George Takei Says William Shatner Is 'Not the Fittest Specimen' for Space Travel: 'A Guinea Pig'

George Takei and William Shatner
George Takei and William Shatner
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George Takei's feud with his former Star Trek costar William Shatner appears to be going strong more than 50 years later.

The actor, 84, didn't pull punches when he commented on Shatner, 90, becoming the oldest person to travel to space during Wednesday's roundtrip with Jeff Bezos' aerospace company Blue Origin to the edge of space.

"He's boldly going where other people have gone before," Takei told Page Six on Wednesday. "He's a guinea pig, 90 years old and it's important to find out what happens."

STAR TREK, James Doohan, DeForest Kelley, Walter Koenig, Majel Barrett, William Shatner, Nichelle Ni
STAR TREK, James Doohan, DeForest Kelley, Walter Koenig, Majel Barrett, William Shatner, Nichelle Ni

Everett Collection

RELATED: William Shatner's Fascinating Life, from Star Trek Icon to Real-Life Astronaut

"So 90 years old is going to show a great deal more on the wear and tear on the human body, so he'll be a good specimen to study. Although he's not the fittest specimen of 90 years old, so he'll be a specimen that's unfit!" he added.

Shatner successfully completed the voyage aboard the Shepard rocket for the NS-18 mission on Wednesday, sharing an emotional testimonial upon his arrival back to Earth.

"I hope I never recover from this. I hope I can maintain what I feel now. I don't want to lose it. It's so, so much larger than me," Shatner said. "It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the rudeness of life and death."

RELATED VIDEO: William Shatner and Blue Origin Passengers Float In Space

Shatner and Takei have kept up a purported feud over the decades, after they've both opened up about butting heads with each other on the set of Star Trek, which first premiered in 1966. But Takei has claimed that there's no real feud between them.

"It's not tension, it's all coming from Bill," he told The New York Times Magazine in 2015. "Whenever he needs a little publicity for a project, he pumps up the so-called controversy between us."

"It's difficult working with someone who is not a team player. The rest of the cast all understand what makes a scene work – it's everybody contributing to it. But Bill is a wonderful actor, and he knows it, and he likes to have the camera on him all the time," Takei added.