This is your captain speaking

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/10/2011 (5386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WILLIAM Shatner has been asked almost every question in the universe about Star Trek.

The 80-year-old actor routinely has to answer the same queries from Trekkies around the world, so to save time, he has published a handy guide, William Shatner’s Standard Star Trek Convention Answers, in his new book, Shatner Rules.

Some of his responses include:

• “Leonard, definitely. The other four? Not so much.”
• “Well, that’s a question for Gene Coon.”
• “Probably City on the Edge of Forever, and you should watch it yourself to find out more!”
• “Nichelle. Twice.”
• “That would be ‘The Corbomite Maneuver,’ which I don’t have to explain since you’ve all seen it. Next question.”
• “Third door on the right.”

One day Shatner wants to get the answers into the hands of people everywhere.

“I’ll just hand out a pamphlet with the answers,” he says with a grin Monday during a media day at the Fort Garry Hotel.

“It was just fun to me because I get asked all the time, ‘Who was your friends? Why did you do that?’ so I gave all the answers in one half page.”

Shatner didn’t take questions Tuesday during his one-man show, How Time Flies, at the Centennial Concert Hall, but will host a Q&A when he returns to the city Sunday to appear at the Central Canada Comic Con. (He was originally scheduled to speak Saturday but has signed up to participate in a horse-riding competition in Los Angeles that night.) The one-hour Q&A session is at 2 p.m. Sunday with a limit of 300 patrons.

Tickets to the session are $20. He will be signing autographs and participating in two photo ops at 12:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. Autographs and photos are $70 each and can be personalized if purchased on Friday or Saturday.

Shatner has written several books about his time on the Star Trek TV series, including 1993 Star Trek Memories, which answers some of the detailed questions fans have, but doesn’t remember every minute detail, such as what he said or was feeling in episodes like The Trouble With Tribbles or Tomorrow is Yesterday.

He is impressed fans are so well informed and involved, he says.

There is one thing he would like to clear up, though: the misquote of one of the show’s most famous catchphrases, “Beam me up, Scotty.”

The members of the USS Enterprise never said that during the television show’s three-year run from 1966 to ’69 or in any of the six movies the full original cast appeared in. The crew members actually said, “Scotty, beam us up,” or “Scotty, beam me up,” and even, “Beam them out of here, Mr. Scott,” but never “Beam me up, Scotty.”

The misquote is so engrained in people’s minds, even the actor who played Scotty, James Doohan, used it as the title for his autobiography.

“It’s the wrong thing to say, it never was said, it’s totally misinformed,” Shatner says.

rob.williams@freepress.mb.ca

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