Star Trek spat: Why did one Starfleet captain block another on Twitter?

If Captain Lorca wants to hail Captain Kirk, he'll have to use some communications technology other than Twitter.

William Shatner (best known for playing Kirk in 1966-68's Star Trek) has blocked fellow Trek actor Jason Isaacs (Lorca on the still-in-progress series Star Trek Discovery) from reading his tweets, Isaacs revealed on Sunday.

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Shatner hasn't offered any reason for the blocking. But as many fans have pointed out, just under two weeks ago there was this headline in the London Metro newspaper:

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Yet to be fair to Isaacs, and with all due respect to our friends in the UK media, that's something of a clickbait headline.

Yes, Isaacs did say that Shatner appearing in Discovery would be "stunt celebrity cameo casting." (He was right: the series, a prequel, is set when Kirk is 26, so to shoehorn the 86-year-old Shatner into it, you'd have to make him Kirk's grandfather or some such, which would be as distracting and as desperate a move as making Kirk ski-jump a shark.)

But Isaacs also went out of his way to be nice to his peerless predecessor, saying that he'd be "happy to meet Will Shatner in real life in a restaurant."

Also, it turns out there's another very good plot-based reason for the two not to meet -- given that the crew of the Discovery ended their midseason finale in an entirely different universe.

So there may be another reason for Shatner to block Isaacs -- and it may be the same reason your family members aren't talking to each other after Thanksgiving dinner. It appears they really don't see eye to eye on the state of the country.

Isaacs is a heartfelt and outspoken opponent of Trump, whom he frequently peppers with inventive invective. A recent example:

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Shatner, by contrast, has meekly failed to offer the slightest criticism of Trump; he has joked that as a Canadian he'll get deported if he does.

He does, however, have at least a year-long history of slamming "SJWs" and "snowflakes" and "misandry" on his Twitter feed. Many of his statements are identical to the kind you'll find on 4Chan, which Shatner has admitted to reading. Since the middle of 2016, his feed has contained mostly quote-tweet-based, eyeroll-emoji-filled attacks on various followers who have stepped out of line in one way or another.

Shatner likes a good Twitter fight -- and he likes to block people, as this fascinating Storify attests.

In other words, these two are as likely to get on as your argumentative Fox News-watching grandpa and your extremely liberal brother. Still, as good Star Trek fans we still hold out hope that Shatner will let his shields down one day -- and that they'll be able to meet in real life in a restaurant.