The Captains Page #10

I did all those years ago

really did affect him?

I was in deniaI

and I was in a sort of derisive

feeling about Captain Kirk

until I saw you

play Captain Picard,

and I thought, you've brought

all your talents,

all your excellence,

all your gravitas

to the part

and then your

statement in which you said

all the kings and emperors

and romantic parts

that you have played

classically and elsewhere

all have led up to playing

Captain Picard,

But I, too,

have played classical roles

and been in wonderful

productions

and I never

thought of it quite that way,

that the way Captain Kirk

changed my life,

I never quite

thought of it that way

until this epiphany

I've had as a result of doing

the research on you,

How extraordinary,

How extraordinary,

I have so many observations

about what you've been saying,

There are many places in which

our careers and our lives

and work overlap,

Tremendous amount,

I don't believe this is

coincidence,

I think Gene Roddenberry

sometimes knew

exactly what he was doing

and sometimes was just working

on instinct,

when he cast you, when,

very improbably, he cast me,

And the story about all my work

prior to ''Star Trek''

being nothing

but a preparation

for sitting in the captain's

chair of the Enterprise,

I said this very

early in the first season

when we were doing

a lot of press

and I found myself

being asked questions

or listening to comments

that were ever so gently,

ever so subtly implying

that given my past,

my history as an actor,

wasn't I just slumming

a little bit now?

You know, hadn't this

just taken

a little bit of a downward...

I was so offended by these

suggestions,

because you know how hard

we worked on those shows,

the hours that we put in,

that everybody put in,

If I filled

that chair at all well,

if I had any authority

on the bridge

or on an alien planet,

it was because of what

I'd done before

that gave me that

confidence and assurance,

and I think thoughtfulness

about the work,

And very early on,

I remember in a conversation

with Jonathan frakes,

Commander Riker,

saying I'm going to do the best

work in this syndicated

science-fiction television

show that I can possibly do,

Who am I to argue with the

Captain of the Enterprise?

What's the name of that planet,

Veridian III?

Yes,

I take it the odds are against

us and the situation is grim,

You could say that,

Sounds like fun,

You applied all your skills

without any sense of it

being less

than demanding,

everything you had,

I don't mean that when

I was shooting,

that I didn't do

anything less than my best,

I was coming from a more

emotional point of view,

I think, and that

I was trying to

generate as much... emotion

within what was written,

to extract as much juice out of

it as possible,

that I, when I look at

some of the things I did, I...

''What was I...

Why wasn't I more diffident

about that?''

Instead of trying to extract

every moment of

drama out of it,

But there's one difference that

separates the two of us,

We have all of

these similarities,

You were creating a show,

We were developing

that creation of yours,

The passion...

You see, it's so good you talked

about the passion

that you put into it,

My passion was

of a different nature

from yours as Captain Kirk,

You were setting the style,

the form, the shape,

the quality of

the energy of that series,

I finally realized that it

wasn't Starfleet

I wanted to get away from,

I was trying to accept the pain

I felt

after my wife's death,

I thought I could

take the uniform,

wrap it around that pain

and toss them both away,

but it doesn't work like that,

Running may help

for a little while,

but sooner or later, the pain

catches up with you,

And the only way

to get rid of it

is to stand your ground

and face it,

from God to you,

Through to me,

What happens when you die?

Tell me,

Wish I knew,

Do you have a thought?

It could be good,

it could be bad,

That makes me smile,

I wish I knew,

Well, what's your feeling about

life and death?

- What's your feeling?

- Well, I don't think...

I think we're just...

these are just...

the bodies are just temporaI

and another word

that you and I can use,

but, you know, we're not our

bodies,

- the're...

- Are we?

- We have a soul?

- I think so, I think so,

And does that soul

go someplace?

- I think so,

- Like where?

- I think it's all around us,

- Yeah?

It's not in

a pearly gate or...

No, no,

But the souls,

the essence of the lives

that have been before

are around us,

AIways, always,

And so there's... so...

And do they have

an influence?

- Oh, absolutely,

- And helping guide,

Yeah, sure,

So you don't think in terms of

life and death?

I don't,

I think about it in terms...

You know, for other people,

but I think...

I'm so... the more we're...

The longer

I'm here and the more I see,

the less I think about that

because so many people don't

get it as long as I've had,

so many people don't

have as much as I have,

and so I think as you get older,

you know, people always talk

about perspective,

but I think

you get more grateful,

Mr, Shatner, you are

well-traveled, well-read,

You've loved often and well,

You've experienced

a great deal of grief

and probably no end of problems

that none of us will ever know,

so I have to conclude that

you're an examined person,

so I want you to really answer

this question,

When you die,

do you believe that there

is a life after that

or do you believe that it is

ashes to ashes, dust to dust?

When I had to play the death

of Captain Kirk...

the night before,

I said to myself,

I have to look at the moment

of death,

how will I feel?

And so I imagined myself

on the threshold,

I fainted once

when I drank a cold beer

after a hot workout

and I went out...

- How typical of you,

- And I went out,

I chug-a-lugged a cold beer,

and sooner or later

I passed out, and I was...

20 seconds later,

I was going, what happened?

But I remember

the closing in,

Yes,

The ''iris-ing'' in

of my feeling,

And like how they're...

Holy cow,

Zoom... and I was out,

So what is

that moment of death?

Where is that margin

that you say

I'm alive and I'm dying?

I'm dead,

I had to imagine that,

Then, I had to

characterize it

by what would Captain Kirk do,

So there's

two answers here,

One is, the death of

Captain Kirk,

I imagined Kirk with

a lifetime of looking at the...

The alien,

- The alien coming towards you,

- Right, right, right,

And instead of fear, I always

play, wow, look at that!

Oh, his giant teeth

is coming towards me,

that sort of thing,

awe and wonder,

I figured Kirk would look

at the moment of death and go,

''Oh, my,''

It was...

fun,

Oh, my,

I'm frightened of death,

I'm scared,

- Are you?

- Yeah,

I thrust it out of my mind and

probably by the dint of work

'cause I know death

is over my shoulder,

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