The Towering, Small-Screen, Soft-Focus Genius of William Shatner
Captain Kirk turns 94
On the occasion of the Canadian-American actor and sub-orbital astronaut William Shatner’s 94th birthday, I’d like to offer this appreciation of the Big Giant Head’s underrated genius, from an essay I wrote for Salon in 2003 (‘Captain Kirk’s Bulging Trousers’):
It was Shatner’s Kirk, with all his magnificent flaws and vanities, who made Star Trek more th…