Several weeks ago, and in a mysterious half-mythical locale like Middle Earth or Camelot, but with better Wi-Fi, I attended the second annual ShatnerKhan. As was specified in my contract, there was New York pastrami and other deli selections to make bearable the task of viewing an intense selection of Shatneriana. Up front I will state it was barely sufficient to cushion my system from the brutal shocks of what was to come.
After the rigors of ShatnerKhan I, I had assumed that the membership would have retreated from the danger zone of forbidden Shatner and played it safe with an agenda restricted to Star Trek and Twilight Zone standards. That was not the case. Like the fictional Gamesters of Triskelion these risk takers wouldn’t settle for trifles like quatloos or CBS science fiction episodes. They were hunting for big game. And they started it off by firing with both barrels.
In my youth I remember seeing a commercial that featured a young-looking William Shatner dressed up as Alexander the Great. Even as a child I knew there was something wrong with that picture. Luckily, I was spared finding out how wrong it was until ShatnerKhan II.
I don’t remember if this was a CBS or NBC made for tv movie. Whatever it was I can tell you it was awful. It was as if the producers were looking for the perfect formula to guarantee that this project would crash and burn like nothing before or since. Think of it, they teamed up Bill Shatner and Adam “Batman” West and put them in dresses, really embarrassingly short dresses. Then they had them riding around on horses and generally pretending to fight a war. They threw in John Cassavetes and Joseph Cotten just to try to butch it up a little but after twenty minutes I begged for mercy. It was just too horrendously bad. I asked for some kind of change of pace just to help me shrug off the effects of that nightmare. I was allowed to choose “The Doomsday Machine.”
Here my feet were back under me. I had just reviewed the show recently and felt like I was back in the company of an old friend. I could hum along to the danger theme of that episode.
Dahdunt, dahdunt, dehdunt, dehdunt
Dahdunt, dahdunt, dehdunt, dehdunt
Dahdunt, dahdunt, dehdunt, dehdunt
Dahdunt, dahdunt, dehdunt, dehdunt
Dehduntduntdunt, dehduntduntdunt
Duhdeduhdeduhduhdehhhhh!
There was the Bill Shatner I was comfortable making fun of. There was Bill Shatner wearing pants. Sure, he might take his shirt off once in a while or have it ripped off of him in a fight but he was consistently dressed like a man. With everything back to normal I declared a break and we broke out the vanilla ice cream, Mounds Bars and salted cashews. This provided just the right amount of sugar shock for us to actually discuss what we had watched without really caring what we were talking about. It was a great success.
With the last of the cocoanut and chocolate washed down with crème soda I thought I was ready for whatever would be next. After all, having survived Alexander the Great I didn’t think there was anything left in Shatner’s resume to worry about. Boy, was I wrong.
Shatner is known for talk-sing covering songs by other singers. But I had never heard him in a duet. I wish I could still say that. I was bombarded by something so pathetic that I can’t even describe it. Words fail me. You’ll have to judge for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J648lr8cjuw
It was like some kind of Lovecraftian horror that leaves you gibbering and disoriented. I just sat there and let the rest of the group steer the choice of videos without me. I think we watched Amok Time but I’m really not sure. It was all hazy. I was like some kind of disaster survivor sleep walking through the wreckage of my mind.
When I finally started to come around, I was sitting at a table with a cup of coffee and a slab of ice cream cake. The world started to come back into focus. When the discussion returned to Shatner, I noticed that there was no mention of what we had witnessed. I could tell that none of us wanted to acknowledge that we had allowed ShatnerKhan II to overstep the bounds of sanity and even break the bonds of normal space-time. We had let it get away from us and we all knew we had been lucky that we hadn’t summoned up some horrible presence from “out there.” Sitting here in the safety of my living room I can contemplate something like that but what if it had happened? What if a fat Korean guy in a bowl haircut and ancient Bill Shatner sweating and talking into his wireless microphone had broken through the space time continuum and suddenly appeared before us singing, “A Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Very probably the whole multiverse would have exploded forming a big bang across all the universes there are. I can’t be responsible for that. I can’t let that happen, not on my watch!
I’m going to need a kill switch for ShatnerKhan III. That’s the only way it’s going to happen. And I’m going to need a lot of corned beef and mustard too.