Why Bill Shatner speaks the way he does

Alas, the mods will come along to drive a stake in its heart.

Don't be shocked when it happens.

 

Nah, it's been less than a year.

Shatner acted the way he did because he was trained to act on stage according to the common techniques of the time. This is a style that today's viewers may be unaccustomed to. There's nothing wrong with that.

Kor

 

Umm, the mods react as though a thread has "spoiled like milk" if there has not been a response as recently as 6 months.

Thus we have new threads readdressing the same bloody topics over and over and OVER AND OVER rather than containing them in a single thread!

 

The rules say a year. I took that at face value. Sorry to all if that wasn't meant to be literal!

 

I think some of the most detailed discussions, novel takes and interesting trivia comes from the discussion in old threads. I think the locking of old threads is a travesty, to be honest. The same organic discussions are not going to take place and build on each other, and no one wants to sit and repeat themselves or repeat old, oft spoken diatribes. IMO there is no positive in locking old threads. They will get buried farther and farther, regardless of their relevance or content.

 

I don't particularly want to slog through dozens of pages of a thread before I'm up to speed. I'd much rather threads get shut down and kept to a reasonable length. And besides, you can always link to an old thread if it contains something relevant.

 

Well, tbh, your complaint applies to lots of LIVE threads, as well..... *glances over at Axanar*..... .

 

I think Shatner was a pretty good, even excellent, actor when he wanted to be. There's a pretty strong correlation between episodes that are good and episodes in which Shatner gives a strong performance. In weaker episodes, I often don't enjoy his performance nearly as much. That could just be because I loved his portrayal of Kirk, so when he was turning in a good acting job, I was more likely to enjoy the episode. But I've also often suspected that if Shatner himself didn't like an episode, he didn't perform as well. And perhaps his and my tastes are similar. I don't know.

The worst Shatner acting moments I can think of off the top of my head in all of TOS are the two scenes where Kirk loses it in And the Children Shall Lead (in the Triacus cave and later on the bridge and in the turbolift) and the ridiculous scene in Return to Tomorrow in which Sargon first possesses Kirk and Shatner stumbles around saying, "Your captain has an excellent body, doctor," which is for my money one of the most preposterously funny-in-an-unintentional sense scenes in all of TOS. Maybe Shatner hated those episodes or at least those scenes. I certainly doubt he enjoyed the "anxious Kirk" scenes from ACSL, because his performance there is just simply embarrassing and absurd. On the other hand, I believe his favorite episode was Devil in the Dark, despite the fact that (IIRC) his father died mid-shoot. His acting in that episode is amazing.

Just a theory. Otherwise I agree with everyone else that as he became more comfortable in the role, he let more of his natural tendency as a ham (amply demonstrated in his post-TOS work, Trek and non) come through in his performances. And as many here have noted, TOS injected a lot of comedy and lightheartedness into the proceedings after the first season.

 

A friend and I recently watched "Return to Tomorrow" and "Obsession" back-to-back, and it is almost staggering how different Shatner's performance is in them.

 

I agree. Other than the utterly ludicrous "excellent body" scene in RTT and a few other moments here and there, his acting isn't too bad in the rest of it. I know a lot of fans dislike the "Risk Is Our Business" monologue, but I like it and I think Shatner delivers it well.

However, his performance in Obsession is top-shelf. Just superb. There's no hamminess or "overacting" whatsoever. I have a feeling he liked that episode a lot.

 

What I noticed about the "Kirk is anxious" scenes in And the Children Shall Lead and other episodes is Shatner's tendency to emphasize the 'shock of realization' moment with the crumpling of his body, his eyes going wide, and slapping one hand into the other just above his knees. I don't know where he got it from, but it always makes me smile.

 

Sadly I think the "Kirk is anxious" scenes could have been excellent, especially in the cave when the mystery/horror element was not yet known or revealed and he could have conveyed a subtle sense of being trapped that Spock would find abnormal, without making the whole thing just utterly cringeworthy. But then I believe that ACSL could have been a decent, maybe even good episode with a few changes like eliminating the masturbatory hand gestures with honking, Belli's shower curtain, the chant, and Scotty threatening to kill Kirk and Spock. Enh, sue me.

 

Shatner is playing Sargon in Kirk's body, so of course his performance is going to be different. I think he did a great job in both episodes. The big scene with "Your captain has an excellent body" was always one of my favorites. Shatner was great in that.

"Return to Tomorrow" is a very theatrical story, so he couldn't play it in a low-key, matter of fact naturalism. No real person has ever done these things; you can't just copy "real life" for getting possessed by Sargon!

 

Shatner never really got credit for adjusting his performances based on the quality of the scripts. In bad episodes he goes hog-wild, as if he will single-handedly save a terrible script through the sheer power of his scenery chewing. I'd say look at "Obsession" vs. "The Gamesters of Triskelion" for an even starker difference. Love him or hate him, he was always trying.

 

Exaggerated physical gestures in acting are often rooted in a theatrical rather than cinematic background (effectiveness and quality of the exaggeration varies of course). Less the case today (what with mics and projection screens a frequent presence in larger venues), actors of Shatner's generation were trained to project to the "cheap seats" (while those down front knew that such projection was to be expected). When working in film and television, such actors had to tone things down considerably--some were better than others. Even the good ones (and Shatner could be quite good) usually did their best work in the hands of a skilled director (or at least one who could override the actor's propensity for hamming it up--though even Kubrick could not entirely reign two giants (Olivier and Laughton) in Spartacus.) I have often suspected that Shatner's lesser performances, in Trek or elsewhere, owed as much to a lack of strong direction to his opinion of the script. This is true of MANY actors, but particularly of classically trained stage actors.

 

I wish there had been a "Kirk is anxious" scene in the movies.

Kor

 

OHHHHH that's very strange . . . but THAT'SME!!! THAT wouldn'tregisteronyourtricorder!