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IT WAS hardly the final frontier. But, to a then-unknown Canadian actor shuffling up the Royal Mile desperate for some dinner, a wet August night in Edinburgh past closing time was a bleak and foreboding place for the young William Shatner.

He had been performing at the festival and was starving after a show when he was taken in by an incredibly friendly Scots-Italian family and given a warmer welcome than he has ever received at any Starfleet space station or sci fi comic convention in the 60 years since.

Bill spent the summer in Scotland in 1956 performing Henry V at the festival with a Canadian theatre company, and said that he has had a special place in his heart for Scotland ever since.

Ten years after his Scottish tour, Shatner won the role of a lifetime and has celebrated 50 years of Captain James T Kirk and Star Trek.

Now 85, the Montreal born actor-writer-presenter-singer-producer-director is still one of the busiest entertainers in Hollywood, and as well as enjoying nostalgic look backs to five decades of Gene Roddenberry’s famous TV show and movie franchise, he has published his 27th novel.

His book Zero G is the first in a series of futuristic space station scifi crime novels he has created, and he said that looking 50 years into the future is even more exciting than his fun lookbacks to the days of rubber masked aliens and swooshing slide doors on a Hollywood studio.

He said: “I just finished a TV special where I talk to a lot of astrophysicists which started out as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek.

“I was booked to talk to several astrophysicists which culminated with Stephen Hawking, and the more I talked to these guys and realised how imaginative their process was and realised there is a line somewhere between science fiction and science fact where astrophysicists are imagining things that only a science fiction writer would be conversing with.

“Star Trek is a mythology of the future.”

He continued: “Fifty years in the future seems like a long time but in essence it isn’t because here we are in 2016 and a lot of people can remember 1960.

“What was going on and the issues that were prominent then, the cold war and all, are still prominent now. Fifty years later we are facing the same problems. So 50 years in the future, how much will be different?

“There are political elements and new alliances that suggest things might happen 50 years in the future, and of course nobody knows so you can’t argue with me, and it was fun devising these things.”

It’s all a long way from the days of treading the boards at the Edinburgh festival.

“I played the Edinburgh festival years ago, before Star Trek, and I had an experience in Scotland I have never forgotten. The theatre closed at 10.30pm at night, and every business including the bus lines, were all closed, so when we came out of the stage door, we had to walk to our digs up a hill and couldn’t find a meal or anything.

“For a group of Canadian actors, it was very lonely, and I was walking up the hill alongside the castle one evening after a show and peered into a darkened window and saw this guy cleaning up, so I knocked on the door and I said, ‘Do you have anythinhg to eat?’ He said no, I explained the situation, that we couldn’t find any place to eat after a show. He asked us to come back the next day.

“We came back and went upstairs above the restaurant and the family was called D’Angelo and they were Italians who had gotten there prior to the second world war, they had been interned, they had emerged from that experience, opened an Italian restaurant, and they were so friendly that they invited 15 strangers to their house.

“They served up a beautiful Italian meal and they are the friendliest people I’ve ever met. And to these entire strangers, they offered Italian-Scottish hospitality. I have never forgotten it.

“It’s hardly likely they would have recognised me when they saw Star Trek but it’d be interesting to hear a response if the D’Angelo family is still there. That’d be fascinating.”

Shatner was 35 when he first boarded the Starship Enterprise.

Former LA cop Gene Roddenberry had created scifi TV show Star Trek but was in trouble after the pilot episode bombed. The original captain, Jeffrey Hunter as Pike, was replaced by the dashing Canadian who put on the yellow jersey and created an icon as soon as he sat in the chair.

The series ran for three years and 79 episodes before being cancelled.

But its impact had been immense, and years of repeats led to increasing clamour for more. In 1979, Star Trek The Motion Picture arrived, to a mixed reception, but the success of the superior Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and its subsequent follow ups, ensured the Star Trek name continued well over the decades.

The Next Generation then came along, along with other TV spin-offs, while Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Uhuru and Chekhov all continued on the big screen until handing over the mantle to Patrick Stewart and the Next Generation gang, with the 1997 transition film Generations, which saw the death of the Captain.

It’s a moment Shatner remembers well.

“I recall a very meaningful moment I guess when I said to Patrick Stewart, ‘Here’s the keys to the car.’ And I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve never said that before.’

“In the movie when they killed the character, I got up and jokingly, but not jokingly, said to the producer that I’d written a book called The Return, in which I bring Captain Kirk back to life.”

There has been talk of Kirk returning to Star Trek, as Nimoy did, in the 21st-century reboots, and Shatner said he would be open to it. And he admits he is a fan of his younger version, played by Chris Pine.

“When they did that with Spock, and I said to Leonard that you know your old when you go back in time and you’re still old.

“I don’t know what my plan is, JJ Abrams is very imaginative, and is a wonderful producer-director and may very well imagine something that I would find interesting but I would have to play a meaningful role.

“It’s like looking at an old picture of yourself watching Chris Pine do Star Trek. I think, ‘Holy mackerel, I’m old. He does a wonderful job, he is talented, he is excellent and young, and a wonderful guy, so I wish him well.”

It was while making Star Trek movies that he first took to writing, just to add another successful page to one of the most diverse acting CVs in history.

As well as Captain Kirk, he enjoyed an 80s TV smash as LA cop TJ Hooker and has enjoyed consistent TV work with huge 00s hit Boston Legal and he is also enjoying success with a new reality style show, Better Late than Never, where he, Henry (The Fonz) Winkler, boxing champ George Foreman, and NFL star Terry Bradshaw tour exotic destinations.

He has also enjoyed a music career, with his unique 1968 covers album The Transformed Man the first of three albums, and is working on another wit Yes frontman Billy Sherwood.

As much as he loves all his art projects, writing has been a consistent career since his first book TekWar was released in 1989, with Zero G his 27th to date. Its sequel, out next year, will be number 28.

And he must feel very lucky to have been able to reinvent himself, with so many different careers and adventures in the last fifty years?

“I don’t think of it as reinventing, they are all facets. Buried inside us are all these talents and abilities. It is my luck in life to be given the opportunity to express them.”

Zero G by William Shatner and Jeff Rovin is out now on Simon and Schuster.