Star Trek Lost An Emmy Because Of A U.S. President
Star Trek: The Original Series was nominated for Emmy awards 12 times. Unfortunately, actually earning an Emmy proved more difficult than trying to detect the Romulans when they were cloaked. Still, there were high hopes that William Shatner would earn an Emmy for the final episode of the show, “Turnabout Intruder,” and the book The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years claims the series lost its last Emmy chance due to the death of President Dwight D. Eisenhower interrupting the show.
Star Trek: The Original Series writers William Shatner could have won an Emmy for his performance in the series finale, but the episode was bumped because of the death of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
There is a certain irony in the fact that the series finale of Star Trek: The Original Series is often considered one of the worst ever made by fans. The episode actually states outright that it’s impossible for women to become captains in Starfleet.
Later shows completely ignored this (which is why we have Melanie Scrofano killing it as Captain Batel in Strange New Worlds), but in “Turnabout Intruder,” we see what happens when a woman frustrated by Starfleet sexism switches bodies with Captain Kirk.
He faced the double-acting challenge of playing someone else (of a different gender, no less) inhabiting his body, and the actor managed to deliver a surprisingly vulnerable and intimate performance.
That’s right: the original Star Trek show ended with a “Freaky Friday” style episode that had more sexism than you could shake a warp core at. But if you can get past that (which is, admittedly, a very big ask), you will find a surprisingly-nuanced performance from William Shatner.
He faced the double-acting challenge of playing someone else (of a different gender, no less) inhabiting his body, and the actor managed to deliver a surprisingly vulnerable and intimate performance.
According to Star Trek: The Original Series writers Bjo and John Trimble, the episode “might have won an Emmy for William Shatner,” but that was made impossible by the death of President Eisenhower.
The death of a popular president was a big enough deal that his funeral was broadcast to all major TV stations on the night that “Turnabout Intruder” was meant to originally air. It was pushed to the following week, but this was enough to ensure that the episode wouldn’t win any Emmys.
The reason for this is simple: in order to be eligible for an Emmy, a television episode must be broadcast between June 1 of the previous year to May 31 of the current year. The Star Trek episode “Turnabout Intruder” was originally scheduled for broadcast on May 27, but the broadcast funeral of President Eisenhower pushed the episode out of that Emmy window.
It could have theoretically been nominated for the following year, but since Trek was off the air and out of most people’s minds by then, it never even got the nod.
Would William Shatner Have Won The Emmy?
Obviously, it’s impossible to know if Star Trek: The Original Series or William Shatner would have earned an Emmy for “Turnabout Intruder” if Eisenhower’s funeral hadn’t pre-empted the episode. Honestly, appreciating the finer parts of Shatner’s acting amid one of the most sexist and awful Trek episodes ever written is a bit like searching for parts of the USS Reliant in the Mutara Nebula.
Still, Spock was fond of saying “there are always possibilities,” and one of those possibilities is that Shatner might not have had to wait until 2005 before getting an Emmy (for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Boston Legal).
