Captain, My Captain – it is time to address your fans.
The legendary star of Star Trek, William Shatner is making a grand pilgrimage to House of Blues for a one-of-a-kind experience sure to make any Trekkie giddy.
Shatner will be screening the 1982 sci-fi landmark, Nicholas Meyer’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in its full glory on the big screen. “The movie was one of the better, and some people think it was the best movie made of the group that I did,” Shatner says. “It is a meaningful film, as it a very emotional film – it tugs at your heart. Those are the best Star Treks that were made. So it is a really entertaining piece of film that audiences love.”
As if seeing the film with Captain Kirk isn’t enough, Shatner highlights additional selling points. “First of all, the film is refurbished,” he says. “The color and the sound has been modernized so it is right up there technically.”
‘Then,” Shatner previews, “what happens is I come out on stage after the film has played, and talk to the audience for an hour or more to answer questions and tell stories about the making of the film. The audience and I then have a mystical connection. It’s amazing! It’s almost laughable, but there are times when the theatrical spirit takes place and it almost is a religious experiment. It’s like being caught up in a current. It a beautiful thing and it happens quite often where the audience and I make a connection.”
The rhapsody of reminiscence is a highlight for Shatner, even if many of his co-stars from the 43-year-old picture have passed on. “I really loved Leonard and DeForest a lot. Both those guys were great human beings, and they each had their own character and I had fun with them. We lived a long time in each other’s company. So I never lose sight of that.”
The memory veers the 94-year-old television legend into a frank dissection of loss. “I don’t know if after all these years it touches me the way it used to, when I talk about Leonard, who was my brother, really,” he says tenderly. “I could be near tears. The way he died, emphysema. And DeForest who was in an actors home, another terrible way of dying. If you want to die, you should go quickly – and they lingered. But I never forget them. But time has assuaged the sorrow.”
Shatner knows many questions will likely be about Khan, but he readily admits to being ready to discuss any part of his storied career. “I am open to talking about anything,” he says, diving into the state of Trek leading up to the famed sequel. “What happened on that film: because management at Paramount decided to make a feature length film of Star Trek, and they called it Star Trek: The Movie. It was all right and it did fairly well, but it wasn’t the great success they had hoped for until later when it made more money.
So they decided to cancel everything. Then wiser heads prevailed and they said: let’s do a limited budget on it. So they limited the budget on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and wrote the story more than all the technical daring dos. So it became a touchstone for the kind of Star Trek stories we wanted to tell, those that moved and made you think. That’s what the Wrath of Khan does. It is a film that has great feelings, everyone is moved. [Then] I come out after the film is over and talk about anything they want to talk about. It’s usually about the film, but not necessarily.”
Shatner is candid on the stark differences between debuting on the small and large screens: “You do a television show, you do ten pages a day, you are exhausted at the end of the day, and during the day you are performing and learning lines for the next day – so you are continuously busy. I am probably lying prostrate at least one of the days of the weekend! You don’t have much time for anything else.”
“On a film, it is more leisurely. You have time between shots, sometimes you have days between shots. It can be boring. Each [medium has] a benefit and each being not as beneficial, given the time constraints. Those films were wonderful, as they gave you time to prepare them, do them and finish them.”
Never the less, the nonagenarian continues to marvel at the staying power of not only his original 79-episodes, but the nearly 60 year franchises that continues to deliver new adventures via spinoff series and films, like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Section 31. “It is incredible,” he says with zeal. “It is a phenomenon in show business and actually: it can’t be repeated. Another show would have to be 60 years old to rival what Star Trek has done. I don’t know about you, but I won’t be here. You can see how unusual it is. And it is gathering new viewers all the time as new generations is brought on board.”
Looking back, Shatner has great perspective on the ever-upturned entertainment industry having lived through eras of feast and famine. Of the current point, he notes our times of transition. “It is a whole new world out there,” he agrees. “Filmmakers are suffering at that new world. Every so often, every generation or 20 years, the film industry goes through a paroxysm of pain and anguish when something has changed. And something has changed now with streaming. So it is a whole new world for filmmakers, and it is very difficult at the moment. There are filmmakers standing by with film they want to make or films that they have made and can’t get releases. It is a time of change. It will evolve. It will get better for filmmakers, but it will take time.”
All the better reason to take a trip down nostalgia lane, to the much celebrated summer of ’82 when Sci-Fi was king at the box office and the future triumphs of the Enterprise on the big screen were far from assured.
Shatner is scheduled to appear at 6 p.m. on Thursday, July 31 at the House of Blues, 1204 Caroline. For information, call 888-402-5837 or visit houseofblues.com/houston. $55-105
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
