William Shatner bemoans 'Starfleet Academy' end, mocks 'woke' backlash

Oh my!

These guys are in their 80s and 90s. I'm sure they checked out from the zeitgeist decades ago.

I remember when Herman Cain was tweeting about how COVID was all a hoax, about a month after he died from COVID.

I think Takei draws some amusement from hearing that his "branded" social media page entertains people on his behalf. He's not completely disinterested in it. But yeah, he's a million years old. He's not spending all day on that Internet thing that young people have told him about. No more than Trump personally does construction work on buildings with his name on them.

Used to like Takei's posts but nowadays it's just news articles and top ten lists.

Make sense. They probably don't care much for social media. They get enough fame already and don't care to raise it even more.

At age 90 I’m not sure I would want to argue with internet strangers either

Unfortunately I don't think Takei is all there anymore. I'm seeing a Nichols/Lee situation with him. 

Hd used to for a few years (facebook at least) but HEY he's almost 90.

Someone had reached out to Spiner because they had gotten blocked by ‘Shatner’ and Spiner DM’d Shatner’s account asking why on the other person’s behalf. Whoever was running the Shatner account went off on Spiner. He picked up the phone to call Shatner because he was so confused by the reaction, only to discover that Shatner doesn’t run his Twitter account and all of this occurred without his knowledge.

>(a hired PR troll) Oh, it's not even a PR guy. It's the dude who has been running his website since the late 90s. As the internet has changed, he's just given himself a wider and wider latitude.

Something similar happened to [Dave Chappelle](https://youtu.be/7_Egh9mW5y4?si=bpaAOTIPOCD0D9aI).

Mike's look of sincere puppy-dog misery when he talks about his childhood hero Captain Kirk belittling him both breaks my heart and makes me laugh until there's tears in my eyes

He just doesn’t do podcasts.

Imagine how much that broke Mike’s heart. I bet Jay found the whole thing hilarious but that genuinely must have hurt Stoklasa bad.

https://medium.com/@WilliamShatner/the-toxic-empires-of-egoligarchies-e4b38e697726 Shatner claims it was him according to this article.

It's impressive how active he keeps himself, still riding horses and never really slowing down. I imagine if a Gorn happened to show up on his ranch, he would clumsily brawl with it.

He's 95 today. It's his birthday!

Likes his peace? The man doesn't know how to slow down. I became interested in what he was up to when I read he was doing a cruise to Antarctica in late 2024, and I discovered the man really keeps busy. I saw him at DragonCon last year, he seemed pretty sharp though he took what was supposed to be a Q&A panel and let one person ask a question. She actually asked two, "What's your favorite horse? And are you going to talk about Boston Legal?" He then proceeded to talk about what he's been up to and that Antarctica trip for 40 minutes and left 15 minutes early. He did mention he was sick so I think that lead him to changing the format, we did notice the moderator who was supposed to be there wasn't there. We thought he was going to bring it back around to her question, about 25 minutes in he mentioned horses but didn't answer the question. I guess technically not saying anything about Boston Legal did answer her question though. He talked about several projects he had going, some were interviewing fans, one was children's book or something, a podcast with his daughter, and he talked about how he found out one of the other featured guests on the cruise was Neil deGrasse Tyson so he took it upon himself to contact Neil to coordinate on the talks they'd give, Shatner would learn basic astrophysics to give a lecture on that and Neil decided to give a more pointed lecture on astrophysics that tied into the Antarctic journey better. I checked last night and the man has 7 talks he is giving at different places in the US and Canada in the next month. He's also got 3 events in Europe this year with events in the US between those. He's still acting and doing podcasts and such. He's got to be the busiest 95 year old on the planet but he seems to like it.

it's just sad how a person likeness will be used to put words in their mouth without it actually being them. And sadly the people who will eat it up because of what they represent.

I'm 41 and barely manage my social media. If I'm famous at 94 I'm just letting some young kid exploit it for whatever. I dunno, feet pics. I'm 94 I don't care.

I know that Mark Hamil and Ice T absolutely handle their own social media.

I wanna say it was Dave Chappelle that had a bit about someone pretending to be him getting into a spat with Katt Williams who was also just a guy just pretending to be him. "Katt, I want you to know that I dont have a twitter." "So what n*gga neither do I the f*** you talking bout"

Sometimes part of the contractual obligation for promotion that actors take when agreeing to a role includes social media posts. It's why so many celebrities social account are nothing but promos. They're all run by PR firms. As for the ones that seem to have some weirdo going wild with it? Probably a case of guys like Shatner being too old to know and/or care.

I have an intern who writes all my Reddit posts for me.

Technically their job would just be to post news about what the person is doing. Think of the socials like just another website. My guess is they don't expect the employee to engage in personal arguments with people.

I remember “Shatner” getting into an extended tiff with some Outlander fans on Twitter around the mid-2010s as well. It was extremely weird. I was like “I know actor-shippers are obnoxious but don’t you have better things to do?”

The world would probably be a better place if everyone viewed it like that, tbf.

As an old man, this is exactly what I would do.

The extremely old call to setup an in-person meeting to shake hands about it(in a McDonalds at 5:30 am)

The funniest one was Herman Cain. Posted anti-vax and anti-masking shit during Covid. Died of Covid, after tweeting a picture of him and his family without masks, at the event it's believed he caught it. Son took over his account. After some time, it went right back to posting anti-vax and anti-masking rhetoric.

“Woke up this morning-“ Ah f*** they made the sopranos woke!

The bigger issue is grammar of this headline. Replace the word "woke" with anything, and you still have an ambiguous headline. > Shatner mocks "Christian" backlash. You would presume that meant backlash _by_ Christians, or the quotation marks would mean by so-called Christians. You would not presume it was backlash that simply invoked the word "Christian".

I can’t take anyone seriously who use it unironically because it doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s basically just a signal for other hateful bigots

Largely this word in the context of movies/series is describing writing teams that put class and identity above everything else in their character/story development hierarchy, to the point of feeling very forced, and frankly coming across antithetical to the more rich and complex subject matter of prior iterations. And really this is not just my opinion, the producers of ST, SW etc are very proud of their approach to secure new and more modern audiences - and I just think that’s interesting because those audiences are not showing up to support the endeavors and the shows get cancelled.

Interestingly enough, [there is already a wheelchair analog](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Melora_Pazlar) in established canon. 

Kind of like Geordie's visor in TNG?

The issue with entertainment in general is this shift away from, you know, entertainment, to instead being about preaching to you. When a character's entire identity is wrapped up in making the audience ashamed (of literally anything), that is usually a bad character. When the entire ensemble falls under this, it's not longer a story, it's a sermon. Which is ironic because the message is usually left-leaning (or "woke" to stay on topic), which also tends to be less religious than the right.

That's literally the example Shatner gave in the article you didn't read that's linked to this post

I watched all of TOS in 2010..erm..online. I had never been into or known much about it before that. That moment was so 'normal' to me, I barely registered it beyond a typical swarmy Kirk thing. It wasn't until even years later I found out it was a big deal. Which is pretty cool, when you think about it. Post-Abrams Trek biggest problem isn't 'woke' etc - there's nothing new in the IP it's interested in exploring on any level. From the very little I've seen of it, it's trashy 6th-grade reading/media comprehension level and lots of flash and noise, but their target audience is somehow both early 20s who don't care about the IP or over-40s who are turned off by all the flashy nonsense. Each of the previous series had a specific area of focus: - TOS was almost like Twilight Zone, the stories have a lot more inherent horror on the possibilities of what could exist beyond our planet, both fantastic and terrible. It was a reflection of a society that, until the past ~20 years, had never had to really think about anything beyond their immediate 100 miles or really understand repercussions of their current decisions into the future. To understand different people's ideas and try to respect instead of reject them outright. - TNG was similar but mostly more grounded. The focus was on morality and ethics, not just from an American or even human perspective, but more universal. The Borg were the ultimate villain against that ideology, to face a creature and society with no capability of understanding or interest in any layer of ethics. - DS9 started in wanting to focus on smaller issues of a single cross section of society, found that not to be a good fit for ST, and quickly developed into a different perspective on morality and ethics - when is it necessary to cross uncrossable lines for the sake of your collective survival? Pretty much every character introduced as a lesser villain becomes an ally at some point, although those villains largely did not become less villainous. - Voyager again was trying to explore ideas of what could be out there by going to a separate quadrant. It was too sterilized by corporate and without real ideas to do much new. 7 of 9 was the most interesting idea but got too caught up in the actor as a sex symbol. It lost its purpose, although the last season or two of getting closer to home was fun. - Enterprise wanted to tell the story of bridging the gap between now/First Contact and TOS technology, I still think it's a really cool concept but they didn't know where to drive it and it didn't work being stuck in one time period, also wtf sonic showers every episode. I think revisiting this with a For All Mankind approach, each season having a gap of 50 years or so, could really work. All of the recent stuff has instead been simple rehashings or small twists on everything which came before, for an audience who has moved on or never cared to begin with, and no identity to drive the shows. Wow, this went on so much longer than I thought, I didn't realize I had so much to say on the topic. I'm really not that into Trek at all..btw it's been 10+ years since I watched any of TNG or DS9 so sorry if I got something wrong, this is my memory.

They were talking about it at the Premier.

> I just figured it was for a younger generation and fucked off. It was but it didn't even appeal to them.

Tbh my first interpretation of the headline was that Shatner was whining about inclusivity, rather than defending it. I think the wording is a little confusing. >William Shatner ***laments*** 'Starfleet Academy' end, mocks ***anti-***'woke' backlash would have been better IMO. The word choice in the original just gives it an unintentional bitchy-old-man connotation.

I thought Shatner was complaining the show was cancelled because of a backlash from woke people. I never watched it. I so wanted to (Paul Giamatti in a full on knife fight! I saw that clip) but I won't pay Paramount because they are fascist toadies, the sort of horseshit Gene Roddenberry fought against.

I'm not cute, but point taken.

Shatner is the one celeb I wake up everyday and wouldn’t be surprised finally passed. He’s doing amazing for 95.

Ehh, even at 75 pneumonia can knock you off relatively easily. If nothing else, the protracted recovery to full strength predisposes you to contracting another bout and if you end up on steroids that can make your metabolism wonky, not to mention increasing your vulnerability to other infections. If I see someone come back with a new pneumonia within 12 months over the age of 75 I can pretty much guarantee they won't be here in 18 months.

I don’t know… I watch it with my teenage kids. 17-19, it’s a teen drama for sure. It may have been successful on a network like the WB. As an adult, I could easily pass on it. It had moments and it had teen angst that sort of broke my immersion. I haven’t had that angst for almost 30years. My kids though - they enjoyed it and pretty much every Sunday asked if I wanted to watch it with them.

> couldn't hear the dialog over the music / effects Doesn't help that most of the crew can't enunciate properly, and I'm not even talking about Hunter.