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Rating: 5 stars

All movies seen on 12/12/2011

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The Captains (2011)

Directed by William Shatner

Documentary

Overview

The Captains is a feature-length documentary film written and directed by William Shatner. The film follows Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have portrayed starship captains in the Star Trek franchise.

Length 97 minutes

Actors

William Shatner | Patrick Stewart | Avery Brooks | Kate Mulgrew | Scott Bakula | Chris Pine | René Auberjonois | Jeri Ryan | John de Lancie | Jonathan Frakes | Sally Kellerman | Walter Koenig | Robert Picardo | Connor Trinneer | Nana Visitor | Grace Lee Whitney | Chase Masterson

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

When I heard The Shatner was making a STAR TREK documentary about the Captains of the Federation, I expected it to be quite shallow and Original Kirk-dominated; boy was I wrong.

In the last few years with RAW NERVE, Shat has developed into an in-depth interviewer with an affable manner, sometimes a bit of honest cluelessness, and probing questions. For whatever reason, it works even when you think it shouldn’t, and that follows into THE CAPTAINS.

Throughout Shatner introspects quite often, but he also finds a way to get most of the other captains to open up emotionally about their own experiences. I do wish, however, that Shatner had dug more into Kate Mulgrew about the tensions on the VOYAGER set between her faction and the one that developed around Jeri Ryan. Mulgrew only briefly and vaguely alludes to the troubles, but if he had gotten her to open up, it could have added a new depth by unpacking it alongside his own on-set issues with most of the TOS cast. And then there’s Avery Brooks. Oh Avery Brooks, my favorite Trek captain, who proved the most difficult interview of the bunch with his, shall we say, eccentric and joyous nature. Every time Bill asked a question Avery would smile and sing and tinkle the piano, rarely giving a straight answer. I’m not sure anyone could’ve blasted through that shield with six quantum torpedoes, but it seemed that Shatner was ill-equipped to deal with a man who is living in his own world.

Ever since his book STAR TREK MEMORIES, Shatner seems to want to explore the person he is and was through everyone else’s eyes and acts, properly so, as the axis around which all other TREK captains orbit. In THE CAPTAINS we gather in all of the other actors’ experiences, but it rips open the wounds that Shatner caused in his own life and he seems honestly rergretful upon introspection. For a man who was notoriously self-centered, it’s nice to see a bit of emotional evolution, even if it is so many years later and after so many George Takei-like bridges have burned. THE CAPTAINS is another touching, if sometimes painful, chapter in his emotional rebirth.

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