NEW STAR TREK MOVIE?

Stardate 2009: you must be kidding. A new Star Trek movie? C'mon now! There is only one Star Trek--and it was filled with rubber-headed monsters and space hippies and terrible wooden dialog. The Shat read his lines like a Shakespearean ham performing Lear at the community theater. All he needed were a few cloves stuck in his cheeks and a nice honey glaze. I'm not a loyal Trekkie by any means, but that's the Trek I know and love--kid stuff for kids--not these high-tech, CGI-fueled mini-operas and morality tales. Give me the original, anyday--replete with cheap special effects--and we can have a laugh over beer and Cool Ranch Doritos.

The original Captain Kirk battles a rubber-headed monster on the Planet of Cheap Special Effects.

The old crew before the franchise went into warp.

The new movie? I heard it was great. Haven't seen it. They've updated the story for modern day viewers, which sounds weird to me. Anyway, the Enterprise is caught in a downwardly spiraling economy and a Romulan efficiency expert is beamed aboard to clear things up. After a devastating flurry of buzzwords, the e.e. lays off most of the crew and outsources their jobs to a slave planet. The film ends with the "enterprising" crew searching the far reaches of the galaxy for work.


The original series didn't shy away from social comment: space hippies on "The Way to Eden."

WILLIAM SHATNER, RENAISSANCE MAN

William Shatner cannot be killed. He has nine lives. Not only is he an actor (Star Trek, Twilight Zone, T.J. Hooker, Boston Legal), a director (Star Trek the Movie), a writer (Star Trek books, with Judith and Garfield Reese-Stevens), and a pitchman and shill (countless commercials), he can also sing like a nightingale.

Well, not really. You could say The Shat is a "song stylist." His interpretations are so bad they're good--and then bad again. When he met Mr. Tambourine Man he didn't just ask for a song, he pistol-whipped the perp like T. J. Hooker on cranky pills.

Here Shatner performs the Pulp song "Common People" with the help of Joe Jackson and Ben Folds.

Of course, we can't resist re-posting his surreal "interpretation" of the Elton John classic "Rocket Man." This is cool. In fact, it's cold as hell.

Who said there are no second acts in American lives? That's right. Too bad Fitzgerald never met William Shatner.

WILLIAM SHATNER, ROCKET MAN

There is no one who "interprets" a song like William Shatner. Friends tell me he's in on the joke, and the pompous, overwrought, pseudo-Shakespearean reading of lines is part of the gag, but I'm not so sure. Still, something fascinates us about the Shat. He's way out there, in his own universe.

This week the Dalai Lama visits the west coast, and Pope Benedict visits the east coast, so for a few golden days the country will be a holy man sandwich.

In such cosmic times, who else can we turn to for the galactic perspective, other than Captain Kirk himself? On a rocket, no less? Stuffed into a tuxedo, puffing a cigarette like an exhausted guest at a wedding reception, Shatner serves as a reminder that not all sentient beings have escaped human suffering or transcended the ego. He is the common man, weary, buffeted by fate, clinging against all odds to his delusions of grandeur. He is you and me. He is Shatner.