. And here's Shatner the Novelist churning out engaging prose in three sci-fi series, including a set of tales about the resurrection of his alter ego, Capt. James T. Kirk.
Fitting. For like the icon he embodied, the actor has been resurrected as well. A generation after "Star Trek" sealed his immortality, nearly two decades after "T.J. Hooker" threatened to undo it, William Shatner has become a brand name.
From accidental comeback...
"It's almost accidental. I'm not sure what caused it," Shatner said on a recent day, taking a moment between rehearsals of the 3rd Rock From the Sun season finale. He sounds sedate, not at all like the over-the-top extraterrestrial overlord he plays.
"Something's happened out there," he said in a telephone interview. "People are perceiving me as funny, and they want funny things from me."
He's giving them what they want. Because everyone, it seems, is hungry for Shatner. Those who love him love it. Those who love to hate him -- who, on Web sites like The First Church of Shatnerology, lampoon his reputation for over-the-toppery -- love it even more.
After 1994's Star Trek Generations killed off Capt. James T. Kirk, Shatner, by his own account, spun into a funk. Rescue 911, the emergency drama he hosted, was canceled, as was TekWar, a short-lived TV series based on one of his book series.
"My career and my personal life both fell apart. I needed some serious cheering up," Shatner wrote in Get a Life! (Simon & Schuster Trade), his account of how he finally came to understand the Star Trek phenomenon after earning Trekkies' enmity by heckling fans on NBC's Saturday Night Live.
Then, in early 1998, Priceline came calling.
The operators of the Internet site, where customers make offers for goods, decided to hire a recognizable voice for radio ads. Two names came to mind: Bill Cosby and Shatner. They chose the latter and went to his house to pitch him. Shatner "thought we were crazy," said Priceline spokesman Brian Ek.
The company kept at him for weeks, and finally he signed on and asked to be paid in stock options -- an unusual idea, and a risk. The radio and newspaper ads, edited by Shatner, were straightforward and low-key -- low-key for Shatner, that is.
...to the buried musical urge
When Priceline took off, TV ads seemed a natural next step. The New York office of the ad firm Hill Holliday decided to use popular songs about change and travel, which led to the exhumation of a much-heckled chapter in Shatner's past.
As the original Star Trek slouched to its budget-strapped end, Shatner recorded "The Transformed Man," a 1968 album that capitalized on his new fame (the album cover said "William Shatner: Captain Kirk of Star Trek").
On it, in the staccato tones of a righteous starship captain, he belted out unusual renditions of "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and other hits. It sounds like this: "Picture yourSELF! In a boat! On a RIVER!" The LP enshrined Shatner in the annals of musical history. One critic, after listening, concluded that he "sounds in dire need of padded restraints."
Today, Shatner remembers "The Transformed Man" as an album "in which I linked prose and lyrics to a song in kind of a medley to show a relationship between the written word and music."
Sure, people made fun. But 32 years later, he's getting the last laugh.
The Priceline ads play off the lounge-lizard notion. Set in what appears to be a crowded, smoky bar (again, Shatner's idea), they feature him in a leather jacket singing his unique take on "Free Bird," "Age of Aquarius" and other songs. In between, he throws in improv comedy lines about airline tickets, online purchases and naming your own price. In the last of the 10 spots, he smashes his guitar a la Pete Townshend. Even Shatner's backup band didn't know what he had planned.
"It doesn't take anybody looking closely at the commercials to see the man's having fun," Ek said. And when Priceline posted digitized video of the ads on its Web site, visits jumped 4,000 percent overnight.
"A lot of celebrities are so concerned with projecting a very focused image. They either want to be the comedian or they want to be serious. Bill is willing to let people interpret," said David Wecal, executive creative director at Hill Holliday's New York office.
"He's out there singing, and he's not the world's greatest singer," Wecal said. "The fact that the man is out there doing that takes a lot of courage."
Comedy and grief
Meanwhile, 3rd Rock brought Shatner aboard for a recurring role as the Big Giant Head opposite John Lithgow's earthbound alien operative. Shatner plunged in with glee, portraying the uber-ET as a Bloody Mary-swilling, womanizing boor whose only redeeming character trait is that he occasionally departs for another galaxy.
"He was the leader of one of the greatest TV space shows in history; he should be the supreme leader of another. We thought that type of cult value would be terrific," said Bob Kushell, executive producer of 3rd Rock.
Shatner has always been adept at comedy. One of the best original Star Trek episodes, "The Trouble With Tribbles," featured a tour-de-force comic performance, and he parodied his command pomposity in Airplane II: The Sequel (1982).
"He goes through life with this true measure of confidence that is unparalleled to anybody I've ever met," Kushell said.
Shatner may have another reason to focus on work. Last summer, his wife Nerine
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