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.' "

Toupee: Generations

Remember how Leonard Nimoy was tricked by a teleprompter into making a very rare reference to his pal's toupee? Well, the son of Spock, Adam Nimoy, has been a little less restrained. In his candid autobiography My Incredible Miserable Life: An Anti-Memoir (buy here or visit Adam Nimoy's page here), Nimoy makes a brief reference to seeing Shats' toup separated from its host:

"The other thing I really liked about being on the set, besides hanging out with the cast and gazing at Bill Shatner's hairpiece sitting on a mannequin's head in the makeup department, was the smell. Immediately when you walked in it hit you because there was a little room on the stage where these guys made all the different color knobs you see on the Enterprise control panels."

Young Adam Nimoy visits the Star Trek set. Source: MyStarTrekScrapbook.blogspot.com

Now, Nimoy's experience is a rare one indeed. Biologists have since determined that Shatner's toupee is very much like the Trill species from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - both the host and symbiont are unique beings that fuse into one - and neither can be separated from the other for long periods of time. What was Shats like without his toup? Which characteristics of the fused being were Shatner's and which were the toupee's? Much study has yet to be done in this area.

The real final frontier.

The third season Star Trek episode "The Lights of Zetar" (possibly our least favorite Trek episode) features a shot at the beginning (an unused shot from a first season episode, no less) that gives a rare overhead glimpse of the various contours, ridges and valleys of Shatner's toupee.

And it is perhaps ironic that in a world where weather patterns can be predicted weeks ahead...

...and the surface of Mars has been mapped in great detail...

...that there is still so much that humanity has yet to learn about Bill Shatner's toupee. Could the toup be the real final frontier? As Gene Roddenberry once didn't say: The toupee adventure is just beginning...


UPDATE: A reader asks - "Doesn't this picture detract from the two-toup theory advanced early in this blogs's history? (That Shatner wore separate front and rear hairpieces simultaneously), It looks like one single, unified toupee."

Not necessarily. In fact, it may help to confirm it. Notice the two separate directions of the hair. A large piece combed backwards and attached to the top of the head, and the side-comb frontal piece designed to just thicken up the hairline a little that is slightly combed over the rear piece. A lighter separate front would be far easier to attach and make the overall toupee a bit more rigid. Of course, we aren't really sure about this, but rather it is based on some anecdotal evidence and a little guesswork. We will try to get more info from a hair specialist.

The Trouble with Toupees...

It is perhaps ironic that the image related to Shats' toup that has most transcended into popular culture actually has nothing to do with Bill Shatner's toup at all - or does it? We are of course referring to a famous still of Captain Kirk buried in Tribbles in the second season Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles". This is an image that just begs to have a funny caption attached, and if you do a Google image search for "Shatner toupee" you'll find that many people have indeed done just that. Below (and the above image) are just a few examples we pulled of the net (some with a few spelling mistakes):

So if the public easily caught on to the apparent underlying toupee-related vibes of the image, then surely the Star Trek crew did too back when they made the episode.

Indeed, if we look closely at "The Trouble with Tribbles", we see that there is a great deal of subtle fun apparently being poked at Shats. James Doohan (Scotty) almost salivates with glee as he recounts to Kirk (Shatner) how a Klingon called him a "tin-plated, overbearing, swaggering dictator with delusions of godhood". And he appears even happier to tell the captain that he only started a fight with the Klingons after they insulted the Enterprise and not its captain. James Doohan was perhaps Bill Shatner's biggest ever detractor, so a chance to be mean to Bill probably made him feel like he was letting off a little steam.

This episode was written by David Gerrold and directed by Trek regular Joseph Pevney. Both men were already very familiar with the internal dynamics of the Star Trek cast and crew. Gerrold's earliest outline of the story (sourced here), then entitled "The Fuzzies" contains the basic premise of the later Tribble storage compartment scene:

"Kirk and Spock stare at the empty bins, both think the same thing at the same time... 'The warehouse of grain!' Kirk pries the granary doors open. Fuzzies roll out. The worst has happened. They have devoured the grain. Spock quotes the number of fuzzies exactly, and Kirk issues an order. 'First, close that door! Second, capture Cyrano Smith!' "

But let's take a step back. What exactly are the underlying vibes of the famous image beyond the obvious "toupee cupboard" type stuff? In the book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, producer Bob Justman relayed a story about how Shats' toups had a tendency to go missing:

"We had always planned to have two Shatner pieces at the start of each season, and we expected to have the same two when the season ended. Somehow, there was only one left when Fred Phillips, our makeup man, took inventory after the last episode [of the first season] was filmed.

"The hairpieces were made for Bill; he was the only one they fit. The missing toupee had been left in the makeup room. It didn't just get up and walk out by itself. I was sure the cleaning lady wasn't guilty; she already had a wig. Who could have taken it? And why?

"I couldn't resist: 'Ever find that missing toup, Bill?'

" 'Who, me? Nope. It was in the makeup room when I left that night. I told you, ask Fred. Surely you don't think that I...?' He was the very soul of innocence. But I had made my point. He knew that I knew."

So one possible interpretation for the Tribbles scene is that it is a subtle inside reference to Shats being forced to open the locker of his dressing-room and being caught red-handed in possession of an entire mountain of missing toupees. Notice the staging and notice that the director has put one Tribble in Bill Shatner's hand:

Roddenberry, Justman and Solow confronting Bill Shatner in his dressing room?

Of course, this is just a theory and it could indeed be that the apparent toupee metaphors are only in the minds of certain viewers (and blogs) and that the producers really did not intend any similarities to Shats' toup at all. We may never know. But whether intended or not, a great deal of viewers think about one thing when they see that scene, and it isn't Tribbles!

Image sourced here.

Makeup secrets: a rare glimpse...

We know that Bill Shatner has on occasion expressed irritation at photographers potentially revealing his "makeup secrets", even when those photographers were invited by his Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy. So it is quite unusual to find a promo featuring a very, very brief and unspectacular clip of a hair and makeup person attending to Shatner's hair on the set (set meaning green-screen in this case) of Boston Legal. The full clip is here and the brief hair segment contained within is below: