William Shatner is celebrating 60 years of Star Trek with a new documentary that argues the real story behind the franchise is stranger than anything the show ever imagined. The Sixty-Year Mission: How Star Trek Changed Television and the World, which Shatner executive produced, opened in theaters on October 9, and its official tagline — that the film uncovers truth "indeed stranger than science-fiction" — sums up exactly why the 95-year-old icon signed on.
A Love Letter With Executive-Producer Muscle
Written and directed by Mark A. Altman — the Inglorious Treksperts host behind the 2016 oral history The Fifty-Year Mission — with producers Daren Dochterman, Ashley E. Miller, and Michael S. Broder, the film digs into the blend of creative genius, backstage conflict, and personal struggle that turned a canceled three-season show into a cultural institution.
Shatner told Inverse at New York Comic-Con that he got involved because Altman and his team are genuinely talented: if people like that want to make a documentary about a show he was part of, he figured he better be in it too. The film packs in interviews with Walter Koenig, George Takei, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Simon Pegg, Robert Picardo, Gates McFadden, Denise Crosby, Nana Visitor, Gene Roddenberry's son Rod, and hundreds more actors, writers, and creatives.
The Premiere Week That Was Pure Trek
The documentary launched with a gala premiere at Regal Times Square in New York City on October 8, where Shatner introduced the film before a Q&A with Spiner, Picardo, Visitor, and Crosby alongside the filmmakers. The event kicked off New York Comic-Con's Star Trek 60 celebration, which ran October 8–11 and included a Shatner panel moderated by superfan Ben Stiller — who showed up with a Gorn head from his memorabilia collection.
Early clips from the film have already charmed fans. In one, Shatner recounts how Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock was getting all the fan mail — "the lesser-billed guy is getting all the mail" — and how series creator Gene Roddenberry reassured him that the better the people around you, the better you look.
"It Doesn't Make Any Sense" — and That's the Point
In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, Shatner was blunt about why the franchise's survival still surprises him: it lasted three seasons, was canceled for low ratings, and only came back to life when syndication put reruns in front of younger viewers. He calls Star Trek "a phenomenon that in our lifetime can't be repeated" and "unique in the annals of show business."
A fresh TrekMovie review praises the documentary's deep-cut research, noting it traces ideas back to a 1961 Roddenberry concept involving a dirigible crew circling the globe, with influences from the 1943 war movie Air Force and Jules Verne. Fiction imagined the future — but the facts of how it got made, Shatner suggests, top the fiction.
Meanwhile, the Captain Keeps Busy
The documentary is just one item on the nonagenarian's schedule. Shatner debuted his heavy metal band, The F*ckers, at Riot Fest in Chicago in September, with tours of Australia and Florida planned. His new memoir, Wisdom & Worries — reflections in verse on his career, his faith, and his 2021 Blue Origin spaceflight — arrives October 27.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Silly Fun (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Takeaway: At 95, William Shatner isn't just coasting on Captain Kirk's legacy — he's executive-producing the story of how it all happened, arguing the behind-the-scenes facts outshine the science fiction. The Sixty-Year Mission is in Regal Cinemas now, and it arrives in the UK on October 21.
Sources: TrekMovie's announcement of The Sixty-Year Mission, Space.com's look at the 60th anniversary documentary, USA TODAY's exclusive on Shatner's new memoir Wisdom & Worries, and Inverse's NYCC interview with Shatner.