Imbalance of Terror

Amateur toupology.

Some time before the William Shatner School of Toupological Studies launched Shatner's Toupee, an amateur toupologist called "Nite Trek" was conducting toupological research and posting it on the "Trek BBS" Star Trek message board (see picture above). We certainly applaud and encourage such research, though we hope that if a touposcope was used, that adequate protection against toup-particle emissions was ensured.

The unusual image is from the first season Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror". The particular close-up shot of Captain Kirk represents, we believe, perhaps the single greatest lace malfunction in the entire series. Close attention to makeup and lighting would usually ensure that the lace line that anchored the front of (or frontal) toupee to Bill Shatner's head remained all but invisible. If we enhance an image from the scene, the line becomes even more prominent:


We have a description of this line from Star Trek producer Bob Justman in the book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (see here for more):

"My gaze shifted to his (Shatner's) hairline. Examining balding actors' hairlines was a habit I'd picked up over the years. The 'lace' that anchored the front of his toupee glistened. I made a mental note of it to tell the makeup man about it before we filmed again."


One thing that Bill Shatner evidently soon learned after this incident was to avoid scrunching his forehead, which only helped to dislodge the fragile flap. As to why in this case the lace line was so low, we can only speculate. Perhaps this was the first appearance of a new toupee - Bill Shatner had two toupees on Star Trek as Bob Justman also noted in the aforementioned book:

"We had begun the first season with two new toupees for Bill because his own 'personal' ones were too ratty-looking. He would wear one toupee while the other piece was being cleaned in the makeup department...Each hairpiece cost $200, a pricely sum in those days."

Perhaps following this shot, the skin was cut back a little, while lighting and makeup likely did their best to make sure that such an incident never occurred again. As to why such a protruding skin was required at all, that likely has something to do with finding a smooth surface to paste the toupee on to. Bill Shatner evidently had a little hair on the front of his scalp that he may have been reluctant to shave off to provide such a surface directly under the toup.

Too close to call? - A contrarian view.

We were going to move on to other areas of toupology today, but we feel that the debate that raged in the previous post is difficult to ignore. Previously, we stated our belief (we attempt to be scientific here and try our best to avoid stating as fact things we don't know beyond a reasonable doubt - though in this case erred on that front on several occasions) that Bill Shatner had had a hair transplant in 2000. But there is a convincing contrarian view - and one that merits closer attention. This view is that in 2000, Bill Shatner, rather than getting plugs, merely switched to a different kind of hairpiece or hair system - the phrasing is unimportant.

One anonymous poster (we really do plead for you to use usernames, which are just as anonymous but merely give you a name so we don't have to call people "anonymous") wrote:

"I am very familiar with the hair piece Mr. Shatner is wearing. It is designed to be worn only once. They call it the "Saturday Night Special" The hair strands are inserted (no knots) into a very fine membrane which requires glue to adhere to the scalp. The membrane is as fine as a fly's wings. Transparent to the eye. Once the hair piece is removed, it must be discarded. Lasts approximately 3-4 weeks."

From a purely juristic sense, we have to ignore the first sentence. But the rest is very interesting.


Here is the main overriding argument for a toupee: There is simply too much hair on Bill Shatner's head to have come from his own head.

This remains a valid argument. In our previous post, we argued that a transplant could overcome that. However, upon closer examination of numerous Shatner images, we noticed that the hair on Bill Shatner's head remains suspiciously thick far more often than it is as thin as this:


The contrarian argument would suggest that the above was a rare ratty toupee.

Yet, there is also something unusual going on at the back - evidence of a patch of slightly longer hair. This would again point to the transplant theory - a harvesting area in which the hair is grown a little longer to hide the patches.


Or could it be both? A third option? Does Bill Shatner wear a toupee that is made from his own hair? This would (kind of) enable him to claim that he doesn't wear a toupee anymore.

We posted this extract as an update in our last post, and are interested in your thoughts:

" 'And no, it isn't a toupée,' [Shatner] says, tugging his hair." See here for more from this interview.

If it is a toup, then Bill Shatner was simply lying point-blank. Or was he parsing words like hair piece with hair system? Yet, so much of Bill Shatner's public and increasingly confident toupee jocularity (for example this and this) has seemed to stem from the post-2000 era in which the toupee was but a thing of the past. Could it all be an illusion? Is it just another toupee? Is Bill Shatner screwing with our minds?


There is another issue too. The times that we know that Bill Shatner is wearing a piece:


Is there really room up there to place a piece over plugs (yes)? That would likely make the scalp invisible.

Truth is, we don't really know - we find arguments from both sides to be persuasive on many points. Yet, we have decided that there is now enough reasonable doubt about the plugs to avoid stating them as being fact.

We do know that post-2000 Bill Shatner still wears a piece. But the real question is and remains, whether he has also had surgery. Like you, we are eager to solve this mystery.

What is it?

A debate has been raging of late among some readers about Bill Shatner's current hair. What is it? Is it a transplant or some very, very fine and expensive hair appliance? How could Bill Shatner's real wrap of hair around the back and sides provide enough hair to fill out the top?


All very interesting questions. Many of you have also been pointing to some recent and high-quality close-ups of Bill Shatner at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center that were posted at the German shatner-news website - some of which we reproduce here.

We will now try to make the case why we think that Bill Shatner has indeed had a hair transplant (plugs) and try to answer some of your questions in the process:

Imagine Bill Shatner's head were a three-sided sports stadium filled with people. The people are the hair at the back and sides and the pitch is bald scalp.


Would it be possible to fill out the green playing field with spectators without emptying the seats too much (let's overlook the relative stadium-to-pitch size issues)? Could an equilibrium be reached whereby the stadium looks relatively full and the seats still look relatively full too? Now imagine that if to that you added the fact that for every seat vacated by someone going to stand on the pitch, a new person eventually appeared to take their place (hair regrowth). The answer is yes:


This is what we believe Bill Shatner has managed to achieve. His hair all over is pretty thin in terms of hairs per square inch, and patchy in places too, but the image of a full head of hair is largely maintained.

Apparently supporting this toupological thesis (or should that be plugological?), we have what appears to be visual evidence of areas that are harvested for donor hair - look at the temple area:


And possibly here too - a closeup from Mind-Meld (more here):


Now, if we look at the relative spacing of the hair, we see that certain areas are a little patchier and require additional work after a time - hair falls out and needs to be replaced. Would Bill Shatner, now prosperous and wealthy, ever be photographed with a hairpiece in such a bad condition?


Yet, we also believe that Bill Shatner still uses hairpieces from time to time. These are systems that are placed on top of his plugs, likely when he is facing the harsh lights of a studio and his plugs aren't quite up to scratch. For example...


...this, we believe is a piece. One of the telltale signs is the sharp hairline at the sides and a little too thick hair at the top. Thus, what Bill Shatner has devised is a look that we believe allows him to get away with not wearing a toup most of the time, but still enables him to slip on a similar-looking toup when the demands of lighting and constant plug-tune-ups negate the possibility of the transplanted hair holding-up to scrutiny.

Plugs:


Piece:


The donor hair that Bill Shatner apparently provides is resistant to male pattern-baldness and so grows on the top and regrows at the back and sides. As this Q&A, linked to by "RM" in a reader discussion about hair transplants notes: "Hair transplants are permanent because the hair used is from the back of the hairline which is usually resistent to the norma hair loss progression of male pattern baldness. However, you will not get a full head of hair from this. It will fill in, but never be as rich and full as it was in youth."

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UPDATE: " 'And no, it isn't a toupée,' [Shatner] says, tugging his hair." See here for more from this interview. If it was a toupee, then that would make Bill Shatner a liar. Now, Shats has been a little dishonest in the past, but not in recent years - instead he now parses and plays with words when it comes to the subject of his hair. So the above statement would be a little brazen and out-of-character for Bill Shatner if it were not true. See all our Shat-no-meter rulings for more.

A big bald head.

Bill Shatner's first ever feature-film appearance - one that at that point seemed to present a trajectory towards eventual leading man status - was in the 1958 movie The Brothers Karamazov based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's famous novel. "This was my big break, this role was going to make me a star," reflected Bill Shatner in his wonderful and very funny autobiography Up Till Now.


The actor moved to L.A. with his wife Gloria in order to perform in the movie, which was shot in 1957. Despite still having (albeit thinning) hair of his own, there evidently wasn't enough of it to be trimmed into the short, bowl-shaped hairstyle that the character of Alexej Karamazov, a prospective monk, required. Thus, Bill Shatner began his movie career wearing a wig.


Upon the movie's release, many posters simply featured a large picture of the head of the movie's star Yul Brynner (who as reader "RM" recently commented kept kicking Bill Shatner in the pants during the shoot for some reason). So, not only did Bill Shatner begin his movie career wearing a wig, but the first ever time he saw his name on a movie poster, the dominant image was that of a big bald head! Perhaps there was a message there somewhere - success without a toupee is possible too!

Talkshow toupology.

There are arguably three main late night talk show hosts in US television: Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno and David Letterman.


Each, entirely coincidentally, has a hairstyle that mirrors a phase of Bill Shatner's hair. Conan's hair closely resembles the old "Jim Kirk lace" (1958-1969); Jay Leno's hair resembles the "T.J. curly" toups Bill wore from 1976-2000, while David Letterman's hair (some suggest not entirely thanks to nature alone) resembles the current "Denny Crane plugs" look.


So it is perhaps interesting (or not at all) that of these three hosts, Bill Shatner has developed a close (often surreal) bond with Conan O'Brien.


Recent and frequent appearances on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien featuring readings of Sarah Palin's tweets and so forth have only solidified this apparent friendship. Most recent was an appearance several days ago in which Bill Shatner was there to plug (no pun intended) the latest season of Shatner's Raw Nerve. The interview included Bill Shatner donning a fake pair of vampire teeth.


Anyway, could Bill's friendship with Conan be rooted (again, pardon the pun) in O'Brien's very Jim Kirk-like hair, frontal swoosh (entirely natural in this case) and all? Does this reveal a slight nostalgia for the good old days as Bill Shatner reflects back upon a long and productive life filled with various toupees? "You know, Conan - you, and especially the hair, remind me of me when I was younger!"

Watch Bill Shatner's latest Conan appearance here and visit the Shatner's Raw Nerve website here.

Bill Shatner on women's hair.

Bill Shatner, touped-up, in a 1959 magazine story.

Bob Schnakenberg's Encyclopedia Shatnerica (click here for more on this book) features an interesting quote from Bill Shatner in its "Women" sub-category. A 1968 interview with the magazine Photoplay is sourced, in which Bill Shatner discusses his taste in women. "I am definitely in favor of the long hair trend in women," he states, adding "One of the glories of being a woman is long, luxuriant hair, whether it is used to run barefoot through or tie in pigtails." Shats then turns to the subject of a woman's appearance: "A girl who is particularly well built should wear miniskirts, if she has the right legs. If not, she should consider getting clothes to overcome these defects, not show them off for all to see."


The first sentiment is fair enough - a personal preference for long-haired women (a touch of jealousy perhaps?). However, it's when Bill Shatner turns towards the overall subject of how women should look that he arguably goes off the rails a little. Some of our female readers will probably find the latter comments to be outrageously sexist - we don't disagree - the only possible caveat being that they were made in 1968, not 2009.

But far more interesting from our point-of-view is the unwitting approach to imperfection that Bill Shatner reveals in the miniskirts comment. A woman with less-than-perfect legs should, according to Bill Shatner, "consider getting clothes to overcome these defects, not show them off for all to see." The word "defect" is a particularly strong choice of words - yet that is likely how Bill Shatner viewed his own baldness too. And in Bill Shatner's view, such defects should be covered up at all costs, both to protect others from their hideousness, and also to presumably protect the deformed person from utter humiliation.

Repulsive reality?

This belies an apparently very strong emotional reaction by Bill Shatner to his own hair loss. We know that when he was young, Bill Shatner in effect betrayed his father by choosing acting over the family clothing business. Perhaps as Bill Shatner went bald, echoes of being like his bald father, having to return home a failure because of his "inherent flaws" created a particularly strong psychological complex in him. Baldness was Joseph the clothier, not Bill the leading man.

A young Bill Shatner (left) with his father (top right).

On an interesting side-note, when, following the death of Michael Jackson, his friend Uri Geller was asked about the subject of Jackson's plastic surgery, Geller noted that he had once asked the singer why he was altering his face - "I just don't want to look like my father" Jackson told him candidly. Now, obviously Jackson's reaction to his face was a myriad times stronger than Bill Shatner's ongoing hair complex. And it could just be that Bill Shatner is stuck in the 1940s in terms of how "the star" should protect his image. Yet, we don't think it entirely out of place to try to understand the possible psychology behind words such as "defect" or the motivations behind the shabby surely-baldness-would-be-better-than-this "lost years" toupees from the mid-seventies.

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UPDATE: A commenter asked how old Joseph Shatner was in the above picture. We understand that Joseph Shatner was born in Austria on 31st May 1898. He died in Florida 17th January 1967. Since Bill Shatner was born in 1931, and he is about five in the above family picture (which also features mother Anna Garmaise Shatner 1908-1992 and one of his sisters Joy or Farla) that would make Joseph approximately 39 years-old, which is roughly how old Bill Shatner was during the end of Star Trek's run.

Toupee art.

A chronology of toupees - but also speculation about the future.

In 2007, The Shatner Show gave numerous artists a chance not only to interpret Bill Shatner's face, but also his toupees. The end result was both a book and a show. 76 artists - for that was Shats' age at the time - contributed works.


During The Shatner Show's run, most people focused on the face and largely overlooked that this collection also represented the hitherto largest collection of artistic images interpreting Bill Shatner's toupees ever assembled. From the "Jim Kirk lace", the "T.J. curly" and the "Denny Crane plugs" - all were subject to the artistic touch - there was even some speculation about the future direction of Bill Shatner's hair (see picture at top of page), suggesting a slow acceptance of some degree of baldness may be next.


You can buy and also look inside the book here. Read more about The Shatner Show at the Uppercase Gallery's blog.

Poll result.

An overwhelming majority of voters believe that the reason Bill Shatner ended his autobiography Up Till Now by mentioning the toupee, is to show that he could laugh at the issue. Yet only 4% of voters believe that it was a step along the road towards full disclosure. And almost a fifth (12% plus 7%) believe that this was a clever way for Shats to make us think his hair is real because he had no problem mentioning the toup rumors! Thanks for voting!

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By the way, our thanks to "The Ian Camfield Blog" part of the UK's Xfm radio for mentioning us: "The Best Fan Site Ever?....." they very kindly wrote of us. Hello to Ian's readers and welcome to Shatner's Toupee, the public information service of The William Shatner School of Toupological Studies!

Bill Shatner's amazing Houdini toupee trick.

Another great find from "RM" - a 2004 interview with Bill Shatner in which the subject of a rather hastily-drawn self-portrait (and the hair) comes up. We're still trying to figure out what exactly Bill Shatner was doing with this picture, but the interview conducted by David Keeps for Blender.com begins with a mention of the sketch and an apparent comment by talkshow host Jay Leno:


Keeps: Jay Leno just walked by and said that your self-portrait “looks like someone with bad hair implants, singing into a potato.”

Shatner: What is he talking about? I’m a rock & roll singer on my knees, can’t he tell? And that’s a microphone.

Again, another very skillful sleight-of-hand non-denial denial from Bill Shatner (see here for another classic example of this). This, despite the fact that a representation of someone could be so poorly drawn as to make them look like they had bad hair implants in the picture even though in real life they did not. Thus, Bill Shatner could simply have said "Yes, it does!" without confirming anything. Yet, somewhat tellingly, Bill Shatner instead embarks on a strategy of cleverly avoiding the hair issue completely.

Incidentally, the fact that Shats could inadvertently draw a picture that highlighted his hair transplant is a little mind-bending (Sigmund Freud would have a field day).

More properly, what Bill Shatner actually employs in his response to Keeps is the magicians' trick of misdirection. Imagine a magician pointing to what's in his or her left hand - a coin perhaps - you focus on that hand and don't notice the magician then putting their right hand in their pocket for a mere split second to get rid of the coin. This is a very common trick in magic.

Keeps noted "Jay Leno just walked by and said that your self-portrait 'looks like someone with bad hair implants, singing into a potato.'"

Let's look at Bill Shatner's response closely.

"What is he talking about?" This is an archetypal non-denial denial, the act of appearing to deny but not actually denying (the issue of hair transplants or baldness in general) or even addressing anything. Now, for the next part of the reaction:

"I’m a rock & roll singer on my knees, can’t he tell?"

This sentence is the first part of the misdirection trick. Bill Shatner is very cleverly shifting focus away from specifics (hair) and misdirecting (through being selective over what he chooses to respond to) the attention of the interviewer towards the general - in this case the overall image, despite the fact that this wasn't really what he was asked about. You could or could not be a rock & roll singer and still look like you had bad hair implants. Thus, Bill Shatner's answer avoids the question by misdirecting away from it. And now the final crucial part:

"And that’s a microphone." [emphasis ours]

The final sentence underscores the genius of misdirection. Bill Shatner was asked (meaning this was the dominant point of Keeps' comment to which Bill Shatner could react) about this (the hair):


But through misdirection (selectively focusing on the potato/microphone analogy rather than the hair-transplant part), Bill Shatner has shifted attention to this (the microphone):


Harry Houdini would be proud!

A toupee nightmare at 20,000 feet!

It's amazing just how many Bill Shatner roles lend themselves to being viewed through the prism of the toupee metaphor. Nowhere is this more evident than in the classic 1963 Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet".


Most of you will be familiar with the archetypal dream involving unexpected nudity: you are fearful of an impending big day at work or an important exam and the night before you have a nightmare that you have turned up but somehow managed to forget your clothes. For a toupee-wearer, such as Bill Shatner, that nightmare might be superseded by another one - turning up somewhere without your toupee.


But the metaphor in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is a little more complex than that. The plot (more detail here) involves a released mental patient Robert Wilson (William Shatner) flying home after just having been discharged from a sanatorium. As the flight progresses, he enters a private nightmare - a gremlin outside is dismantling the plane. No-one else appears to see it. Is Shatner's character going mad again?

The gremlin is a fuzzy, hairy creature - a kind on anti-Tribble (see here for potential Tribble/toupee metaphors).

The tearing away at the plane's wings appears to represent a tearing up of the frontal "skin" which anchored the front of the lace toupee Bill Shatner wore. During filming, it required regular attention to conceal its visibility from the cameras.


The crucial contrast lies between the two world's represented in the Twilight Zone episode - the safety of the toupee within the stable confines of the plane, versus outside - in the midst of the strong winds and rain, the toupee doesn't stand a chance.

The gremlin naturally serves as the representation of the toupee, in effect detaching and dismantling the very framework which keeps it safe. How can a toupee do this to itself? Caught in the wind, it is the toupee that both resists the wind, but also serves as the very instrument that provides the wind leverage to tear it from the scalp - how ironic! In reality, the toupee provides comfort, but is also permanently threatening to sabotage itself. It demands constant attention - if you ignore it, it has the power to humiliate you.


The outside nightmare, if the gremlin succeeds in dismantling the wing of the plane, will soon make it's way into the well-groomed wind-less serenity of the cabin. The plane will fall and the private nightmare will suddenly become very real - metaphorically, the toupee on Bill Shatner's head will be torn off and Bill Shatner's horrifying fear of baldness revelation will be thrust upon him. But inside, nobody believes Shatner's character is seeing what he sees. How could they? The toupee is not something which they have to grapple with. How can he explain it to them without really explaining it to them and revealing his toupee secret?

This is truly the worst kind of nightmare - one in which you are trapped and absolutely alone in your fear. The insanity and panic grows...Soon, the "lace" outside will be detached, the plane will fall, the internal comfort will be destroyed...and then the actual baldness will be revealed to everyone!


The episode ends with Shatner's character committed. But, here's the rub: the camera pans to the plane's wing and it really has been damaged.

In the real (the above being a real nightmare) world, at this point, Bill Shatner wakes up. Deeply perturbed, he is sweating and breathing heavily. He places his hand on his head, the toupee isn't there - but that is fine. As he adjusts back to the warm confines of his bed, he knows that he is not on the public stage - here, it is fine to be bald; here, the gremlin has no power.

Bill Shatner then opens a drawer by his bedside. The toupee sits inside, oblivious to the nightmare that it's host has just experienced. Shatner chooses not to wake his beloved toup; instead, he gently strokes it before quietly and carefully closing the drawer again. Phew, it was only a nightmare!

A toy of the gremlin in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet".

Watch on YouTube, or buy here as part of the Twilight Zone season 5 DVD set.