Mind Meld

"Each man hides a secret pain. Share yours with me."
— Lawrence Luckinbill in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (dir. William Shatner)

Douglas Adams and John Lloyd once defined an imaginary word, "Mauuruig," as "the inexpressible horror experienced on waking up in the morning and remembering that you are still Scotty on Star Trek." To wake up and find you are Captain Kirk must be bleaker still. Why does the whole world ridicule William Shatner?

"Because he can't act" is the explanation from your man on the street. Fifty percent of the time this is followed by an impromptu Captain Kirk impersonation, or rather an imitation of a comedian imitating Kirk, as if pausing in the middle of sentences explains everything. "A jealous god— Spock— if only we could— destroy the computer—"

This will not do. Take John Travolta, for example. He's not the most versatile actor in the world but even his worst atrocities haven't earned him anything like an Encyclopedia Shatnerica mocking every atom of his being. And the soap opera actors who took control of the USS Enterprise in the 1990s — where's their share of the derision? What exempts the performance of, say, Jonathan Frakes from the crushing standards to which we've held William Shatner, driving this man to film Priceline ads, host "Iron Chef" and wallow in the most mortifying depths of self-parody? Or does he do it to himself?

In his new home video release Mind Meld, Shatner invites himself over to Leonard Nimoy's house and tries to find out.

The DVD runs 75 minutes and also includes a "making of" featurette, implying the Shatner-Nimoy summit is the kind of media event so incredible that you would want to understand how it happened. The featurette calls the disc the first step in promoting a coming WilliamShatner.com website.

Wait, isn't there one already? Yes, but the new one will be different. Shatner, who used to play a guy that destroys tyrannical computers, wants to "colonize our community through a variety of interactive forums." Ominous.

Nimoy appears to be down for whatever as Shatner's vanity project kicks off in his backyard, revealing that he drove a taxi in this very same neighborhood ("No. Come on," Shatner says, with a glint of the old charm) where they sit.

"Look at this," Shatner says. "This is material success."

"Serenity," Nimoy adds. He has an easy, New Age grin, which, in the old days, was a sign that stoic Mr. Spock was insane on account of alien spores.

This video concludes with Shatner hugging the Spock actor and uttering, "I love you" and "You're my best friend," though you wonder if they really get together all that often and if Nimoy is secretly glad to get this over with.

Mind Meld plays like outtakes from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's cheesy campfire bonding sequence until you realize Nimoy has started discussing being drunk on the set in 1967.

Besides alcoholism, the other key topic is the pain of not being taken seriously. Nimoy relates how, after he told journalists Star Trek was a dignified show about science and big issues, a reporter visited the set just in time to see Nimoy reciting, "Captain, the monster attacked me."

The plight of Shatner and Nimoy is the plight of modern man. Well, not really, but it sure is crazy. They are barely able to come to grips with it. At the end of their careers, they have left American culture a legacy of two great characters. But their huge cult audience is of no comfort, because for the time being the rest of society unfairly views Trek as an Austin Powers joke.

Soundstage planets, scantily clad women and the earnest plots of Cold War sci-fi have been easy prey for a generation of stand-up comedians. Instead of finding dignity in having put in some genuinely moving performances (watch him again in The Search for Spock some time), Shatner mocked himself in movies like Generations. That's the one where Kirk — and this is a guy who stole the Enterprise and risked everything to save his friends and turn death into a fighting chance to live — falls off a bridge and dies a cheap death.

If someone told Shatner he should learn to joke about himself a little more, it was bad advice, because he has a terrible sense of humor (in Mind Meld he is still very proud of quipping "Get this man an aspirin!" after Nimoy yelled "Pain!" during filming). Today, like a child trying to laugh along with his bullies, Shatner makes an ass of himself.

Not that Shatner has Nimoy's self-knowledge. Puzzled by why the rest of the crew doesn't like him much, all he can think of is that during the Trek revival of the 1980s, "the cast members began to consider themselves leads in the film." Not naming James Doohan, etc., the two men allude to the "cast members" cooly, as if these people were alien specimens in the airlock.

I tracked down original cast member Walter Koenig, who had not heard Shatner's comment. Koenig played the hot-tempered Ensign Chekov, the Russian navigator, always quick to defend Kirk's honor.

"That's a self-explanatory statement," he said, "as unprofessional as it is ungrateful, and one that bespeaks his insensitivity and lack of awareness."

He was wearing a faded Star Trek VI crew jacket. He had with him a ponytailed gray wig. He had just played Scrooge in a production of A Christmas Carol in Thousand Oaks, an hour north of Los Angeles.

Also on the video, Nimoy muses about an unnamed cast member who didn't say goodnight to him (presumably under the misapprehension that he was a lead in Star Trek). Confronted about the incident the next day, the person blew up at him, saying, "And do you want to know why?"

Nimoy didn't want to know why (he says with the grin).

Koenig says that was him.

The oddest moment on Mind Meld is when the late DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy) gets overdue mention, in which he is damned by faint praise. He had a simple life, they say. And then Nimoy, who has lately described himself as the "consummate artist," murmurs: "It's not a life I would aspire to."

That green-blooded, inhuman son of a bitch, as the doctor might say. This must be his revenge for all those arguments he lost.

As for Shatner, it's hard to say what he wants to accomplish with this unappealing release. All I can figure is that it is a kind of cry for help from a man descending into the final stages of losing all control of his ego. That WilliamShatner.com computer — if we could somehow destroy it before it goes online, maybe force it to calculate all the digits of pi or something, we might still be able to save him...

— John Gorenfeld (john@flakmag.com)