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

Do me a favour, would you? You will see what I mean when you watch You Can Call Me Bill, and you might already be familiar with William Shatner's extended musical repertoire. Take a pause for a moment, go to a window, step outside, or even just pull up Google Images, and look, really look, at a tree!

That's not some wishy-(green-)washy request, and nor is "I Want to Be a Tree," the title of a track from Shatner's 2024 album So Fragile, So Blue. Shatner really does want to be a tree, at least to the extent anyone possibly can. He has made plans, in death, not to be blasted out in a photon torpedo casing, but for a redwood to be placed to grow over an open bag of his ashes. "I want to be a tree/ You can sit right down under my shade/That'll be enough for me," as the lyrics go. If his friends could go there to sing a round of Row, Row, Row Your Boat, I think Captain Kirk might just have liked the idea too.

If all this is about introspection, then it is equally about connection, and about life as much as it is death. You Can Call Me Bill begins with trees, as Shatner discusses the mycorrhizal networks that link them. "I'd like to think there's a lattice-work in the universe," he states. It is this interconnectedness in nature, and between human beings and nature that drives Shatner (notably through his passion for horses), and that drives the documentary itself.

If "lattice-work in the universe" also sounds familiar to you, although this wasn't the point Shatner was trying to make, then it is because it is part of the conceit behind Star Trek: Discovery's spore drive. Recently, Shatner garnered some criticism for saying that the latest Star Trek would have Gene Roddenberry "turning," not like the spore drive, "in his grave". As Shatner clarified to CinemaBlend's Mick Joest, he meant this merely as a comment about a certain… lapse in "military protocol".