I have no idea where Mr. Shatner was on Friday, September 17, 1976, when the orbiter Enterprise was rolled out in Palmdale. But for what it's worth, Shatner wasn't really shying away from Captain Kirk and Star Trek. Back then, Shatner did a stint on The Storybook Squares (a kid version of The Hollywood Squares with fictional kid-friendly characters instead of actual stars) as Captain Kirk.
Here's a shot of "Captain Kirk" with "Old Mother Hubbard" (the late Milton Berle), "Little Miss Muffet" (Valerie Bertinelli) and "Simple Simon" (Anson Williams):
Interestingly, game shows would usually tape all five shows for the week on Friday--a marathon shooting day. (Well, five half-hour shows isn't much of a marathon.) So, it actually is possible that this is exactly where Shatner was that day--but that's just speculation.
As a side note about those goofy clothes: for an upcoming Star Trek Phase II episode, it's no secret that the Enterprise needs to go back to the "Rome" planet for one reason or another, When we last left that planet, its "modern-day" was 1967-ish looking. People wore late '60s clothes. Well, when we return, it's about 1970, so we speculated that in order to blend in, our Enterprise crew would need to be wearing the clothes that they'd be wearing on that planet at about that time (assuming it progressed about like our planet did).
(For costuming inspiration, we actually looked at stuff Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley had been wearing back then.)
Here's a shot of "Captain Kirk" with "Old Mother Hubbard" (the late Milton Berle), "Little Miss Muffet" (Valerie Bertinelli) and "Simple Simon" (Anson Williams):
Interestingly, game shows would usually tape all five shows for the week on Friday--a marathon shooting day. (Well, five half-hour shows isn't much of a marathon.) So, it actually is possible that this is exactly where Shatner was that day--but that's just speculation.
As a side note about those goofy clothes: for an upcoming Star Trek Phase II episode, it's no secret that the Enterprise needs to go back to the "Rome" planet for one reason or another, When we last left that planet, its "modern-day" was 1967-ish looking. People wore late '60s clothes. Well, when we return, it's about 1970, so we speculated that in order to blend in, our Enterprise crew would need to be wearing the clothes that they'd be wearing on that planet at about that time (assuming it progressed about like our planet did).
(For costuming inspiration, we actually looked at stuff Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley had been wearing back then.)
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