Please tell me you are availing yourself of William Shatner’s YouTube channel, where the Star Trek legend and national treasure expounds, usually to one of his daughters, about the pressing matters of the day. One highlight so far is “Shatner Tries To Settle Takei Feud.” Shatner has always laughed off the trash talk from Trek co-star George Takei, which seems like the right approach for an unflappable starship captain. In this clip, Shatner again manages to come off as bemused by the whole ordeal (yet quite willing to milk it for publicity). I love when, about 30 seconds in, Shatner brings viewers up to speed by saying that Takei “has been mean to me.” MEAN to him!

The exchange that begins at 1:54 is priceless, too.¹

Another highlight is “Shatner On His Star Trek Signature Drop Kick,” in which he recounts his epiphany that Kirk’s patented move for dispatching bad guys violates the laws of physics. (The fatal flaw of the Shatner drop kick is that only one person is guaranteed to end up flat on his back, and that’s the kicker, not the kickee.)

I think I enjoy Shatner most, though, when he’s simply making banal observations about stuff that has nothing to do with Star Trek or his new talk show. Stuff like Tina Fey and golly how much she looks like that Sarah Palin person!

Halfway through that Tina Fey video, I asked myself, “Why am I watching this?” The answer: Because it is Shatner. And that is enough.

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1. Shatner mentions Takei’s longstanding desire for Sulu to have his own starship. I read Takei’s autobiography years ago, and his crusade to have his own starship took up almost a whole chapter. I remember understanding the symbolism of it but also being bewildered, as Shatner apparently was, by how hard he pushed for it. Why the hell would you want to get off the Enterprise? The most interesting part of the book was not Takei’s sniping at Shatner but rather his story of being in Japanese internment camps as a child. ↑