The Captains

Promotional posters for The Captains documentary

The Captains is a Canadian Star Trek documentary which was written, co-produced, and directed by William Shatner. Its premiere screening was held on 25 July 2011 in New York and Los Angeles.

Shatner traveled to Canada, the UK, and the US to interview each of the actors who had helmed their own incarnation of the Star Trek franchise as its central Starfleet captain. While recounting many of his own Star Trek experiences, Shatner interviewed:

• Patrick Stewart
• Avery Brooks
• Kate Mulgrew
• Scott Bakula
• Chris Pine

Clips from their respective episodes and/or films were interwoven throughout the interviews and combined with other archival footage and stills. Shatner also interacted with fans and fellow Star Trek actors at the 2010 Las Vegas Creation convention.

The Captains included a humorous feature interview with Christopher Plummer on-stage at the Festival Theatre in Stratford, Ontario. It was also notable for its footage of a "Kirk vs Kirk" arm-wrestling match between Shatner and Pine on the sidewalk adjacent to Paramount Studios.

The 97-minute documentary also featured appearances by:

• Rene Auberjonois
• Jeri Ryan
• John de Lancie
• Jonathan Frakes
• Sally Kellerman
• Walter Koenig
• Robert Picardo
• Connor Trinneer
• Nana Visitor
• Grace Lee Whitney

Production credits[]

William Shatner, J. Craig Thompson, and David Zappone acted as the film's executive producers and Kevin Layne as creative consultant. It was produced by David Zappone's 455 Films and Le Big Boss Productions (Canada) in association with Epix, Ballinran Productions, and Shatner's own company, Melis Productions.

The music was composed by Andy Milne, who commented: "For many years, I had been performing with the actor Avery Brooks, who's also a singer and pianist. And when William Shatner was making this documentary that he made that I scored for him – it was called 'The Captains' – he was doing interviews with all the actors that succeeded him in captain roles in all the Star Trek franchises. And his interview with Avery was very much built around music, it was very improvisational, the two of them sitting at a piano, talking, singing, joking, thinking about similar experiences. And so as a result of that exchange and relationship, I guess Shatner had a conversation with Avery about the music, and Avery just said, 'I've got your guy.'" [1]

DVD releases[]

The region-free DVD release was licensed to Toronto, Canada-based Entertainment One (credited as "eonefilms.com on DVD back covers) and contained besides the documentary proper, two additional special features, "The Making of The Captains" (11:01) and the DVD trailer (1:01).

Though predominantly a Canadian production, and despite the fact that Region 1 releases are habitually issued simultaneously in the US and Canada, this time around a Canadian DVD issue lagged the US issue by three years for unknown reason.

In 2016, five years after the original US Region 1 DVD release, a Germany-only Region 2 version followed suit under the title William Shatner's The Captains. Produced by New KSM it was intended as the DVD version for the Blu-ray counterpart variant of the documentary, the remastering of which into that format just completed by the company that year. In 2020, Shout! Factory released the (region locked) Blu-ray Disc in North America as well, but in this case as a box set exclusive only, and not as an individual standalone retail release.

The Captains Close Up[]

In 2013, the documentary was repackaged as The Captains Close Up, using previously unused footage from the original documentary, focusing on each captain in their own segment.

See also[]

• The Captains of The Final Frontier – a 2010 A&E Biography Channel documentary
• Star Trek: The Captains' Summit – a 2009 Paramount documentary
• Star Trek documentaries – a list of Star Trek documentaries

External links[]

• The Captains at Wikipedia
• The Captains at the Internet Movie Database
• Official film site^(X) at EpixHD.com^(X)