Entertainment07 September, 20262 min read
Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek Debuted Sept. 8, 1966, With Captain James T. Kirk
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Debut on September 8, 1966, in the United States. The USS Enterprise crew was led by Captain James T. Kirk.
Star Trek’s original cast
The original Star Trek series from creator Gene Roddenberry made its U.S. debut on Sept. 8, 1966, aired through 1969, and charted the galactic adventures of the USS Enterprise led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner).
CBS via Getty notes that Shatner “immortalized the role of James T. Kirk,” and the article adds that a different captain was almost in charge of the ship in the first pilot titled “The Cage.”
NBC turned down the pilot but ordered a second one, and the second pilot kept Leonard Nimoy as Spock while Shatner starred as Kirk, with Majel Barrett later returning as Nurse Christine Chapel.
Shatner later returned to the role numerous times, starring in all six movies centered on the original Enterprise crew, as well as Star Trek Generations(1994), and voicing Kirk for Star Trek: The Animated Series.
Space flight and Spock
In 2021, the nonagenarian William Shatner flew to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft, and the article says he later described the trip as feeling like a“funeral”instead of a “celebration.” Shatner wrote in a 2022 essay for Variety that “The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.”
The article also frames Spock as the only nonhuman member of the Enterprise’s core bridge crew, a half-human, half-Vulcan whose two sides were frequently at odds. It says Leonard Nimoy’s final performance as Spock came in 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness before his death in 2015, and it adds that Nimoy died in 2015 at the age of 83 from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Seven Up! bows out at 70
Seven Up is coming to its final conclusion with 70 Up, described as “the Bayeux tapestry of television,” and the series began in 1964 with a group of randomly chosen seven-year-olds filmed to answer questions about the effect of fate, class and environment on people’s aspirations and outcomes. The Guardian says the Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia has taken over from Michael Apted, who died in 2021, and it recounts that producer Claire Lewis got a call from Nick Hitchon, who had terminal cancer and wanted to record a final interview.
Hitchon died hours after Lewis recorded his thoughts, and the article says Lewis then “we all decided that we should make another film and [began] looking for a director”. The Guardian also includes Neil Hughes’s reflections, including his view that “I constantly try to clean up my image,” and it quotes him on the series’ approach to mental health: “If somebody has a mental health problem, it doesn’t mean they are odd.”