Notes on William Shatner’s new Epix special “Get A Life”:
* It’s a decent and even moving documentary about Star Trek fandom, but nowhere near as entertaining as 1997’s “Trekkies” or its 2004 sequel.
* Though allegedly the documentary version of Shatner’s book of the same name, “Get A Life” was written and directed by Shatner but feels too often like an hour-long commercial for Creation Entertainment, which has organized thousands of conventions dedicated to Star Trek and other nerd fare.
* Shatner says he’s appeared at “hundreds” of Stat Trek conventions. Why was I under the impression he rarely appeared at these things?
* Shatner narrates and appears in cartoon form in the credits, but he’s not on screen very much. Mostly he’s glimpsed fireside, listening to a myth expert essentially regurgitating what Joseph Campbell told Bill Moyers a quarter century ago.
* There’s a lot of footage of couples who met each other through Trek fandom.
* Those interviewed include new Sulu John Cho, old Uhura Nichelle Nichols, Celeste Yarnall (Yeoman Martha Landon of “The Apple”) and Arlene Martel (who play Spock’s wife T’Pring in “Amok Time”). (Does Zoe Saldana’s Uhura knows about T’Pring?)
* We see Lawrence Montaigne, who played Stonn (whom T’Pring preferred to Spock) attend a lecture on “Star Trek.”
* We get a moving update on muscular dystrophy sufferer David “Captain Dave” Sparks Jr., introduced in Shatner’s “The Captains” documentary.
* We meet a firefighter who likes to dress as Romulans and Klingons and a Hubble telescope software manager. We meet Richard Arnold, a Star Trek expert and assistant to Gene Roddenberry who was on the Paramount payroll between 1986 and 1991.
* The great Ira Steven Behr, the longtime “Deep Space Nine” showrunner who these days walks with a cane and dyes his goatee blue, appears for a few seconds to tell us Trek represented optimism.
* We see Terry Farrell reunite with Nana Visitor and Rene Auberjonois. Farrell apparently hadn’t seen the other two since she left DS9 to joined the cast of “Becker” in 1998.
* One of the more interesting revelations is Visitor continues to be followed around the world by a quintet of heavyset, middle-aged female fans who can afford to see Visitor every time she’s on the Broadway stage.
* Best of all, we get to meet Heather Marsh, a likeable young woman who once cried when she saw an image of Jadzia Dax on a giant banner. We get to see her have a long sit-down with Jadzia alter ego Terry Farrell in an empty convention ballroom.
8 p.m. Saturday. Epix.
