I think it's safe to say starting around 1967 he went ham. However if you watch his early films/TV and first season of Star Trek you can see a more subtle form of acting without the need to make.every.word.into.a.sentence. halting style of speaking. I especially think his acting int he first dozen episodes was Emmy-award winning stuff.
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shareShat had to carry the whole series. None of his ham and egger co-stars could carry the show so it was all on his shoulders. Remember the episode when Spock and some of the crew were stuck on a planet on the shuttlecraft and they pretty much just focused on them? Terrible. They couldn't even carry a single episode. Besides season 3 is the worst season anyway.
"No! That’s not true at all. Elvis takes fifty percent of everything I earn." Col. Parker
The Galileo Seven aired on January 5, 1967, season 1 episode 16. That was a great episode.
shareRent or buy The Andersonville Trial. The whole cast... Shatner, Richard Basehart, Jack Cassidy, Cameron Mitchell... amazing.
How sad, that you were not born in my time, nor I, in yours.
if you watch his early films/TV and first season of Star Trek you can see a more subtle form of acting without the need to make.every.word.into.a.sentence. halting style of speaking. I especially think his acting int he first dozen episodes was Emmy-award winning stuff.
Agreed. His performance in the first several original ST episodes was sterling. No unnecessary halts or exaggerations. I wonder if he began to stress out over the burden of being the key character and needing to memorize all his lines in a very short time and deliver them with only maybe a five-six day production schedule - not to mention how many more episodes were filmed for the typical TV show back then. I makes me wonder if his choppy delivery was some weird kind of "mnemonic device" that helped anchor the lines in his memory. I have no other way of explaining his later halting kind of delivery... unless he was overly self-critical and didn't think his original delivery was working for some reason...?
It is startling to see the change mid season 1. Beautiful, fluent line delivery up to that point and the choppiness ever after that you noted.
shareBoy, I'm glad this is being discussed. Shat as Kirk was at his best up until about, as you said, mid-season #1. "What an actor!" my 16 year old mind (yes, I'm ancient) was thinking... but then the artificiality crept in. Didn't ruin the show for me by any means, but ... when your parents start making fun of "your star's" quirky/Kirky mannerisms, you begin to sense that something really HAS gone wrong...
I do think he was better in the movies, even in the maligned ST:TMP, and he hit a high with Wrath of Khan (even though his violent cry against his foe has been widely satirically imitated). And I think he was good in The Undiscovered Country, except for that dreadful stint on Rurapente which imo had some awful writing...
Have to disagree. Watch his "Outer Limits' offering, "Cold Hands, Warm Heart." He is AWFUL. A truly embarrassing
performance. Even worse when compared to his co-star in the episode, Geraldine Brooks, who was terrific in a
thankless role.
The good thing about Star Trek was not Shatner's acting, it was the theme, and the stories.
shareI like his acting.
If you stop thinking about it as acting and think about the situation, it makes sense.
They are on a spaceship, totally alone, and all this crazy stuff is happening. People would freak out and determined people with courage would be in a super intense drama mode.
He made it feel like it was really happening.
I watched Next Generation on Netflix recently and it was horrible. The people had zero passion and I heard this was on purpose. If you have people in these situations and they have a bland passionless quality then humanity sucks.
Shatner was great and so was Nimoy.