Customer Reviews

Captain Quirk/the Unauthorized Biography of William Shatner

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I think anyone who has read this book from cover to cover will find it to be a moving portrayal of a fascinating man. I'm no Trekker and I do not worship Shatner like a lot of people, but I feel I understand him much better now. The author worked with him and interviewed the entire cast and crew of Star Trek and TJ Hooker. I am not so naive to think that celebrities never realize the politics of show business after their run-ins with fellow actors and deny anything really happened. I heartily recommend this book -- but only for people who don't give a damn about Star Trek and want to read an in-depth and multifaceted biography of a modern icon. After reading this book I have come to see the human side of Shatner and the tragedies and disappointments of his life.

This is a must for any Star Trek fan. It is a completely unauthorized biography of William Shatner, or "Captain Quirk," as the camera crew called him behind his back. Here are the elements of Shatner's career we've all been hearing about: the arrogance, the humanity, the overacting, the fine acting, the hairpiece. To be fair, William Shatner does not get to tell his side of the story, so this book has to be judged in that light. Yet only an unauthorized bio could have such pithy quotes from George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and Jimmy Doohan about Shatner's line-stealing, scene-cutting, and personal abrasiveness. Another advantage of an unauthorized bio is it praises Shatner in ways a personal account might not have. Did you know that for his early stage work, one critic said Shatner would be the next Olivier? And how about that black and white movie in which Shatner spoke only in Esperanto, which stunned the critics? And, as the book points out, some of his Star Trek work is undeniably brilliant. All in all, this is a well-rounded biography, covering Shatner's early work, the Star Trek series, his down-on-his-luck times after the series, the Star Trek movies, and his more recent successes. This is all interwoven with his personal life, making for an interesting, if complicated, portrait.

Instead of focusing on Shatner's life and being a true "autobiography", all this book does is tell us all the bad things he has done. And you know what? Most of them aren't even true. Want an example? Ok, here's one: This book claims that Shatner had a fight with Marina Sirtis(Counselor Troi)and got most of her scenes cut from Star Trek Generations. Without taking into account the fact that this would be totally and completely IMPOSSIBLE for an actor to do,let me tell you what Marina said about it in an interview in Star Trek Communicator. She said "This whole thing that appeared in the tabloids about us having a fight wasn't true. I didn't even see Shatner once during the filming of the movie." So there you have it. That is just one of the many lies I discovered in this book. Of course, what do you expect when the back of this book lists tabloids like "Star" as one of its sources for information?

Then faint damnation must be praise. Although written with marginal competence (the arguments are often specious and/or circuitous), this attempted hatchet job at the (in)famous pop culture icon actually reveals an intelligent, thoughtful, and thoroughly (self)tormented individual who tried to be the next Olivier but happened to wind up as a national punchline instead. How must the man feel? That it is a question of any importance to me actually gives Captain Quirk some value, which it would not ordinarily achieve from either a journalistic or literary point of view.