William Shatner: Star Trek Creator Would Be ‘Turning in His Grave’ over Woke Hollywood

William Shatner says the creator of Star Trek would be turning in his grave if he knew about the ‘woke’ programming currently coming out of Hollywood.

During a one-hour chat at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday, 91-year-old Shatner declared that Gene Roddenberry would not be impressed by the any of the new Trek shows.

Breitbart.com reports: During the one-hour chat which ranged from “fun” topics, to “serious” topics, and with copious amounts of foul language from both Bill and his host, Clerks director Kevin Smith, Shatner was asked if he thinks any of the new Trek shows rival his own three seasons from 1966 to 1968.

Shatner was flat on the question. “None of them,” he curtly replied.

But it wasn’t a reply merely out of ego. Shatner added that he thinks Roddenberry would also agree.

“I got to know Sean Adl-Tabatabai Gene Roddenberry in three years fairly well,” Bill said, “he’d be turning in his grave at some of this stuff.”

Indeed, it was well known inside the Star Trek world that the modern producers of the various shows, including Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), couldn’t wait for Roddenberry to be out of the picture. Roddenberry kept a tight grip on his vision of Star Trek, and his fellow producers felt that he restricted their creative process too much with his highly specific ideas about the sort of future his show would portray.

When Roddenberry died in 1991, that finally gave the producers of shows including Deep Space Nine (1993-1995), Voyager (1995-2001), and Enterprise (2001-21005), the chance to take Star Trek into areas that Gene would never have allowed when he was alive and in control of the Star Trek universe.

Even with today’s new series, the episodes are spinning off into areas that Gene would never have allowed. Star Trek star and TV director Jonathan Frakes recently acknowledged this when talking about one of the episodes of Picard he had directed.

Frakes noted that an episode which portrayed conflict between two of the show’s crew members would never have happened when Gene was alive.