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I want to discuss accessibility because it is the most important thing for making websites. Other A List Apart articles give you innovation and insight. This article will give you homework. These are just my personal views, but they’re pretty good.

I want to start off with a couple of statements, and you will agree:

1. Designers are good people. I have never heard a designer say, “I don’t care if somebody can’t read this text”, “Not my fault if somebody can’t use this device”, or “Who cares if this is confusing?”
2. Some designs exclude people. You have seen people unable to read the text on a website or app that somebody designed. You’ve seen people unable to use a physical device that somebody has designed. You’ve seen people utterly bamboozled while trying to use a service that somebody designed.

So what?

The first question is, “Is this life-or-death stuff?” The answer is, “Yes.” In my favorite essay, This Is All There Is, Aral Balkan makes the point that pretty much everything that we design can affect life events and death events. Aral gives the example of how even a straightforward bus timetable app can affect life and death events, if we design it badly:

• somebody might miss a life event, such as their daughter’s fifth birthday party; or
• somebody might miss a death event, such as the chance to say goodbye to a dying grandmother.

The next—and frustrating—question is, “Why do some designs still exclude people?” After all, we know that:

• not everybody can see perfectly;
• not everybody can hear perfectly;
• not everybody thinks the same way; and
• not everybody moves the same way.

I think the answer is that there’s too much to recall. Consider, if you will, the wide variety of topics that A List Apart articles cover. Designers are expected to remember all of that guidance, plus all of the accessibility guidance, plus so much more. It is too much.

Recognizing accessibility issues while designing

I’d like to point toward one possible solution, starting from Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. These are from the mid-1990s, and—although there’s a good chance that you, gentle reader, are a lot younger than that—please bear with me. 

Seeing as the problem is that there’s too much to recall, I want to look at heuristic № 6, “Recognition rather than Recall.” Jakob Nielsen said that for users, information required to use the design should be visible or easily retrievable when needed. I suggest we tweak that to make life easier for designers. Let’s say that the information required to produce the design should be visible or easily retrievable when needed. In other words, let’s make it easier to recognise accessibility issues while we’re designing.

How are we going to do that? I really like the book A Web for Everyone—Designing Accessible User Experiences by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery. I really like this book not only because it includes a quote from me—actually two quotes, but I don’t like to boast—but because it includes personas that are perfect for helping us to recognise accessibility issues. That’s the good news. The even better news is that these personas are available now for free on the companion website to the book What Every Engineer Should Know About Digital Accessibility, again by Sarah Horton, with David Sloan this time.

Meet your users

I’m going to introduce you to these personas now:

• Vishnu, an engineer and global citizen with low vision says, “I want to be on the same level as everyone else”, “If I can adjust my screen, I can read comfortably”, and, “Translating in my head is easier with simpler sentences.”
• Trevor, a high school student with autism, says, “I like consistent, familiar places on the web”, “When I can learn the pattern, I can find my way”, and, “Reading is hard for me”.
• Steven, a deaf graphic artist and American Sign Language speaker, says, “My only disability is that everyone doesn’t sign”, and, “Without captions, it’s meaningless to me”.
• Maria, a bilingual community health worker, says, “I love this. It’s all here … when I can find it”, “When a site is confusing, I just leave”—fair enough, Maria!—and, “When I hear and see it, health information makes more sense”.
• Lea, an editor living with fatigue and pain, says, “No one gets that this really is a disability”, “Don’t make me work so hard”—please do not bombard this lady with drop-down lists—and, “Links at the top of the page make navigation easier for me”.
• Jacob, a blind paralegal and a bit of a geek, says, “The right technology lets me do anything”, and “This makes it possible to do my job”.
• Emily, who has cerebral palsy and is living independently, says, “I want to do everything for myself”, “Simpler screens are easier screens”—hell yeah, Emily!—and, “Tell me what I need in advance”.
• Carol, a grandmother with macular degeneration which affects her sight, says, “My grandkids are dragging me into the world of technology”, “I don’t understand what the screen is saying”, and, “Why can’t the text be just a little bit larger?”

I want to throw one more persona at you now, because, well, A List Apart readers are overachievers. One of my favorite authors, Cennydd Bowles—who literally wrote the book on Future Ethics—says to create Personas Non Grata. In other words, every time we design something, we have to think about what a bad guy could do with that thing, and whom that might affect.

To actually use these personas while designing, I like what Eric Meyer and Sara Wachter-Boettcher in Design for Real Life call the Designated Dissenter: for each project that you work on, one of your teams should be responsible for asking, “Will this work for Vishnu?”, “How’s Trevor going to get on with this?”, and so on. 

Then, once you’ve used the personas to recognise the accessibility issues, you can look up the guidelines for whichever platforms you’re designing for: 

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
• Accessibility designing — Material Design 3
• Accessibility — Windows apps
• Accessibility | Apple Developer Documentation
• Check your interface for accessibility (Ubuntu)

Your mission, should you choose to accept it

I told you in the introduction of this article that I would give you homework. You thought I was joking. So, here’s your homework: I want you to grab the personas from the Know About Accessibility website, and use them throughout every design project to help you recognise accessibility issues while you work—and reclaim design for everyone.

NOTE: This article is based on “Recognise,” my five-minute presentation from Interaction Design Association (IxDA) Dublin’s Defuse (Design for Use) event in 2025.

Every language app in your pocket inherited a teaching method built for Latin. Understanding why that happened is a more useful design lesson than anything the apps themselves will teach you.

In 1788, Prussia introduced the Abitur, a standardized national examination required for entry into universities and the civil service. To pass it, students needed to demonstrate measurable, gradable knowledge. The system needed to teach language to large classrooms, produce consistent outcomes, and do it with one teacher and thirty students. The educators responsible for designing this system reached for the only teaching template they had, one that had been used in European schools for two centuries: the method developed to teach Latin.

Latin, by 1788, was a dead language. Nobody needed to speak it. The scholars who studied it were reading Cicero and Virgil, not conducting conversations. The method built around it, memorizing grammar rules, constructing translations, analyzing written texts, reflected that reality exactly. Oral skills were irrelevant. Comprehension of written form was everything. The method was not designed to produce speakers. It was designed to produce readers of texts in a language nobody spoke.

When Prussia applied this template to French and German, living languages spoken by living people, the premise did not change. Johann Valentin Meidinger’s textbook Praktische Französische Grammatik, published in 1804, ran to 37 editions across Europe by 1857. Karl Plotz formalized the approach into what became the dominant model for teaching modern languages across Europe and eventually the United States, where it became known simply as the Prussian Method [1]. Each institution that adopted it trained teachers in it, who trained students who became teachers. The constraint that created the method, how do you grade language at scale with limited resources, became invisible inside the method itself. What remained was the assumption: language is a body of rules to be learned consciously and measured. It was a design decision dressed up, over time, as a pedagogical truth.

The observation that should have ended it

There are people in the world who cannot read or write a language and speak it fluently. There are children who hold full conversations years before they can read a single word. There are immigrants who arrive in a country knowing nothing of its language and come out, years later, speaking it naturally, not because they studied it, but because they lived inside it. Literacy and fluency are separate things produced by entirely separate mechanisms. The Grammar-Translation method, as it became known, assumed they were the same thing. That assumption was inherited from a method designed for a language nobody needed to speak, and it was wrong the moment it was applied to a language people actually used.

The evidence against it accumulated slowly. In the mid to late nineteenth century, reformers including François Gouin in France and Maximilian Berlitz in the United States argued independently that language should be taught the way it is actually acquired, through immersive exposure to real communication in the target language, not through analysis of its rules. Berlitz built an entire school network around this principle. The reformers were correct. They were also largely ignored by mainstream education systems, because the Grammar-Translation method had one decisive advantage that direct immersion did not: it could be graded.

In 1982, the linguist Stephen Krashen gave the argument its most formal articulation in what he called the Monitor Model of second language acquisition. His distinction was precise: language acquisition, the unconscious process through which children absorb their native language and through which adults succeed in immersive environments, is categorically different from language learning, the conscious study of grammar rules and vocabulary that classrooms deliver [2]. Acquisition produces fluency. Learning, at best, produces the ability to pass a test. The evidence supporting this distinction, and the observation that immersive exposure to real native-speaker communication is the mechanism that produces genuine fluency, has only grown since.

I went to Brazil without a word of Portuguese and came out speaking it. I studied French in a classroom for years and cannot hold a conversation in French today. This is not an unusual experience. It is the expected outcome, and it has been the expected outcome for as long as we have had formal language education.

The same decision, made again in a different medium

Prussian educators faced the question: How do you deliver language learning at scale, measure progress, and retain users over time? The answer it arrived at was structurally identical to the one arrived at in 1788. Duolingo gamified the grammar drill into a streak. Anki formalized the translation exercise into a spaced-repetition flashcard. Babbel organized grammar lessons into structured modules. The interfaces were new. The underlying assumption, that language is a thing you study rather than an environment you inhabit, was not.

This was not a failure of design skill. The products that emerged from these decisions are, in many respects, genuinely well-crafted. Duolingo’s retention mechanics are sophisticated. Anki’s spaced repetition is grounded in real cognitive science. They are excellent at what they actually do. The problem is what they actually do: produce measurable engagement with a proxy for language rather than the conditions that produce language itself. A streak is measurable. A vocabulary score is measurable. The moment a user walks out of an app and holds a real conversation in another language, that happens in the world, outside the product, and cannot be instrumented.

When the outcome a user needs is difficult to measure directly, the design process tends to reach for something that can be measured. The proxy becomes the goal. The interface optimizes for it. The gap between what the product delivers and what the user actually needed grows. This is not a pattern unique to language learning. It is a pattern that repeats across product categories whenever a design constraint—the need to measure, the need to scale, the need to produce a grade—gets built into a system so deeply that it stops being visible as a constraint and starts being mistaken for a truth about the problem itself.

What happens when the constraint changes

The constraint that made the Grammar-Translation method necessary in 1788 was real and rational. One teacher. Thirty students. A standardized exam. You cannot grade a conversation at scale. You can grade a translation exercise. The method was not chosen because it produced fluency. It was chosen because it produced a score.

That constraint no longer exists in the same form. Technology has made it possible to deliver immersive, real-time conversation practice to anyone with a smartphone, at a cost that continues to fall. The design problem is no longer how to make language learning gradable at scale. It is how to make the conditions of genuine language acquisition accessible to people who cannot move to another country or afford a native-speaker tutor.

The products that are now closest to solving the actual problem are not the ones that invented a new pedagogy. They are the ones that removed the access barrier to an old one. Praktika builds AI conversation partners with distinct personalities, regional dialects, and cultural context, replicating the specificity of a real native speaker rather than a generic language-learning voice. Langua clones native speaker voices so that the interaction feels like a real conversation rather than a lesson. Rosetta Stone’s foundational methodology, image association in the target language with no translation, was built on the same insight Berlitz arrived at in the nineteenth century: language is acquired through immersive exposure, not through analysis of its rules [3]. A 2025 meta-analysis of 31 studies found that AI conversation tools produced a statistically significant improvement in language learning outcomes, a result that no amount of flashcard optimization has consistently matched [4].

None of these products invented a new theory of language acquisition. They translated an existing one into something more people could reach.

The design question this leaves

The Grammar-Translation method persisted not because educators were wrong about design, but because a design decision made under a specific constraint became, over two centuries, indistinguishable from the thing itself. The constraint, how do you grade language at scale, was forgotten. The method it produced was inherited as if it were a description of how language works, passed from Prussia to Europe to America to the App Store, from the grammar drill to the streak.

Every time a design team optimizes for a metric because the actual outcome is hard to measure, they are making a version of the same decision. It is often the right decision given real constraints. The question worth asking is whether the constraint that made it necessary still exists, or whether it has simply become invisible inside the system it originally produced.

Before reaching for what can be measured, it is worth asking what the user actually needs to do, and what stopped them from doing it before. Sometimes the answer is a new solution. More often it is an old one that was always out of reach.

How to Protect Your Business Name With a Trademark written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode Overview You found a great name, bought the domain, locked in the social handles and filed the LLC. It feels settled. But none of those steps gives you the legal right to use the name, and the conflict usually shows up after the logo is designed and the launch date is […]

How to Protect Your Business Name With a Trademark written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode

Overview

You found a great name, bought the domain, locked in the social handles and filed the LLC. It feels settled. But none of those steps gives you the legal right to use the name, and the conflict usually shows up after the logo is designed and the launch date is on the calendar.

On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I talk with trademark attorney Natalie Nguyen, founder of Prolumis Legal in Oklahoma City, about how to trademark a business name the right way. We cover why a Google search isn’t a clearance search, how trademark classes work, what it costs when someone else registers your name first, and why those cheap filing offers in your inbox can create bigger problems later.

This one is for small business owners, entrepreneurs, authors and marketing agencies who name things for a living. If you’re launching a business, a product line or a book, listen before you spend money on design.

Guest Bio

Natalie Nguyen is a trademark attorney and the founder of Prolumis Legal in Oklahoma City. She has filed more than 2,000 trademark applications, building her experience in a high-volume national trademark practice and an in-house role at a Fortune 100 company. Nguyen is licensed in Texas and Oklahoma.

She founded Prolumis Legal on the belief that trademark protection should start with strategy, built around where a business is headed. She works with entrepreneurs, branding agencies, authors, publishers and podcasters on clearance, registration and brand protection.

Key Takeaways

• Forming an LLC and registering a domain gives you a business entity and a web address. Trademark rights come from registering with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
• A Google search will catch identical names, but trademark confusion can come from names that are only similar.
• Clearance has to look beyond your exact goods and services to anything a consumer might see as related.
• Trademarks are registered by class. Delta Air Lines, Delta Faucet and Delta Dental can all coexist because they sell very different things.
• Big brands can still push back across classes if they believe a newcomer is trading on their goodwill.
• Using a name for decades gives you common law rights, but defending them means a cancellation fight that is costly, slow and uncertain.
• Nguyen’s triage for any name: Is it distinctive? Is it available? Can it grow with your business?
• Branding agencies help their clients most when they bring a trademark attorney in before presenting final name options.
• Budget filing services rarely include a proper search or careful goods and services descriptions, and the USPTO filing fee alone is $350 per class.
• Anyone can use TM. Only marks registered with the USPTO can use ®. Once you’re registered, you’re responsible for policing your mark, starting with a cease and desist letter.

Great Moments (Timestamps)

[00:01] – The name feels settled, until it isn’t

[01:06] – What 2,000 trademark filings have shown Nguyen about when owners discover a problem

[01:51] – A family business using its name for fifty years finds someone else already registered it

[02:53] – Common law rights and why defending them is expensive

[03:56] – The marketer’s view of a name versus the trademark attorney’s view

[04:58] – The biggest misconception: the LLC and the domain

[05:24] – Why a Google search misses potential conflicts

[06:08] – Using the USPTO’s own search tool as a starting point

[06:55] – The Delta example and how trademark classes work

[07:24] – False association and borrowing someone else’s goodwill

[08:09] – Triage for a name that’s already launched

[08:31] – The Brand Protection Scorecard

[10:08] – ProlumisClear and why branding agencies should involve an attorney early

[10:55] – The retailer contract that hinged on a trademark someone else had filed

[12:17] – Are the $275 trademark filing offers worth it?

[14:24] – Disclaimers and why I couldn’t claim the word “marketing”

[15:23] – Can you trademark a book title?

[16:38] – Date of first use anywhere versus date of first use in commerce

[17:37] – Protecting a trademark outside the United States

[18:36] – TM versus ®

[19:47] – How to police your trademark

[21:20] – How to connect with Nguyen

Memorable Quotes

“Just because you got the LLC, just because you got the domain, your trademark is not protected.” Nguyen

“It doesn’t have to be identical for there to be trademark confusion.” Nguyen

“A trademark is not just about filing a trademark. You need to come up with a strategy from the beginning.” Nguyen

“If there’s any trademark attorney that is telling you that they can file a trademark for $200, you’re going to get what you’re paying for.” Nguyen

“I would much rather have that conversation in the beginning than later on, after they’ve already invested thousands of dollars.” Nguyen

Resources

• • • Prolumis Legal: prolumislegal.com
    • Email Natalie: natalie@prolumislegal.com

The American Dream means something different to everyone, but for some famous faces, it involved a pretty dramatic change of circumstances. A few grew up in homes where money was constantly running short. Others arrived in the United States with unfamiliar surroundings, limited English, or careers that had barely begun. Their paths weren’t always straightforward, either. There were unsuccessful auditions, financial setbacks, unexpected opportunities, and plenty of years spent figuring things out. Today, these names are associated with blockbuster movies, successful businesses, and worldwide recognition, making their earlier struggles almost difficult to imagine. Here are 15 celebrities whose journeys offer very different versions of the American Dream.

The post 15 People Who Made the American Dream Come True appeared first on Den of Geek.

At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral James T. Kirk stands before the crew of the USS Enterprise to offer some words of solace on a heartbreaking occasion. Their friend, colleague, and commanding officer Spock has died, sacrificing himself to save them all. Kirk in particular has lost the person who understood him best, and fans of the franchise have lost their favorite character.

“Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels,” begins the Captain. “His was the most… human.” Kirk’s words are fitting, even the fact that he identifies the half-Vulcan as fully human, a designation the living Spock would have rejected. But its not the words that really stand out. It’s the way that William Shatner delivers those words, the preposterous pregnant pause he holds right before spitting the word “human,” the way he twists his face in anguish. 

For years, moments such as these made Shatner’s acting an object of ridicule. But it’s high time that we recognize them as what they are: excellent melodramatic acting.

A Laughed-At Legend

It’s hard to say where Shatner’s reputation went sour. Certainly, people noticed and mimicked his off-beat cadences early on. See, for example, the way John Belushi milked the pauses when playing Kirk on a sketch in a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live. Even Shatner himself seemed to play it up on various chat show appearances. But all of these seemed like extensions of the show itself, Star Trek’s tendency to prattle on about weird alien names or borrow from Shakespeare for titles such as “Dagger of the Mind.”

Yet, for those who grew up in the era of The Next Generation, Shatner seemed like the old buffoon we had to put up with before we got to the good stuff. Shatner would go on Conan and sing/talk “Common People,” or he’d show up in a spoof of Seven on the MTV Movie Awards. But surely he didn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as Jean-Luc Picard, played by properly serious dramatic actor Patrick Stewart?

Perhaps it was all of those goofy roles that diminished Shatner’s reputation. Perhaps it was his turn as the title cop in the ‘80s series TJ Hooker that did him in. Where Star Trek let Shatner monologue about humanity’s better nature and the joys of discovery, TJ Hooker asks Shatner to deliver diatribes about permissiveness corrupting society, and how the police should be given free reign to crack down on degenerates. On TJ Hooker, Shatner’s speeches felt like the boasts of a blowhard right wing talk show host, hardly engendering the same sympathies as the intrepid captain.

And so, Shatner became a joke, even among Trekkies. That is, until Kirk finally shared the screen with our beloved Captain Picard. And then, the magic of Shatner’s style could no longer be denied.

Generational Talent

Star Trek: Generations is a terrible movie. It somehow botches the lay-up of getting Malcolm McDowell to play a fanatical villain, it turns the explicitly kid-avoidant Picard into someone who longs for a Victorian family, and it lets Kirk die on a rusty bridge. It doesn’t even do justice to the central hook, teaming Kirk and Picard on an adventure.

But Generations does do exactly one thing correct: it gets out of the way and lets Shatner do his stuff.

For those who have forgotten, Star Trek: Generations involves an anomaly called the Nexus, which traps whoever enters it, but fills them with bliss. The Nexus destroys the Enterprise-B, under the command of hapless Captain Harriman (Alan Ruck), and seemingly kills Kirk in the past. But when Picard encounters the Nexus in his present, he finds Kirk apparently living out his dream, on a ranch with horses and an off-screen wife.

The story asks Picard to convince a seemingly contented Kirk to return to action and stop the villain Soran. Picard does so by using what we’ve come to know as his greatest skill, his gift of argument and oration. Yet, in the actual conflict between the two, Picard comes off stiff and uncomfortable, while Kirk seems sprightly and excited, full of life.

Take one of their first exchanges, when Picard enters Kirk’s homestead and tries to explain that he’s the captain of the future Enterprise. Stewart stumbles over his words, talking slowly in the fear that his revelations will startle his predecessor. At the same time, Shatner bounces around the room, with Kirk paying little mind to his visitor and instead taking stock of the items around him. Kirk stops when he finds a clock and realizes it was once a gift to Doctor McCoy. Shatner, of course, pauses as he delivers the line, holding his face stone still to register the shock. When Kirk snaps out of it, Shatner speaks the next lines in a rush, as if he can’t get them out quickly enough.

Were an impressionist on SNL to speak the lines in the same way, they would sound silly and ill-chosen. But in the moment that Shatner says them, they feel perfect. He knows that the occasion calls for pomp and circumstance, and he meets that moment. The meeting of two legends should be a big deal, it deserves awe and playfulness and even sanctimony—not whatever Stewart is doing.

Shatner delivers, over-delivers, the emotion the scene requires, and he does it well, because he’s been answering the call as Kirk for decades.

Boldly Going Where No Actor Has Gone Before

Part of Star Trek’s longevity owes to the fact that it covers so many tones and genres. Yes, it is absolutely an inspiring, utopian show about how humanity gets better over time and improves to explore space. It’s an adventure show that features humans punching aliens in the face, and it’s a philosophical show that sees those same humans sitting down with aliens to talk through their differences. It’s a serious show with pretentious titles, and it’s a silly show that has its doctor chase around a white rabbit to find a pair of girls in bikinis.

In short, Star Trek involves big feelings and big thoughts, and, as such, it calls for big performances. No one has answered that call as deftly and consistently as William Shatner. Laugh if you want, do goofy impressions if you want. But of all the actors in the absurd, far-out world of Star Trek, William Shatner is undoubtedly the most human.

The post Star Trek: Celebrating the Scene-Chewing Genius of William Shatner appeared first on Den of Geek.

We’ve all done it. You’re halfway through a streaming marathon, the opening credits start, and your finger heads straight for the skip button. But every once in a while, a show has a theme song so good that you actually want to hear it again. Maybe you know every word, or maybe it’s an instrumental that gets stuck in your head for hours. Some themes bring back memories of watching TV after school, while others are just genuinely great pieces of music. And really, what’s another minute when the song is that good? These 15 shows gave us opening themes worth sitting through, even on the fifth episode in a row.

The post 15 Shows With the 10/10 Most Un-Skippable Theme Songs appeared first on Den of Geek.

At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral James T. Kirk stands before the crew of the USS Enterprise to offer some words of solace on a heartbreaking occasion. Their friend, colleague, and commanding officer Spock has died, sacrificing himself to save them all. Kirk in particular has lost the person who understood him best, and fans of the franchise have lost their favorite character.

“Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels,” begins the Captain. “His was the most… human.” Kirk’s words are fitting, even the fact that he identifies the half-Vulcan as fully human, a designation the living Spock would have rejected. But its not the words that really stand out. It’s the way that William Shatner delivers those words, the preposterous pregnant pause he holds right before spitting the word “human,” the way he twists his face in anguish. 

For years, moments such as these made Shatner’s acting an object of ridicule. But it’s high time that we recognize them as what they are: excellent melodramatic acting.

A Laughed-At Legend

It’s hard to say where Shatner’s reputation went sour. Certainly, people noticed and mimicked his off-beat cadences early on. See, for example, the way John Belushi milked the pauses when playing Kirk on a sketch in a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live. Even Shatner himself seemed to play it up on various chat show appearances. But all of these seemed like extensions of the show itself, Star Trek’s tendency to prattle on about weird alien names or borrow from Shakespeare for titles such as “Dagger of the Mind.”

Yet, for those who grew up in the era of The Next Generation, Shatner seemed like the old buffoon we had to put up with before we got to the good stuff. Shatner would go on Conan and sing/talk “Common People,” or he’d show up in a spoof of Seven on the MTV Movie Awards. But surely he didn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as Jean-Luc Picard, played by properly serious dramatic actor Patrick Stewart?

Perhaps it was all of those goofy roles that diminished Shatner’s reputation. Perhaps it was his turn as the title cop in the ‘80s series TJ Hooker that did him in. Where Star Trek let Shatner monologue about humanity’s better nature and the joys of discovery, TJ Hooker asks Shatner to deliver diatribes about permissiveness corrupting society, and how the police should be given free reign to crack down on degenerates. On TJ Hooker, Shatner’s speeches felt like the boasts of a blowhard right wing talk show host, hardly engendering the same sympathies as the intrepid captain.

And so, Shatner became a joke, even among Trekkies. That is, until Kirk finally shared the screen with our beloved Captain Picard. And then, the magic of Shatner’s style could no longer be denied.

Generational Talent

Star Trek: Generations is a terrible movie. It somehow botches the lay-up of getting Malcolm McDowell to play a fanatical villain, it turns the explicitly kid-avoidant Picard into someone who longs for a Victorian family, and it lets Kirk die on a rusty bridge. It doesn’t even do justice to the central hook, teaming Kirk and Picard on an adventure.

But Generations does do exactly one thing correct: it gets out of the way and lets Shatner do his stuff.

For those who have forgotten, Star Trek: Generations involves an anomaly called the Nexus, which traps whoever enters it, but fills them with bliss. The Nexus destroys the Enterprise-B, under the command of hapless Captain Harriman (Alan Ruck), and seemingly kills Kirk in the past. But when Picard encounters the Nexus in his present, he finds Kirk apparently living out his dream, on a ranch with horses and an off-screen wife.

The story asks Picard to convince a seemingly contented Kirk to return to action and stop the villain Soran. Picard does so by using what we’ve come to know as his greatest skill, his gift of argument and oration. Yet, in the actual conflict between the two, Picard comes off stiff and uncomfortable, while Kirk seems sprightly and excited, full of life.

Take one of their first exchanges, when Picard enters Kirk’s homestead and tries to explain that he’s the captain of the future Enterprise. Stewart stumbles over his words, talking slowly in the fear that his revelations will startle his predecessor. At the same time, Shatner bounces around the room, with Kirk paying little mind to his visitor and instead taking stock of the items around him. Kirk stops when he finds a clock and realizes it was once a gift to Doctor McCoy. Shatner, of course, pauses as he delivers the line, holding his face stone still to register the shock. When Kirk snaps out of it, Shatner speaks the next lines in a rush, as if he can’t get them out quickly enough.

Were an impressionist on SNL to speak the lines in the same way, they would sound silly and ill-chosen. But in the moment that Shatner says them, they feel perfect. He knows that the occasion calls for pomp and circumstance, and he meets that moment. The meeting of two legends should be a big deal, it deserves awe and playfulness and even sanctimony—not whatever Stewart is doing.

Shatner delivers, over-delivers, the emotion the scene requires, and he does it well, because he’s been answering the call as Kirk for decades.

Boldly Going Where No Actor Has Gone Before

Part of Star Trek’s longevity owes to the fact that it covers so many tones and genres. Yes, it is absolutely an inspiring, utopian show about how humanity gets better over time and improves to explore space. It’s an adventure show that features humans punching aliens in the face, and it’s a philosophical show that sees those same humans sitting down with aliens to talk through their differences. It’s a serious show with pretentious titles, and it’s a silly show that has its doctor chase around a white rabbit to find a pair of girls in bikinis.

In short, Star Trek involves big feelings and big thoughts, and, as such, it calls for big performances. No one has answered that call as deftly and consistently as William Shatner. Laugh if you want, do goofy impressions if you want. But of all the actors in the absurd, far-out world of Star Trek, William Shatner is undoubtedly the most human.

The post Star Trek: Celebrating the Scene-Chewing Genius of William Shatner appeared first on Den of Geek.

Being a child actor means having your awkward years documented for millions of people to see. Most of us get to hide our questionable haircuts and embarrassing school photos, but these performers had entire movies and television episodes preserving theirs. Some became famous before they were old enough to drive, while others spent years playing minor roles before anyone knew their names. Growing up on camera doesn’t guarantee a lasting career, either. Yet a handful managed to leave their childhood characters behind and become some of the biggest names in entertainment. Here are 15 actors who went from familiar young faces to genuine cultural icons.

The post 15 Actors Who Went from Awkward Kid to Cultural Icon appeared first on Den of Geek.

At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral James T. Kirk stands before the crew of the USS Enterprise to offer some words of solace on a heartbreaking occasion. Their friend, colleague, and commanding officer Spock has died, sacrificing himself to save them all. Kirk in particular has lost the person who understood him best, and fans of the franchise have lost their favorite character.

“Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels,” begins the Captain. “His was the most… human.” Kirk’s words are fitting, even the fact that he identifies the half-Vulcan as fully human, a designation the living Spock would have rejected. But its not the words that really stand out. It’s the way that William Shatner delivers those words, the preposterous pregnant pause he holds right before spitting the word “human,” the way he twists his face in anguish. 

For years, moments such as these made Shatner’s acting an object of ridicule. But it’s high time that we recognize them as what they are: excellent melodramatic acting.

A Laughed-At Legend

It’s hard to say where Shatner’s reputation went sour. Certainly, people noticed and mimicked his off-beat cadences early on. See, for example, the way John Belushi milked the pauses when playing Kirk on a sketch in a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live. Even Shatner himself seemed to play it up on various chat show appearances. But all of these seemed like extensions of the show itself, Star Trek’s tendency to prattle on about weird alien names or borrow from Shakespeare for titles such as “Dagger of the Mind.”

Yet, for those who grew up in the era of The Next Generation, Shatner seemed like the old buffoon we had to put up with before we got to the good stuff. Shatner would go on Conan and sing/talk “Common People,” or he’d show up in a spoof of Seven on the MTV Movie Awards. But surely he didn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as Jean-Luc Picard, played by properly serious dramatic actor Patrick Stewart?

Perhaps it was all of those goofy roles that diminished Shatner’s reputation. Perhaps it was his turn as the title cop in the ‘80s series TJ Hooker that did him in. Where Star Trek let Shatner monologue about humanity’s better nature and the joys of discovery, TJ Hooker asks Shatner to deliver diatribes about permissiveness corrupting society, and how the police should be given free reign to crack down on degenerates. On TJ Hooker, Shatner’s speeches felt like the boasts of a blowhard right wing talk show host, hardly engendering the same sympathies as the intrepid captain.

And so, Shatner became a joke, even among Trekkies. That is, until Kirk finally shared the screen with our beloved Captain Picard. And then, the magic of Shatner’s style could no longer be denied.

Generational Talent

Star Trek: Generations is a terrible movie. It somehow botches the lay-up of getting Malcolm McDowell to play a fanatical villain, it turns the explicitly kid-avoidant Picard into someone who longs for a Victorian family, and it lets Kirk die on a rusty bridge. It doesn’t even do justice to the central hook, teaming Kirk and Picard on an adventure.

But Generations does do exactly one thing correct: it gets out of the way and lets Shatner do his stuff.

For those who have forgotten, Star Trek: Generations involves an anomaly called the Nexus, which traps whoever enters it, but fills them with bliss. The Nexus destroys the Enterprise-B, under the command of hapless Captain Harriman (Alan Ruck), and seemingly kills Kirk in the past. But when Picard encounters the Nexus in his present, he finds Kirk apparently living out his dream, on a ranch with horses and an off-screen wife.

The story asks Picard to convince a seemingly contented Kirk to return to action and stop the villain Soran. Picard does so by using what we’ve come to know as his greatest skill, his gift of argument and oration. Yet, in the actual conflict between the two, Picard comes off stiff and uncomfortable, while Kirk seems sprightly and excited, full of life.

Take one of their first exchanges, when Picard enters Kirk’s homestead and tries to explain that he’s the captain of the future Enterprise. Stewart stumbles over his words, talking slowly in the fear that his revelations will startle his predecessor. At the same time, Shatner bounces around the room, with Kirk paying little mind to his visitor and instead taking stock of the items around him. Kirk stops when he finds a clock and realizes it was once a gift to Doctor McCoy. Shatner, of course, pauses as he delivers the line, holding his face stone still to register the shock. When Kirk snaps out of it, Shatner speaks the next lines in a rush, as if he can’t get them out quickly enough.

Were an impressionist on SNL to speak the lines in the same way, they would sound silly and ill-chosen. But in the moment that Shatner says them, they feel perfect. He knows that the occasion calls for pomp and circumstance, and he meets that moment. The meeting of two legends should be a big deal, it deserves awe and playfulness and even sanctimony—not whatever Stewart is doing.

Shatner delivers, over-delivers, the emotion the scene requires, and he does it well, because he’s been answering the call as Kirk for decades.

Boldly Going Where No Actor Has Gone Before

Part of Star Trek’s longevity owes to the fact that it covers so many tones and genres. Yes, it is absolutely an inspiring, utopian show about how humanity gets better over time and improves to explore space. It’s an adventure show that features humans punching aliens in the face, and it’s a philosophical show that sees those same humans sitting down with aliens to talk through their differences. It’s a serious show with pretentious titles, and it’s a silly show that has its doctor chase around a white rabbit to find a pair of girls in bikinis.

In short, Star Trek involves big feelings and big thoughts, and, as such, it calls for big performances. No one has answered that call as deftly and consistently as William Shatner. Laugh if you want, do goofy impressions if you want. But of all the actors in the absurd, far-out world of Star Trek, William Shatner is undoubtedly the most human.

The post Star Trek: Celebrating the Scene-Chewing Genius of William Shatner appeared first on Den of Geek.

Movie magic sometimes starts in a surprisingly ordinary room. A sweeping alien landscape might actually be a green wall, while a terrifying creature could be an actor in a motion-capture suit. Even enormous castles and futuristic cities often begin as a few carefully built pieces surrounded by equipment. That’s where visual effects artists come in, adding the worlds, characters, and details that weren’t there during filming. Of course, knowing how these scenes were made doesn’t make the finished movies any less impressive. If anything, seeing what the actors and crew had to work with makes the results even better. These 15 movie sets looked very different before CGI worked its magic.

The post 15 Movie Sets That Needed the CGI to Make Them Work appeared first on Den of Geek.

At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral James T. Kirk stands before the crew of the USS Enterprise to offer some words of solace on a heartbreaking occasion. Their friend, colleague, and commanding officer Spock has died, sacrificing himself to save them all. Kirk in particular has lost the person who understood him best, and fans of the franchise have lost their favorite character.

“Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels,” begins the Captain. “His was the most… human.” Kirk’s words are fitting, even the fact that he identifies the half-Vulcan as fully human, a designation the living Spock would have rejected. But its not the words that really stand out. It’s the way that William Shatner delivers those words, the preposterous pregnant pause he holds right before spitting the word “human,” the way he twists his face in anguish. 

For years, moments such as these made Shatner’s acting an object of ridicule. But it’s high time that we recognize them as what they are: excellent melodramatic acting.

A Laughed-At Legend

It’s hard to say where Shatner’s reputation went sour. Certainly, people noticed and mimicked his off-beat cadences early on. See, for example, the way John Belushi milked the pauses when playing Kirk on a sketch in a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live. Even Shatner himself seemed to play it up on various chat show appearances. But all of these seemed like extensions of the show itself, Star Trek’s tendency to prattle on about weird alien names or borrow from Shakespeare for titles such as “Dagger of the Mind.”

Yet, for those who grew up in the era of The Next Generation, Shatner seemed like the old buffoon we had to put up with before we got to the good stuff. Shatner would go on Conan and sing/talk “Common People,” or he’d show up in a spoof of Seven on the MTV Movie Awards. But surely he didn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as Jean-Luc Picard, played by properly serious dramatic actor Patrick Stewart?

Perhaps it was all of those goofy roles that diminished Shatner’s reputation. Perhaps it was his turn as the title cop in the ‘80s series TJ Hooker that did him in. Where Star Trek let Shatner monologue about humanity’s better nature and the joys of discovery, TJ Hooker asks Shatner to deliver diatribes about permissiveness corrupting society, and how the police should be given free reign to crack down on degenerates. On TJ Hooker, Shatner’s speeches felt like the boasts of a blowhard right wing talk show host, hardly engendering the same sympathies as the intrepid captain.

And so, Shatner became a joke, even among Trekkies. That is, until Kirk finally shared the screen with our beloved Captain Picard. And then, the magic of Shatner’s style could no longer be denied.

Generational Talent

Star Trek: Generations is a terrible movie. It somehow botches the lay-up of getting Malcolm McDowell to play a fanatical villain, it turns the explicitly kid-avoidant Picard into someone who longs for a Victorian family, and it lets Kirk die on a rusty bridge. It doesn’t even do justice to the central hook, teaming Kirk and Picard on an adventure.

But Generations does do exactly one thing correct: it gets out of the way and lets Shatner do his stuff.

For those who have forgotten, Star Trek: Generations involves an anomaly called the Nexus, which traps whoever enters it, but fills them with bliss. The Nexus destroys the Enterprise-B, under the command of hapless Captain Harriman (Alan Ruck), and seemingly kills Kirk in the past. But when Picard encounters the Nexus in his present, he finds Kirk apparently living out his dream, on a ranch with horses and an off-screen wife.

The story asks Picard to convince a seemingly contented Kirk to return to action and stop the villain Soran. Picard does so by using what we’ve come to know as his greatest skill, his gift of argument and oration. Yet, in the actual conflict between the two, Picard comes off stiff and uncomfortable, while Kirk seems sprightly and excited, full of life.

Take one of their first exchanges, when Picard enters Kirk’s homestead and tries to explain that he’s the captain of the future Enterprise. Stewart stumbles over his words, talking slowly in the fear that his revelations will startle his predecessor. At the same time, Shatner bounces around the room, with Kirk paying little mind to his visitor and instead taking stock of the items around him. Kirk stops when he finds a clock and realizes it was once a gift to Doctor McCoy. Shatner, of course, pauses as he delivers the line, holding his face stone still to register the shock. When Kirk snaps out of it, Shatner speaks the next lines in a rush, as if he can’t get them out quickly enough.

Were an impressionist on SNL to speak the lines in the same way, they would sound silly and ill-chosen. But in the moment that Shatner says them, they feel perfect. He knows that the occasion calls for pomp and circumstance, and he meets that moment. The meeting of two legends should be a big deal, it deserves awe and playfulness and even sanctimony—not whatever Stewart is doing.

Shatner delivers, over-delivers, the emotion the scene requires, and he does it well, because he’s been answering the call as Kirk for decades.

Boldly Going Where No Actor Has Gone Before

Part of Star Trek’s longevity owes to the fact that it covers so many tones and genres. Yes, it is absolutely an inspiring, utopian show about how humanity gets better over time and improves to explore space. It’s an adventure show that features humans punching aliens in the face, and it’s a philosophical show that sees those same humans sitting down with aliens to talk through their differences. It’s a serious show with pretentious titles, and it’s a silly show that has its doctor chase around a white rabbit to find a pair of girls in bikinis.

In short, Star Trek involves big feelings and big thoughts, and, as such, it calls for big performances. No one has answered that call as deftly and consistently as William Shatner. Laugh if you want, do goofy impressions if you want. But of all the actors in the absurd, far-out world of Star Trek, William Shatner is undoubtedly the most human.

The post Star Trek: Celebrating the Scene-Chewing Genius of William Shatner appeared first on Den of Geek.

Buying an old house comes with a few surprises. Maybe the floors creak, the basement smells weird, or there’s a door that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. But sometimes, pulling down a wall reveals something nobody expected. We’re talking forgotten staircases, shoes that have been sitting in the same spot for a hundred years, and rooms that apparently didn’t make it onto the floor plan. Some discoveries turn out to be perfectly ordinary, while others leave homeowners wondering what on earth the previous owners were doing. Luckily, plenty of people have shared photos of their finds. Here are 15 discoveries that might make you reconsider what’s hiding behind your own walls.

The post 15 People Share The Strangest Thing They Found Hidden in Creepy Old Houses appeared first on Den of Geek.

At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral James T. Kirk stands before the crew of the USS Enterprise to offer some words of solace on a heartbreaking occasion. Their friend, colleague, and commanding officer Spock has died, sacrificing himself to save them all. Kirk in particular has lost the person who understood him best, and fans of the franchise have lost their favorite character.

“Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels,” begins the Captain. “His was the most… human.” Kirk’s words are fitting, even the fact that he identifies the half-Vulcan as fully human, a designation the living Spock would have rejected. But its not the words that really stand out. It’s the way that William Shatner delivers those words, the preposterous pregnant pause he holds right before spitting the word “human,” the way he twists his face in anguish. 

For years, moments such as these made Shatner’s acting an object of ridicule. But it’s high time that we recognize them as what they are: excellent melodramatic acting.

A Laughed-At Legend

It’s hard to say where Shatner’s reputation went sour. Certainly, people noticed and mimicked his off-beat cadences early on. See, for example, the way John Belushi milked the pauses when playing Kirk on a sketch in a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live. Even Shatner himself seemed to play it up on various chat show appearances. But all of these seemed like extensions of the show itself, Star Trek’s tendency to prattle on about weird alien names or borrow from Shakespeare for titles such as “Dagger of the Mind.”

Yet, for those who grew up in the era of The Next Generation, Shatner seemed like the old buffoon we had to put up with before we got to the good stuff. Shatner would go on Conan and sing/talk “Common People,” or he’d show up in a spoof of Seven on the MTV Movie Awards. But surely he didn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as Jean-Luc Picard, played by properly serious dramatic actor Patrick Stewart?

Perhaps it was all of those goofy roles that diminished Shatner’s reputation. Perhaps it was his turn as the title cop in the ‘80s series TJ Hooker that did him in. Where Star Trek let Shatner monologue about humanity’s better nature and the joys of discovery, TJ Hooker asks Shatner to deliver diatribes about permissiveness corrupting society, and how the police should be given free reign to crack down on degenerates. On TJ Hooker, Shatner’s speeches felt like the boasts of a blowhard right wing talk show host, hardly engendering the same sympathies as the intrepid captain.

And so, Shatner became a joke, even among Trekkies. That is, until Kirk finally shared the screen with our beloved Captain Picard. And then, the magic of Shatner’s style could no longer be denied.

Generational Talent

Star Trek: Generations is a terrible movie. It somehow botches the lay-up of getting Malcolm McDowell to play a fanatical villain, it turns the explicitly kid-avoidant Picard into someone who longs for a Victorian family, and it lets Kirk die on a rusty bridge. It doesn’t even do justice to the central hook, teaming Kirk and Picard on an adventure.

But Generations does do exactly one thing correct: it gets out of the way and lets Shatner do his stuff.

For those who have forgotten, Star Trek: Generations involves an anomaly called the Nexus, which traps whoever enters it, but fills them with bliss. The Nexus destroys the Enterprise-B, under the command of hapless Captain Harriman (Alan Ruck), and seemingly kills Kirk in the past. But when Picard encounters the Nexus in his present, he finds Kirk apparently living out his dream, on a ranch with horses and an off-screen wife.

The story asks Picard to convince a seemingly contented Kirk to return to action and stop the villain Soran. Picard does so by using what we’ve come to know as his greatest skill, his gift of argument and oration. Yet, in the actual conflict between the two, Picard comes off stiff and uncomfortable, while Kirk seems sprightly and excited, full of life.

Take one of their first exchanges, when Picard enters Kirk’s homestead and tries to explain that he’s the captain of the future Enterprise. Stewart stumbles over his words, talking slowly in the fear that his revelations will startle his predecessor. At the same time, Shatner bounces around the room, with Kirk paying little mind to his visitor and instead taking stock of the items around him. Kirk stops when he finds a clock and realizes it was once a gift to Doctor McCoy. Shatner, of course, pauses as he delivers the line, holding his face stone still to register the shock. When Kirk snaps out of it, Shatner speaks the next lines in a rush, as if he can’t get them out quickly enough.

Were an impressionist on SNL to speak the lines in the same way, they would sound silly and ill-chosen. But in the moment that Shatner says them, they feel perfect. He knows that the occasion calls for pomp and circumstance, and he meets that moment. The meeting of two legends should be a big deal, it deserves awe and playfulness and even sanctimony—not whatever Stewart is doing.

Shatner delivers, over-delivers, the emotion the scene requires, and he does it well, because he’s been answering the call as Kirk for decades.

Boldly Going Where No Actor Has Gone Before

Part of Star Trek’s longevity owes to the fact that it covers so many tones and genres. Yes, it is absolutely an inspiring, utopian show about how humanity gets better over time and improves to explore space. It’s an adventure show that features humans punching aliens in the face, and it’s a philosophical show that sees those same humans sitting down with aliens to talk through their differences. It’s a serious show with pretentious titles, and it’s a silly show that has its doctor chase around a white rabbit to find a pair of girls in bikinis.

In short, Star Trek involves big feelings and big thoughts, and, as such, it calls for big performances. No one has answered that call as deftly and consistently as William Shatner. Laugh if you want, do goofy impressions if you want. But of all the actors in the absurd, far-out world of Star Trek, William Shatner is undoubtedly the most human.

The post Star Trek: Celebrating the Scene-Chewing Genius of William Shatner appeared first on Den of Geek.

Hollywood has a way of making the actor pool feel very small, which is why it’s odd when a once popular star suddenly stops appearing in movies, attending premieres, or giving interviews. Some of these actors walked away while their careers were still going strong, leaving audiences wondering what happened behind the scenes. Others turned down opportunities for years without making a big announcement about their plans. In several cases, the reasons became clearer much later. Their stories reveal what happened after the cameras stopped rolling and why some famous names remain surprisingly difficult to spot.

The post 15 Celebrities Who Disappeared From Hollywood Without Explanation appeared first on Den of Geek.

At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral James T. Kirk stands before the crew of the USS Enterprise to offer some words of solace on a heartbreaking occasion. Their friend, colleague, and commanding officer Spock has died, sacrificing himself to save them all. Kirk in particular has lost the person who understood him best, and fans of the franchise have lost their favorite character.

“Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels,” begins the Captain. “His was the most… human.” Kirk’s words are fitting, even the fact that he identifies the half-Vulcan as fully human, a designation the living Spock would have rejected. But its not the words that really stand out. It’s the way that William Shatner delivers those words, the preposterous pregnant pause he holds right before spitting the word “human,” the way he twists his face in anguish. 

For years, moments such as these made Shatner’s acting an object of ridicule. But it’s high time that we recognize them as what they are: excellent melodramatic acting.

A Laughed-At Legend

It’s hard to say where Shatner’s reputation went sour. Certainly, people noticed and mimicked his off-beat cadences early on. See, for example, the way John Belushi milked the pauses when playing Kirk on a sketch in a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live. Even Shatner himself seemed to play it up on various chat show appearances. But all of these seemed like extensions of the show itself, Star Trek’s tendency to prattle on about weird alien names or borrow from Shakespeare for titles such as “Dagger of the Mind.”

Yet, for those who grew up in the era of The Next Generation, Shatner seemed like the old buffoon we had to put up with before we got to the good stuff. Shatner would go on Conan and sing/talk “Common People,” or he’d show up in a spoof of Seven on the MTV Movie Awards. But surely he didn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as Jean-Luc Picard, played by properly serious dramatic actor Patrick Stewart?

Perhaps it was all of those goofy roles that diminished Shatner’s reputation. Perhaps it was his turn as the title cop in the ‘80s series TJ Hooker that did him in. Where Star Trek let Shatner monologue about humanity’s better nature and the joys of discovery, TJ Hooker asks Shatner to deliver diatribes about permissiveness corrupting society, and how the police should be given free reign to crack down on degenerates. On TJ Hooker, Shatner’s speeches felt like the boasts of a blowhard right wing talk show host, hardly engendering the same sympathies as the intrepid captain.

And so, Shatner became a joke, even among Trekkies. That is, until Kirk finally shared the screen with our beloved Captain Picard. And then, the magic of Shatner’s style could no longer be denied.

Generational Talent

Star Trek: Generations is a terrible movie. It somehow botches the lay-up of getting Malcolm McDowell to play a fanatical villain, it turns the explicitly kid-avoidant Picard into someone who longs for a Victorian family, and it lets Kirk die on a rusty bridge. It doesn’t even do justice to the central hook, teaming Kirk and Picard on an adventure.

But Generations does do exactly one thing correct: it gets out of the way and lets Shatner do his stuff.

For those who have forgotten, Star Trek: Generations involves an anomaly called the Nexus, which traps whoever enters it, but fills them with bliss. The Nexus destroys the Enterprise-B, under the command of hapless Captain Harriman (Alan Ruck), and seemingly kills Kirk in the past. But when Picard encounters the Nexus in his present, he finds Kirk apparently living out his dream, on a ranch with horses and an off-screen wife.

The story asks Picard to convince a seemingly contented Kirk to return to action and stop the villain Soran. Picard does so by using what we’ve come to know as his greatest skill, his gift of argument and oration. Yet, in the actual conflict between the two, Picard comes off stiff and uncomfortable, while Kirk seems sprightly and excited, full of life.

Take one of their first exchanges, when Picard enters Kirk’s homestead and tries to explain that he’s the captain of the future Enterprise. Stewart stumbles over his words, talking slowly in the fear that his revelations will startle his predecessor. At the same time, Shatner bounces around the room, with Kirk paying little mind to his visitor and instead taking stock of the items around him. Kirk stops when he finds a clock and realizes it was once a gift to Doctor McCoy. Shatner, of course, pauses as he delivers the line, holding his face stone still to register the shock. When Kirk snaps out of it, Shatner speaks the next lines in a rush, as if he can’t get them out quickly enough.

Were an impressionist on SNL to speak the lines in the same way, they would sound silly and ill-chosen. But in the moment that Shatner says them, they feel perfect. He knows that the occasion calls for pomp and circumstance, and he meets that moment. The meeting of two legends should be a big deal, it deserves awe and playfulness and even sanctimony—not whatever Stewart is doing.

Shatner delivers, over-delivers, the emotion the scene requires, and he does it well, because he’s been answering the call as Kirk for decades.

Boldly Going Where No Actor Has Gone Before

Part of Star Trek’s longevity owes to the fact that it covers so many tones and genres. Yes, it is absolutely an inspiring, utopian show about how humanity gets better over time and improves to explore space. It’s an adventure show that features humans punching aliens in the face, and it’s a philosophical show that sees those same humans sitting down with aliens to talk through their differences. It’s a serious show with pretentious titles, and it’s a silly show that has its doctor chase around a white rabbit to find a pair of girls in bikinis.

In short, Star Trek involves big feelings and big thoughts, and, as such, it calls for big performances. No one has answered that call as deftly and consistently as William Shatner. Laugh if you want, do goofy impressions if you want. But of all the actors in the absurd, far-out world of Star Trek, William Shatner is undoubtedly the most human.

The post Star Trek: Celebrating the Scene-Chewing Genius of William Shatner appeared first on Den of Geek.

Everyone just wants some acknowledgment for a job well done. Even, it turns out, serial killers. Since Dexter first premiered on Showtime in 2005, the titular Dexter Morgan (played by Michael C. Hall) has been hard at work making the world a safer place… in his own roundabout fashion. Through eight seasons in Miami (Dexter), […]

The post Michael C. Hall Talks Dexter’s Midlife Crisis in Resurrection Season 2 appeared first on Den of Geek.

At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral James T. Kirk stands before the crew of the USS Enterprise to offer some words of solace on a heartbreaking occasion. Their friend, colleague, and commanding officer Spock has died, sacrificing himself to save them all. Kirk in particular has lost the person who understood him best, and fans of the franchise have lost their favorite character.

“Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels,” begins the Captain. “His was the most… human.” Kirk’s words are fitting, even the fact that he identifies the half-Vulcan as fully human, a designation the living Spock would have rejected. But its not the words that really stand out. It’s the way that William Shatner delivers those words, the preposterous pregnant pause he holds right before spitting the word “human,” the way he twists his face in anguish. 

For years, moments such as these made Shatner’s acting an object of ridicule. But it’s high time that we recognize them as what they are: excellent melodramatic acting.

A Laughed-At Legend

It’s hard to say where Shatner’s reputation went sour. Certainly, people noticed and mimicked his off-beat cadences early on. See, for example, the way John Belushi milked the pauses when playing Kirk on a sketch in a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live. Even Shatner himself seemed to play it up on various chat show appearances. But all of these seemed like extensions of the show itself, Star Trek’s tendency to prattle on about weird alien names or borrow from Shakespeare for titles such as “Dagger of the Mind.”

Yet, for those who grew up in the era of The Next Generation, Shatner seemed like the old buffoon we had to put up with before we got to the good stuff. Shatner would go on Conan and sing/talk “Common People,” or he’d show up in a spoof of Seven on the MTV Movie Awards. But surely he didn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as Jean-Luc Picard, played by properly serious dramatic actor Patrick Stewart?

Perhaps it was all of those goofy roles that diminished Shatner’s reputation. Perhaps it was his turn as the title cop in the ‘80s series TJ Hooker that did him in. Where Star Trek let Shatner monologue about humanity’s better nature and the joys of discovery, TJ Hooker asks Shatner to deliver diatribes about permissiveness corrupting society, and how the police should be given free reign to crack down on degenerates. On TJ Hooker, Shatner’s speeches felt like the boasts of a blowhard right wing talk show host, hardly engendering the same sympathies as the intrepid captain.

And so, Shatner became a joke, even among Trekkies. That is, until Kirk finally shared the screen with our beloved Captain Picard. And then, the magic of Shatner’s style could no longer be denied.

Generational Talent

Star Trek: Generations is a terrible movie. It somehow botches the lay-up of getting Malcolm McDowell to play a fanatical villain, it turns the explicitly kid-avoidant Picard into someone who longs for a Victorian family, and it lets Kirk die on a rusty bridge. It doesn’t even do justice to the central hook, teaming Kirk and Picard on an adventure.

But Generations does do exactly one thing correct: it gets out of the way and lets Shatner do his stuff.

For those who have forgotten, Star Trek: Generations involves an anomaly called the Nexus, which traps whoever enters it, but fills them with bliss. The Nexus destroys the Enterprise-B, under the command of hapless Captain Harriman (Alan Ruck), and seemingly kills Kirk in the past. But when Picard encounters the Nexus in his present, he finds Kirk apparently living out his dream, on a ranch with horses and an off-screen wife.

The story asks Picard to convince a seemingly contented Kirk to return to action and stop the villain Soran. Picard does so by using what we’ve come to know as his greatest skill, his gift of argument and oration. Yet, in the actual conflict between the two, Picard comes off stiff and uncomfortable, while Kirk seems sprightly and excited, full of life.

Take one of their first exchanges, when Picard enters Kirk’s homestead and tries to explain that he’s the captain of the future Enterprise. Stewart stumbles over his words, talking slowly in the fear that his revelations will startle his predecessor. At the same time, Shatner bounces around the room, with Kirk paying little mind to his visitor and instead taking stock of the items around him. Kirk stops when he finds a clock and realizes it was once a gift to Doctor McCoy. Shatner, of course, pauses as he delivers the line, holding his face stone still to register the shock. When Kirk snaps out of it, Shatner speaks the next lines in a rush, as if he can’t get them out quickly enough.

Were an impressionist on SNL to speak the lines in the same way, they would sound silly and ill-chosen. But in the moment that Shatner says them, they feel perfect. He knows that the occasion calls for pomp and circumstance, and he meets that moment. The meeting of two legends should be a big deal, it deserves awe and playfulness and even sanctimony—not whatever Stewart is doing.

Shatner delivers, over-delivers, the emotion the scene requires, and he does it well, because he’s been answering the call as Kirk for decades.

Boldly Going Where No Actor Has Gone Before

Part of Star Trek’s longevity owes to the fact that it covers so many tones and genres. Yes, it is absolutely an inspiring, utopian show about how humanity gets better over time and improves to explore space. It’s an adventure show that features humans punching aliens in the face, and it’s a philosophical show that sees those same humans sitting down with aliens to talk through their differences. It’s a serious show with pretentious titles, and it’s a silly show that has its doctor chase around a white rabbit to find a pair of girls in bikinis.

In short, Star Trek involves big feelings and big thoughts, and, as such, it calls for big performances. No one has answered that call as deftly and consistently as William Shatner. Laugh if you want, do goofy impressions if you want. But of all the actors in the absurd, far-out world of Star Trek, William Shatner is undoubtedly the most human.

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