The Star Trek legend, William Shatner, continues to find himself in the middle of a debate.
Star Trek legend William Shatner made a show for a production company. That is all he did. That production company sold the show’s distribution rights to RT, a Russain backed television network that has a history of some shady reporting. Shatner has a contract with the production company, Ore Media, to promote the show.
Some people don’t understand that, no, he can in fact not just walk away from his contract. He would be sued, and a court could rule that he has to honor the deal or pay a massive penalty for breaking the contract. Shatner is 90 years old. Do you really think he wants to spend the last years of his life in the middle of a stressful lawsuit all so you can win some flame war?
Shatner has done nothing wrong, even if you don’t like what’s happening. Shatner, however, is apologizing for the comments made by one of RT’s highest-ranking members, Margarita Simonyan, the “editor-in-chief” for RT. Simonyan Tweeted out that Shatner had “joined the good guys”, which again isn’t true. So Shatner took to Twitter to disavow her.
Let me be crystal clear. I don’t know this woman at all. In NO WAY am I going to tolerate vernacular like this. I am not political & I am angry that the head of a network would say this about me on a show they only bought for distribution. I apologize to my fans on her behalf. https://t.co/vfd6nuVUJF pic.twitter.com/WAEJGKMLxq
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) July 2, 2021
The saddest part about all this is how the production company, an outfit called Ore Media, has done nothing to protect or support Shatner, who’s eating trash for their decision.
William Shatner drops another nugget to think about involving Star Trek
Shatner, not one to be outdone, pointed out a huge flaw in many people’s arguments; they don’t seem to have a problem with Star Trek airing in countries like Russia, or in other nations where the network that airs it is run by the government. Star Trek currently runs on 188 different channels worldwide.
How many of them have shady pasts? This isn’t to take away from the issue of RT as a whole, they have been very misleading in the past. The point is, however, why didn’t anyone speak up before?
And what about Star Trek shown in countries all over the world on stations that are owned & run by the governments that have major human rights violations. You going to blame me for that too? How idiotic are you? https://t.co/PytpWACwEx
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) July 2, 2021
Because despite the seriousness of RT as a brand, a lot of this is typical social media outrage for the sake of outrage. There’s no consistency in the outrage at RT, despite their issues, it’s just fans of Trek using it as a reason to get mad at Shatner.
Who literally had no say in anything going on.