Get a Life! (Star Trek)
by William Shatner

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Book Reviews of Get a Life! (Star Trek)

Book Review: Hilarity in Prose
Summary: 5 Stars

Summary of Get a Life! (Star Trek)

Get A Life! with the possible exception of "Beam me up, Scotty," is clearly the most repeated catchphrase in the history of Star Trek?. Poking fun at Star Trek's gung-ho fans and conventions in a now infamous Saturday Night Live sketch, William Shatner's comic rallying cry has been indelibly emblazoned into the collective psyche of trekkers everywhere. Through the years, the phrase has spurred laughter, anger, controversy, and far more than its fair share of debate. It's now also given birth to an honest, sentimental, insightful book.

Uncomfortable with speaking onstage, William Shatner had spent the better part of the previous quarter century steadfastly avoiding convention appearances. However, to publicize the release of Star Trek Generations, Shatner agreed to a rare series of speaking engagements at Star Trek conventions around the globe. He was jolted by an unavoidable dose of reality.

Shatner was met with wild enthusiasm, love, and good humor at convention after convention. Touched and fascinated, he was overwhelmed with the realization that in almost three decades of starship hopping, he'd never really taken the time to enjoy or understand Star Trek's fans or their conventions. That's when the light bulb clicked on; that's when "Captain Kirk" dove headfirst into action.

For the past several years, William Shatner has been treating each Star Trek convention like an enormous research project. Interviewing fans, dealers, fellow castmembers, convention organizers, and promoters -- even going undercover beneath alien makeup -- Shatner's been scouring convention floors. Having grilled trekkers and trekkies in all corners of the planet, Shatner's had his eyes opened and his mind boggled. He's amassed a small mountain of research material, and cultivated his findings in Get A Life!

This is a first-person journey of discovery told with self-deprecating wit, unflagging honesty, and his trademark enthusiasm and humor. Get a Life! tells William Shatner's own story of how the actor who played the now deceased starship captain, James T. Kirk, can finally come to grips with his past, his fans, their love, and his own intergalactic legacy.

In the course of this book, Shatner gives us a short history of Trek fandom, reveals the thinking behind Paramount's decision to kill off James T. Kirk, briefly explains the origins of the infamous Saturday Night Live sketch that gives the book its title, holds a seminar with the three other starship captains, and even takes lessons on the proper way to imitate Kirk from the master, Kevin Pollak, an actor/comedian. (Among the insights gained: those dramatic pauses in Kirk's speeches were the result of Shatner trying to remember his next line.) And there are plenty of jokes at the expense of Leonard Nimoy, as well as a few skewering Shatner. (The "elephant story" is a classic in itself. Once, when Shatner was on a photo safari in Africa, an elephant did number two on his head. He tells the story at cons, and the fans seem to love it, for some reason.) But the most touching segments of Get a Life! are Shatner's interviews with the fans, particularly those to whom the show and the fan community have given a social and emotional lifeline. Once you've read the conversations with the shy veterinary student who made friends by dressing his cats in Star Trek uniforms, or with a young woman whose severe emotional and sexual trauma had led to the development of multiple personalities that included three healing presences in the form of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, you will never be able to make a Trekkie joke quite so readily again. --Ron Hogan

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