Shatner’s 1986 SNL: The Night Star Trek Fans Outraged

William Shatner played the beloved Captain Kirk in the “Star Trek” franchise on and off for nearly 30 years, but he wasn’t always comfortable with the role. The shows and films themselves were fine; the issue was that he didn’t quite know how to handle the fandom. He was bewildered by all the dressing up and the seemingly-obsessive questions fans asked him; at one point, fans attempted to tear off his clothes as he was walking out of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and at another point someone tried to shoot him at a fan event in Germany.

Simply put: by 1986, Shatner was getting sick of the Trekkies, so when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” that year he decided to let them have it. He played himself in a sketch at a “Star Trek” convention where he snapped at the fans, telling them, “Get a Life! … For crying out loud, it’s just a TV show. I mean, look at the way you’re dressed… You’ve turned an enjoyable little job I did as a lark for a few years into a colossal waste of time.”

The sketch was controversial to say the least. Althou…m/img/gallery/why-william-shatners-1986-snl-appearance-left-some-star-trek-fans-furious/the-1986-sketch-underlines-how-much-our-culture-has-changed-1728566399.sm.webp” type=”image/webp”>

NBC

Since the “Get a Life!” sketch aired, it’s noticeably gotten a lot easier to be a hardcore fan of “weird” and “nerdy” franchises like “Star Trek.” This shift could already be felt just 10 years later, during a 1996 controversy about a female juror who showed up to the televised Whitewater trial in a “Star Trek” uniform. The radio show “This American Life” did a whole segment about it at the time, noting that although the woman in question was reportedly an “excellent juror, very serious, took copious notes,” she was nevertheless dismissed from the jury.</