I love Fark. Love love love. How can you not, when it brings us this historic moment in TV?
Fark said it was broadcast exactly 30 years ago, but a search online indicates it was aired on January 21, 1978. Either way, it was momentous. Thing is, I remember watching it! I was pretty young in ‘78, but a HUGE science fiction fan (still am, baby, still am). The Saturn Awards were on TV, and I couldn’t believe it; we had gone mainstream! I (vaguely) remember that they had an animated Pete’s Dragon giving out an award; can any BABloggee confirm or deny that?
Anyway, Shatner came on, and even at the tender age of 14, I realized that we were seeing something that would be sung about for the ages.
The Shatner discusses this moment here.
And Wil, if you’re reading this, I know how you feel about WFS. But c’mon. This is history.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Look, if you’re going to bring up something that’s that painful, you might as well mention Nemoy’s “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Thank you very much, Phil. Now I must smash my brains out with a large hammer.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Whoa whoa whoa… don’t ever diss the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. That is the best song ever written about the zaniest halfling to walk middle-earth.
Besides, it beats any song that was in that terrible Hobbit cartoon.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:34 am
“And I’m going to be….. HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH, as a kite by then…”
January 16th, 2008 at 10:38 am
This is cut up over ten segments and transferred from old videotape but here is the show the Shatner clip was taken from. Pure Seventies cheese. Even the dancing Superman has a porn star moustache!
Here is The Science Fiction Film Awards!
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=816&m=The%20Science%20Fiction%20Film%20Awards&p=2
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=817&m=The%20Science%20Fiction%20Film%20Awards&p=2
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=818&m=The%20Science%20Fiction%20Film%20Awards&p=2
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=819&m=The%20Science%20Fiction%20Film%20Awards&p=2
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=820&m=The%20Science%20Fiction%20Film%20Awards&p=2
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=821&m=The%20Science%20Fiction%20Film%20Awards&p=1
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=822&m=The%20Science%20Fiction%20Film%20Awards&p=1
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=823&m=The%20Science%20Fiction%20Film%20Awards&p=1
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=824&m=The%20Science%20Fiction%20Film%20Awards&p=1
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=825&m=The%20Science%20Fiction%20Film%20Awards&p=1
January 16th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Dear God! It IS Zapp Brannigan!!!
January 16th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I wonder how many reports of people stabbing themselves in the ears with a pencil there were that evening…
January 16th, 2008 at 11:11 am
I hate hate HATE when I experience a parody before its progenitor (yes, I saw the Stewie Griffin version first and knew nothing about this until today).
January 16th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I enjoy Shatner’s music. The experience is like banging your head repeatedly against a wall, it’s so nice when you stop.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Well I have a whole cd called Spaced Out with Shatner and Nimoy signing on it, it was giving to me as a birthday gift.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:36 am
I like Stewie’s version a little better:
http://bebo.com/watch/997898260
That’s the good stuff…
January 16th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I absolutely love this video. I first saw it in the 80s when one of my tape-trading friends showed it to me on VHS.
If I asked him real nice, Brent Spiner would to do an impression of this performance, and I can still see his gold face scrunched up while he pretends to hold a cigarette and broods.
Phil, you may want to change your links to WILLIAM F*** SHATNER Part 1 and Part 2, which I wrote for my book Dancing Barefoot, and reprinted for my Suicide Girls Geek in Review column last year. Your readers may want to know that SG is considered “Adult” and is blocked by most webfilters. My articles are SFW, but do contain language that you probably wouldn’t want to use around your grandparents.
January 16th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
[…] Uh, oh, nobody tell him. Phil won't notice, he's too busy watching old YouTube video of Shatner singing Rocket Man. […]
January 16th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Oooooooooo, that’s really bad…
LOL!
January 16th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
If you like that, look up his “Tambourine Man” - EPIC!
January 16th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I would just love to see him take on the old Adam and the Ants hit “Stand and Deliver” and especially enjoy the last verse:
da diddley qa qa da diddley qa qa
da diddley qa qa da diddley qa qa
January 16th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Wow…. Janine, those clips were funky, man! That opening number brought back memories.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
What ? No William Shatner singing Common People with Joe Jackson and Ben Folds ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eISBTBwWKeE
and of course, time to repost Shatner singing ‘My Way’ to George Lucas, the cast of Star Wars in front of a chorus line of Dancing Stormtroopers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p55YD8QhQ3o
January 16th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Amazing that we had both this and the Star Wars Holiday Special in the same year! Ah, the late ’70’s!
It’s cool to know that WW reads this blog too. I have two of his books — just waiting for Phil to come out with his next one, to catch up.
January 16th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Gosh! “The Shat” really earned his nickname, didn’t he?
I prefer Kate Bush’s cover of the same song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYSCHKmvcIY
When I was a PhD student, and finding things a bit tough, the line “And all this science I don’t understand / It’s just my job five days a week,” really struck a chord with me (as it were).
January 16th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Oh, yeah, and: Mmmmmmm, Kate Bush…
January 16th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Anybody here remember “Spy” magazine? They once printed a scatter plot of celebrities, in which the x axis was something like “level of self-parody reached” and the y axis was “self-awareness of that level”. Waaaaay out in the upper-right corner was Shatner.
The technical term for that corner of the graph, I believe, is “camp”.
January 16th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
After this program aired, 500,000 trekkies around the world lit up a cigarette for the first time, coughed their lungs out, and never listened to Elton John songs again. Sorry, but I find this hilarious. Shades of Denny Crane in that third clone which I guess in its day was cutting edge technology. One thing I will say, I have never seen Bernie Taupin look so hot, proving once again that Elton does in fact have good taste in men.
January 16th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Think Nimoy singing, I walk the Line. Now that is somewhat painful could be worse it could be Roseanne Barr singing the US national athem.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
well theres 5 mins of my life i wont get back, thax phil, or should we call you Fry
ps theropod i fell the same way, though the stewie skit was just as boring
January 16th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Was that Trilogy of Terror’s Karen Black at the very beginning? Wow.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
The producers must have been high as a kite when they scripted this performance. Then a year later, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released.
January 16th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
This is by far the most epic proof that Shatner fails at looking cool.
SO BAD!
January 17th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the OH GOD GET ME AN ICE PICK! I MUST RE-UN-DISREMEMBER THIS MOMENT AGAIN!
January 17th, 2008 at 6:09 am
Don’t forget Shatner’s rap rendition of Mark Antony’s soliloquy from ‘Julius Caesar’, as featured in the film ‘Free Enterprise’
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3yerCiByca4
January 17th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I thought it was funny, which I’m sure it was intended to be. Shatner knows he can’t sing so why not play it for laughs?
As for Nimoy’s Bilbo, I liked it. I used to have his LP, the one with the drawing of him with a sucker in his mouth, and I actually enjoyed it. I guess I just go for the off-beat kind of stuff, which is also why I love Dementia music.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I love this stuff.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Dear god I had to stop that. Why oh WHY must you torture us with that? I had to go find the original on YouTube just to get the Shat version out of my head, though I think it never will now.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
[…] didn’t. Uh, oh, nobody tell him. Phil won’t notice, he’s too busy watching old YouTube video of Shatner singing Rocket Man. Yikes! Larry Sessions at Earth & Sky Blogs shows you how to measure the Sun. And finally, […]