You’d kind of expect that a guy who played the iconic character of Captain James Kirk, legendary space-Casanova, would have left behind a few fatherless kids. (And we’re not talking about David Marcus from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan.) It seems that art has imitated life, although the boy in question isn’t half-green because his mom was an Orion slave girl. He’s Peter Sloan, a Canadian radio host, whose mother, Kathy McNeil, supposedly had a whirlwind affair with The Shatner in Toronto. Upon birthing Sloan, she gave the boy up for adoption.
“Luke, I am your father!” Shatner never said, not quoting from the wrong science fiction franchise. Instead, the famous actor has repeatedly rebuffed his possible offspring’s affectionate overtures like the U.S.S. Enterprise avoids a collision with an asteroid.
Sloan first approached Shatner in 1984 on the set of cop show T.J. Hooker. Recalled Sloan, “At that point he said, ‘I just don’t understand what you want from me?’ I said, ‘I just want to hold my father in my arms.’ I started to cry, he was crying as well and then he lifted me up and held me in his arms.”
Yet despite this tearful meeting straight out of television melodrama, Shatner’s reps have enforced a no-go zone around the 85-year-old actor, treating dadless Sloan like he was a marauding Gorn. Sloan’s response was to fire a full barrage of legal photon torpedoes, seeking to cause $170 million bucks in damage. Upon notice of the suit, Shatner may or may not have replied, “Shields up!”
Will this be Shatner’s real Kobayashi Maru? (Geeks know what we’re talking about.) It may take a DNA test to set this mess right, as this is one fight Kirk can’t fix with a quick punch or a fired phaser.
