Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 16, 1990 TAG: 9006160488
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JERRY BUCK ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Rescue: 911" uses the actual participants to re-enact episodes in which emergency personnel saved the lives of people involved in fires, accidents, crimes and other life-threatening situations.
"We did three specials a year ago and I remember thinking it would make a great series," said the show's host, William Shatner, best-known as Capt. James T. Kirk of "Star Trek."
Shatner was selected by executive producer Arnold Shapiro, who won an Academy Award and four Emmys for the documentary "Scared Straight." Shatner, a flying enthusiast, earlier had narrated a documentary on the Air Force for Shapiro.
"Nobody had any idea this would go to series, and nobody had any idea it would be so popular," Shatner said. "I don't know why this show works and others haven't. It could be recreating the rescues with the real people."
Rescue shows, mostly fictional, have been around a long time, from "Rescue 8" to "Emergency!" to "240-Robert." This past season, NBC tried one on lifeguards, "Baywatch," and ABC had "H.E.L.P.," but both dramas failed.
"H.E.L.P.," incidentally, originally was called "Rescue: 911," but had to change its name.
"I've never been more proud of being connected with a show than `911,' " Shatner said. "Imagine being part of a show where 12 lives have been saved because viewers saw life-saving techniques.
"A woman waiting for treatment in a hospital emergency ward saw the show. It had a scene about kids and leaking gas fumes. The woman told her husband, `Those are the same symptoms I have. Get home and get the kids out.' The man rushed home and saved the kids from a gas leak."
Shatner goes to Huntington Beach, Calif., to film his appearances and narration.
"We do it at a training area or in the dispatch center," he said. "One day, we were filming in the dispatch center when a woman called and said her husband had shot himself. He was still alive. You're standing there, once removed from the tragedy, as the dispatcher calmly tries to help the woman on the other end whose life has been shattered."
Shatner said he never learned the outcome of the emergency.
"Rescue: 911" doesn't always recreate its emergency calls. A camera crew from the show was riding in a Boston ambulance last October when Charles Stuart used his car phone to report that he had been wounded and his wife, Carol, had been fatally shot.
The complex and controversial case attracted national attention when Stuart said the couple had been attacked by a black man. Later, when Stuart himself became a suspect, he killed himself.
Shatner also happened to be in Boston at the time and appeared on "CBS This Morning" to talk about his show's involvement, along with the police dispatcher who took the 911 call.
Shatner long has been known as Captain Kirk in the classic "Star Trek" television and motion picture series. He made his movie directing debut with "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier."
He said he did not know if there would be another movie, but that he had heard rumors of a new feature in which the crew of the Enterprise would be taken back to their days in the Space Academy. The cast would include Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the other regulars, as well as younger actors portraying them as cadets.
Shatner, meanwhile, is writing a sequel to his best-selling futuristic novel "Tekwar." The new book, "Teklords," continues the story of Jake Cardigan and his fight against drug traffickers. He said the book essentially places T.J. Hooker, the policeman he played in the 1982-86 series of the same name, 150 years into the future.
He also is co-writing with Michael Tobias a novel called "Believe," which he described as "Harry Houdini meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" during an attempt to communicate with the dead.
Tobias wrote, directed and produced "Voice of the Planet," a 10-part environmental series for SuperStation TBS that stars Shatner. The series will be broadcast Oct. 15-19.
Shatner plays a research scientist sent to various parts of the world by a hacker who keeps breaking into his computer. It provides a fictional background for reality programming about global ecology - with Faye Dunaway as the voice of the computer.
Shatner said he also is talking to CBS about directing and starring in a television movie.
Asked if he would do another series, he said, "What I really want to do now is find material, develop stories and direct. Whether I also star in the project is incidental. I want to direct. I think in pictures, I dream in pictures."
by CNB