‘Star Trek’ Legend Rushed To Hospital

The 94-year-old actor most synonymous with bringing the “Star Trek” franchise into mainstream pop culture was rushed to a hospital in the Los Angeles area on Wednesday.

William Shatner, the iconic leading man who played Captain Kirk, was brought in after experiencing trouble with his blood sugar levels, sources with direct knowledge told the Daily Mail. The health scare occurred while he was at his downtown L.A. home.

Thankfully, Shatner had the calm of mind to call 911 and wait for the Los Angeles Fire Department’s first responders to arrive. An ambulance drove him to the nearest emergency room.

Despite his advanced age, Shatner hasn’t rested or even partially retired. He was basking in Star Trek fame at Dragon Con in Atlanta only last month.

Curiously, Shatner’s talent agency, Talent Works, denied that he went to the hospital, according to ABC7.

But other sources told TMZ that Shatner is now “resting” and “doing good.”

By Thursday morning, he was back to his usual jovial self.

“I over indulged. I thank you all for caring but I’m perfectly fine. I keep telling you all: don’t trust tabloids or AI!” Shatner joked on social media.

The health scare comes about a year after Shatner shocked fans by announcing that he had been privately battling stage four melanoma. He revealed that he underwent both surgery and a rigorous immunotherapy regimen, but did not say when.

In 2016, Shatner was given a brief scare when doctors produced a false positive finding for prostate cancer after a test result showed abnormally high levels of PSA, the antigen that indicates the presence of a foreign body in the colon.

“That was really scary,” Shatner recalled to NBC News. “I was told by a doctor I had a terminal disease. That I was going to die.”

Shatner is best remembered as Captain Kirk from the original “Star Trek” series, which ran from 1966 to 1969, a time when America’s fascination with outer space was at its zenith. The show’s final season coincided with Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon on July 16, 1969.

The cast featured Leonard Nimoy as Spock, DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy, James Doohan as Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott, and Nichelle Nichols as Nyota Uhura. Nemoy, perhaps second in prominence only to Shatner, passed away in 2015 at the age of 83.

Although the original cast disbanded, fans couldn’t get enough of Shatner, who reprised his original role in an animated series and the fan favorite “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (1982).

But Shatner’s most important mission of all may have been his trip to the edge of outer space on October 13, 2021, when he became the oldest person to ever venture into orbit.

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Writing about his experience for Variety, Shatner later described it as both “exhilarating” and filling him with “overwhelming sadness.”

“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral,” he wrote.