Caption contest!

"Is that a toupee or are you just pleased to see me?"

What's going on in the above behind-the-scenes picture from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, sourced via trekcore.com? Is it toupological shock or awe or both? Time for another reader's humorous caption contest, we think! As always, the winner "receives" a prize, which in this case "is" a rare 3D collector's map of the entire main WSSTS complex! Roast away - we look forward to reading your ideas!

On a side note, perhaps one of the most memorable things about the above Spock neck-pinch scene from ST:IV is the "I Hate You!" music playing on the punkster's "Boom box". Here's the complete song, which as noted in the YouTube clip, was actually written by the movie's associate producer Kirk Thatcher.

Why has this instantly memorable song never been covered properly? Perhaps by the band "Shatner's Hairpiece" (another pop-culture homage to William Shatner's toupee). By the way: Kirk and Thatcher - there's a hair association there too, one that can mess up your sub-conscious and lead to embarrassing moments like these (warning, this clip may make you cringe!):

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: Garfield and Friends.

Garfield and Friends was a children's animated series that ran on US TV from 1988-1994. The second season's "Show 29" featured a segment called "Swine Trek", essentially a parody of Star Trek - the segment also contains some not-so-subtle lampooning of Bill Shatner's legendary toupee-wearing:


Orson Pig (the characters in this segment are from the "U.S. Acres" comic strip by Garfield creator Jim Davis) has a fever. Lying in bed, his spaced-out state leads him to have a dream...


...the barn becomes an Enterprise-like starship flying through space...


...the animated farm animals are now its crew.


The characters' respective new idiosyncrasies in this dream closely match those associated with the original Star Trek crew - we have a Spock (Sheldon), Uhura (Lanolin Sheep), McCoy (Wade Duck), Scotty (Bo Sheep), Sulu (Roy Rooster) and a Chekov (Booker). There's even some subtle jesting (see Galaxy Quest) about the lesser characters not being given enough to do.


Meanwhile, Orson Pig is the captain, modeled on Captain Kirk...modeled on William Shatner!


The parody is very much of the original 60s Star Trek-era styles - except for one thing: the captain's hair. Orson is wearing a very thick (and surprisingly accurate-looking) "TJ Curly" toupee (the kind that Bill Shatner wore during the period when this episode was made).


The episode has a considerable amount of fun with Orson's toupee. Virtually every movement that the character makes leads to it becoming momentarily dislodged - sometimes in dramatic fashion. It's a joke that many young viewers (particularly those unfamiliar with Bill Shatner or Star Trek) would likely have missed - to the rest of us, the joke is surely impossible to miss!

Indeed, the producers of Garfield and Friends also appear to demonstrate an understanding of the tremendous potential for knowledge that Bill Shatner's toupee-wearing represents: this particular toupological depiction helps to highlight the principle of weightlessness caused by free fall rather effectively.


In one sequence (pictured above and below), as Orson's body (and head) quickly falls to the ground as part of his sharp downward steps, the toupee is momentarily left in a state of weightlessness before gravity and atmospheric effects take over.


It is, in effect, a microcosm of the Vomit Comet effect (flaws in our science? - please let us know).

Here's an extended segment from the show:

Garfield and Friends is available to buy on DVD.

Our thanks to reader "Ratty Lost Years Piece" for the great tip. You can read his "first suspicions" story regarding this episode here.

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: Night Court.

Night Court is a US TV sitcom that ran from 1984-1992 and focused on the exploits of a group of legal professionals working the night shift in a New York court. During its eighth season, an episode called "To Sleep, No More" aired, which featured very direct references to Bill Shatner's toupee-wearing. In the episode, bald bailiff Nostradamus "Bull" Shannon (pictured above), decides to wear a toupee with an unusual name: "The Shatner Turbo 2000". A quick overview of the story:


TV host Bert Parks appears as himself in the episode, although he's now working as a spokesperson for "Frosted Neon Nuggets Cereal". He approaches Bull (played by Richard Moll) in the court cafeteria and offers him the opportunity to answer a question and win a prize. Bull answers the question correctly and must then choose from four prizes - three are revealed beforehand and one is a secret mystery prize.


Bull chooses the mystery prize, which turns out to be a toupee; the character can then choose any toupee from a catalog (sound convoluted? well, it is an 80s sitcom!). After reading through the options, he decides upon a controversial toupee called the "Shatner Turbo 2000".


This toup, it turns out, is "Cultivated from the hair of specially selected donors. Each follicle is individually steamed, pressed and hand-woven by a team of craftsmen in Vienna." But the "indestructible" toupee also has some "effects" which turn out to be an uncanny ability to attract women.


Naturally, the toup is unmistakably modeled on the long-serving "TJ Curly" style (1976-2000) that Bill Shatner wore during this period. Here's a clip from the episode:

And here's Bull realizing the powers of the "Shatner Turbo 2000":

Later on, Bull wears the toup for an important function only to have it removed and stamped upon by a colleague (prosecutor Reinhold Fielding Elmore, played by John Larroquette) who thinks that a tarantula is eating Bull's head.


In typical sitcom style, by the end of the episode, the character has learned his lesson about letting himself be loved for what he truly is rather than what he wishes he could be - he ditches the toup. What did he do with it? He gave it to the bald janitor...

Sadly, the episode in question isn't available on DVD yet, though earlier seasons of Night Court have been released. Click here for more Bill Shatner toupee pop-culture references.

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: Mad magazine.

A 1994 issue of Mad magazine published around the time of the release of the movie Star Trek: Generations. Two bald captains, one captain's chair and one toupee that Patrick Stewart, alias Captain Jean-Luc Picard, is apparently attempting to tear off his predecessor's head!


On a related note, reader "Toup-eh?" pointed to this YouTube clip, in which, at around 3:55, actor Jonathan Frakes describes Generations as "The story of two captains in search of one good hairpiece."

Poll result and a "my first suspicions" story.

A rather even spread of results for our latest poll, which sought to gauge readers' views on the importance that Bill Shatner places not on the wearing of toups, but on their styling. A fifth of voters thought that Bill Shatner didn't care as long as there was some kind of toup up there, another fifth believed that the various toup styles represented genuine fashion statements. A quarter of voters believed that the bad toups suggested at least some degree of self-delusion (meaning he thought they looked good even when they didn't) on the part of Bill Shatner.

Thanks for voting!

Back in December of '09, we asked our readers to share with us the moment when they first began to suspect that Bill Shatner's hair wasn't as real as they had once thought, which led to some very interesting stories. And that brings us to an email we received from a young reader named Jason. He wanted to share his first suspicions story (actually more of a crushing revelation!):


"Funnily enough, I still remember the first time I found out [about Bill Shatner's] toupee use. I was watching Star Trek II for the first time as a seven-year-old, and I commented to my mother about how William Shatner's new curly hair looked like my fathers. It was then she let out the huge bombshell that my beloved Captain Kirk was indeed wearing a toup, and had been for some time.

"I don't know if any other person reacted similarly to hearing this for the first time but I burst out into tears! I guess something about realizing that your hero is a mere mortal after all..."

Not Jason

A truly moving story indeed! See here and here for two versions of another story to do with children, cruelty and Bill Shatner's toupee.

Jason also had a "Shatner's toupee in pop-culture" tip, the clip of which we'll try to track down:

"I saw Adam Sandler's new movie 'Grown Ups' the other night (horrendous) and in a scene Rob Schneider's character admits to his use of a toupee. Adam Sandler promptly makes fun of his situation by referring to him as 'William Shatner.'"

So there we have it - a truly reader-inspired interactive post!

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: Futurama (again).

The classic animated series Futurama already has one entry in our growing catalogue of references to Bill Shatner's toupee or baldness in popular culture. This second example occurs in the third season Futurama episode "I Dated a Robot" in which the character Fry steals the image of actress Lucy Liu in order to create an ideal robot lover.

During the episode, Fry and Leela visit a physical representation of the Internet. In this surreal place, the two characters walk past various stereotypical epitomes of the Internet - including two nerds arguing about whether Kirk of Picard is the better Star Trek captain (a somewhat passé discussion these days).

- "No way! Kirk could kick Picard's ass!"

- "Yeah, but at least Picard had the guts to admit he was bald!"

Watch the clip below:

Of course, technically speaking it is Shatner, not Kirk that is bald. Unless...did Kirk wear a toupee too?!?! Maybe he was bald but allergic to Scalpanox 5 (now there is an obscure reference that I'm sure at least one of our readers will help explain!).

You can buy Futurama Season 3 here.

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: The Critic

The Critic was a short-lived comedy animation series that ran for two seasons between 1994 and 1995. Many of those involved in the series had ties to The Simpsons - and that is perhaps why we find the very same toupee color mismatch joke in The Critic that had previously been done a year earlier in The Simpsons (see here for our Simpsons entry). Clip below:

The irony about these (rather obvious) mismatch jokes is that they aren't exactly accurate. Though Bill Shatner's later weaves had their fair share of flaws (and we try to study them all here) color mismatches weren't really an issue - in fact, that tended to be far more of a problem during the original Star Trek (see here).

However, we have managed to find one (undated - any tips?) picture of a very strong color mismatch - and ironically, the other way round from the archetypal cliché. In this case, Bill Shatner's hair appears darker and more colorful than the lighter and greyer hairpiece. Maybe it accidentally got put in the washing machine! Please let us know of any more mismatch pics you readers may find.

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: How's the Night Life on Cissalda?

How's the Night Life on Cissalda? is a 1977 sex-themed sci-fi short-story written by author Harlan Ellison - famous to Star Trek fans as the man who wrote the acclaimed episode "The City on the Edge of Forever". The short-story is available in this collection.

According to a message-board poster here, the book contains the following reference to William Shatner's toupee. We should note that we have no way of knowing whether this transcription is entirely accurate:

"William Shatner, because of his deep and profound experience with Third World Aliens, attempted to communicate with the disgusting thing that popped into existence in its [his?] dressing room. He began delivering a captainlike lecture on coexistence and the Cissaldan--bored--vanished to find a more suitable mate. A few minutes later, a less discerning Cissaldan appeared and Shatner, now overcome with this good idea, fell on it, dislodging his hairpiece."

Ellison's predilection for mentioning Shats' toup has previously been looked at in this post.

Many thanks to our readers for alerting us to this and helping track down the extract. We are always very glad for your help and assistance!

Shatner's toupee in popular culture: Polly Pepper.

Asides from animation, short-films and songs, Bill Shatner's toupee has also forever been immortalized in the world of fiction thanks to writer R.T. Jordan and the 2008 novel Final Curtain: A Polly Pepper Mystery (see here for more). The book is about the life of an ageing fictional television actress who ends up trying to solve a mysterious murder.

On page 248, we have this nugget:

"Soon Polly was making the rounds of several other tables. She air-kissed Megan Mullally, Bridget Fonda and Will Ferrell, and when her social chores were over she hugged her waiter, Kevin, good-bye and then settled into the back of the Rolls. She made comments about several of the restaurant's famous clientele. 'That's not a judgement,' she defended her sniggering at William Shatner's crooked toupee. 'It's merely an observation. Polly Pepper never says a negative word about her friends and colleagues.' "

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: Robot Chicken.

In 2005, Robot Chicken, a stop-motion comedy sketch show airing on the US cable channel Adult Swim, did an episode called "Toy Meets Girl". The episode featured a segment called "Warp Speed Wig" featuring William Shatner's toupee, which in this case sneaks off its host's head during the night and has a series of adventures all of its own! BE...low... IS...the seg-MENT!:

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: The Simpsons.

In 1993, during the fourth season of the animated series The Simpsons, the Star Trek cast was rather mercilessly lampooned (mainly for their advancing years) in a brief segment in an episode entitled "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie". The segment in question is an amusing fictional trailer for a wonderfully titled Star Trek XII: So Very Tired.

Among the many things the segment pokes fun at is Bill Shatner's toupee, which in this case sits thickly resplendent and richly colored on top of his mismatched real and very gray hair. Of course, Bill never had these kinds of severe mismatches in the later years as is depicted here - that actually tended to happen far more during the early years of Star Trek as you toupologists out there will know all to well!

The real Shatner, with some help from Photoshop!

One interesting note: Bill Shatner is perhaps one of the only celebrities of his stature never to have guest-voiced on The Simpsons. Could this segment have offended him? Who knows? However, Shatner later did famously appear in The Simpsons' sister-series Futurama in an episode entitled "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" - his hair in that episode was without any mismatched toupee line. Anyway, below is a video of the aforementioned sequence.

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: "eBay".

The 2003 song "eBay" by "Weird Al" Yankovic, which turned out to be a far bigger hit than Yankovic ever expected, features a reference to Shatner's toupee. A line in the song goes: "Tell me why I bid on Shatner's old toupee. They had it on eBay." You can listen to that line below:

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: William Shatner Lent Me His Hairpiece.

In 1996, film-maker Ken Hegan made a 12-minute low-budget short film called William Shatner Lent Me His Hairpiece. The comedy film revolves around a bald loser who becomes a winner after he manages to acquire William Shatner's hairpiece, which has magical powers. Read more about the film here, check out the imdb.com entry here and watch the film below:

William Shatner Lent Me His Hairpiece (an untrue story) | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

Shatner's toupee in pop-culture: Futurama.

There are a surprising number of references to William Shatner's toupee in popular culture and we'll try to bring them all to you here at Shatner'sToupee. We thought we'd start with a reference in the animated series Futurama (this sci-fi series has died and come back to life as many times as Star Trek).

As fans of the series will know, the character of Zapp Brannigan is essentially designed to be a heavily exaggerated "Captain William Shatner". There are numerous references to both Kirk and Shatner's foibles - highly exaggerated, of course: Brannigan is a narcissistic, deeply insecure and somewhat pathetic egomaniac; he hides his weight by wearing a tight girdle under his velour uniform and he also wears a toupee. Here is a clip from the Futurama episode "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch" where Brannigan's toupee (or combover) secret is revealed to the audience for the first and only time thus far in the series thanks to an unwelcome gust of air...