Ballinran pulls back curtain on Star Trek for 60th anniversary of original airing

William Shatner, who famously played Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek, with Ballinran Entertainment president Craig Thompson on the banks of the Avon River in Stratford.

CONNOR LUCZKA, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Sixty years ago, on Sept. 8, 1966, Star Trek made its television debut. As fans around the world celebrate the milestone, Stratford-based Ballinran Entertainment is marking the anniversary by opening its archives and sharing some of the stories and behind-the-scenes images from its work documenting the worldwide phenomenon.

“It all started in Stratford because no one had invited (William Shatner) officially back to Stratford since he was here in the 1950s,” Ballinran president and executive producer Craig Thompson told the Times. “He was just starting to dabble in documentaries and I was running an event called DocFest Stratford, a documentary film festival, and he had just come out with a documentary, and I called him up.”

Shatner, who was a festival favourite in the early years of the Stratford Festival, jumped at the chance, touring the city with Thompson and filling the Avon Theatre for DocFest with his first documentary William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet. From there, Thompson and Shatner began to work together exploring the universe which made Shatner a household name as Captain James T. Kirk.

Fifteen years ago, Ballinran worked with Shatner on The Captains, the feature documentary exploring the lives and experiences of the actors who had occupied the captain’s chair across generations of Star Trek.

Ballinran subsequently worked on Chaos on the Bridge, which went behind the scenes of the turbulent creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and The Truth Is in the Stars, which explored the relationship between Star Trek’s optimistic vision of the future and the scientists, astronauts and thinkers working to make aspects of that future possible.

“So we assembled a list of very well-known people, and some of them we couldn't reach, like Elon Musk and various other people,” Thompson explained. “But the pinnacle or the the top of the Mount Everest for this film was Stephen Hawking, and that was the end of end of the film … We had Whoopi Goldberg, we had Jason Alexander, Seth MacFarlane, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku, Neil Turuk from the Perimeter Institute, Mike Lazaridis, who founded BlackBerry, and then David Suzuki, and ultimately we flew to England and got Stephen Hawking.

“… The challenge was what we had to leave out, because these films are 90 minutes long, or thereabouts, and you can't really include everything.”

Throughout the anniversary week, Ballinran has been sharing archival photographs, behind-the-scenes material and memories from the productions through its social media channels, reminding the public of Star Trek’s impact on the world, and its connection with Stratford.

“Star Trek, the original series especially, and the ones that followed, provide a really valuable lesson about what humanity can achieve when we get over our differences and realize that conflict is not a way to lasting peace,” Thompson said. “And I think that there's a lot to learn from Star Trek, especially now when the world is in such a divisive situation. I think Star Trek offers a lot of valuable lessons for the world we're facing right now – all this disruption that's going on. So it's really worth watching again and remind ourselves what might be possible if we just decided to get along with each other.”