Shatner: Where No Man...

Shatner: Where No Man is a biography of William Shatner who played Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series. Written by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, with assistance from Carol Frisbieaccording to fan contributor "LF" in K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits) 11, it was published by Ace Books in 1979. It is rumored that Shatner later bought the rights to limit access to this book. "Keep that book close to you. Shatner bought the rights and all outstanding copies. He destroyed all copies of the book and deep sixed the rights. You'll never see that book reprinted again." -- comments by Jay P. Hailey at alt.startrek.creative › Kirk/Spock question (February 21, 1998) 
Shatner discussed his acting career and his personal life, and provided many photographs. Leonard Nimoy was included in several of the interviews, and the book emphasizes their camaraderie and good-natured teasing. There is also a chapter dedicated to an interview with Gene Roddenberry. 
Marshak and Culbreath worked on this book for several years. At 1976 Star Trek America Bi-Centennial Con, where Shatner was the guest of honor, detailed flyers were passed around promoting the book, along with a questionnaire for fans to contribute their own memories and impressions of how Shatner and Star Trek had affected their lives. (This material can be seen at TrekkerScrapbook.com.)
Marshak and Culbreath referred to this questionnaire, along with the numerous letters, manuscripts and personal communications they received over the years, as a "years-long study" which "outdrew the Hite Report".The Hite Report on Female Sexuality, begun by Shere Hite in 1972 and first published in 1976, had 3,019 women of all ages responding to an anonymous questionnaire with 58 questions. Marshak and Culbreath's 13-item questionnaire, first distributed in 1976, would have received 3,020+ responses. Marshak, Culbreath, and Marshak's mother "presented excerpts" from this book at Star Trek America/Star Trek America Atlanta 1978 and Star Trek America/Star Trek America New York City 1978 (February).
They concluded that Shatner, and Captain Kirk, had affected people's lives in a positive manner, allowing greater acceptance of diversity, changes in male-female roles and emotional openness in men. (In the 1970s, women's liberation was considered liberating for men too. Several books discussed how feminism would help men.) They also discuss sexual fantasies, including the then-revolutionary idea that women had them, and anthropological studies on dominant vs. submissive traits in animals and humans.
Marshak and Culbreath were part of an earlier, similar fan survey, one of which resulted in the pro book Star Trek Lives!.
==The Pre-Book Questionnaire==
See Questionnaire: A Piece of the Action. For Shatner: Where No Man....
From a fan in 1977:
==Shatner on Shatner==
Shatner described his childhood in Montréal. His family was kind and loving, but he never felt loved, sensing an emptiness. His Jewish faith caused many fights and societal conflicts."Fights, every day, with one or more kids my size or bigger. Somebody recently showed me a high school graduation book. There I was -- a nice-looking boy -- and my nickname was 'Toughie' because I was always fighting and being attacked. Kids would all crowd around, yelling, 'Fight! Fight! Fight!'... The university I went to had a quota. How I made it through the quota, I don’t know... there was a limit to the number of Jewish kids who could go to that university, no matter how qualified they were." Benjamin Law, Dicey Topics: William Shatner talks money, religion and bodies. Sydney Morning Herald, October 6, 2018.Being an English-speaking Jew in Québec must have been nightmarish at times. Most of the rural areas outside the city of Montréal are strongly ethnic French and anti-Semitic. While most are no longer Catholic, "these communities, especially the pure French, are especially hostile to Canadians, English-speakers, ethnic minorities and immigrants of any kind, and especially Jews. Jacques Parizeau, in his concession speech when his separatist party lost the second referendum vote (50.5% to 49.5%), made a speech that made Enoch Powell and George Wallace look like Barack Obama, screaming and spitting into the microphone blaming what the translators called "ethnics and money." But I knew enough French that I could actually make out that the Premier of Quebec was on national television ranting about the niggers and the kikes. These are the people who wholeheartedly endorse the current Québec government's "Values Charter" proposal that, if implemented, would practically eject all Muslims, Sikhs, and Jews from Québec's public service sector, including health care.
"Growing up a Jew in Montréal in the 1940s and 50s, Shatner, I think, would have known where he was and was not welcome in Québec. It's not like no one ever took vacations on canoe trips in the forests, but Montréalers don't usually spend much time outside the city unless they go to English Canada or travel internationally. In Québec, the rural areas aren't associated with enlightenment or open thinking, but with insularity and racism." - Adam Riggio, commenting in Josh Marsfelder's blog entry Sensor Scan: The Transformed Man, review of Shatner's album that came out around the time of this book. Vaka Rangi, September 30, 2013. WebCite. He was not attracted to girls, attributing this to a sense of unworthiness. At six, he was involved in a play as a Jewish child who escapes the Holocaust, leaving his dog behind. The approval and affection he received for having performed well led him to study dramatics, viewed as "weird" by others. He repeatedly referred to the classic cartoon showing a boy teased or maligned for "carrying a violin case".No joke. At fifteen, Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, was viciously beaten by a street gang who had discovered him walking home with a violin case and told him only "girls" studied music. His arm was badly broken and he never fully recovered. Partly as a reaction, he took up strenuous athletics and "macho" sports.
==Shatner on his Career==
He described early successes in theater, film and television, not just as an actor but as a writer and producer, long before Star Trek. His wife Gloria divorced him during Star Trek and took everything. Literally destitute, he had a walking nervous breakdown. Typecasting as Captain Kirk limited his ability to find work. He rebuilt his life and career with the help of his second wife, Marcy.
==Shatner on Kirk==
Shatner stated unequivocally "I am Kirk," probably a reference to I Am Not Spock. He would not let Kirk do anything he wouldn't or couldn't do himself. He speaks about Kirk's willingness to express feelings openly as key to his character as well as true to Shatner's own nature. Nimoy and other Star Trek actors are asked "How much of Shatner is in Kirk, and how much of Kirk is in Shatner?" with various answers. They speak about ways in which he helped and supported them during filming. Shatner went into detail about the humiliation scenes in "Plato's Stepchildren," talking about the care that went into ensuring his performance would be serious.
==Shatner on Trek==
Shatner talks about Star Trek as "a dream, a joy, a delight, a challenge, a memory -- an angel, a wench, a witch." It was a unique show and large parts of it, including many aspects of Captain Kirk's character, had to be made up as they went along. What was planned from the beginning was a high standard which was built into it by "the studio heads, Herb Solow, Gene Roddenberry certainly, Gene Coon by leaps and bounds -- far above anybody else,"As time goes on and people feel more comfortable speaking up, Gene Coon's role as a prime Star Trek creator has become more visible. In Edward Gross' book Trek Classic: 25 Years Later (Image Pub of New York, 1991), David Gerrold said that it was Coon, not Roddenberry, who really made the show what it was: "Gene L. Coon came in early in the first season and pulled it together, and he stayed there until more than halfway through the second season. If you look at the episodes in sequence, you can see that the best episodes are the ones where Gene Coon’s hands were at the tiller. Gene Coon made the show work, very, very strongly." Josh Marsfelder in his essay on "Miri" in Vaka Rangi says: "Coon is one of the great unsung heroes of Star Trek and probably the most criminally marginalized person in the entire history of the franchise. Coon's influence on Star Trek, or at least the Star Trek everyone likes to pretend existed, cannot be overstated: Not to put too fine a point on it, but if there's something you remember liking about the Original Series that didn't evolve in some way from “The Cage”, chances are it was Coon's idea. The fact of the matter is the lion's share of the utopianism and progressive idealism Star Trek is so frequently praised for comes not from Gene Roddenberry, but from Gene Coon." and then goes on to name continuity editors John D.F. Black and Dorothy Fontana, and their insertion of underlying themes and thoughtful material that gave the show an additional dimension than if it had been just entertainment. He believes Star Trek introduced sociological and cultural ideas that were far ahead of their time. 
He speaks about trying to make the crew seem more relaxed and familiar with each other than they had been in "The Cage". He also mentions aspects of the show which would decrease the challenges faced by Kirk and crew. One was the Enterprise:
The other was Spock. Numerous times, Spock had displayed physical strength and mental powers (many devised by Nimoy himself) that "kept giving more invincibility" to his character:
Asked if he missed Spock when he had to be written out of scenes, Shatner stated "Does a captain miss his starship? But -- no. You know, along would come a pretty girl and off I'd go. Sure. It was a nice change. Although -- the captain always comes back to his ship."
Marshak and Culbreath once more bring the topic around to the sexual ideas and kinks present in some of the fan fiction, and ask if Shatner is aroused by any of them, particularly about being controlled by a much stronger woman. He says he is not turned off by them.At around the same time these interviews were taking place, Shat was interviewed on WNEW's Midday Live, hosted by Bill Boggs. Asked "What do you think about this trend in fandom, where Kirk and Spock are more than friends?" Shatner replied: "Well, they're gay, what do you think?" He followed that up with "There's this sociological thing in the U.S., people are uptight about homosexuality. The fact that two men are close to each other can invite speculation that they are more than just friends."
==Gene Roddenberry on Shatner, & Kirk==
 Entire chapter online at deviantart and archived at WebCite.
Roddenberry was interviewed the week after the announcement of Star Trek: Phase II, the originally planned television series. Marshak and Culbreath began by asking him a series of questions about the Kirk-Spock friendship, particularly in the context of Mary Renault's novels about Alexander the Great. Renault depicted Alexander's homosexual love with his close friend Hephaistion, and later with the Persian eunuch-courtesan Bagoas, in a romantic and sensitive style. Shatner had played Alexander in a 1968 TV-movie, and both he and Roddenberry described themselves as fans of the historical Alexander.
Asked if he saw the Kirk-Spock friendship as "two halves which come together to make a whole", Gene replied:
Roddenberry further revealed that he had cast Shatner as Kirk partly on the basis of his performance as Alexander. 
Turning to the ubiquitous theme of Star Trek sexual fantasies, Marshak and Culbreath asked Roddenberry how he viewed them, particularly the idea from "Turnabout Intruder" of a man's psyche trapped in a woman's body. 
"We've been following the studies latelyPossibly a reference to the Kinsey or Hite reports. which say that almost everybody has these reversal thoughts. Remember when we discussed for the book that the top male fantasy is to rape, and the second top is to be raped? With women it's the exact opposite. Top is to be raped, second top is to rape. Now, what do you think is going on there? What is the source of the profound sexual impact of Star Trek?Page 150.
Gene's response: 
The discussion continues along these lines, Roddenberry observing that in "the straight magazines...With the word 'straight', Roddenberry reveals he's aware of K/S and slash zines. they almost always destroy the woman who turns to Mr. Spock," and that "what women want is an alpha male" to actualize their own dominant and powerful natures. He also admits that many sexist elements "slipped through" in his own work as he struggled to express a future of male-female equality.
==Nimoy and Shatner==
Entire chapter online at beyondspock.de and archived at WebCite. 
The authors interviewed Nimoy together with Shatner at "The Captain's Table", a restaurant that Nimoy chose as a joke. While the two actors definitely possess an intuitive, creative "spark" between them, which Nimoy calls "reaching", Nimoy disagrees that Kirk and Spock couldn't live without each other:
However, Nimoy also points out that the scene most indicative of their relationship is the exchange "Live long, and prosper, Spock." - "I shall do neither, I have killed my Captain -- and my friend", from Amok Time. He says "I think Spock was speaking truth." The authors state that this line above all others stands "for the essence of the Kirk-Spock relationship in the minds of the people who love it."
Nimoy said he'd been uncomfortable with the sadism in "Plato's Stepchildren", dismissing it as a third-season script and saying the theme of pushing everyone beyond their limits had already been done much more effectively in "The Naked Time". He refused to speculate on the sexual obsessions suggested by the authors, merely stating that he and Shatner must have done something they were unaware of which caused fans to respond with such ideas: 
As for "Turnabout Intruder," Nimoy said he was much more aware of its message that women cannot do all that men do -- a sentiment with which he disagreed strongly while the script was in production: 
Marshak adds that the episode "loads the dice" by making the woman mentally unstable instead of showing a rational female in command.
==Shatner on "Savagery"==
Shatner discusses primal instincts, the "wolf" and "lamb" sides of Kirk from "The Enemy Within", and some of his acting nuances which he took from descriptions of animal behavior. He speaks about having felt primal rage toward a bullying fellow actor early in his career, but controlled the instinct to attack. The authors examine the messages of Star Trek in light of research done by Canadian anthropologist Lionel Tiger, whom they incorrectly identify as British. In his book Men in Groups,Lionel Tiger, Men in Groups. Transaction, 1969.This book's premises have been discredited for many years. Michael Kimmel's book Misframing Men (Rutgers, 2010) discusses Tiger's work in terms of "recycling 1950s functionalism into normative policy analysis" and detracting women and feminism as causing the decline of masculinity. In many ways, Tiger's ideas on the need for male refuges where women are excluded appear to prefigure those of John Grey. The "alpha male" is far from an established scientific fact. The term was coined by Rudolph Shenkel, who was studying wolves in captivity. David Mech mistakenly referenced Shenkel's work before studying wild wolves and discovering that stereotypical commanding, dominating, self-serving behavior we think of as "alpha" only occurred with wolves in captivity, confined and terrified. Mech has worked for years to remove the "alpha male" myth from popular culture. Tiger discusses the purposes of male bonding (a phrase he invented) and male stoicism in establishing "alpha male" dominance ranking and access to fertile females. The authors speculate that if Shatner as Kirk projects the sense that he is an alpha male, but at the same time sets an example of emotional openness, he and Star Trek may influence American culture toward a time when emotional expression by males will be accepted.
==Shatner on Women and Feminism==
Shatner and the authors discuss the changes that the Women's Liberation Movement have brought to everyday American culture. This is where people began questioning practices such as referring to women under thirty as "girls", saying "baby" for a loved one, etc.At least baby is used by both men and women. The more odious "little girl" is still with us in songs. They bring up the sexism implied in "where no man has gone before." Another subject is inappropriately affectionate gestures with women other than a romantic partner, such as taking her chin in your hand and lifting her face up (which Shatner did with Marshak, and which Marshak found "extremely alpha")In her story "The Procrustean Petard", Marshak has Klingon commander Kang do this to James Kirk after he's been turned into a petite, helpless female by an alien sex change machine.. Shatner confesses that he once went up to a male ambassador from IndiaThis may have been Braj Kumar Nehru. and pinched his cheek as you would a toddler, saying his cheeks were "just chuckulamumula" and remembering him "just staring -- the little brown eyes."Marshak's response: "Somebody should have filmed that."
The authors digress into the types of women portrayed on the show who were attracted to Kirk or whom he found attractive. The women were extremely diverse as to personality type, and love and romance were portrayed in a wide variety of ways. This apparently inspired fan authors to create fantasies "spun off" from the "catalog of Kirk's women". The authors claimed that most of these stories "should come in a plain brown wrapper and frequently do, usually to our mailbox".Perhaps Marshak and Culbreath planned a third New Voyages with the best of the X-rated stories. However, by 1979, stories involving either Kirk or Spock with women were largely passé. Meanwhile, they observed that men seemed to view Kirk as a kind of role model whose more admirable qualities, including his emotional openness, can be emulated. As Tarzan embodied a male archetype, the authors felt that Kirk was rapidly becoming one also.
==Shatner and Marcy==
The authors meet Marcy Shatner for the first time in a lengthy, worshipful chapter transcribing a rambling conversation about their relationship. Marcy Lafferty, the daughter of longtime CBS programming manager Perry Lafferty (misnamed "Percy" in the book), had been an actress and dancer before marrying Shatner. She met him when she was a production assistant (script girl) on The Andersonville Trial. Many fans probably remember her as Chief Navigator DiFalco, who replaces Lt. Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.Shatner and Marcy divorced in 1996. He married Nerine Kidd in 1997. In 1999 she drowned in the family swimming pool, and Shatner revealed she'd been an alcoholic, confirmed by Leonard Nimoy, himself an alcoholic, who took her to AA meetings. Shatner married Elizabeth Martin in 2001.
Among other things, we learn that Marci has got Shat on a vegetarian diet eliminating all white flour and sugar.People have been eating whole grains for thousands of years, until the 1800s when new technology made refined grains affordable. In the 1960s, "whole grains" were again in demand, brought to public attention by Americanized versions of the Asian macrobiotic diet first introduced to westerners through the writings of George Ohsawa in his 1965 book You Are All Sanpaku (an imbalance of elements in the body) and subsequently endorsed by Beats and hippies. Ohsawa wrote several books about macrobiotic nutrition. Buddhist poet and social critic Gary Snyder and hippie author-inventor Stewart Brand were probably the first Americans to write extensively about the benefits of macrobiotic food. Some musicians and actors tried it, giving it more publicity. See Brand's The Whole Earth Catalogue and Alicia Bay Laurel's Living on the Earth for more examples. They discuss her influence on his life and career, veering off into sexual "conquest" and male-female interactions in terms of biology vs. society. 
The authors speculate that as feminism helps men to discard the idea that emotional openness is wrong for men, it will also help women to discard the "Chameleon Effect". Women are allowed to be emotional as long as they do not make waves, as long as they are whatever the people around them want them to be. Shatner and Marci evince "electric interest" in this idea, and Shat speculates on a story about a "chameleon woman" who could become anything a man desired. If she tried to behave as herself, the man would hate her because he wanted the fantasy. See the TNG episode "The Perfect Mate", featuring an "empathic metamorph".
The authors listen to the album The Transformed Man, consisting of recitations and spoken song lyrics, and conclude that there are "fourteen men on that album, and every one of them is [Shatner]."
==Shatner and the Future==
Shatner is last seen working on Star Trek: The Motion Picture and planning a new stage show called Star Traveller. Originally meant to be a one-man dramatic show like his An Evening with William Shatner, he's expanding the idea into a multimedia extravaganza.These one-man shows were not always well-received by fans. Writing on eBay in 2017 concerning the sale of a poster announcing Leonard Nimoy's "Spock & I" appearance at the Crouse-Hinds theater in Syracuse, NY, eBay seller mark_dq of The Cazenovia Collection had this to say: "At the time of Mr. Nimoy's lecture at the Crouse-Hinds theatre, Syracuse Star Trek fans were still fuming from an appearance on the exact same stage only a few months previously of WILLIAM SHATNER! You see, Shatner's lecture was billed by the Cinephile Society as "The Star Trek Show" and advertised with pictures of Captain Kirk and a BONUS SCREENING of a 16mm print of the original pilot episode "The Cage," which at that time was not readily available for viewing by the public. Well Shatner showed up, did a bunch of pompous dramatic readings that had nothing to do with Star Trek, science fiction, or space travel; answered a few questions till someone asked about "The Cage." Shatner mumbled some excuse about not being able to get the print and high tailed it out of central New York. Disgruntled ticket buyers complained so loudly that many months later, partial refunds for ticket stubs were offered." From The Cazenovia Collection on eBay, 1978 Original LEONARD NIMOY "SPOCK AND I" Lecture Tour Flier Poster Syracuse, NY, page found 2017-07-20; WebCiteShatner still does these one-man shows. His latest, in 2014, is called Shatner's World: We Just Live In It. 
The authors wax lyrical about the rollout of the prototype space shuttle Enterprise. Star Trek fans have always credited their letter campaign with President Ford's request that the shuttle's name be changed from Constitution, and the entire cast were present with Roddenberry at the rollout.Given the tragedies which followed, it's a good thing this Enterprise never actually went into space. They enumerate several television shows that present visions of hope and progress, such as Roots, or the now-forgotten 1978 miniseries Holocaust. Institutions such as segregation, which seemed "carved in stone" at the beginning of the 1960s, are described as "gone", and the authors describe "Uhura's contemporary counterpart" as an unnamed news anchor in Huntsville, Alabama, apparently the first black woman to have her own TV talk show.It is difficult to find a reference to this news anchor. There were many black women in broadcasting in the late 1970s. They are possibly thinking of investigative reporter Renee Dials of WALA; she was the first black woman news anchor in Mobile; not Huntsville, but the dates are right. The first black woman to have her own television program was Lena Richard, who had a cooking show from October 1949 - November 1950 on WDSU in New Orleans. The first black woman TV talk show host was actress Della Reese in 1969-70. The first black woman television journalist in the western US was Belva Davis, but she was in San Francisco. The first black woman to anchor a major network newscast was Carole Simpson at NBC News, but she was Chicago-based. Today, we might speak of astronaut Mae Jemison as Uhura's counterpart. 
Meanwhile, science fiction writers comment on Star Trek's, and Kirk's, impact on Western society. Robert Heinlein says "Star Trekkers alone can make the difference between a future in which we sink to a new dark age, and one in which we go upward, outward, to the stars."
Most fans probably do not remember that the prestigious SF author Theodore Sturgeon, who wrote the story outlines that became "Shore Leave" and "Amok Time", actually moved to California and began working on his scripts in the Star Trek offices when the show began. He speaks of being allowed to go everywhere on the set, to follow the actors so he could write their lines based on how they spoke in daily life. While he felt there wasn't much originality in the concept of Kirk, he thought that as the show went along Shatner began to invest the character with personal qualities that made him more dynamic and less of a stereotype. Sturgeon's comments about the actors, rarely if ever cited, should be of interest to today's fans:
And these words, from Arlene Martel, who played T'Pring:
Among other observations by actors and critics, the last pages contain an anecdote from Jesco von Puttkamer, at that time NASA's program manager, who'd been a technical advisor on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Speaking about being interviewed for the 1976 television series Mysteries of the Gods (see it here), von Puttkamer said:
"You have to be very tight, you know, for the interview, for the close-ups -- very close together -- nose to nose. We had been working on it and I was not used to it. I was a little stiff or something. He wanted me to loosen up.
"All of a sudden Bill leaned forward and he kissed me!"According to DeForest Kelley in interviews quoted on DeKelleyFans Shatner frequently did this as a gag.
==Marshak and Culbreath on "Where No Man..."==
==Fan Response==
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===2012===
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Star Trek TOS Professional Works