Opinion: Captain Kirk’s karmic mission

On Wednesday, Capt. James Tiberius Kirk is scheduled to head to space for one last time. Of course, that's a bit of poetic license; Kirk is, after all, a fictional character. Instead, William Shatner, who played Kirk starting with the "Star Trek" TV show of the late 1960s, will become the oldest person to leave the confines of Earth and gaze out into what has been called "the final frontier."