A global "Code 145T"!

At 0614 CET on 6th August 2010, the following message was sent out by the William Shatner School of Toupological Studies to all staff across the globe:

WSSTS--0614CET-08/06/2010--VER:453FKBCC001--IMMEDIATE ATT:---P1---ALL STAFF-CODE 145T/RHR-//AYS-829-FIND--SS!

Now, we're not allowed to reveal all of the details of the above message, but "CODE145T/RHR" basically means that a significant "Real Hair Reflex" has been found. "AYS-829-FIND--SS" is an instruction to all of our toupologists that an urgent analysis is required and they should report to a toupological sub-station as soon as possible.

One of hundreds of WSSTS sub-stations located around the globe.

Asides from the main WSSTS facility, the institute also has established these so-called "sub-stations" at numerous locations across the globe. This enables our toupologists to have access to an array of basic toupological equipment at all times. For example, should a toupologist be on vacation and have a sudden new theory about William Shatner's toupee or should a toupologist be delivering a lecture on the other side of the globe and need access to a touposcope, then these sub-stations are designed to provide just that.

A remote toupological sub-station in Hatutu.

Which brings us back to the "Code 145T". Regardless of the time of year, a team of analysts at the WSSTS is constantly combing through (pardon the pun) a mountain of raw touptelligence. This can consist of reports, readers' tips (we're always thankful), anything really. These reports are then triaged according to a 1-5 scale of priority (the "P" code above); 5 represents a low level of urgency, while 1 denotes the highest level: all available toupologists are to report immediately to a toupological sub-station to analyze an urgent find.

In this case, the urgent find in question is a 1999 interview with Bill Shatner on The Daily Show (recently reported here) about the upcoming re-release on DVD of the cult Esperanto film Incubus.

During the interview, Bill Shatner engages is a rather long "Real Hair Reflex" - which we broadly define as "real hair or toupee interaction, which subconsciously or inadvertently reveals Bill Shatner's toupee wearing". Watch the full incident (at around 1m 30s) in the interview below:

The full 8,426 page preliminary report into this incident is now available to read at the usual location... (note: please don't all click to the report at once, as this may cause the ever busy WSSTS servers to overload)

But to summarize this particular moment from 1999, Bill Shatner, very much off guard, appears to start playing with his real hair at the back of his head, running his fingers through and tugging at it for a good while. And during this, he is careful to leave the toupee undisturbed. Interestingly, the incident occurs when correspondent Mo Rocca mentions the character of T.J. Hooker - a sub-conscious association to his own "TJ Curly"?

1999 represented the year when we all bid a teary farewell to the "TJ Curly". However, it appears that rather than a sudden jolt from the "TJ" to the "Denny" Bill Shatner orchestrated a subtle transition from one toupee style to the next - notice how the hair is straighter, grayer and shorter already, but still essentially a "TJ". Very crafty...

Kingdom of the Spiders - a toupological analysis.

Kingdom of the Spiders is a 1977 feature-film starring William Shatner as Dr Robert "Rack" Hansen, a local vet in the US state of Arizona. The film begins with a cow mysteriously dying, akin to the famous shower scene from Psycho:

Meanwhile, the star is riding around on a horse...


And fooling around with his late brother's widowed wife, portrayed by Bill Shatner's then real wife Marcy Lafferty.


A dog dies too...


...so a feisty entomologist is sent to investigate, with Bill Shatner's character also trying to seduce her.


There be spiders everywhere causing the deaths!


Slowly, more and more spiders invade the local town.


Panic ensues.


A spider climbs on a man's bald head.


Hiding inside a barricaded house proves futile...


...as finally, the spiders get to Bill Shatner.


What to make of all this then? Hitchcock's The Birds but with spiders? Sadly, not quite. More like The Devil's Rain, with spiders instead of satanists. Certainly not Jaws with spiders (more plot and analysis of films that possibly inspired Spiders in Wikipedia's entry for the film). We really wanted to like this movie, hoping for some kind of kitsch classic (not really expecting the movie to be scary), but found that Kingdom of the Spiders just wasn't anywhere near as entertaining as it could be.


The pace of the movie is deadly slow, with the spider-induced drama really only coming about during the movie's conclusion. The characters, including Bill Shatner's vet are all pretty two-dimensional and uninteresting. Dare we say that Bill Shatner's performance isn't really that good in this movie - he doesn't seem to know who his character is. The horse riding and adding of Marcy Lafferty to the movie - her performance really is pretty dreadful - all come across as concessions to a star rather than having any dramatic merit.

In short, there's a plot - spiders attack town - but there is really no story to carry that plot, nothing really to hold the viewer's interest beyond the next spider-induced fright. So the audience is left waiting for something to happen...it never really does.


Let's move on to the hair, which proves far more interesting. The style is certainly early "TJ Curly", but also something of a hybrid toupee in that the hair is still quite straight, far more like the previous "Lost Years" style. Interestingly, at times it is straighter in the movie...


And at other times, it is curlier - a clear transition taking place before our very eyes...


There's a scene where we see Bill Shatner stroking through someone else's hair:

And then there is the crucial scene at the end of the movie - Bill Shatner and his toupee being attacked by spiders:

There's a wealth of potential toupee metaphors that we can interpret here. Did the writers want to create a kind of anti-Tribble? A toupee that instead of being cute and cuddly, is frightening and dangerous? What if the toupee came to life? What if its spawn crawled off the mother head and began to multiply - and then decided to return? Yet another toupee nightmare?


Kingdom of the Spiders is available to buy as a recently released remastered special edition DVD. A film that one can't help but wish were better than it actually is.

The Andersonville Trial - a toupological analysis.

The Andersonville Trial is a television play, which dramatizes the 1865 trial of Henry Wirz, commander of the notorious American Civil War Confederate-run prisoner-of-war camp known as Camp Sumter or Andersonville Prison. In that camp, amidst appalling conditions, thousands of captured Union soldiers perished during the war - upon the war's end, many of those that survived were found malnourished, diseased and distressed from the conditions there.

William Shatner's character interrogates a witness at Henry Wirz's trial.

Following the defeat of the secessionist Confederate army and the Union's liberation of the prison in May 1865, Wirz was arrested and tried by a military commission in Washington D.C.'s Capitol building on charges of conspiracy and murder. Wirz argued that he was simply following orders and that he had tried his best to keep conditions at the prison as favorable as possible.

Richard Basehart as Henry Wirz.

Nonetheless, he was found guilty and executed in November 1865. The trial was controversial for a number of reasons, with some echoing Wirz's own defense and others accusing the Union of vengeance, not only for the war, but also for the recent assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

William Shatner as prosecutor Norton P. Chipman.

This trial was dramatized in 1970 with an award-winning 150 minute PBS production that starred William Shatner as Norton P. Chipman, the Union soldier and prosecutor of Wirz.

Jack Cassidy (left).

Also starring in the television play were Richard Basehart as Wirz, Jack Cassidy as Wirz's defense council (Cassidy is perhaps best remembered as one of the all-time best recurring Columbo villains) and a host of other names, including a very young Martin Sheen.

Martin Sheen.

There's little question that this is one of the most meaningful, prestigious and forceful roles that Bill Shatner has ever had. The production was filmed (on video) in three, pretty much "as-live" acts. Bill Shatner's copious experience in theater as well as live television with productions such as Studio One meant that he was perfectly prepared for the challenges presented by The Andersonville Trial.


Much like The Tenth Level, this television play deals with questions surrounding morality, obedience to authority, personal responsibility and free will. As the proceedings unfold, Shatner's character tries to prove Wirz's guilt by presenting a succession of witnesses. The trial ends with a dramatic interrogation of Wirz himself, who demands to take the stand, insistent on his innocence.


Bill Shatner is on fire in this production - anyone who has seen him passionately talking a computer to death in Star Trek, will recognize the performance given here by the actor.


Here's a clip from near the end:

If only more similar roles had been available to Shats at this time. But, alas, The Andersonville Trial was a rare prestigious high in a post-Star Trek nightmare era during the early-to-mid 1970s that was only just beginning when this production was mounted. One side-effect of this slump already visible in this production is Bill Shatner's weight - he is chubbier here than he had ever been up to this point in his entire on-screen career.

Despite running at two hours and thirty minutes, The Andersonville Trial feels neither overlong nor padded out. The drama presented is engrossing, compelling and thoroughly entertaining.

Now, to the hair...

Interestingly, Bill Shatner's hair makes an entrance before we see his face, perhaps a concession to the toup in light of the fact that it has so little to do during the rest of the production:


The style here has echoes of the recently-ditched "Jim Kirk lace" - except that the top piece is no longer attached via an old-style lace "skin". This makes the hair here more of a transition (or hybrid) toupee, representing a key step in the shift away from the laces of old towards the easier-to-apply, but not as good-looking basic hairpieces of the 70s era, which were simply glued to the scalp. Add to that the sideburns - our guess is that they aren't real either.


At one point, we see a mysterious rear patch - one that we have spotted before. Could this be a permanent scar of some kind as it's almost certainly too low to be male pattern baldness?:


We should also add that this is an extremely sweaty production - a deliberate choice by the producers to underline the hot, stuffy atmosphere of the court. All of the actors perspire profusely throughout, and in Bill Shatner's case, his toup picks up a little of that sweat too:


Indeed, a variety of toupees and hairpieces are on display in this production - but of course, none manages to upstage the king of the toupee himself: William Shatner.

The Andersonville Trial is a great piece of drama and we highly recommend it. It is available to purchase on DVD.

The Tekwar toupee.

An interesting picture from Bill Shatner's Tekwar TV series based on the books of the same name. The image shows both a high hairline and a kind of hybrid toupee - indeed, the hair appears to be a unique mix of all three major styles (the side-parting of the "Jim Kirk lace", the thickness of the "TJ curly" and the straightness of the "Denny Crane"). Perhaps this was a nod to the uniqueness of this endeavor.

We have to admit that despite the William Shatner School of Toupological Studies being one of the most well-staffed scientific institutions in the world, with an army of dedicated toupologists studying Bill Shatner's toupees night and day, we really haven't meaningfully turned our attention to this series. So, we certainly appreciate any insight from our readers!

The environmental toupee.

Long before the problems of global warming were being seriously tackled by this planet's governments, Bill Shatner was subtly lobbying for climate change to recognized as a serious problem. A crucial example of this is Shats' 1978 demonstration of an energy-saving "hybrid toupee". The toupee he wears in his appearance on The Mike Douglas Show is a rare outlier, which combines the traits of both the "Jim Kirk" lace as well as the prevailing Shatner style of the time, the "T.J. weave".

Not only did it get twice as much toupage to the gallon of hair, but it also reduced Bill Shatner's heating bills by providing increased insulation. Al Gore would have been very proud!

The full episode can be watched at this website - you have to sign up to find the clip.