Canadian-born Shatner’s career can only be summed up by reference to the Queen lyrics he reads out (it would be wrong to say he actually sings them) in a recent advert for a travel agency: “is this the real life or is this just fantasy?” The utterly surreal nature of his glittering film, television and spoken word career has no bounds. It is almost Lynchian. You can practically imagine him as a character in Twin Peaks.
If you look at some of the great cult television programmes, he appears. He is there. Often for baffling reasons, or as a joke, but he is there nonetheless. The Twilight Zone. Star Trek. The Simpsons. Family Guy. He is ubiquitous in popular culture.
Generation upon generation has been reared on Shatner. My own first memory of him was less illustrious: his brief foray into Crunchie Nut adverts in the 2000s. But after that I saw him in films like Miss Congeniality, quirky legal dramas like Boston Legal, and eventually the second greatest episode of The Twilight Zone, the much-parodied ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’.
But, beyond Star Trek and his Hoff-like meme status in popular culture, he is also a published science fiction novelist, director and spoken-word behemoth. TekWar, his science fiction saga, has given rise to comics, video games and television adaptations. Who can forget his rendition of ‘Rocket Man’? Or ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’?
Seemingly no-one continues to make as many appearances on television as Shatner. He has hosted numerous awards ceremonies, comedy and panel shows, far beyond his native Canada and the United States. Saturday Night Live and Have I Got News For You are just two institutions where his appearance will be remembered. And for some, remembered in infamy.
To put it simply, there is only one William Shatner. And that is his biggest draw.
