Takei's Claims About Shatner

I guess I meant in terms of equal screen time.

Is it one of the few episodes we get the whole post-Rand team? Chapel and even Kyle are in it.

 

"Monstrous behavior" that snide gives the impression Bill Cosby was allegedly violating school girls and innocent Christian women. Working in the bowels of Hollywood, actors, filmmakers ESPECIALLY upstarts, there's a certain tone of crazy which is quite alarming for me. The method to attract and put oneself out there is self inflicting and entices them within BOTH parties to do some disturbing things to each other. For the means to those sacrifices is a tough one especially when one of them didn't get what they wanted after the affairs.

It's really ugly in this environment and it is still going on and allegedly Cosby and convicted Weinstein are not even the worst, if you could imagine THAT, they're prominent faces I know, who are on TV, who are considered "GOOD" in Hollywood and viewers and fans just - don't - have - a fucking clue what they are at parties and vistas. The upstarts, Men and Women, VERY WELL knows the stakes going into the tigers' lair but cry me a river when it didn't go their way. Which is why I'm so relieved I work in the business in San Francisco; it's less Sodom and Gomorrah up here than in Los Angeles and Orange County.

 

I can't have The Green Berets and a thread about Shatner going on without The Mute Marine.

 

Help me understand what you mean here. Are you saying I'm downplaying? Or over-selling? He was accused of sexual assault going back to the mid-60's. The charges sound plenty monstrous to me.... Does it matter how innocent or not these women were? Roofies are roofies, no matter whose drink you drop them into.

He was found guilty until the conviction was overturned due to technicalities. He wasn't found innocent or acquitted, merely released from prison.

 

I remember when this aired, I saw the opening and felt it was a huge waste of Shatner to kick off his hosting of SNL with this skit. Literally any guest could have done it.

Thankfully, The Restaurant Enterprise was worth the wait.

 

Sorry but getting to the point where you routinely drug to unconsciousness and then rape women for decades is indeed to me monstrous Behavior; and that's exactly what he engaged in by his own admission. The only reason he got off the way he did quit because to get said admission, the attorney general made a deal where he would not be prosecuted for what he admitted to. That doesn't make his behavior any less monstrous.

 

He was charged and prosecuted from an admission from his civil trial, everything else is from other accusers are alleged. Doesn't make it true for every person who accuses the accused, but from the bowels of the industry there were behaviors I'd seen from upstarts and personalities which were indecent and with the substances they're using its impossible for me to think either side could remember what happened. Best to earn these positions the right way instead of doing things which one could deeply regret. I don't believe those women.

 

More than anecdotal evidence; we have first-hand accounts, including from Harlan Ellison. (Who had more than his own share of jackholery, but still.)

Ellison recounted stories of Shatner coming to his house to count lines before the script had even been turned in.

 

Ellison was also known to tell a tale or two if he thought it would be fun. Not exactly the most reliable source, unfortunately.

 

Yeah, but it certainly tracks with what others have said. And Shatner himself has acknowledged that he wasn't exactly above "reassigning" other actors' dialog to himself.

I mean, he is what he is. Or at least he was what he was. No particular judgment on it.

 

...and its well-known pre-TOS Shatner was an up-an-coming, well-regarded stage actor who moved to TV (like so many stage and movie actors of that era) and was in demand. All one needs to do is look at the kind of series an specials he guest-starred on to know what kind of actor he was / how he was considered in the industry.

Of course, you mention his post-TOS credits (and as noted upthread, The Andersonville Trial, among numerous examples of his talents in-between TOS and the ST movies), and Takei?

As much as he haunted the convention circuit spinning a tale of how important he was to TOS (and there's that extended propaganda film with dimwitted John Wayne), it did not show Takei to be some strong talent. Because....he was not.

Indeed.

 

M'Benga appeared twice.

 

M'Benga was only in A Private Little War and That Which Survives, I thought.

 

I seriously want to know if Shatner did any serious drama after TOS. I don't regard TJ Hooker as serious drama. I think its a shame if he didn't.
Can some of Takei's lack of star roles have something to do with the colour of his skin? Yes Asian Drug Lord, Kung Fu expert, what else?

Has even Shatner joined the bunch of liars who said he was line stealing?

For all we know if Shatner did steals some lines and all those people weren't lying. Maybe he was right and the episodes turned out better. I don't know what lines he could have stolen in COTEOF though. Perhaps he wanted Kirk to create the time-viewing device. But can you image if you were the day player and you didn't come in on Friday because Kirk was suddenly an engineering expert? Yes its OK for us but less pay for the guest star or other day player.

 

I'm sure one will find a way to inject one, either in one of the 80,000 novels over the decades or the most burning question of all time will be resolved in yet-another-piggybacking-prequel?

 

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000638/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Offhand, I can think of The Tenth Level, a 1975 fictionalized version of the Stanley Milgram psychological experiments.

 

One could compare the shooting scripts to the episodes and test this idea that Shatner stole lines. Remember, there were claims that the Uhura, "Sorry, neither," line was ad libbed but it's right there in the script. It's certainly possible and likely Shatner's feedback on scripts resulted in changes, but on the set as-claimed is another matter.

 

I'd expect to see Kirk's lines in the final drafts, which would be tighter and more to the point than earlier pages with supporting lines all over the place. And Shatner surely had input.

But I also figure TV producers at large, and Roddenberry in particular, would give themselves the path of least resistance when somebody complained about losing dialogue. Don't be the bad guy, take responsibility, and put supporting actors in their place. Commiserate with the Takeis and Nichols of this world, share their feelings. Put all the blame on the star, even if his script notes accounted for fewer line cuts than your own work on the re-write. Because you quietly agree with the star that the stories should focus on him, and you really don't care if people blame him more than he deserves.

And incidentally, if you want Nichols to keep doing the naked-under-your-desk routine, she had just better blame somebody else for all her complaints. And you can't carry that off if Takei and Koenig know the truth, so you have to lie to them about Bill, too.

One lie leads to another, like the time GR told Majel that NBC refused to have a woman as second in command, but he had fought valiantly for women's representation. And then he had to tell convention goers that story about NBC because Majel was letting it out, and she mustn't find out it was bullcrap. And then whaddaya know, GR is a feminist hero. Life is funny like that.

 

^^^
Here's the thing, (and Walter Koenig has confirmed this in many interviews about the situation himself); at the time on the set, none of the day players complained anyone. All of this stuff said about Shatner was complaints that started on the Star Trek convention circuit. And even Walter Koenig admitted that that was on him and the other actors. TV production in the sixties was such that they all felt they had no recourse to complain if they wanted to keep their jobs.

William Windom (who played Commodore Decker in TOS S2 "The Doomsday Machine), as stated in numerous interviews that BOTH William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were 'counting lines' in the script, and trying to make sure that neither one of them had way less lines than the other.

(And remember that during the three-season TOS production period, for a time Nichelle Nichols had an affair and was sleeping with Gene Roddenberry himself, but even during that period she never complained about the supposed William Shatner situation.)

So yeah, while I'm not saying this situation didn't occur, it's clear that if any of the day players felt short-changed with regard to their parts in various scripts; they never made that known to anyone on the TOS production staff at the time.