#the captains

[rozugold]

HI!!! Just wanted to see that I LOVE YOUR ANIMATICS ON YOUTUBE!! Thank you for introducing me to Bullets and How To Be Alone, I would've never found them without your videos hehe

~ 🐐

YAY TY!!!

[ponnfarrtrek]

I am watching The Captains, or to be more specific I am watching the extended version where they each get an episode and I am watching the Avery Brooks episode. I wish more people had seen it, because I have this general impression that people have formed their opinions about Avery Brooks from the documentary film and it's such a distorted picture. To this day I see people say things about him and there's no evidence really except a small part of a film from 2011 which did not do him justice. If you can watch the longer version, please do so.

[gaykarstaagforever]

I finally watched Shatner's "The Captains" from 2011, because Shout! Studios's YouTube channel is randomly uploading this stuff for free.

I never sought this out, because the kayfabe Bill Shatner douchebag-with-a-heart-of-gold thing he does, to whatever degree of realness or fakeness, stops being funny after like 20 minutes. And yet he never stops doing it. And you can't tell what's a joke and what is his very real emotional issues, and he's too old to still put this on everyone, and if I don't put up with this shit from my family, I'm not real interested in watching Shatner do it.

All that said, I think "The Captains" has merit as some kind of art, even if it's absolutely not being taken in the way Shatner clearly wants it to be. Watching him brag and work out his semi-real personal issues at the expense of other people is fascinating, if only to see how they react / put up with it.

I don't know if there's any real insight into these other people's Trek experience, because they're all too busy engaging in intellectual jousting with a man who, even at this point, was way too old to be this grandiose and prickly about his culturally-significant but middling television career. If they had called this "Captain Kirk Annoys Other Starfleet Captains," that would more accurately tell you what you're getting with this.

Plus he DID have this edited to make Kate Mulgrew and Avery Brooks look like kooks, and that is a highly problematic flex for a guy whose whole thing is how he was an integral part of a progressive 1960s TV show. I think both of these people understood almost immediately what they were getting into, and decided to push back in ways that actively sabotaged Bill's self-centered thesis. And he realized that, and tried to punish them for that, because he's William Shatner and he is a well-known self-righteous petty jackass.

Stewart and Bakula played nice, and so get a nice edit. It's so transparently what it is. And Shatner either didn't realize how obvious it is it because of his ego, didn't care entirely, or somehow thought this was some sort of flex that would make him look cool...?

As it is, it comes across like a very vain old man being unable to separate himself emotionally from something he should really be over by now. And in doing that, he is sexist and racist and clearly lying a handful of times.

Again, it's fascinating to watch, specifically because of that. He missed his target, and hit himself. And he doesn't seem to know that, or is so up his own ass that he thinks that is a win, because hey, still about him, right?!

He makes Avery Brooks look like a goddamn lunatic. I'm not saying Brooks isn't inclined to pretentious artistic flourish, i.e., his own version of navel-gazing self-important bullshit. He's an actor. They're all actors. In Hollywood. Being a swaggering dickhead is 60% of that job. But there is clearly a lot of selective editing here, regardless of whatever Brooks was trying to do with whatever he's doing. It's gross to portray him like this, and then poke fun at it later (in one of several obviously scripted sequences).

Oh, and the Chris Pine stuff is just pitiful. Shatner is pretending to poke fun at the idea that he's mad that a hot young actor has taken the Kirk mantle from him. His way of doing this is to say he's actually flattered that Hollywood casting people think he looked like Chris Pine when he was younger.

Right, Bill. How mature of you. Very funny.

You're very blessed this man agreed to submit to this crap in the first place, you jackass. Come on. It's just sad.

Shatner here is JUST self-aware enough that he lets some of these other people's experiences shine through. But even then, it's mostly in service to the "Bill Shatner, Important Asshole," bit. And who needs that? Besides William Shatner?

Especially since, again, he literally lies a lot. About Trek, about his own career, about his influence. The Macho Man Randy Savage made a lot of outlandish claims, too. And I'd absolutely watch a documentary he made. But I'd very confidently know what that was.

Any other interviews any of these people have done with anyone else about this period in their lives is more revealing and insightful than anything here. This is a Shatner vanity project, to no greater end.

And it is exactly as good and valuable as that could ever be.

But one hell of a ride, in its bumpy way.

[handsomeworf]

[zinda-his-eyes-red]

William Shatner is absolutely horrible to Kate Mulgrew in "The Captains". I don't know how she had the strength to sit there and take his questions seriously-- boss bitch behaviour under the circumstances. I do wish she'd pushed back on his mysogyny a bit more but at the same time, I can't put all that on her. It's honestly painful to watch Shatner make such a fool of himself. What an absolutely bizarre doc.

[aleksdenser]

new realities of the future

[rozugold]

Congrats on surviving Tamal Session this year Captain :D. Me and my family started late on making tamales as well lol (I think it was around 1 am??)

Since I'm probably gonna be knocked out for most of the day, I just want to say Merry Christmas to you!!! I hope you have a nice time and get to relax a bit after dealing with the stress of the holidays ^^

- Captain Rice (insert emoji here idk i'm writing this on desktop lol)

YAY merry Christmas captain :] I hope you and the fam have a nice one!! May your tamales be very tasty