As thousands of Trekkies looked on in horror, William Shatner said that Star Trek owes its success to the Star Wars saga.
“Star Wars created Star Trek. You know that?” he said.
During a Star Trek convention in Las Vegas this Saturday, Shatner said the franchise owes its success to SW even though it was released on television a decade prior, because it was cancelled after three seasons and likely wasn’t going to return.
“Every year, there was the threat to be canceled. The third year, we were canceled, and everybody accepted it,” Shatner added.
“At Paramount Studios, they were running around bumping into each other. ‘What do we got?! What do we got to equal Star Wars?’” Shatner told the crowd. “There was this thing that we canceled, under another management, it was called Star Trek? Let’s resurrect that!”
From io9:
While Star Trek: A Motion Picture wasn’t nearly as good or successful as Star Wars(Shatner called it “flawed”), that didn’t stop them. The movie series continued and now Star Trek is one of the top-grossing sci-fi franchises of all time. Star Trek: Beyond has made almost $200 million worldwide so far, and the new CBS show, Star Trek: Discovery, is on the way.
“Star Trek, at its best, tells human stories,” Shatner said, according to io9. “Star Wars was grand, like opera. It was huge with great special effects. It was a marvelously entertaining film, but it wasn’t specifically about people the way those Star Treks were.”
Featured image: Robert Williams (Flickr)
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