Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Son of Kirk
William Shatner has said he’s the luckiest man on Earth, and who could possibly disagree with him? Notice that he said “man” and not “human”. He’s obviously not as lucky as those women who can have 12 orgasms in a minute. Nevertheless, he is justly proud of his many achievements and good deeds.
“I've got a beautiful wife, three beautiful children and I've raised a large amount of money for charity,” he declared.
Now, there are some trekkies who think Picard was a better captain than Kirk. I don’t agree with them. Picard was an uptight character who never let his hair down in front of the crew, whereas Kirk was a cool dude who could horse around and flirt with the alien chicks. This made him a better ambassador for humanity than Picard, because no one wants to make friends with a goody-two-shoes species that hides all its vices and doesn’t know how to have fun. Picard was good for signing treaties after Kirk had pressed the flesh.
So why am I talking about William Shatner? I’ll tell you why! A 59-year-old man called Peter Sloan, who claims to be Shatner’s illegitimate son, is suing his alleged father for $170 million. What he has done to merit such a sum is a mystery to me. His mother put him up for adoption at the age of five, and his foster parents did a perfectly good job of raising him. Maybe they would be entitled to ask Shatner to recompense them for their time and trouble, but Sloan’s demand for cash is pure brazen audacity.
You could argue, of course, that Shatner should have done the decent thing and raised the boy in his own home. That would be ignoring the reaction of Mrs Shatner, who might well have sued for divorce on discovering her husband had fathered a bastard son. It’s a foolish captain who causes his ship to capsize by taking on an extra cabin boy.
Much as I’m rooting for Shatner in this dispute, one aspect of his strategy does worry me: he is denying paternity out of hand. His publicist made the following statement on his behalf:
“Mr Shatner has three lovely daughters, but no sons ... Mr Shatner is aware of the lawsuit, but there's nothing there because he isn't his father.”
Sloan insists that Shatner admitted to being his father in private and now wants a DNA test to settle the matter. At the age of 85, Shatner might be playing for time in the belief that he’ll be dead before the court orders him to comply. I would have preferred to see him acknowledge his son, while condemning him for his greed and unwarranted sense of entitlement.
Of course, this lawsuit could only arise because American courts have got a reputation for giving people large sums of money for no good reason. As we say in the Congo, if you feed one crocodile, be prepared to feed ten the next time.
Labels: Kirk, lawsuit, lawsuits, Picard, Star Trek, William Shatner
Monday, June 15, 2009
To baldly go...
A character called Dr Lewis Dartnell is claiming that space travel makes you bald, fat and ugly. I know a coded insult aimed at William Shatner when I see one. The rumour that Captain Kirk wore a wig is absolutely false – it would have had to be glued to his scalp to stay on during all the fisticuffs and jujitsu he did with recalcitrant aliens. The colour match with his eyebrows was also too exact for the dyes of that era.
There is no evidence whatever that space travel causes hair loss. The Apollo astronauts were at least as hairy during splashdown as they were during lift-off. (They were much less hairy than the space chimps, of course, but that is comparing apples with pears). I’d like to know whether the newspaper that quoted Dr Dartnell checked his credentials first. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were one of those bogus doctors who go into practice to fondle women’s breasts. In any event, the phoney pundit will probably now be deluged with hate mail from outraged trekkers. And it will serve him right.
Now Captain Picard was as bald as an egg, but that doesn’t prove anything because he was slim and handsome rather than fat and ugly. The Next Generation, it must be admitted, was superior to The Original Series in almost every particular. Picard had more gravitas than Kirk, Data out-spocked Spock, and there were two leading ladies in skin-tight lycra costumes rather than the token Miss Uhura with a gizmo stuck in her ear. The surest way of getting a friendly debate going amongst a group of men is to ask them whether they’d rather ravish Beverly Crusher or Deanna Troi. There are always strong preferences for one or the other, although the manager of the safari camp once declared that he “wouldn’t touch either of those prick teasers”.
Some humans foolishly believe that we gorillas empathise with the Klingons. Nothing could be further from the truth. As well as being prodigious meat-eaters (and presumably suffering from halitosis as a result) they are far too tense and irascible to be our kindred spirits. I feel particularly sorry for Worf, scowling away on the bridge while everyone else grooves to the pulse of the warp engines. If I were on the Enterprise, I’d try and get him to lighten up:
“Worfy baby,” I’d say, “you’ve got to lose the ‘fuck you’ attitude, which went out of fashion shortly after the death of Genghis Khan. Chill out in ‘Ten Forward’. Flirt with Whoopie Goldberg. Learn to play the guitar. Eat more fruit. That’s the way to make friends and influence people on a Federation star ship.”
But they’ll never top The Next Generation. A big part of its appeal lies in the depiction of a harmonious space community free of jealousy, intrigue and masturbation. There was no need for self-abuse on the Enterprise because of the holodeck, where the computer would generate fully functional surrogates capable of unlimited guilt-free coitus (and no risk of cooties). Instead of vainly trying to seduce Dr Crusher, a crewman could do his worst to her exact replica. How did Beverly feel about men using her simulacrum as a concubine? I don’t know, but I would hope she felt flattered.
Labels: baldness, Kirk, masturbation, Picard
