Who is this Captain Kirk?

One of the television programs in your list is Star Trek. Captain James Kirk was the commander of the starship Enterprise in that television series.

beamed himself somewhere? What does this mean in this sentence? Can you be more specific? Thank you my dear friend Setanta!

The series Star Trek was a fictional account of a starship in the 25th century. One of the technologies they used as a "transporter"--this device supposedly breaks a person or an object down into its constituent parts (atoms? who knows, it's television science fiction--it doesn't have to make sense), and then "beams" those parts, sends them somewhere else. A classic phrase from the series has Captain Kirk talking into his communicator (a miniaturized radio) and saying to the starship's engineer, Montgomery Sc ott: "Beam me up, Scotty." It has become a joke. So the author is saying that Captain Kirk travelled around by being "beamed" over short distances.

Didja know the transporter concept was an accident? The show was in production and the shuttlecraft sets were not yet completed. In order to be able to show transportation between the ship and a given planet's surface, the writers had to come up with something that was plausible and also inexpensive, given the show's limited budget. Hence beaming.

No, no, it can't be ! ! ! Gene Roddenberry was a genius . . . a certifiable genius ! ! !





Well . . . certifiable, anyway . . .

Got it!

The Star Trek series was somewhat successful on television. NBC (the National Broadcasting Company) originally ran the series, and clashed with Gene Roddenberry, the creator, over how the show should be portrayed, as well as having a racially diverse crew--Roddenberry wanted a racially diverse crew, NBC didn't. Eventually, NBC cancelled the series.

But the series was so popular with a hard core of fans, that motions picures were made based on the original television series. These motion pictures were so successful that a new television program was created--Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was more like the show Roddenberry had always wanted. Three more spin-off series were produced. A spin-off is a show which is created from another successful program. These were Star Trek Voyager (the original starship was a naval vessel, a warship--the voyager was an exploration ship), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which was about a space station near a "worm hole" (don't ask) and Enterprise.

The original Captain James Tiberius Kirk was played by a Canadian actor, William Shatner--who is arguably the world's most famous and sucessful bad actor. He really over-acted, he "hammed it up," as one says in English.

This is what William Shatner looked like in 1966:



This is what he looked like in the motions pictures, made over a 12 year period:



The second television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation was also very popular, and more motion pictures were made from that series. In total, motion pictures have been made on the Star Trek theme for 30 years. The highly successful Next Generation series and motion pictures featured Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard. In that series, there wasn't the embarrassing over-acting in which William Shatner indulged, and Enterprise was run more like an actual naval vessel. This is the actor Patrick Stewart in his role as Jean-Luc Picard:

Patrick Stewart's also, I think, pretty easily the best actor they ever had on any of the shows or films.

Star Trek is easy to parody and make fun of but, bottom line, they showed the first-ever interracial kiss on TV (in I think 1968) and the cast showed competent intelligent people of both genders and all races -- which wasn't really seen in most of the rest of TV (I can really only think of Bill Cosby in I Spy as being at all comparable) at the time.

I agree. He's a first rate actor in every role i've ever seen him play.

By the way, Roddenberry only got his racially diverse crew by having knock-down, drag-out fights with the boys at NBC--which is probably why the show was cancelled after just four seasons. He hated NBC, and wouldn't give up his rights to the concept, and they just wouldn't work with him any longer.

The Canadians actually think of William Shatner as a great comedian. There is just no accounting for taste.

As good as it gets.

I don't think we think of him as a 'great' comedian, but we are in on the joke. We do like the man and are proud he's one of us...