Although Picard (I have yet to talk about his final season, I know) is the quintessential captain for a whole generation, we could consider that the great cornerstone of the franchise is the work of William Shatner as Captain Kirk. The ‘Star Trek’ adventures are one of the mainstays of television science fiction navigating “The Last Frontier.”
However, as the name itself indicates, everything is fiction… and we are no longer talking about colorful civilizations but also about the artistic license around pure space exploration that means that we do not have a real perspective of the immense dimensions that exist in space. Something that discovered, to his disappointment, William Shatner.
In 2021 the actor fulfilled one of the dreams of his life. After three decades of his career commanding the fictional Enterprise, Shatner could travel into space via Blue Origin the Space Shuttle by Jeff Bezosand became the oldest man to travel to space with his 90 years.
Quite an event that excited him but that, as he recounted in his 2022 book ‘Boldly Go. Reflections on Life Awe & Wonder’, she was far from what she expected. A journey that could be followed in a Prime Video special.
darkness and death
On the pages of the book Shatner is shown as a man passionate about space and for the mysteries of the universe and how that concern has moved him over the years. But when push came to shove, he was overwhelmed by what he saw in orbit:
«I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have been raised over thousands of years of exploration and hypothesis. The stars exploding years ago, the light traveling towards us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in zones thought to be devoid of matter… all of that has excited me for years… but when I looked the other way, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic wonder to look at… everything what I saw was death.
I saw a cold, dark, black void. It was not like any blackness you have seen or felt on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, encompassing everything. I turned to the house light. He could see the curvature of the Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds, and the blue of the sky. It was life. Life raised, sustained. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.
Everything I believed was wrong. Everything she expected to see was wrong.”
Shatner continues the story by telling how it was one of the strongest feelings of grief that he has experienced, discovering shortly after that he was not alone but that had suffered the so-called “perspective effect”which also had space pioneers like Yuri Gagarin.
And it goes in two directions. Although the vision of space was devastating, that of Earth filled him with hope:
«It can change the way we look at the planet, but also other things such as countries, ethnic groups, religions; it can cause an instant reassessment of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonders we have in common rather than what makes us different. It bolstered my own view of the power of our beautiful and mysterious collective human entanglement tenfold, and ultimately restored a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have a gift that other species may not have: we are aware, not only of our insignificance, but of the greatness around us that make us insignificant. This perhaps gives us an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to this planet, to the other, to the life and love that surrounds us. If we catch that possibility.”
In the end, a bit like ‘Star Trek’ it could be Earth.