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Evidence That William Shatner Was Really Quite Good
Forty years after Star Trek left the air, James T. Kirk remains one of the most recognizable characters in television history—and also one of the most parodied, thanks in large part to William Shatner’s idiosyncratic acting style. The actor’s delivery, full of syncopated stops and starts, with a tendency toward bombast, practically begs for mimicry, and it’s certainly received it. Everyone from John Belushi to Jim Carrey to even Shatner himself has taken a swipe at Kirk, not to mention countless impressionists and stand-up comics.
Yet no actor ever inhabited a character more fully. Shatner simply is Captain Kirk; the two seem to have merged on some Zen-like metaphysical plain. Even though Chris Pine took over the role in director J. J. Abrams’s 2009 Star Trek feature film, Shatner remains fixed in the public mind as Kirk. Maybe that’s because Shatner identified so strongly with the captain. “Kirk was, for the most part, me,” Shatner wrote in Star Trek Memories. “An idealized version of me, certainly, but one that nonetheless sprang rather readily from my own inner workings.” As a result, even though he was classically trained, Shatner played the role “almost totally on instinct.” And for the most part, despite all the ribbing his work has taken over the years, Shatner’s instincts were sound.
Shatner cozies up with guest star Joan Collins in this publicity still from “The City on the Edge of Forever.”
Captain Kirk is best remembered for stirring speeches, bruising fistfights, and his smooth moves with the ladies, all of which Shatner handled expertly. But the actor brought greater nuance and subtlety to the part than is widely recognized, and could be very effective in quiet, introspective scenes. He also displayed a deft touch with comedy—a gift that, in the 1990s, gave his career a wildly successful second act. During the 1960s, however, Shatner’s talent remained underappreciated. This was in part because the actor was prone to periodic excesses. In episodes such as “The Paradise Syndrome” (as the amnesia-stricken “Kirok”), he soared stratospherically—and, it must be granted, highly entertainingly—over the top. Unfortunately, critics, historians, and even many fans seem to remember only his furious over-emoting and forget Shatner’s fine work in most other episodes. Yet, scattered throughout Star Trek’s original seventy-nine adventures there are many reminders, shining moments that reveal the full breadth and depth of the actor’s underestimated abilities.
The Death of Edith Keeler
One reason why “The City on the Edge of Forever” is widely considered the single best Star Trek episode is that it contains Shatner’s single best performance as Captain Kirk. The teleplay, credited to Harlan Ellison but rewritten by virtually the entire Trek writing staff, gives Shatner a chance to play everything he plays well: heroism, as he dashes through the Guardian of Forever to save Dr. McCoy (and the rest of the galaxy as we know it); comedy, as Kirk and Spock try to fit in with New Yorkers of the 1930s (“My friend is obviously Chinese … he caught his head in a mechanical rice-picker”); and romance, as Kirk falls for the strong-willed but gentle-hearted Edith Keeler (Joan Collins). Throughout the episode, Shatner works in a lower register than usual, illuminating Kirk’s thoughts and feelings mainly through facial expressions and body language. Kirk informs Spock, “I believe I’m in love with Edith Keeler.” But we already know this; it’s written on Shatner’s face in a previous scene, when Kirk looks longingly at Keeler as she confronts Spock for stealing a jeweler’s tool kit.
The story’s shattering climax remains perhaps Star Trek’s single most famous scene. To prevent the Nazi conquest of Earth, Kirk stops McCoy from rescuing Keeler from a fatal auto accident. Shatner grabs DeForest Kelley and clings to him, eyes slammed shut, flinching at the sound of screeching tires. Shatner’s expression makes clear that the captain is not only restraining McCoy, but also leaning on his friend for support. Kirk looks as if he might collapse with anguish. Screenwriter Harlan Ellison wanted a different approach to this scene—with the coolly logical Spock preventing the love-struck Kirk from saving Keeler—but Shatner’s pitch-perfect approach to this moment is what gives “The City on the Edge of Forever” its staggering emotional power. The actor is also quietly effective in the episode’s wrap-up. No jokey banter this time; Kirk, looking shaken, simply orders “Get us the hell out of here.” Shatner delivers the line with a forty-yard stare and a catch in his throat. It’s the perfect ending, one Herb Solow and Gene Roddenberry fought NBC’s Standards and Practices Department to keep. (The network’s censors objected to the word “hell.”) Laughs, tears, adventure, romance—“The City on the Edge of Forever” has it all, but none of it would work without Shatner’s masterful performance.
Kirk Battles the Gorn
Kirk’s epic struggle with the Gorn in “Arena” remains one of the series’ most famous moments—and one of Shatner’s best sequences.
Captain Kirk found his way into plenty of fights over the years, brawling with foes (and sometimes friends) both human and alien in dozens of episodes, but he was never in a scrap quite like his epic battle with the reptilian Gorn in “Arena.” This clash, which consumes nearly half the episode’s running time, is the stuff of legend—not only among viewers but also, apparently, within the mythology of the franchise. When Captain Sisko and members of his crew travel into the past in the Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations,” Sisko yearns to ask Kirk about “fighting the Gorn on Cestus III.”
In much more obvious ways than “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “Arena” is built entirely around Shatner. He’s on-screen almost constantly, assigned the most grueling physical action ever included in any Trek teleplay. Even before the fierce contest with the Gorn begins, Kirk and his landing party are caught in a deadly skirmish with the as-yet unseen enemy. Throughout this sequence, Shatner remains in near-constant motion, running, diving, and dodging explosions. Even though Shatner was doubled for some of these shots, Kirk’s battered, weary appearance toward the end of this adventure probably required no acting at all. However, it’s important to remember that Kirk’s struggle is not just a physical one; ultimately, he triumphs through brain rather than brawn. Kirk, limping over rocks and dunes, tries to figure out how to cobble together a weapon capable of defeating his bigger, stronger adversary. The knowledge is there, if he can set aside his fear and repulsion of the Gorn, and the waves of pain and exhaustion gripping his body, to concentrate. Shatner’s convincing facial expressions and expressive body language illuminate the mental aspect of the conflict. The actor’s work here is even more impressive since he has very little dialogue and no one other than the stuntman in the Gorn suit to play against. The weight of the entire narrative rests on his shoulders.
Not coincidentally, both “The City on the Edge of Forever” and “Arena” were directed by Joseph Pevney, who had a knack for eliciting outstanding performances. Pevney oversaw fourteen Trek episodes (more than any director except Marc Daniels), also including “The Devil in the Dark,” “Amok Time,” “Journey to Babel” and “The Trouble with Tribbles,” all of which contain excellent performances by Shatner or Leonard Nimoy or both, and often fine work by the supporting cast as well. Between “City” and “Arena,” Pevney helped Shatner deliver a matched set of performances that demonstrate the full range of his talents.
Kirk Battles Kirk
The Gorn was tough, but Captain Kirk’s most difficult adversary was undoubtedly—himself. In the classic adventure “The Enemy Within,” a transporter malfunction splits the captain into two Kirks, one compassionate but indecisive, the other ruthless and impulsive. This is another yarn constructed around Shatner, whose Jekyll-and-Hyde-like portrayal serves as a nearly ideal single-episode summary of the actor’s abilities. As the Good Kirk, Shatner is quiet and introspective. When the character’s willpower and decision-making ability begin to wane, Shatner slumps his shoulders and nearly mumbles his lines. As the Evil Kirk, he prowls the decks of the Enterprise like a hungry tiger just escaped from the circus. Swilling Saurian Brandy from the bottle and leering at Grace Lee Whitney’s Yeoman Rand, Shatner radiates menace. Sometimes (especially in close-up) his Evil Kirk comes perilously close to camp, but the actor delineates the two characters distinctly. Even when the two are dressed identically and seen side by side, it is not difficult for viewers to discern which Kirk is which. That may seem simple, but many talented performers have struggled in similar dual roles. (The great Spencer Tracy famously became irked during the filming of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1941] when a visitor to the set asked, “Which one is he playing now?”) The one flaw that makes “The Enemy Within” a less than perfect summary of Shatner’s talents is that it’s an unusually humorless episode, providing no opportunity for the actor to display his comedic gifts. Otherwise, at least for Shatner, this one’s as good as it gets. Even James Doohan, who seldom found a kind word for his former captain, was forced to acknowledge in his 1996 autobiography Beam Me Up, Scotty that “I thought Bill’s performance was pretty OK in that one.”
“Risk Is Our Business!”
“Return to Tomorrow” is a far weaker episode than “The Enemy Within” (or for that matter “The City on the Edge of Forever” or “Arena”), but it contains a single golden moment that remains burned into the memories of many fans. The Enterprise discovers an ancient, long-dead world where the final survivors of a race of superadvanced beings linger on, their minds preserved in glowing spherical receptacles. Sargon, the leader of the aliens, asks the humans to trade places with them temporarily, so they can build android bodies and regain corporeal form. In exchange, Sargon pledges to share fantastic technical and medical advances with the humans. It’s a dangerous proposition, so Kirk gathers his inner circle—Spock, McCoy, and Scotty—along with Dr. Ann Mulhall (Diana Muldaur) in the briefing room to discuss the idea. McCoy and Scotty are resistant, but Kirk allays their concerns with a stirring speech that encapsulates the nature and importance of the ship’s five-year mission, and also reflects the soaring, humanist vision of Star Trek. It concludes with the following assertion:
Risk? Risk is our business! That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.
As Shatner delivers these lines, director Ralph Senesky slowly dollies in tighter and tighter on the actor’s face, and Alexander Courage’s Star Trek title theme swells in the background. “Return to Tomorrow” isn’t a great episode. And when you look at the full speech on paper, rife with clichés and mixed metaphors, it’s not great oratory, either. But Shatner sells it beautifully. His passionate, starry-eyed delivery makes the material seem great. He transforms what could have been a throwaway sequence into the ultimate expression of Captain Kirk’s leader-of-men charisma. After this, no one ever wondered (if they ever wondered before) why Kirk’s crew seemed so loyal; they would willingly fly into a supernova for their captain. And audiences would willingly come along for the ride.
Introducing Fizzbin
The entire cast (and most fans) enjoyed Star Trek’s occasional voyages into comedy. The enduring popularity of “The Trouble with Tribbles” notwithstanding, “A Piece of the Action” remains the show’s single funniest episode. In this installment—based on an idea originating with Roddenberry’s initial, 1964 outline for the series—the Enterprise travels to Sigma Iota II, a backwater world that has been corrupted by pre-Prime Directive contact with human beings. The planet has developed a culture emulating Chicago gangs of the 1920s, based on a history book left behind by the crew of the starship Horizon 100 years earlier. Now Kirk, Spock, and McCoy (bedecked in pinstriped suits, toting tommy guns and attempting to drive a “flivver”) find themselves embroiled in a turf war between rival crime bosses. Somehow, they must undo the cultural damage and set the Iotians on a less self-destructive course.
Shatner clearly had a blast making this episode, which brings his comedic flair to the forefront. In one side-splitting scene, Kirk distracts the guards holding the landing party captive by introducing a card game called Fizzbin. The rules, which Kirk is clearly making up as he goes along, are ridiculously convoluted: “You’ve got two Jacks; you’ve got a half-Fizzbin already. … (But) if you get another Jack, why, you’d have a Shrum and then you’d be disqualified. Now what you need is a King and a Deuce. Except at night, when you’d need a Queen and a Four.” Shatner’s deadpan delivery of this asinine double-talk is priceless. Later, unable to connect with the aliens any other way, Kirk begins to speak and act like a refugee from a Jimmy Cagney gangster flick, adopting a Brooklynese accent (even pronouncing the captain’s name “Koik”) and employing archaic slang. “I’m getting’ tired of playin’ patty-cake wit choo penny-ante operators,” Shatner sneers. “Spocko, cover ’im!” Along with the Fizzbin lesson, this interlude never fails to inspire gales of laughter, even among viewers who have seen the episode many times before.
Three decades later, Shatner earned a string of Emmy and Golden Globe nominations (winning both awards in 2005) for his comedic performance as unscrupulous yet endearing attorney Denny Crane on Boston Legal. But he was never funnier than in “A Piece of the Action.”
Outmaneuvering the Romulans
In “Balance of Terror,” Shatner delivered another powerful, low-key performance. The episode is dotted with superb moments for the actor. In this adventure, designed to emulate sub-hunting World War II movies such as The Enemy Below (1957) and Run Silent, Run Deep (1955)—the Enterprise battles the cloaked flagship of the Romulan Empire, which wipes out a handful of UFP outposts along the edge of the Neutral Zone separating Federation and Romulan space. Most of the story is devoted to a protracted cat-and-mouse struggle between the Enterprise and the Romulan “war bird”—or, more precisely, between Captain Kirk and the unnamed Romulan commander played by Mark Lenard. Shatner is quietly effective merely sitting in the captain’s chair and looking pensive, as Kirk tries to outguess the wily Romulan. The two leaders grow to respect and admire one another as the battle unfolds. No single episode better depicts Kirk’s leadership, both military and moral. In one of the story’s unforgettable moments, navigator Stiles (Paul Comi) becomes suspicious of Spock when the Romulans are revealed to have Vulcan-like features. “Leave any bigotry in your quarters, there’s no room for it on the bridge,” Kirk snaps. Shatner’s authoritative, dead-serious delivery lends the material the gravitas dictated by the script. (Perhaps he was inspired by Lenard’s equally impressive work as the Romulan commander.) Written by Paul Scheider, this is one of the last episodes in which Kirk is depicted as a brooding commander plagued by self-doubts, in the tradition of C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower. While this runs counter to Shatner’s usual swashbuckling, devil-may-care approach to his role, it’s appropriate given the magnitude of the scenario: Kirk’s actions could ignite an interstellar war that would cost millions of lives. Shatner also brings a feathery touch to the story’s downbeat wrap-up, in which Kirk attempts to comfort a young officer whose fiancé was killed in the attack—on what was supposed to be the couple’s wedding day. “It never makes any sense,” Kirk says simply. Shatner’s quiet brilliance here, and throughout, help make “Balance of Terror” one of Star Trek’s most gripping and emotionally resonant adventures.
Outwitting NOMAD
“The Changeling” features a more typically Shatnerian Captain Kirk, this time pitted against NOMAD, an Earth space probe that has mutated into a deadly mechanical menace bent on “sterilizing” (that is, killing) all imperfect “biological units” (which means everybody). Ultimately, Kirk turns NOMAD’s implacable logic against itself, pointing out that the probe has also made several errors (including mistaking Kirk for its creator) and demanding that it carry out its primary function to destroy imperfection—beginning with itself. With a gleam in his eye and his trademark hesitation delivery, Shatner goads NOMAD: “You are flawed—and imperfect. Exercise your prime function!” He’s in fine fettle from the start, but his winning work here creates one of Kirk’s signature moments. Shatner’s comic timing reemerges for the story’s amusing wrap-up, in which Kirk jokes about the loss of his “son,” NOMAD. “What a doctor he would have made!” Shatner bemoans with mock sorrow.
“The Changeling” was one of five episodes in which Kirk basically talked a robot or a computer into committing suicide. He used the same strategy in “The Return of Archons,” “I, Mudd,” “The Ultimate Computer,” and “What Are Little Girls Made Of?.” Shatner always shined during these confrontations, brimming with confidence and good humor, suggesting that Kirk got a special kick out of outsmarting computers. In the end, that quality—the sense of fun and adventure—was the element Star Trek most needed from Shatner. With or without him, the show would have offered high-quality, adult-oriented science fiction and tackled hot-button social issues through the lens of fantasy. But Shatner’s effervescent presence as Kirk enabled Trek to do those things and seem fun at the same time. Episodes like “Balance of Terror” work so well because they exist in contrast to the series’ typically lighter-hearted adventures. That’s why, even at his most indulgent, Shatner’s work remains essential to the appeal of the program.