HAPPY BIRTHDAY to an intergalactic treasure! By CHRIS FRANKLIN Had William Shatner (born March 22, 1931) never set foot on the bridge set of the starship Enterprise, he’d still be assured some measure of pop culture immortality. His various early film roles, his appearances on anthology TV series like Thriller and particularly The Twilight Zone still endure. Had his post-Star Trek work come along in the same manner, he had T.J. Hooker, Boston Legal and various other gigs to keep him in the limelight. But the role of Captain James T. Kirk has made him an icon. While that word is thrown around far too loosely these days, Shatner earned it. Leonard Nimoy’s Spock was the soul of the original Star Trek series, the living embodiment of “the other” that the series set out to find and explore. The outsider that the audience members could all identify with to one agree or another. Shatner’s Kirk was the series’ heart. The ideal, the inspiration we could aspire to. He had the confidence, the swagger, the bravery to do what must be done, and make it look relatively easy. Except when it wasn’t, and Shatner allowed us to sweat alongside the captain. He wasn’t perfect, he had regrets, he’d made mistakes, and sometimes he did make the wrong move, but he always rebounded. That made him relatable as well. The hero we wanted to be, with just enough clay on his black boots to remind us of who we were. Like many pop culture heroes of the past century, Shatner’s Kirk has been pressed into plastic, ceramic and glass collectibles capturing the likeness, the essence of the 23rd century’s greatest explorer. To celebrate Shatner’s 95th birthday, lets beam up 13 prime (directive) examples: —  Captain Kirk 8-Inch Figure, Mego, 1974. By 1974, Star Trek’s success in syndication resulted in not only a new animated series from Filmation with most of the original cast (including Shatner) providing the voices of their characters, but also an avalanche of merchandising far surpassing what was produced during the original series’ initial network run from 1966-1969. Seen here sitting confidently in the chair from the toy line’s Enterprise playset comes the best figure on this list, Mego’s original 8-inch Captain Kirk. Many figures of the man and the character have come since, some of them quite...