STAR TREK’S CAPT. KIRK DOES KARATE!
"There were all types of things I had to be adept at — things like kicks and leg work, and all these things were constantly landing me on my ass. This made me realize I had a lot more to learn about combat, even for staged action."
This article was published in the April 1974 issue of Fighting Stars magazine, a sister publication of Black Belt. That means it appeared just five years after the original Star Trek was canceled and many years before the sci-fi series became a staple of film and television. At the time, William Shatner was not the international superstar he’s recognized as today. He was just an actor who’d had a good run on a series that happened to be set in space. And he was a martial artist.
When the USS Enterprise abruptly splashed down from its three-year trek to the stars, angry fans denounced the TV “high-thinkers” who chose to ground the space adventure with the hope of replacing it with an even higher-rated show. The industry captains never did find that higher-rated program, but the adventures of Capt. James T. Kirk and his Star Trek crew still delight science-fiction aficionados, even if only in syndication.
Life on board the Enterprise must have been something else. The crew traveled more space miles in prime time than the entire NASA program from John Glenn to Skylab. The adventures of Capt. Kirk made the void of space so convincingly alive that real astronauts in Houston and Cape Canaveral sheepishly confessed that they, too — like millions of collegians,
