Anson Mount recalls recording Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' opening monologue while William Shatner was actually in space. As the Captain of the Starship Enterprise in Strange New Worlds, Mount is the latest to voice over Star Trek's classic opening speech, "Space... the final frontier..." over the show's opening credits. As fate would have it, Mount recorded the monologue on October 13, 2021, the day William Shatner went into orbit aboard Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin NS-18 space flight.
Speaking to Moovy TV alongside his Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' cast mate, Rebecca Romijn, Anson Mount told the story of recording Star Trek's iconic opening monologue and how he took the time to recognize the serendipity of doing so while William Shatner was in space. Read Mount's quote and watch Moovy TV's interview video hosted by Johan Albrechtsen below:
Anson Mount: It’s actually a good story because it wasn’t a recording booth. We were still under lockdown, so what they did is they sent me this box of recording equipment that I could use at home. And so, I was in my basement, the technical team operating this box was in New York, and the post production team was in Los Angeles. And we were really spending a lot of time on that monologue trying to get it exactly right because you’ve got one shot at it.
So we were working on it, working on it, working on it, and piecing this sentence to that sentence, and there were these little pauses that were happening as they were building it. And I said, ‘Guys, can we just take a moment to realize here that we’re gonna remember this moment for the rest of our professional lives. That we got to record this monologue.’ And everybody was like, ‘Yeah, that’s really cool!’
And then I realized, and I said, ‘Of course, y’all realize that William Shatner is in orbit right now.’ And he was. This was while he was in orbit with Jeff Bezos, we were recording that monologue. I mean, you couldn’t make that up. It was also a great realization because it took the pressure off… It just told me, ‘Don’t try to outdo Shatner.’
Rebecca Romijn: Right. You just got outdone by Shatner yet again! (laughs)
Who Else Recorded Star Trek's Classic "Space... The Final Frontier" Monologue?
Anson Mount is the latest of a star-studded lineup
Reciting Star Trek's iconic "Space... the final frontier..." monologue is an honor usually reserved for the Captain of the Enterprise and leading man of each Star Trek series set aboard the Starship Enterprise. Of course, William Shatner's Captain James T. Kirk made the "Space.,. the final frontier..." speech famous on Star Trek: The Original Series, but it was Spock (Leonard Nimoy) who got to voice over the monologue at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Nimoy's Spock got to say the speech again at the end of Star Trek (2009).
Captain Kirk gave a variation of his monologue, changing "Where no man has gone before" to " Where no one has gone before" at the end of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country .
Patrick Stewart's Captain Jean-Luc Picard delivered an updated version of "Space... the final frontier" in 178 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Scott Bakula's Captain Jonathan Archer only got to say, "To boldly go where no man has gone before" at the end of Star Trek: Enterprise's finale. The entire cast of Star Trek Beyond delivered the speech before the end credits, and now Captain Pike gets the honor on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The next Captain of the Enterprise fans want to hear deliver the iconic monologue: Jeri Ryan's Captain Seven of Nine.
