Viewed in
2012
Formats
Netflix streaming (Xbox 360)
Premise
William Shatner interviews all the actors who've played starship captains in the Star Trek franchise.
Liked
Parts of the interviews.
Hated
Sloppy storytelling, annoying score.
Thoughts
As a fan, I really wanted to like The Captains, but found it a meandering bore.
Obviously, it was cool to see him talking to all the captains from each series, one-on-one. The most interesting conversations involved topics like the actors' hesitations to attend conventions, the dislike of being known just for their captain role, and the hardships of shooting their series. I also got a glimpse of each actor's personalities.
Unfortunately, as a whole, the narrative was all over the map, which is probably what a conversation with Shatner would be like. I frankly could care less about their life philosophies nor anything unrelated to acting/Roddenberry's creation. Same for the Chris Pine interviews, who I'm sure is a fine fellow, but at the time of this documentary, had only one Star Trek film under his belt and had very little to offer.
Shatner the personality was fun. Shatner the writer/director/interviewer was not. He was too close to the subject to help mold a coherent, interesting narrative to the fascinating subject. There were bizarre editing choices left and right, and he kept interjecting himself during each conversation, coming off as a control freak diva. Music choice and placement was super distracting as well.
Even for hardcore Star Trek fans, I'm on the fence to recommend it. There was some nice nostalgia and nuggets of insight, but unfortunately, Captain Kirk could not steer this vessel into the territory of a fascinating story to an interesting subject.
