Captain Kirk would throw out terms like “warp factor”, “photon torpedo” and other mind-blowing technological terms throughout the original Star Trek series.
Cool, right?
Problem is, while he wowed Trekkies in the height of his day, William Shatner has a dirty secret.
He didn’t know what the heck he was talking about.
In a recent interview, Bill confessed that modern technology is beyond his scope of comprehension. Twitter? Computer passwords? Forget it.
No wonder the crew of the Enterprise kept getting into so much trouble. Their captain didn’t have a clue. Apparently he had difficulty just sending an email back to Earth for a little help.
Can you picture this email?
“Subject: What Does This Button Do?”
Referring, of course, to the little “Send” button above the email he is so desperately trying to -- well, send.
Or maybe the Enterprise kept getting into so much trouble without much repercussion because Kirk’s inbox was stuffed full of orders to return to Earth ASAP for court martial, but he just didn’t have the savvy to figure out that “You’ve Got Mail” didn’t mean he had a backlog of letters waiting at the Post Office.
I dunno . . . I think even Spock would raise his eyebrows a little bit.
Speaking of whom, Leonard Nimoy is busy promoting technology left and right. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71meib_q0MY&feature=player_embedded#!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHso0wDMxqA&feature=player_embedded
Granted, Nimoy is just using a script, but still . . . He certainly has a grasp of Twitter, as opposed to Shatner’s expressed befuddlement regarding the concept. Here’s where you can find Nimoy on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/leonardnimoy
The point is, why was Kirk captain of the Enterprise while Spock was clearly more in tune to how actually run a computer?
I think it’s just another example of politics at work. It’s not WHAT you know . . . It’s WHO you know. Obviously Kirk knew all the right people to get him into command.
Spock? Well, he’s from another planet. Who’d trust a guy from another planet to fly a spaceship?
