Shatner still can't explain 'Star Trek' success

William Shatner appeared Thursday on CNN's "Larry King Live."

(CNN) -- More than three decades after the starship Enterprise began roaming the galaxies, "Star Trek" captain William Shatner still struggles to explain the series' phenomenal success.

"Everybody watches it for a different reason," Shatner, a.k.a. Captain Kirk, said Thursday on CNN's "Larry King Live."

"There was science fiction, there was adventure, there was philosophy. There were the family of characters that they fell in love with.

"And yet, cancel that family of characters and bring in another family of characters, and you've got another hit series called 'Star Trek,' so I don't know."

EXTRA INFORMATION CNN's Larry King Live

Shatner, who is in four upcoming movies, also is promoting a new video, "Mind Meld: Secrets Behind the Voyage of a Lifetime," in which he and "Star Trek" co-star Leonard Nimoy talk candidly about the show and its effect on their lives.

He compared it with the movie "My Dinner with Andre."

"It's conversation on the most intimate subjects by two people who have known each other half their life," Shatner said.

Shatner also talked with King about the 1999 death of his wife, Nerine Kidd, whom he found in the pool of their Hollywood Hills home.

"My wife, whom I loved dearly and who loved me, was suffering with a disease that we don't like to talk about -- alcoholism -- and met a tragic ending because of it," Shatner said.

Shatner, who has remarried, said the love and support of friends and family helped him work through the grief.

"That grief is as palpable as pneumonia, as a disease," he said.

"It has a beginning, a middle and an end. To each individual it changes. But that grief -- you can be led through grief, out of grief. You heal like it's a wound. It's a terrible, terrible pain. But the pain eventually subsides."