William Shatner 'Appalled' by IRS 'Star Trek' Spoof

Captain Kirk is not amused.

William Shatner — the actor who portrayed the iconic captain of the Starship Enterprise on TV's "Star Trek" — has spoken out via Twitter denouncing a government funded video parody of the series made in 2010.

"So I watched that IRS video," Shatner wrote via his Twitter account (@WilliamShatner). "I am appalled at the utter waste of US tax dollars."

CBS News obtained a copy of the IRS video last week and released it on the web. The video shows a high quality mockup of inside the Enterprise and reportedly cost $60,000 in taxpayer money to create along with a "Gilligan's Island" spoof in the same vein.

Officials with the IRS explained that the video was part of a larger training effort by the government body.

"In addition, the IRS has instituted tough new standards for videos to prevent situations similar to the 2010 video," officials said in a statement reported by CBS.

While the IRS spent thousands on its "Star Trek" video, fans of the real science fiction franchise have a chance to catch every live-action series in the show's history for free on Hulu.

The company announced last week that it will stream all five series — "The Original Series," "Voyager," "The Next Generation," Deep Space Nine" and "Enterprise" — online for free to honor Shatner's 82nd birthday. There was also a short-lived cartoon version of the series, "Star Trek: The Animated Series," but that is not part of the Hulu project.

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Miriam Kramer
Staff Writer

Miriam Kramer joined Space.com as a Staff Writer in December 2012. Since then, she has floated in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight, felt the pull of 4-Gs in a trainer aircraft and watched rockets soar into space from Florida and Virginia. She also served as Space.com's lead space entertainment reporter, and enjoys all aspects of space news, astronomy and commercial spaceflight.  Miriam has also presented space stories during live interviews with Fox News and other TV and radio outlets. She originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee where she and her family would take trips to dark spots on the outskirts of town to watch meteor showers every year. She loves to travel and one day hopes to see the northern lights in person. Miriam is currently a space reporter with Axios, writing the Axios Space newsletter. You can follow Miriam on Twitter.