Shatner boldly goes where he has gone before

William Shatner supplied to TimeOut

William Shatner is beaming back into Auckland, returning to where he first started his solo stage show four years ago.

In 2011, Shatner opened his Kirk, Crane and Beyond tour at Auckland's Civic.

Now the former commander of the Starship Enterprise and Boston Legal star with the exuberant self-deprecating personality is bringing an evolved version, Shatner's World ... We Just Live In It, to the Aotea Centre on October 10.

"I haven't done it quite a while. I am going to have to re-learn it to come to Auckland," Shatner says from Los Angeles. But I am looking forward to it because the piece is very meaningful to me.

"It's a part of me and I have enjoyed performing it for that reason. It's such a personal statement and I am gratified by the audience reaction to it."

While the 2011 show featured Mike Hosking interviewing Shatner on stage and came with musical support from Dave Dobbyn and Whirimako Black - and the actor reciting a poem by Keri Hulme - this time it's all him.

After taking the original show to Australia and Canada, Broadway beckoned. For Shatner it was a return to the theatre he had last played in his pre-Star Trek days.

"It's like fate. I had given up on the idea of Broadway. They want their performers to stay on the show for at least six months and I didn't want to be in New York for that amount of time. And wouldn't you know - I am asked to go to New York for a limited period of time in the very theatre that I had left so many years before."

But why does the 84-year-old feel the need to keep performing?

"Well, the point is, that instead of sitting back it's a step forward, and it's what I do. What I have done all my life. And these are stories about my life."

William Shatner on stage in Shatner's World.

The performance comes with video backing that required a deep dig in the archives for footage from Shatner's long screen career.

"It was very much digging up old treasures. What to put up there and what not to put up there was also very much a hazard."

Still, it must be strange standing on stage in front of your face from 50 years ago and 5m high, night after night ...

"That's right. And very painful," he laughs.

Tickets for Shatner's World are on pre-sale from July 27 and available to the general public from August 3.