His voice was unmistakable, even at 90 years old.

We all know it, fans of Star Trek or not. The classic baritone, smooth like 50-year-old scotch, measured and controlled. The way Captain Kirk once sounded giving orders from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

“Hi, this is Bill Shatner, looking for Ray Duckler.”

The vibe was casual, informal, relaxed. Shatner was conducting 15-minute interviews leading up to his live appearance Thursday night at 7 at the Capitol Center for the Arts.

After viewing a refurbished version of The Wrath of Khan, Shatner will take the stage and answer audience questions, and my hunch is he’ll speak from the heart no matter what the audience asks him.

That’s the way he was on the phone. Deflector shields off. Shatner wants you to know that he feels terrific. He bristles at the Hollywood portrayals of people his age as old, bent over, helpless.

After all, Shatner flew to space last year, invited by Jeff Bezos, to become the oldest man to do it. He was 90 years, six months and 22 days old.

‘A delicious moment’

He was an open book, who mentioned the death of his third wife, addressed an old Twilight Zone episode and, of course, spoke about Star Trek and the role that made him a superstar more than 50 years ago.

“I’ve done this several times,” Shatner said. “It’s wonderful in the theater. I’ll come out for an hour or so, and generally, I’ve either been making a public fool of myself or I’m viewed as a genius of entertainment.”

I’m not a Trekkie. I don’t go to conventions, nor do I wear pointy ears and carry a phaser on Halloween. But great writing and great storylines were and continue to be at the heart of Star Trek, which ran for three seasons in the late 1960s and has since morphed into one of the most admired shows in television history, spawning multiple spinoff shows and movies.

Kirk and his crew sought out new life forms, and the show’s creators were careful to depict these civilizations through two separate prisms: those who used their advanced intellect to attain peace, and those who used their smarts to wage war and steal land, er, space.

Shatner never saw it coming. Never figured that the character he played, the way he played him, combined with smart plots would one day place him in elite company in the entertainment world. Right near the top of the list for recognizable characters.

“I would liken it to this moment between you and me,” Shatner said. “A delicious moment, and 55 years later, people will say, ‘Remember the interview Duckler did with Shatner? Let’s revive it.’ That’s what has happened (with Star Trek). It’s as much of a shock to me as it is to you, that it’s had a healthy shelf-life.”

Sincere thanks

He mentioned heartfelt appreciation, for both his career and his audiences. He touched on his work from the 1960s.

Have you seen that Twilight Zone episode from ’63, one of the most popular in the series’ history? In it, Shatner, recently released from a mental hospital, insists to his loving wife and the flight attendant that he’s seen something outside, more than once, bending pieces of the wing, essentially sabotaging the flight.

We see the monster too. No one else does but Shatner. The monster is scary, with giant lips and black around his eyes. He’s wearing a suit of some kind, hairy.

In the end, Shatner, strapped to a stretcher, is taken away, bound for a return trip to the mental hospital.

Then we see the plane at the airport, its wing clearly damaged, in no shape to fly.

“I imagine it strikes a note in the psyche of all of those who fly a lot,” Shatner said. “The fear was epitomized with this Czech acrobat in a furry suit. Furry.”

His kids loved it. To the point where they asked daddy to look out the window during a real flight and respond as though he’d seen a monster.

“They’d call the hostess over and I would be looking out the window,” Shatner said. “Then I’d turn around and I had this look of horror on my face. The kids were laughing.”

Bigger things on the horizon

Shatner was on his way to icon status. But he needed something to put him over the top.

“I had an element of popularity at the time but I don’t recall being stopped on the street,” Shatner said. “I’d hear, ‘Aren’t you the gym teacher at the high school?’ Only after the Star Trek association did they know me.”

He did other things and succeeded. He starred as a cop in T.J. Hooker for five years during the 1980s. He won a pair of Emmys for his roles in The Practice and its spinoff, Boston Legal.

He appeared on 3rd Rock From the Sun for two seasons and had roles in more TV shows than you could count, for decades after Captain Kirk had exited the USS Enterprise for good.

He’s taken his lumps as well. Over the albums he has released and his singing appearances on TV in the 1960s and ’70s.

Especially the now-famous video of Shatner hosting the Saturn Awards in 1978, puffing on a cigarette, wearing a tuxedo, talking the words to Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” his pauses and inflections creating a sense of drama, a style we heard while Kirk prepared his crew for battle against the Klingons.

He also heard about his weight. He was roasted 15 years ago on Comedy Central’s gut-busting show. There is no mercy at those things.

“It was really awful,” Shatner said with a light laugh. “I did one of them and I asked Leonard Nimoy to be on the dais and he said no. I said to him, ‘What do you mean, no?’ It took that experience for me to figure out why he didn’t want to go.”

Examples from the roast:

Jason Alexander, who played George on Seinfeld: “Because that’s the actual Captain’s chair from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, and there’s only one ass big enough to fill it. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. William Shatner.”

And this from comedian Jeffery Ross: “Look at you. You let yourself ‘boldly go.’ When did you go from Captain Kirk to Captain Crunch? You left T.J. Hooker and went to P.F. Chang’s.”

Time flies

Our 15 minutes sped by like a ship at Warp Speed. Shatner has two sold-out shows this weekend in Pennsylvania.

Twenty-eight tickets, ranging in price from $87 to $94, remained on sale Tuesday morning for Thursday night’s show here.

“Maybe people don’t know I’m coming,” Shatner said.

If you go, you’ll have access to an icon, the chance to ask far more questions than I could.

We never covered Shatner’s trip to space last year, his musical videos from 40-plus years ago, his relationships with other Star Trek cast members, or the tragic death of his third wife, Nerine Kidd.

He loved meeting Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist, portrayed by Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything.

Hawking, confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak because of ALS, communicated through a speech-gathering device, using a single cheek muscle to ask Shatner to name his favorite Star Trek episode.

Hawking’s was “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Mine too. In that one, Kirk travels back to 1930. He falls in love with Edith Keeler, played by Joan Collins.

In the end, Kirk, with a chance to save Keeler from a speeding truck, deliberately allows her to die, thus stopping her growing peace movement that, if she had lived, would have delayed America’s entry into World War II and allowed Nazi Germany to build nuclear weapons before the United States.

Kirk and his crew beam up, back to their own time, but not before the captain, devastated and heartbroken, famously says, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“I said I didn’t know which was my favorite,” adding, “but that was one of my favorites,” Shatner said.

He’ll answer your questions Thursday. The same guy who portrayed, memorably, a man for all seasons. A good man. A brave man. A ladies’ man. A man’s man.

“I know it’s cold there, but we’ll have a warm theater, a warm audience and a warm actor from LA,” Shatner said. “I’m so grateful about the way I feel and in terms of security. To have the audacity to regret anything would be the height of ignorance.”

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