As Shatner heads toward the stars, visions of space collide

As Shatner heads toward the stars, visions of space collide

SeattlePI.com

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“Risk is our business,” James T. Kirk once said. “That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”

More than a half-century later, the performer who breathed life into the fabled Enterprise captain is, at age 90, making that kind of risk his own business and heading toward the stars under dramatically different circumstances than his fictional counterpart. And in doing so, William Shatner is causing worlds to collide, or at least permitting parallel universes to coexist — the utopian spacefaring vision of “Star Trek” and the evolving, increasingly commercial spot that “space” holds in the American psyche.

When Shatner boards Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin NS-18 in Texas at around dawn Wednesday, his one small step into the craft creates one of the ultimate crossover stories of our era.

It’s about space and exploration, sure, and certainly about capitalism and billionaires and questions of economic equity. But it’s also about popular culture and marketing and entertainment and nostalgia and hope and Manifest Destiny and, and, and … well, you get the idea.

“What will I see when I’m out there?” Shatner wondered last week, talking to Anderson Cooper on CNN. An equally valid question is this: What will WE see when he’s out there?

It will be a complex blend of human dreams superimposed upon technology and hope, braggadocio and cash, and the notion that space travel elevates us — all orchestrated by a company under criticism for what some call the decidedly un-utopian, tech-bro ways that it operates.

Is all that and “Star Trek” a good fit?

THE WORLD OF `STAR TREK’

Since its 1966 premiere with one of the most diverse casts TV had ever seen, “Trek” has grown from Gene Roddenberry’s fever dream of a “‘Wagon Train’...

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