TIME: "Top 10 Unforgettable William Shatner Moments"

[JamesG]

Top 10 Unforgettable William Shatner Moments
Tuesday - March 23, 2011


William Shatner — actor, comedian, pitchman, recording artist and author — turns 80 today. From Captain Kirk to an interpretive performance of "Common People," Shatner has had an accomplished and eccentric life.

TIME takes a look at some of his best moments:






10. Performing Sarah Palin's Speeches, Tweets







Sarah Palin's rambling resignation speech in July 2009 had many ready to write her off as an incoherent train wreck. But late-night television host Conan O'Brien wondered if the joke was actually on the naysayers.

Maybe, he suggested, Palin's made-up words and erratic delivery shouldn't be interpreted as mundane political speak, but as profound poetry.




To test his hypothesis, O'Brien invited William Shatner to deliver Palin's speech verbatim. The legendary actor didn't disappoint, peppering Palin's punches with mock seriousness and dramatic pauses.




The segment was a huge hit, and Shatner later returned to "The Tonight Show" to read her tweets as well as an excerpt from her autobiography, Going Rogue.











9. Shater the Rapper







The denouement of the 1999 comedy Free Enterprise features William Shatner, playing a darker, misguided version of himself, rapping a rendition of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

The film, which received decent reviews, is about two friends, Robert and Mark, who are both approaching 30 and looking for love. The pals, huge "Star Trek" and Star Wars fans, are ecstatic when they meet Shatner (who insists they call him Bill), their idol.




Well, Bill isn't all that he's cracked up to be — in fact, they meet him while he's perusing a smutty magazine — a fact that inspires the men to drop the hero obsession and pursue their life's desires.

The New York Times called the film a "slight, bright, clever romantic comedy."











8. An Interracial Kiss






On this episode of "Star Trek", Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura are among several Enterprise members who are lured to a planet inhabited by Platonians (named in honor of the Greek philosopher Plato).

The Platonians seem to possess telekinetic powers and use them to overpower Kirk and Uhura as well as Spock.



While under the Platonians' spell, Kirk and Uhura are forced to perform for the Platonians wearing Greek garb and are made to kiss — what is now popularly known as the first interracial kiss on television.

Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, said of the kiss, "It was originally written as being between Uhura and Spock. But Bill Shatner said 'Oh no! If anyone is going to get to kiss Nichelle, it's going to be me!' And so they rewrote it, and we all laughed about it."











7. Waking Up the Discovery Astronauts


On March 7, as NASA's Discovery space shuttle left the International Space Station for the last time, its astronauts received a surprise wake-up call from William Shatner, who greeted them with a prerecorded message styled after the original "Star Trek" theme.


"Space, the final frontier," Shatner's message began.

"These have been the voyages of the space shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: to seek out new science, to build new outposts, to bring nations together on the final frontier. To boldly go and do what no spacecraft has done before."











6. A Song for George Lucas






When director George Lucas received his American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 2005, William Shatner paid tribute to the Star Wars filmmaker, one intergalactic pioneer to another.

"Star Wars? I can do Star Wars," he pledged, held at gunpoint by some of Lucas' universally known creations.

With a microphone and a convincing, Stormtrooper-studded cancan number, Shatner honored Lucas with a performance of Frank Sinatra's 'My Way'.





Over the years, loyal fans have pitted the "Star Trek" and Star Wars franchises against one another in a battle for the ultimate space-fantasy bragging rights.

Still, in his signature charming effrontery, the former Captain Kirk serenaded the father of the lightsaber in a true-to-character spoken rendition of the tune.











5. 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet'






Before he took helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise in 1966, William Shatner appeared in one of the decade's other great sci-fi TV series: "The Twilight Zone".

The more memorable of his two appearances came in the episode 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet' (itself one of the series' most famous), in which he stars as a man on a flight menaced by a large destructive gremlin.




Directed by Richard Donner (who would later go on to helm the first Superman film and the Lethal Weapon movies), 'Nightmare' shows Shatner — playing a character recovering from a mental breakdown — at his jittery finest.

Though the distinctive verbal style that would later be so easily mockable pops up here, it is easily overshadowed by Shatner's sweaty performance.











4. An Interpretive Performance of 'Rocket Man'







If you haven't run across it yet, William Shatner's interpretation of Elton John's classic song is one of the most bizarre things you'll ever see.

In 1978, Shatner hosted the Science Fiction Film Awards show and performed 'Rocket Man' (partially because of his "Star Trek" fame), dramatically reciting the verses while puffing on a cigarette.



Halfway into the song, a second Shatner emerges, this time slightly more animated.

Then a third comes into view until they're all singing in unison.

Later, Shatner said he didn't think he'd be talking about the strange performance 30 years afterward.





But a few years ago it went semiviral.

"I feel badly about it because I never intended this song and some of those other things to see the light of day," Shatner said.











3. The Most Listless Fight Ever






Not long ago, in the same era when William Shatner's "Star Trek" first attracted its cult following, teenagers used to sit in basements and play make-believe fantasy role-playing games with funny multisided dice.

When in combat, their characters attacked and defended in turns — a haltingly slow simulation of real-time action.




Somehow, Shatner transported that energy into an episode of "Star Trek" in which he faces off against a bumbling lizard man.

The clash — titled the "Worst Fight Scene Ever" in the above YouTube clip, which has been viewed more than 9 million times — is an excruciating contest of grimaces and feeble jabs, each gesture more absurd than the one that preceded it.











2. Shatner Does 'Common People'






William Shatner's tongue-in-cheek spoken-word renditions of pop songs are so ridiculously bad that they're actually (dare we admit this?) good.

Take his cover of Pulp's 'Common People', off his 2004 album Has Been.




The Shatnerfied cover has guitar riffs, what sounds like dozens of backing vocalists and actual singing by British musician Joe Jackson. But then comes the theatrical powerhouse, shouting the lyrics over what would otherwise be an honest cover of the Britpop classic.

Also, we just love the idea of Shatner going to the supermarket and watching roaches climb the wall.











1. 'Khaaan!'






In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Captain Kirk's nemesis (one of the greatest movie villains of all time) comes to take revenge against Kirk for having left him for dead in exile on a barren planet.

Popular to this day, even by those who have never seen any other "Star Trek" episodes or films, Shatner's pitch-perfect exclamation of rage has found its way onto T-shirts, been made into an online loop animation, received Facebook fans and come to represent pissed-off people everywhere (even babies).

http://www.time.com/time/specials/pa...060704,00.html