Review: How William Shatner Changed the World.

Overall, an enjoyable romp through Sci-Fi culture.
Hosted by Shatner himself, strong in the beginning, but weaker in the second hour as ST:NG, Voyager, DS9, and Enterprise were analyzed.

As we all know, Star Trek is about hope for the future. It’s about technology helping mankind reach it’s fullest potential. This being the creative power of the cult classic. But we live in a post-Star Trek world now as all the franchises have phased out of our space-time continuum. This, despite an amazing television revival of drama in the '90s such as Riker growing and shaving a beard, and the Heisenberg compensator (devised just to keep the nerds hungry for more). Such an amazing cult hit, but why the down-fall? Shatner rightly places the blame on Roddenberry himself. Gene Roddenberry's selfish act of dying opened the door for younger writers some of whom had very un-Roddenberry-like blue goatees. These writers did not share the original vision of the future being be more or less like Connecticut; and with Gene out of the picture, darkness crept in. Technology was not so great anymore and people did not always get along. This dark future trend started off strong with the Borg, but ultimately ended with a gay theme song and a captain who was way too "Quantum Leapy" to foreshadow James Tiberius Kirk.

People voted with their eyeballs. Turns out we want escapist TV to be more than a morality tale of our impending doom, we want slick tech and the girl in the foil bikini. Always have; always will. Cell phones, ipods, computers in the palm of your hand- These things came to fruition because the nerds who invented them saw Star Trek and wondered “Yeah, why not?” But those days are over now, so I guess we’re screwed. And that's how William Shatner changed the world.

Rating:
· 1 Star for William Shatner driving around in an Aston Martin making fun of himself.
· 1 Star for interviewing real scientists who were inspired by Star Trek as children. e.g., NASA guys, the inventor of the cell phone, Non-invasive surgery guys, SETI guy, the guy who wrote the Physics of Star Trek, and the British nut with the chip in his arm.
· Additional 1/2 star for making fun of them too, and getting them to make fun of themselves.
· 1/2 star for telling us that Bones' tri-corder was a salt shaker, and that the transporter was invented because the models for the shuttle crafts were late.
· 1 Star for mentioning Paul Allen and the SFM in Seattle where Kirk's chair resides.
· -1 Star for no Salma Hayek or alien equivalent.

Result: 4 out of 5 stars