TVSquad

Have you been keeping track of The Shatner Project? It's a series of videos that Boston Legal star William Shatner has been doing with his daughter Liz. In one he talked about not being in the new Star Trek flick, and in the latest he goes off on being hated by former costar George Takei.

I'm not an expert on psychology, but when the guy uses words to describe Takei such as "sad," "a poor man," that he has a "sickness" and a "psychosis," and that he should "shut up," I'm going to assume that they're not on each other's AIM buddy list.

Takei has had a problem with Shatner since the early Trek days (something to do with Shatner's ego and wanting close-ups and not giving other stars more screen time), and most recently Takei didn't invite Shatner to his wedding to Brad (even though he did invite Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, and Walter Koenig). Shatner feels sorry for the decades-long feud and doesn't understand it, but he's really snarky about it.

There should be a Celebrity Deathmatch between these two, or at the very least get them in the same house on a celebrity Big Brother.

But don't worry, it's the "good" kind of heading to court, not the drunk driving/holding up a video store/punching someone kind.

Andrew Koenig, who played Boner on Growing Pains* (and is the son of Star Trek's Walter Koenig) was arrested and jailed for 10 hours for stepping in front of a Rose Parade float on New Year's Day. Koenig was protesting the treatment of people in Burma, and the float was a celebration of China and the upcoming summer Olympics. Koenig and his father even went there last year to investigate what is happening and to film some of it. A pre-trial hearing was held yesterday.

My wife gave birth to our first son three months ago, so names have been on my mind recently. A name says a lot about a person: strong names help kids to grow up to be television news personalities or American Ninjas (Wolf Blitzer and Joe Armstrong, respectively). Weak names, on the other hand, lead to name calling in grade school and sad lives of quiet desperation in adulthood.

Television has given us a large catalog of super-cool names to choose from. Since TV is all about wish fulfillment, it's rare for a character to be given a truly terrible name. Sometimes, though, a terrible name slips through the network sieve and luckily for all of us, TV Squad is there to catch it. The five worst names in the history of television after the jump...

Like any normal person living in the 21st century, the first thing I did upon hearing about Tom Snyder's death was to try and find some of his old interviews on YouTube. I'm too young to have watched The Tomorrow Show, but I did watch Snyder on The Late Late Show during my college years.

As I assumed, my YouTube search resulted in a lot of great clips, but the most interesting, to me anyway, is the interview Snyder conducted with James Doohan, Deforest Kelley, Walter Koenig, Harlan Ellison and Al Shuster. The men are talking about the still-in-development Star Trek motion picture. I've placed the interview, in five parts, below.

Well, kind of. Star Trek: New Voyages aims to pick up where the original Star Trek left off by filming new adventures for Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the crew of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701. This is not your ordinary fan film project though. Now a couple years into the project, the producers of New Voyages have been able to attract a lot of talent from the Trek family to work on the show. They have writers that have worked on various Trek incarnations writing the episodes, and now are getting actors with Trek experience as well.

Joel interviewed George Takei earlier this year, and they talked about the New Voyages episode he is doing. That episode, titled "World Enough And Time", begins filming this month. It will follow "To Serve All My Days", which stars Walter Koenig, reprising his role as Pavel Chekov. Other notable casting announcements include Michael Mack, who played Commander Sirol in "The Pegasus" episode of ST:TNG, and Leslie Silva. You may remember Leslie from Showtime's short lived Odyssey 5 where she played Sarah Forbes.

George Takei is a busy guy. Believe it or not, of all the interviews I've done, his had the most regimented procedure: I was supposed to call him and immediately begin the interview, because he had other interviews scheduled around mine.

Apparently, his itinerary has been a bit crowded lately. And for that, Takei -- best known for playing Mr. Sulu on the classic series Star Trek -- can thank the combination of his public coming out late last year and his addition to Howard Stern's Sirius satellite show as its announcer. In fact, the 69-year-old actor's voice was the first one that people heard when Howard first debuted in January. He spent the entire first week there telling graphic stories about his first sexual encounters, cutting goofy IDs, and trading wise-ass remarks with sidekick Artie Lange. He also got pranked not once, not twice, but three times by the crew: once with a David Letterman impersonator and twice with an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator. As always, though, he was a good sport, giving the audience his trademark halting laugh whenever he got scammed.

Since the Governator vetoed the state's same-sex marriage bill, Takei has spoken out passionately for gay rights. He is currently on a speaking tour for the Human Rights Campaign he has dubbed an "Equality Trek". So between that, his appearances at Trek conventions, and his negotiations to return to the Stern show, it's a wonder he has time to talk to any reporters at all.

In our conversation (after the jump), George and I talked about the speaking tour, Howard, his guest turn on Will & Grace, and his appearance as Sulu on a web-only Star Trek series. Oh, and I couldn't leave without asking him about Bill Shatner at least once.

Because Takei needs to be heard as much as he needs to be read (I mean... that laugh!), I've made the audio version of the interview available for download. It's available here.