Paul Wesley did a wild take on James Kirk in the latest Strange New Worlds episode and opens up on his crazy William Shatner impression!
Caution: This article contains SPOILERS for Strange New Worlds season 3 episode 4
Strange New Worlds has done some quirky episodes before, but “A Space Adventure Hour” was something else. It opened with “The Last Frontier,” an ultra-cheesy 1960s sci-fi show where Kirk (Paul Wesley) was the captain with Ortegas and Chapel as his crewmates, all in strange ‘60s style clothing and hairdos.
This was a “show within a show” as it was a fictional series that was part of a holodeck program by La’an, where she portrayed a detective investigating a murder involving the show’s cast. That let Wesley also play Maxwell Saint, the egotistical and slightly dim actor playing this role.
Obviously, this was based on William Shatner’s performance as Kirk. Or rather, the cliche portrayal of the role, as over the years, comedians have mocked Shatner’s performance for his halting delivery and gestures. Shatner himself has noted it wasn’t that bad, but has a good humor about it.
Wesley himself has opened up to TVLine about the role and what it meant. He pointed out that he had deliberately tried to avoid mimicking Shatner’s performance as Kirk and do his own take on the part. However, this was too good to pass up.
“I realized immediately what an opportunity it was to give the viewers a satirical, more humorous version of what I could have done…And I thought, ‘Well, here it is. Let me do it for you now.’ And I had an absolute blast doing it… I didn’t want to overdo it, but I also wanted to do enough where it was a wink to the true fans.”
Wesley added that, amazingly, he had to tone down the performance as some takes had him going too far and “we settled on the moderate one.” Which just makes one wonder how wild the other takes were when this was seen as "moderate."
It was a fun episode with Wesley doing a hilarious take on his usual performance to spark things up. As he says, he wanted it as a love letter to the original Trek and to honor Shatner and “we wanted to have fun with making the sets so clearly a set, and just sort of like that absurdity, yet imagination and beauty, of something that is a 1960s futuristic set for television.”
That worked out and shows how Wesley was a good choice for a young Kirk to make this episode of Strange New Worlds a blast for fans.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds airs Thursdays on Paramount+.
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