Apparently I’m not enough of a Trekkie to have realized that there’s been a thing between William Shatner and George Takei all these years. It came to a head this week, as the Associated Press reported: “William Shatner lashes out at George Takei.” That seems a bit of an exaggeration. Here’s the “lashing out”:
Lashing out? Hardly. Shatner seems pretty calm and genuinely mystified, and he’s simply not that good of an actor to be faking it. On the other hand: making a public video statement about how “sick” you think someone else is who does not appear to be any kind of threat or danger to you, not in a physical sense and not in a reputation sense? Weird.
I don’t know the whole story — probably no one does — but that AP article does include this: “’It is unfortunate that Bill was unable to join us for our wedding as he indeed was invited to attend,’ Takei responded.”
Whatever is going on, it’s all a bit sad.
It’s worse than that; it’s marriage, Jim!
I dunno. Shatner seems calm, sure, but he just goes on and on about Takei’s “psychosis” and the things “festering” inside him and how “sad” that is. I think the far classier response, and the one that would make me buy that it was Takei’s problem, not Shatner’s, would be to make a quick statement to the effect of, “a guest list is up to the happy couple, and I wish them well.” (Plus, if “Spock” and “Chekhov” and “Uhura” all get along well enough to be invited or IN the wedding… the Captain doth protest too much, methinks.)