All is not well on the Starship Enterprise. William Shatner’s much-publicized trip into space last week was a PR coup for Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space tourism company. The 90-year-old Star Trek icon became the oldest person to ever leave the planet, describing his experience in glowing terms:
“I hope I never recover from this. I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened. It’s extraordinary, extraordinary. It’s so much larger than me and life. It hasn’t got anything to do with the little green men and the blue orb. It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death. To see the blue color whip by you, and now you’re staring into blackness … everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see this.”
But his Star Trek co-star George Takei sarcastically dismissed the trip as him “boldly going where other people have gone before” and took a swipe at his age, saying:
“He’s a guinea pig, 90 years old and it’s important to find out what happens. So 90 years old is going to show a great deal more on the wear and tear on the human body, so he’ll be a good specimen to study. Although he’s not the fittest specimen of 90 years old, so he’ll be a specimen that’s unfit!”
Meow. Now Shatner has fired back, claiming Takei is simply jealous he’s having a moment in the spotlight:
This is just the latest tussle in the bitter feud between these two old men. One allegation Takei made is that Shatner purposefully changed the script for Star Trek 5 to prevent Sulu from becoming a Starship captain. He went on to call him “very self-centered”, hinted that he was consistently unpleasant to work with, and apparently refused to invite him to his 2008 wedding.
Shatner has kicked back by saying that Takei is suffering from some kind of Shatner-specific psychosis and that “there must be something else inside George that is festering, and it makes him so unhappy that he takes it out on me.”
“Why would he go out of his way to denigrate me?” Shatner said. “It’s sad, I feel nothing but pity for him.”
So I guess don’t expect a Star Trek reunion anytime soon.