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SHATNER, WILLIAM (1931– ). Canadian actor.
Acted
in and directed: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989); produced,
directed, and acted in: Tekwar (tv miniseries) (1993).
As
evidence for that claim, one could simply compare "The Cage," the original Star
Trek pilot starring Jeffrey Hunter, to "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the
second pilot starring Shatner. While Hunter's performance is not grievously
inadequate, it is apparent that he is not strongly committed to the role and is
not emotionally attached to its fictional environment. But conveying conviction
and passion are Shatner's strengths; even in that first episode, he strives to
show that he really believes in the world of the Enterprise, that
he is really worried about the threat posed by his friend's new powers,
that he really cares about his crew and his friend. It is besides the
point to complain that Shatner is a hammy or histrionic actor, for such an
excess of effort may be necessary to get an audience involved in an exotic,
imaginary filmic world. In essence, by his example, Shatner trained
viewers to love Star Trek; and the program's stunning success in
syndication may be in part attributed to the fact that the experience of
observing Shatner five times a week, not just once a week, made his lessons
five times more effective.
For
three seasons, Shatner perfectly inhabited and molded the role of Captain James
T. Kirk, a compassionate, impetuous man always ready, depending on the
occasion, to engage in fistfights, badinage, or romance; only when asked to
display Kirk's superior intelligence—defeating Mr. Spock in a game of
three-dimensional chess or outwitting a supercomputer—was Shatner
unpersuasive. (Wisely, scriptwriters later learned to leave the thinking to
other characters—Spock, Dr. McCoy, or Mr. Scott.) He was at his best in
episodes that emphasized his softer side, like "The City on the Edge of
Forever," "Metamorphosis," and "The Paradise Syndrome." Indeed, while there
were moments of macho swagger in the character, Shatner cunningly played Kirk
more as a feminine character, as evidenced, for example, in "Balance of
Terror," where his agonizing over the possibility of losing lives in combat
seems inappropriate for a military commander. And consider the final episode of
the series, "Turnabout Intruder," where Shatner had to play a Kirk controlled
by a female personality; it required remarkably little change in his portrayal.
Strangely, when Shatner returned to the role ten years later, he had lost
his grasp of the character, visibly unsure whether to play the same
old Kirk or to invent a new, more restrained and reflective persona;
his performance in Star Trek: The Motion Picture lacked authority
because Shatner himself seemed to sense the wrongness in seizing control
of the Enterprise from a younger and obviously qualified commander.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan tried to force Shatner into
maturity, giving him granny glasses, an ex-wife, and a grown son;
but all these attributes of age were contemptuously tossed away in
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and he briefly recaptured
his old cockiness and air of command in the wonderful Star Trek
IV: The Voyage Home, by far the best film in the series. But ambivalence
returned in Shatner's ineptly directed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,
which uneasily returned to the themes of growing old and dying, and
in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which offered criticisms
of Kirk's stubbornly adolescent amorous impulses. Then, in what one
hopes is his final appearance in the role, Star Trek: Generations
reflected the same conflict by presenting a Kirk in happy retirement
who is implausibly prodded back into action by the decidedly non-adolescent
Patrick STEWART.
Outside
of Star Trek, Shatner has had a long and active career, with uneven
results. He was superb in the Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000
Feet" as the man who sees a gremlin on the airplane wing (far better than John
LITHGOW in the movie remake of the episode), effective in a weaker script for The
Outer Limits, and appropriately sensitive in the television movie The
People. Also, in his major film appearance between the Star Trek
series and the Star Trek films, Kingdom of the Spiders, he was
flawless in a routinely heroic role. But his short-lived series Barbary
Coast indicated just how limited his personal appeal could be, and his
brief role in Airplane II: The Sequel indicated that, unlike the other
television performers in that film and its predecessor, Shatner had no gift for
self-parody. He went on to produce a television miniseries based on his TekWar
novels (featuring Shatner in a supporting role), which seem to derive more from
his experience in the routine cop series T. J. Hooker than anything he
learned from Star Trek. Overall, TekWar was an odd combination of
strengths and weaknesses, something like cyberpunk as envisioned by Gerry
ANDERSON—suggesting that, while Shatner perfectly understood the character of
Captain Kirk, he does not understand science fiction nearly as well.
In
recent years, while writing two memoirs and Star Trek novels, Shatner
earned a steady income displaying his compassion, and expanding waistline, as
the host of the documentary series Rescue 911. Yet a recent series of
self-mocking television commercials, a recurring role in the comedy series Third
Rock from the Sun, and an almost affecting appearance as himself in the
film Free Enterprise, suggest that Shatner may finally be mellowing into
what he should have been a decade ago—a genuinely persuasive father figure
for a new generation of science fiction filmmakers.
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