Shatner Talks Friendship With Trek Actors

William Shatner (James T. Kirk) revealed this week that he's good friends with many of the other Star Trek actors - even though they never starred in the same project together.

"It's interesting how these people have become friends of mine even though I didn't work with them," Shatner told TV Guide. "Patrick Stewart [Jean-Luc Picard] is a really dear friend. We talked on the phone just the other day. He's in England doing a play. I worked for [Kate Mulgrew's] husband when he ran for governor of Ohio. René Auberjonois (Odo) has become a real pal as a result of being on Boston Legal. And Leonard Nimoy (Spock) is probably my best friend. There's a whole coterie of people I hold on to from Star Trek."

Shatner apparently didn't yet know Scott Bakula (Jonathan Archer) that well, but he seemed open to a suggestion by TV Guide writer Danny Spiegel that he and the three other former Trek captains would take the Enterprise star out to dinner, now that his show had gotten cancelled. And Shatner offered the following advice to Bakula: "You've got the money in the bank, Scott. Spend it well. And the next job is around the corner."

If there's one person who's living proof of this, it's Shatner himself, with his current starring role on both Boston Legal and Miss Congeniality 2, and his new project Invasion Iowa, which debuted on SpikeTV last night. In the four-hour miniseries, Shatner and a fake film crew travel to the town of Riverside, Iowa, which calls itself the "future birthplace of James T. Kirk." Shatner tells the locals that because of the Trek connection, he's decide to shoot his new feature film there, but instead it's a prank designed the record the reactions of the local citizens to a film shoot where everything goes wrong.

Shatner admitted that at times, the experience made him feel guilty. "Every night, we'd come and spend three hours in front of the camera saying, 'Oh, my god, I feel so guilty. I cannot believe it. I'm falling in love with these people and they think I'm such-and-such and I'm not.' There were actors who cried out of the pain of lying to them."

So far, reviews for the Shatner hoax are decidedly mixed. On the one hand, Ray Richmond at the Hollywood Reporter wrote that Shatner's "self-deprecating marvel" brings a "long overdue sense of style," but syndicated reviewer Kevin McDonough advised reviewers to steer clear of the show, calling it "a complete waste of time." As for the Naples Daily News, reviewers there took issue with the claim that Invasion Iowa was mean - but they added that it wasn't very funny, either.

To read Shatner's original TV Guide interview, please follow this link. Invasion Iowa continues tonight through Friday on SpikeTV.

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