I didn't take the show all that seriously, Ron, nor Shatner...I watched it for fun at the time, and I just play Shatner up on Mudcat for the fun of it. I am not a hardcore Trekkie and I never was. What I AM is a hardcore fan of Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Joan Baez. I am a hardcore musician and philosopher and spiritual seeker. I am nowhere near being a hardcore Trekkie, and I agree that they were rather odd people (supernerds, in some cases)...BUT....and this is a big "but"....

I was dead serious in what I said about the alternative social values presented by Star Trek. That was strictly due to the vision of one man, Gene Rodenberry, and it flew directly in the face of the values of the very society that spawned television in the first place. It was a view of a social milieu SO far advanced over either capitalism OR communism as to leave them both gasping in the dust of their obsolescence and brutality.

It was a brilliant show in the social values it presented, and those came to full fruition in the "Next Generation" TV show, which did NOT enlist the services of Mr Shatner or his crew at all.

I repeat, it was the most subversive show ever to air in North America, because it presented a society of sanity, honesty, and equality on the airwaves of a present social order based on insanity, dishonesty, and gross inequality...all prostrate at the feet of the Money God.

The fact that people on the show itself had to deal with our money $ySStem has nothing whatsoever to do with that. Of course they had to deal with it. They actually live in the moral and ethical dungheap that is present society, and must deal with it as we all do.

The point is, the show posited something far better in the future. That is worth remembering and learning something from.

You are confusing the triviality of the fame (deserved or not) of a single actor with far more meaningful matters.