William Shatner has been at the forefront of the Star Trek franchise for over five decades. Recently, the actor talked to PeopleTV’s Couch Surfing about the series longevity, saying that it offers “hope” to fans, although he gets there after a pretty bleak setup.
“We’re on the verge of extinction,” Shatner said. “We are poisoning ourselves out of life, and the Earth will survive and this little cancer, mankind, that’s growing all around her will die off the way a body gets a temperature and kills the germs off. Mother Earth will get rid of us because we’re a pestilence. But we don’t have to be. And we can join with the rest of life that makes it here on Earth with equanimity.”
Though Shatner’s statement sounds slightly dramatic, he’s not wrong, and the newly minted 90-year-old has been around long enough to know what he’s talking about. And ultimately, it’s in this context that Star Trek offers people hope. When the show first aired in the 1960s, the world was changing and no one knew if they would be around by the time the 1980s arrived. Set several hundred years in the future, Star Trek told people that if they didn’t mess things up, they, too, could have a bright future.
“The fact that Star Trek exists 400 years from now is sort of a promise that if we do those things, we will, your children, your grandchildren will continue to live and live in fairly decent circumstances if you follow what we’re supposed to follow,” Shatner said. “Star Trek exists 400 years from now, so there’s hope.”
William Shatner is creating an AI version of himself for future generations
It’s a matter of taking stock of what we’re doing to the planet and deciding that we want to make a change so that there’s a future for humanity. Shatner isn’t taking any chances on the longevity aspect of his life. While he’s fully prepared to reach 100, he’s partnered with StoryFile to create an artificial intelligence version of himself so that he will live on in perpetuity. “This is for all my children and all my children’s children and all my children’s loved ones and all the loved ones of the loved ones,” he said in a press release. “That’s my gift to you down through time.”
After his impressive TV and movie career, and as the face of a beloved franchise, there’s comfort to be taken in knowing that William Shatner will always be around in some form or another.
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h/t ComicBook.com