William Shatner’s Take on Earth from Outer Space? It's ‘So Fragile, So Blue...’

William Shatner is best known for his iconic role as Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek, but in real life, he's really taken the show's intro to heart, attempting to "boldy go where no man has gone before," not only in the literal sense, but professionally as well. He hasn't played Kirk since 1994 (in the film Star Trek: Generations) and many of us associate him with later gigs, from TJ Hooker to the host of Unsolved Mysteries, and more recently the similarly eerie Netflix show The UneXplained.

His career as a vocalist is no less storied, though he admits it's not for everyone. His campy, spoken word-ish style brings a certain theatricality to his musical selections, which he says has been mocked by some over the years, but has also found a passionate audience. 

"What is the song saying?" he says, explaining his process for performing music. "I'm taking musical lyric and I'm making it my own as prose, but still trying to retain the musicality of it."

From his dramatic, cigarette in hand take on Elton John's "Rocket Man" back in 1978 to his 2009 version of Pulp's "Common People," which he cites as "the most successful joining of words and music that I've done," Shatner's foray into music has been nothing if not unique.

Shatner loves making music and as he tells Los Angeles during a recent phone chat, his new album (released on April 19 and coming to LP/CD in July) is one of his most meaningful of his career. Titled So Fragile, So Blue, it is inspired by his journey into space in 2021, when he became the oldest human to travel beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Recorded live with the National Symphony Orchestra, the album is part of musician Ben Folds' "Declassified" concert series, which Folds curates as Artistic Advisor at the Kennedy Center. 

Last month, on Shatner's 93rd birthday, he released the first single entitled “I Want To Be A Tree,” a bittersweet ditty about what he'd like to happen after he dies. If you've seen him making the rounds on late night TV lately, there's good reason. In addition to So Blue, the actor also has a children's record called Where Will the Animals Sleep? coming out this month, and a just-released documentary about this life entitled You Can Call Me Bill, which includes musical selections from the new record's program.

"I'm just working all the time on something," Shatner says sharply. "When I have free time it just seems to fill up with press or other engagements. My appearances are usually me telling stories that are amusing, and as new material in my life comes up I add it and tour with that. When the eclipse happened I was in Indiana, and I did a 15 minute introduction with words and music in a baseball stadium." 

The single “Are You The Bayou?” timed with the eclipse and Earth Day, made for a perfect selection at the event, he adds. Thematically, he's thinking a lot about the world, the environment and the damage humans have done to it. A lot of this was inspired by his recent space travel, in which he looked down upon earth and saw it as "so fragile, so blue."

"It brought in sharp focus something I've been talking about since I read Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring. It has to do with global warming and the destruction of the planet, which I find inordinately sad," Shatner shares. "Being up there and seeing the planet and how small it is... I mean, we live on a very precarious little planet and we don't pay attention to mankind's ability to extinguish all life. These great scientists are working very hard on trying to prevent the extremes of global warming and from that point of view, it's heartening, But the lack of attention some people in the American government give it [and those who say] 'there's no such thing as global warming,' makes you want to scream."

Of course, space, planetary travel and "the final frontier" is not new to the man who led the Starship Enterprise on TV. Shatner was recently on Bill Maher's Real Time HBO MAX show and was surprised when the host honed in on his interracial kiss with Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), the first on American television. "She was a very attractive lady," he says when we ask about the actress, who passed away in 2022 at the age of 89. "It was a big deal at the time." 

Shatner says he doesn't keep in touch with his former cast mates too often, but he has seen them all over the years on the convention circuit. And of course "trekkies" were the first uber-fans to create conventions and events that evolved into the influential "con" and collector culture of today.

 "I was part of the first convention in New York so many years ago," he recalls. "And it has grown in popularity now. It's a cultural phenomenon. And so I go to a number of them. And what I do is I sign some autographs, posters and pictures. I'm in front of an audience for about an hour and it's great fun to talk to everyone. I still have a ball."