William Shatner, 94, Undergoes Surgery After Terrifying Horse Accident

William Shatner is trading warp speed for the operating room.

The Star Trek legend, 94, revealed he shattered his right shoulder after a frightening fall from one of his horses late last year — and the injury has gotten serious enough that he’s now scheduled for surgery.

Shatner opened up about the accident while attending the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films’ 53rd annual Saturn Awards in Burbank, California, on Sunday, March 8. He was there to accept a Hall of Fame honor on behalf of the Star Trek franchise, but he admitted he wasn’t exactly feeling like Captain Kirk.

After asking for a chair to speak with reporters, Shatner said he felt “old, tired and kind of hurt.”

He explained that he rides horses trained for competitive equine skills — a fast-paced style that ends with a dramatic sliding stop. But during one ride, things went sideways.

“I ride the horses that can compete in equine skills,” he said, describing the discipline as “fast down and ends on a sliding stop.” Then he added: “And the horse that I owned, I came off.”

Shatner said the horse had a tendency to drift just slightly off line — and in a high-speed moment, that tiny shift became a big problem.

“She had a habit of going too far, like six inches to the side,” he explained. “And I’m riding it. And I’m ready. And she goes [too fast and sent him flying].”

Even with his old stuntman instincts kicking in, Shatner said the impact was brutal.

“I’m not a young stuntman anymore,” he admitted. “I started to roll, but hit the dirt with my shoulder. So I wrecked my shoulder.”

Now, Shatner says he’s set for what he called a “new type of shoulder operation,” struggling to remember the exact name — something like a “reverse” procedure.

“You put the ball in the socket and the socket in the thing,” he said, trying to describe it. “And you come out 10 hours later, and you’re pain-free.”

He added, “So that’s what I am meandering towards.”

The accident is just the latest health scare for Shatner in recent months. Back in September, reports claimed he suffered a mysterious medical emergency at his Los Angeles home. Shatner didn’t spell out what happened, but he later downplayed the situation on social media.

“I over indulged,” he wrote at the time, adding that he was “perfectly fine” — along with a meme joking about his “greatly exaggerated … demise.”

Despite the injury, Shatner still got a hero’s welcome at the Saturn Awards, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd. During his speech, he reflected on why the original Star Trek connected so deeply with audiences, saying great science fiction is really about people.

“Good or great science fiction is about human beings,” he said, explaining that even non-human characters work best when they show real human traits — fears, ambition, and flaws.

“You know what everyone tried to do, including myself, was to make the character human with all frailties and ambitions and fears,” he told the audience.

Shatner also revealed a surprising confession for someone who helped define a TV era: he still hasn’t watched every episode of the original series.

“I haven’t seen all my 79 episodes,” he said. “I just don’t have the time. I’d like to see it, but I don’t have the time.”

Meanwhile, the Saturn Awards ceremony also featured big wins for blockbuster names, with James Cameron scoring major trophies for Avatar: Fire and Ash and Tom Cruise winning best actor for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Cruise even took a moment in his acceptance speech to salute Shatner’s massive impact on sci-fi.

But for Shatner, the biggest moment of the week isn’t on a stage — it’s the surgery meant to get him back on his feet after a terrifying fall that left him, in his words, “wrecked.”