blogquantumreality replied to this post:
William Shatner, in his own books, has even admitted candidly to his fellow actors sitting him down and telling him they didn't like things he did when he was on set, and one of them was a habit of wanting to be at center stage. Isaac Asimov even famously suggested to Gene Roddenberry that Spcok and Kirk become good friends as a way to keep Shatner in scene with Nimoy, who was attracting a LOT of fangirls (and Shatner was getting upset over it), and thus engendering the famous K/S ship. So yes, William Shatner did have an ego.
Sorry, I genuinely don't know how this is relevant to anything I said. Yes, the man is and was a frequently grating prima donna. This doesn't mean any criticism of him—including by another actor but certainly via fandom osmosis—is automatically true or supported by evidence. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. But, in this specific case, it's an objective fact that he lost, rather than gained, lines in each season of TOS, by large amounts, and that this drop didn't benefit Nichols, Takei, or Nimoy, but Doohan and Koenig (and to a lesser extent, Kelley). The fandom desperately wanting to believe otherwise doesn't change the fact that, even if he stole lines, he nevertheless lost them by far, far more than he gained.
And frankly, I think ST fans are incredibly weird and entitled and dismissive about Shatner, his body, his ethnicity and religion, his career, and basically everything he's ever said while ignoring any evidence to the contrary of whatever conspiracy theory is preferred at the moment.
tbh I also think the Asimov influence is exaggerated by fandom. Plenty of very shippy scenes were made extremely early (and Kirk and Spock are already presented as BFFs from very early, esp as aired—Uhura describes Kirk as Spock's only friend in the first aired episode ever, in fact). And the characters simply being friends who are often in the same scenes is absolutely not the reason for K/S. I had heard that many times and assumed it to be the case, but when I actually watched the whole show, it was a transparently inadequate explanation compared to what actually happens in those scenes and the performances of the actors (especially Shatner's performance, fwiw—in fact, I think his performance of Kirk is part of what props up Spock as so intensely lovable, though I'm not sure he could ever see that—but in any case it's one of the main sources of the intense homoeroticism of TOS).
And if I'm being real: I finished TOS less than a year ago and even though Spock is my second-favorite character and easily the most relatable one, I find it annoying that every goddamn thing seems to get warped into being About Spock, no matter how much is carried by Kirk's characterization or the surprisingly layered and often subtle performance of him. So I'll admit that Shatner's irritation in 1966 does not seem nearly as much of an indictment of his character to me as I'd expected from reputation. I'd have been irritated too if I were him, even if I'd have been less of a drama queen about it.
