George Takei has reignited his bitter feud with former Star Trek co-star William Shatner, calling him an ‘unfit guinea pig’.
The 84-year-old actor took aim at the Captain Kirk star after he rocketed to the edge of space with Amazon boss Jeff Bezos on Wednesday, and sparked up their war of words that has been rumbling on for more than 50 years.
The 90-year-old was a special passenger on the billionaire’s Blue Origin spacecraft, and was overwhelmed with emotion when he arrived back down to Earth following the 10-minute flight.
Takei was less than impressed with the 90-year-old actor’s journey into the unknown, and viciously suggested Shatner was picked by Bezos so scientists could study the effects of the flight on a “unfit specimen”.
“He’s boldly going where other people have gone before,” Takei joked to Page Six. “He’s a guinea pig, 90 years old and it’s important to find out what happens.”
“So 90 years old is going to show a great deal more on the wear and tear on the human body, so he’ll be a good specimen to study,” he quipped, adding that Shatner was “not the fittest specimen of 90 years old, so he’ll be a specimen that’s unfit!”
Their bitter rivalry stems back to the 1960s, when they appeared together on the hit US sci-fi show Star Trek, with Shatner playing Captain James T. Kirk, and Takei portraying Hikaru Sulu.
The two ageing stars have bickered for years, with Takei accusing Shatner of ignoring him on the set of the hit TV show, as well as even changing the script so his character Sulu would not be promoted on the fictional Starship Enterprise.
In 2008, Shatner furiously responded after he failed to be invited to Takei’s wedding, and he said his former co-star had a “psychosis”.
“There’s such a sickness there, it’s so painfully obvious that there’s a psychosis there. I don’t know what his original thing about me was, I have no idea,” he fired.
On Wednesday, Shatner was praised for delivering an emotional impromptu speech about his trip to space, just moments after he landed back on Earth.
“Everybody in the world needs to do this. To see the moon come and whip by - now you’re staring into blackness - that’s the thing,” he tearfully stated.
“It was so moving. This experience, it’s something unbelievable,” Shatner cried, as he recalled seeing the moon and the bright blue of the Earth below.
“I hope I never recover from this. I hope I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to ever lose it,” he added.
