NONFICTION - Jan. 9, 1994

TREK MEMORIES by William Shatner with Chris Kreski (Harper Collins: $22; 306 pp). The “Star Trek” universe has certainly taken to heart the Vulcan saying “Live long and prosper.” So it was only a matter of time that William Shatner as the peripatetic character of Captain Kirk would finally give us his story of where no man has gone before, an insider’s look at the development and the day-to-day ups and downs of doing the original “Star Trek” TV show. This is not an autobiography, there is little of his personal life here, except in how it affected his work. Written in a cheery manner and surprisingly low key on the ego-scale, Shatner keeps an even keel as he recites anecdotes, fights, how the characters developed, script problems, struggles between the network and producers, as well as the inevitable personality conflicts at work in a large, close-knit cast. Shatner even touches on the fact that not all of his cast-mates found him Mr. Congeniality to work with and Shatner himself tells of his “strained association” with the paterfamilias of the whole enterprise, Gene Roddenberry.