek supporting cast members whose difficulties with William Shatner have become public.[24][25][26][27] However, in an interview in the 2004 DVD set for the second season of Star Trek, Takei said of Shatner: “He’s just a wonderful actor who created a singular character. No one could have done Kirk the way Bill did. His energy and his determination, that’s Bill. And that’s also Captain Kirk.” He appeared alongside Shatner on the 2006 Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner in which the two mocked each other in good humor and embraced, Takei noting that he was “honored” to be there “despite our past tensions”.
Takei is also one of six actors (the other actors being Jonathan Frakes, Kate Mulgrew, Michael Dorn, Avery Brooks and Majel Barrett) to lend his voice to Star Trek: Captain’s Chair, reprising his role of Captain Hikaru Sulu when users visit the bridge of the original Enterprise in the computer game. In the summer of 2007, Takei reprised his role of Sulu in the fan-made Internet based series Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II episode “World Enough and Time“.[28][29]
After Star Trek
1970s
In 1972, Takei was an alternate delegate from California to the Democratic National Convention. The following year he ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, finishing second of five candidates in the special election and losing by 1,647 votes; the winner received 42% of the votes cast and Takei received 33%. During the campaign, Takei’s bid for the city council caused one local station to stop running the repeats of the original Star Trek series until after the election and KNBC-TV to substitute the premiere episode of the Star Trek animated series scheduled by the network with another in which his character did not appear, in attempts to avoid violating the FCC’s equal-time rule. The other candidates in the race complained that Takei’s distinctive and powerful voice alone, even without his image on television every week, created an unfair advantage.
Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley later appointed Takei to the board of directors of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, making him part of the team that initiated and planned the Los Angeles subway system. Takei was called away from the set of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1978 to cast the tie-breaking vote for the creation of the Los Angeles subway system. He served on the board from 1973 to 1984.[30]
In 1979, Takei with Robert Asprin co-wrote the science-fiction novel Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe.[31]
1980s
In 1980, Takei began a campaign for California State Assemblyman (District 46) from the greater Los Angeles area. However, he chose to withdraw after his opponent challenged the airing of episodes of Star Trek on local television under the Federal Communication Commission‘s Fairness Doctrine “equal time” regulations,[32][33] saying also that “this is the wrong time to interrupt my career as an actor and author.”[32] He also appeared as a sadistic Japanese POW camp commander in the WW2 film Return from the River Kwai (1989).
1990s
Takei starred as a Japanese officer in the 1990 Australian film Blood Oath, based on the real-life trial of Japanese soldiers for war crimes committed against Allied prisoners of war on the island of Ambon, in the Dutch East Indies. In 1994, Takei published his autobiography, To the Stars. At one point he had hoped to do a movie or telefilm based on chapters dealing with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, of which he had personal experience.
2000s
In May 2004, Takei appeared on Scrubs as a priest in episode 22 of season 3, “My Best Friend’s Wedding”.
Takei provided the voice for a ruthless and cowardly Fire Nation warden in season 1 episode 6 “Imprisoned” of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which aired in March 2005.
Takei took a minor role in the 2006 low-budget sci-fi movie “A.I. Assault” (renamed “Shockwave” for subsequent home release), playing airline pilot Major Lane. Transporting two secret US government robots, Major Lane and all on board are killed by the malfunctioning machines with the stricken plane then crash-landing on a deserted Pacific island where the escaped artificial intelligence robots continue their rampage.
In August 2006, Takei was a guest on the Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner. He sat on the dais, and was one of the many people who took part in the roasting, in which he took the time to verbally poke fun at Shatner.
In January 2007, Takei began appearing on Heroes, as Kaito Nakamura, a successful Japanese businessman and father to one of the main characters, time/space-travelling Hiro Nakamura, who also happens to be an obsessive fan of Star Trek. In the first episode Takei is portrayed, “Distractions”, the license plate of the limo he arrives in is NCC-1701, another reference to the Star Trekseries. Also, in “Run!“, Hiro is called “Sulu” by a feisty vixen named Hope. Nakamura is also George’s mother’s maiden name. He appeared in all four seasons.
Takei appeared on the first episode of Secret Talents of the Stars, singing country music but was not selected to proceed to the next stage. However the point became moot as the series was abruptly cancelled after the opening episode.
In 2008 he appeared on the 8th season of the reality TV series I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! on British television. He lived in the Australian bush for 21 days and nights, doing tasks along with fellow campers in order to gain better meals and survive eviction from the show. His politeness and calmness made him popular with the other campers. Out of 15 participants the British public voted him into 3rd place behind 2nd placed Martina Navratilova and winner Joe Swash.
In 2008, he got a role in the real-time strategy game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 as the Emperor Yoshiro of The Rising Sun.
In 2009, Takei appeared in an episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars as the Neimoidian general, Lok Durd. This was the first time in which a leading actor from Star Trek worked in a Star Wars production.
In April 2009, he voiced a fictitious version of himself in the NASA animated short “Robot Astronomy Talk Show: Gravity and the Great Attractor”, part of the web-series IRrelevant Astronomy produced by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
In 2009, Takei and his husband Brad Altman appeared in a documentary short titled George & Brad in Bed that profiled their relationship.
In 2009, Takei was a guest on NPR‘s Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!.
2010s
In 2010, Takei recorded a series of public service announcements for the Social Security Administration to help promote applying online for benefits.
In 2011, he appeared with husband Brad Altman in All Star Mr & Mrs, a show on ITV in Britain presented by Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton.[34]
Takei was also one of the celebrities in the 12th season of The Apprentice. He was fired in the third episode, which aired on March 4, 2012.
Takei marked the 70th anniversary of the internment of Americans of Japanese descent, including himself as a child, by asking his readers to contact the US Congress to block S. 1253, the National Defense Authorization Act, that “would authorize a similar sweeping authority, granted to the President, to order the detention – without charge or trial – of any person even suspected of being associated with a ‘terrorist organization'”.[35]
Takei was featured with Martin Sheen and Jamie Lee Curtis in a performance of Dustin Lance Black‘s play, 8 – a staged reenactment of the federal trial that overturned California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage – as William Tam.[36] The production was held at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre and broadcast on YouTube to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights.[37][38]
In 2012, Takei starred in the musical Allegiance, which Takei described as his legacy project. The show is based on Takei’s own experiences and research into the Japanese American internment of World War II and premiered at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park in San Diego, California.[39] Allegiance debuted on Broadway on November 8, 2015, to mixed reviews. The Guardian said it was “unexceptional though often affecting”; Deadline called it “a triumph of a rare sort, shedding light in a dark corner of our history with uncommon generosity of spirit.” The New York Times praised the “well-intentioned and polished” play for tackling a difficult subject while trying at the same time to entertain its audience, but said Allegiance “struggles to balance both ambitions, and doesn’t always find an equilibrium.” The Associated Press said Allegiance tries to tackle internment camps, discrimination and war, “but does so unsuccessfully in a bombastic and generic Broadway musical.” Variety wrote, “In their sincere efforts to ‘humanize’ their complex historical material, the creatives have oversimplified and reduced it to generic themes.” The Hollywood Reporter said “the powerful sentiments involved are too often flattened by the pedestrian lyrics and unmemorable melodies of Jay Kuo’s score”. USA Today called Allegiance “as corny as Kansas in August and as obvious as Lady Gaga on a red carpet. But darned if it won’t get a grip on your heartstrings.”[40]
In 2013, Takei was a guest judge in the TBS reality show King of the Nerds, in which he is one of three judges of the Cosplay Competition.[41]
Beginning September 17, 2013, Takei hosted Takei’s Take,[42] a web seriesreviewing consumer technology in a manner for viewers over 50 years in age. The series is produced by AARP.[43]
Takei made an appearance in issue no. 5 of Kevin Keller where the titular character cites George Takei as one of his heroes. Upon reading about Kevin with his partner, Takei decides to travel to Riverdale and surprise Kevin. Takei also wrote the foreword for the second volume of the Kevin Keller comics.
Takei appeared in the viral video for Bonnie McKee‘s song “American Girl” lip syncing the lyrics to her song.
Starting in 2013 Takei became spokesperson for Rooms To Go, an American furniture retailer. He was seen in a series of television commercials where he used his famous “Oh Myyy!” tag line.
In January 2014, Jennifer Kroot’s documentary film about Takei, To Be Takei, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He also participated in Do I Sound Gay?, a documentary film by David Thorpe about stereotypes of gay men’s speech patterns.[44]
The Howard Stern Show
Takei first appeared on The Howard Stern Show on November 12, 1990 to promote a New York play he was taking part in. He appeared via a satellite feed on September 27, 1994 to promote his book To the Stars…. Clips of Takei from his audio book and television interviews would later be played on the show, with prank calls and comedy bits being made using them.
On January 9, 2006, it was announced that Takei would be the new announcer for the show when it moved to Sirius XM Radio. Takei sat in the studio for the first week of broadcasts, and to this day sits in for a week of shows every few months. His most recent in-studio appearance was the week of December 5, 2016.
In June 2006, Takei accepted a Freedom of Speech Award on behalf of Stern, with the award being presented by Talkers Magazine. Takei was in the studio again for two days in late September 2006 where he discussed his participation in an episode of Star Trek: New Voyages as well as his participation in the film The Great Buck Howard. In a visit in December 2007, Stern stated that Takei was the only cast member who got universally positive feedback from audience e-mails; even listeners who claim to dislike Star Trek enjoy Takei’s contributions. The show staff has stated that they like his upfront sense of humor and his willingness to talk about almost any issue openly and freely, particularly now that the show is uncensored on Sirius XM.
Takei developed a friendly relationship with former Stern cast member Artie Lange, whom Takei affectionately calls his “cuddly muffin”. They became friends despite Lange’s penchant for homophobic humor. Lange revealed on the air that Takei sent him a “lovely card” praising his guest performance on a 2007 episode of Entourage, in which Takei expressed the desire to one day act alongside Lange, and that the two talk at least once a week by telephone.
Personal life and activism
(left to right) Takei, Archie Comics publicity director Steven Scott, and Takei’s husband Brad Altman at Midtown Comics in New York City.Takei at the Chicago Pride Parade in 2006In October 2005, Takei revealed in an issue of Frontiers magazine that he is gayand had been in a committed relationship with his partner, Brad Altman, for 18 years; the move was prompted by then California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s veto of same-sex marriage legislation. He said, “It’s not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It’s more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen.”[45][46] Nevertheless, Takei’s sexuality had been an open secret among Star Trek fans since the 1970s, and Takei did not conceal his active membership in LGBT organizations, including Frontrunners, where he developed public friendships with openly gay couples such as Kevin and Don Norte.[47] In an on-air telephone interview with Howard Stern, in December 2005, Takei explained, “[We (gay people)] are masculine, we are feminine, we are caring, we are abusive. We are just like straight people, in terms of our outward appearance and our behavior. The only difference is that we are oriented to people of our own gender.”[this quote needs a citation] Takei also described Altman as “a saint” for helping to take care of Takei’s terminally ill mother.
Takei currently serves[48] as a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign“Coming Out Project“. In 2006 he embarked on a nationwide “Equality Trek” speaking tour sharing his life as a gay Japanese American, his 18-year relationship with Altman, Frontrunners, and Star Trek, encouraging others to share their own personal stories.[49][50] In the wake of the 2007 controversy over former NBA player Tim Hardaway, who had stated “I hate gay people”, Takei recorded a mock public service announcement which began as a serious message of tolerance, then turned the tables on Hardaway by proclaiming that while he may hate gay people, gay people love him and other “sweaty basketball players”, and promising Hardaway that “I will have sex with you”. This was aired on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.[51] Takei also appeared on the Google float at San Francisco Pride 2007.[52]
On May 16, 2008, Takei announced that he and Brad Altman would be getting married. They were the first same-sex couple to apply for a marriage license in West Hollywood.[53] On June 17, shortly after Takei and Altman obtained their marriage license, they spread the news by holding a press conference outside the West Hollywood city auditorium.[54] They were married on September 14, 2008, at the Democracy Forum of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, of which Takei is one of the founders and serves as a member of its board of trustees.[55] Walter Koenig was his best man, and Nichelle Nichols, eschewing the title “matron of honor”, was “best woman”. Reverend William Briones of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple of Los Angeles presided.[56]
Takei and Altman appeared in a celebrity edition of The Newlywed Game TV show, which the GSN cable network aired October 13, 2009. They were the first same-sex couple to be featured on the show.[57] Takei and Altman won the game, winning $10,000 for their charity, the Japanese American National Museum.[58]
In February 2010, Takei and Altman became the second same-sex couple to appear on British game show All Star Mr & Mrs, losing to rugby star Phil Vickery and wife Kate.[59]
In November 2010, Takei released another PSA blasting Clint McCance, who was at the time the vice president of the school board for the Midland School District in southern Independence County, Arkansas.[60] In the video, Takei repeatedly calls McCance “a douchebag”. Takei’s video was made as a response to McCance making blatantly homophobic remarks, stating that he “enjoys the fact that [gay people] give each other AIDS and die”.[61] McCance went on to encourage gay people to commit suicide, and stated that he would disown his children if they were gay.[62] Clint McCance has since resigned from his job at the Midland school board. Takei has been praised for his response to McCance and garnered much media attention with his most recent PSA.
Takei serves as chair of the Council of Governors of East West Players, considered the foremost Asian Pacific American theater in the United States.[63]
Takei in September 2012
In May 2011, in response to a Tennessee State Legislature bill that prohibited school teachers or students from using any language that alludes to the existence of homosexuality (the “Don’t Say Gay” bill), Takei released another PSA in which he offered up his name, suggesting that people could just substitute that for ‘gay’. For example, they could support Takei Marriage or watch Takei Pride Parades; or even use slurs like That’s so Takei.
Takei is both a Buddhist[1] and an avid Anglophile. On his personal website he had this to say: “Those who know me know that I am an inconvertible Anglophile – or more broadly, a Britanophile, which includes my affection for Scotland and Wales as well. I love things British. My car is British. My wardrobe, to a good extent, is British. I even love the food in London – I think British food has shaken its prevailing perception as indigestible and become quite wonderful. I try to get to Britain for holidays as often as I can. I love things British.”[64]
Takei at the 2013 Florida SuperCon
Takei has also gained popularity for his Facebook page where his daily posts of humorous pictures (many of which are related to science fiction, LGBT culture and political satire) have attracted over 9 million followers,[65] some of whom are unfamiliar with Takei or Star Trek. He has been lauded as “the funniest guy on Facebook”.[66][67] In September 2013, Takei used his Facebook page to defend Nina Davuluri, who was targeted by a backlash of racist and xenophobic comments after being named Miss America 2014.[68][69] He later appeared in a joint ABC interview with Davuluri, in which she revealed that she is a Trekkie. Takei told her, “In Star Trek we have this creed: ‘Infinite diversity in infinite combinations’. That’s what Starfleet was all about so you’re a part of that.” Davuluri ended the interview by stating, “I have to say ‘Live Long and Prosper'” at which point Takei offered her the Vulcan salute, which she returned.[70]However, Takei also attracted criticism from some people with disabilities in 2014 for his posting of a meme on Facebook and Twitter which shows a wheelchair-using woman standing up to reach something from the top shelf in a store and is captioned “there has been a miracle in the alcohol isle” [sic].[71]People with disabilities noted that people need not be paralyzed to need wheelchairs, after which Takei removed the post and later posted on Facebook apologizing for his comments.[72]
Takei achieved the status of a Top 1,000 Amazon.com reviewer for a short time. His humorous faux reviews (sometimes with Star Trek references, and often with asides about his husband) have attracted thousands (in one case over 25,000[73]) of approving votes from other users.
In 2014, Takei raised $100,000 for an adult eagle scout to start a web series, titled Camp Abercorn, documenting his experiences in the Boy Scouts of America after he was forced to leave, due to their anti-gay adult policy. Takei stated, “As a former Boy Scout myself, it pains me deeply that the BSA still boots out gay Scouts when they turn 18, This web series will help educate and inform, as well as entertain. That gets a big thumbs up from me. Let’s make this happen.”[74]
In 2015, after the announcement of the U.S. Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, Takei was critical of Clarence Thomas‘s dissent and called Thomas “a clown in blackface“.[75] After defending his comments for over a week, Takei apologized for his wording.[75]
On December 8, 2015, following Donald Trump‘s call to ban all Muslims from traveling to the United States, Takei appeared on MSNBC to denounce him: “It’s ironic that he made that comment on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day — the very event that put us in those internment camps,” Takei said. “[A congressional commission] found that it was three things that brought that about. One was racial hysteria, second was war hysteria and third was failure of political leadership. Donald Trump is the perfect example of that failure…. What Donald Trump is talking about is something that’s going to make his logo ‘America disgraced again.'”[76] During the transition following Trump’s election, Carl Higbie cited the internment of Japanese Americans as a historical precedent for a register of Muslims.[77][78] Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Trump advisor on immigration matters to Trump, was reportedly proposing the register as the first priority in a suite of proposals for the Department of Homeland Security[79][80] and as part of the extreme vetting of immigrants.[81]Takei quickly described Higbie’s comments as “dangerous”[82] and went on to say on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell that “[r]egistration of any group of people, and certainly registration of Muslims, is a prelude to internment.”[83]Takei was not alone in his criticisms, Higbie also attracted criticism in the Washington Post,[84] The New York Times,[85] from Megyn Kelly of Fox News,[86]and from Representative Judy Chu (D–CA), who denounced them as “abhorent” idea “based on tactics of fear, division, and hate.”[87] The constitutional basis of Higbie’s idea was also challenged, even though the Supreme Court has not explicitly overturned Korematsu.[88] Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein has argued that Korematsu has “joined Dred Scott as an odious and discredited artifact of popular bigotry,”[89] while Noah Feldman has declared that “Korematsu‘s uniquely bad legal status means it’s not precedent even though it hasn’t been overturned.”[90] President-elect Trump’s transition team have since issued a statement to the Huffington Post denying that Trump supports a Muslim registry.[83] This claim contradicts statements Trump made in 2015,[87][91][92]including those which Takei denounced,[76] and the newspaper noted that video evidence of Trump’s statements is available.[83]
Awards and recognition
George Takei and David Henry Hwang discussing Allegiance at Columbia University in late 2015In 1986, Takei was “inducted” into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a star at 6681 Hollywood Blvd for his work in television.[93]In 2004, the government of Japan conferred upon Takei the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, which represents the fourth highest of six classes associated with the award. This decoration was presented in acknowledgment of his contributions to US-Japanese relations.[94]
Asteroid 7307 Takei is named in his honor. The citation from the NASA website reads:
(7307) Takei = 1994 GT9 Discovered 1994 Apr. 13 by Y. Shimizu and T. Urata at Nachi-Katsuura. George Takei (b. 1937) is an actor best known for his role as Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek television series. He also has a lengthy record of public service through his involvement with organizations such as the Japanese American Citizens League and the Human Rights Campaign. The name was suggested by T. H. Burbine.[95]Upon learning of the decision to name the asteroid after him, he said, “I am now a heavenly body. … I found out about it yesterday. … I was blown away. It came out of the clear, blue sky—just like an asteroid.”[96]In June 2012, the American Humanist Association gave Takei the LGBT Humanist Award.[97]
In May 2014, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation honored Takei with the GLAAD Vito Russo Award, which is presented to an openly LGBT media professional who has made a significant difference in promoting equality for the LGBT community.[98]
In May 2015, the Japanese American National Museum honored Takei with the 2015 JANM Distinguished Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement and Public Service at the Japanese American National Museum’s 2015 Gala Dinner in Los Angeles.[99]
On June 10, 2016, California State University, Los Angeles presented Takei with an honorary doctorate of humane letters for all of his contributions.[100]