Star Trek: 10 Biggest Takeaways From 'William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill'

You Can Call Me Bill is not about Star Trek, but it's naturally not a surprise that Captain Kirk comes up quite a bit. There is one scene from The Original Series that recurs at several points throughout You Can Call Me Bill — Kirk's 'risk is our business' speech from Return to Tomorrow. One of the alternate takes is even shown. If the documentary makes a point to highlight Kirk's famous ethos for being a Starfleet officer, then it's because William Shatner has taken a few personal and professional risks throughout his life. As the promotional synopsis for You Can Call Me Bill puts it,

Bill rides horses every morning, ran atop a speeding train, stood alone on a rumbling 14,000 foot glacier, fearlessly drove racing cars and motorcycles, swam with sharks on his 90th birthday, and is now the oldest man to have ever ventured into space.

Shatner, like Kirk, is well aware of "the enormous danger potential," but, like Kirk, that has never stopped him from taking risks and especially not from "living in the now".

It was, in fact, this sense of "being present" that Shatner believes he brought to the role of Kirk. As Shatner describes it, so long as Captain Kirk had "command presence," the implicit trust of his crew, he could afford to "be a joker," to have moments of levity in amongst the more serious fare. Compared to Star Trek's first pilot, The Cage, Shatner concludes, "I think I brought more humour [to it]. I didn't think it needed to be as 'we're on a mission'".