Hair pre-production...

Following on from our previous post, and inspired by some of your comments, we thought we'd examine Bill Shatner's hair choices for the upcoming sitcom based on the "Sh*t My Dad Says" Twitter page in which the actor is set to star .

At some point soon, Bill Shatner will take part in costume, makeup and hair tests for the CBS project. Perhaps the producers won't feel the need (or will be too uncomfortable) to mention that the real-life dad from "Sh*t My Dad Says" is bald - and that will be the end of it. In that case, Bill Shatner will appear with his suspiciously young-looking current "Denny Crane" style.

But there is also a possibility that a level of trust will develop between Bill Shatner and the producers and a climate of experimentation will ensue, one that extends to toupular issues. Who knows, maybe Bill Shatner, eager for something new, will actually be the one to bring it up...


Or, with some awkwardness, Bill Shatner may be asked for his thoughts about, you know, how he feels he should look. Nervous pause...producers' hearing their own hearts beating... "What HAVE we said?!!" If the producers are lucky, Bill Shatner may agree that he should indeed go bald in this production - (throughout his entire career, Bill Shatner has never done this, not even, we believe, with a "shaven head" or an obvious bald cap).

Doctored image - sourced here.

So what then? Crucially, Bill Shatner could actually go bald while still preserving the illusion that his hair is real. This avenue may be a viable compromise. Here are the options:

1.) Bill Shatner goes toup-less but a story is leaked to the media that the actor is shaving his head for this role. It's a lie, but at least a revolutionary revelation is avoided. The upside is that we finally get to see Bill Shatner without his toupee.


2.) Bill Shatner wears an obvious bald-cap, and perhaps a "balding old man" wig on top of his toupee and/or plugs. This would be somewhat ridiculous, but it is a viable option that again avoids revolutionary revelations. The downside is that we don't really get to see Bill Shatner without his toupee and the whole thing will probably cause all sorts unwelcome attention.


3.) Bill Shatner goes toup-less but has a small line of latex applied to the front of his forehead that makes it look like he is wearing a bald cap. Again, a ridiculous choice but the upside is that Bill Shatner does indeed appear toup-less.

So those are the bald options. On the other hand, Bill Shatner could also go in the opposite direction and do what he did in the the Star Trek episode "The Deadly Years" (the one where some of the crew grow old) - tossing aside any attempts at believability and making his "old man hair" even thicker than usual:


Or perhaps Bill Shatner and his various toupular machinations are contractually viewed as one and the same - audiences don't just switch on for Bill Shatner, but also his toupees - in that case, seeing the actor bald could be viewed by as a risky step too far. We should also add that Bill Shatner is actually four years older than the elderly dad he is set to play.

What will Bill Shatner ultimately decide? It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma covered by a toupee!

BREAKING: Dad from Sh*t My Dad Says is bald!

The recent news that Bill Shatner is to star as the dad in a new sitcom based on the famous "Sh*t My Dad Says" Twitter page appears to have been warmly received in most quarters. Bill Shatner's ever-growing penchant for doing new, unusual and often bizarre things shows no signs of abating...

Yet, one very significant factor has hitherto been overlooked in this story - Justin Halpern's 74 year-old dad (the real-life dad that says all of the "Sh*t") is bald!


Bill Shatner is bald too, but has hitherto preferred to wear a toupee in public. Could this be an historic opportunity for the actor to finally go sans toupee in order to provide a more accurate and realistic portrayal of an old man?!?! More importantly, should Bill Shatner decide to take the plunge?

William Shatner faces perhaps the toughest decision of his toupological career.

Wouldn't Bill Shatner going sans toupee in this project finally and truly fulfill President John F. Kennedy's dream of going to the moon?

"No single [Shatner] project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of [Shatner's head]." -JFK

Obviously, as this huge story trickles through to AP, Reuters, AFP, CNN, the BBC and the rest of the media, we'll keep you posted. Expect some tough questions to be asked!


On a separate note, our thanks to Cinematical.com who have published a story on our toupological efforts - click here.

Fun with Touposhop!

"Touposhop" is a proprietary program developed in the mid-1980s by the William Shatner School of Toupological Studies (specifically the "Department of Non-Toupular Cranial Approximology") to assist us in the creation of photographic approximations of Bill Shatner without his toupee. The technology was later licensed to the Adobe company and turned into Photoshop.

A while back, we brought you two such approximations (from the late 1960s) and now it's time for yet more Touposhop fun with the above image from the mid-1970s.

The Babysitter - a toupological analysis.

The Babysitter is a 1980 TV movie starring Patty Duke, William Shatner and Stephanie Zimbalist.

A middle-aged couple is persuaded by their twelve-year-old daughter to hire a teenage girl, who has seemingly come out of nowhere, as the family's babysitter.


The couple is in the midst of a marital crisis, fuelled by the husband's workaholic nature and the wife's alcoholism.


Bill Shatner plays a dentist...


The family's new babysitter moves in and, with great skill, proceeds to manipulate daughter against parents, husband against wife, wife against husband, the latter of whom she also tries her hardest to seduce.


As if that wasn't enough, she also sets about persuading the alcoholic wife to start drinking again.


Meanwhile, a suspicious neighbor tries his best to investigate this mysterious girl, who seems to have no verifiable past.


The family appears completely oblivious to the fact that their babysitter is turning the entire family's lives into a nightmare.


But the babysitter's facade of normality finally begins to crumble after she beats a fish to death (you'll have to watch the movie).


Therein a killing spree follows.


Until the bitter end...


On the surface, The Babysitter is somewhat similar to The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, made twelve years later. There are also echoes of 1976's Carrie.


While this TV movie could have easily used a little more blood and gore and other R-rated shocks and thrills, we felt that it was nonetheless very engrossing and entertaining as a moody, atmospheric chiller.


The direction was bold, while the music score was also particularly dynamic - all of this was especially surprising and rare for a 1980s TV movie. The script was well-written and one can't help but feel that in his heyday Alfred Hitchcock might easily have been interested in making a movie just like this.

Now, to the hair...

This movie was made between the first two Star Trek movies, and as such, Bill Shatner is wearing his stage one "TJ Curly" weave. This weave was far sturdier and less prone to toupological "moments" than anything Bill Shatner had worn before. This would become even more true a few years later as Bill Shatner shifted to the stage two "TJ curly" toup which went all the way down the sides.

Nontheless, there are a few interesting toupological moments in The Babysitter. One of the weaknesses of this particular hair was a tendency to become slightly misshapen:

Bill Shatner as Elvis.

There's an interesting windy hair moment at one point:


While Bill Shatner also reveals...


... a hat:


The actor's hair is also knocked about a little during the movie's climax.


The Babysitter is a slightly silly, but nonetheless very entertaining movie and we don't hesitate to recommend it. Sadly, it isn't available on DVD (surely it will be eventually) but is available on second-hand VHS. At present, the movie is also up on YouTube in its entirety.

Animated toupee liberation.

As has often been observed, one of the best features about the short-lived Star Trek animated series was that it enabled a level of production design and scope (despite also having a very low budget) that would have been impossible in the live-action series on which it was based. Gene Roddenberry once put it thus: "During the original series, budget considerations meant that there were severe limits as to what we could do with Bill Shatner's toupee. Sure, there was wind and the occasional fall or fight, but that was about it. We knew the fans wanted more, so when we had the chance to do the animated series, one of the first things I instructed the writers to do was to really push the toupee to the limit."


And so they did. During the run of the series, the animated Captain Kirk, based of course on the visage of Bill Shatner, got to do all manner of new and exciting things - and so did his curiously orange hair. These included swimming underwater, exposure to severe winds, fire and much, much more!

"The Ambergris Element"

An example of this new found toupee liberation can be found in the episode "The Magicks of Megas-tu". In one sequence, within a matter of seconds, Bill Shatner's animated toupee is exposed to fire, smoke, rain, explosions, beams of magical light and very, very strong gusts (the character becomes a kind of Touperman with super-toupular powers) - the kind that the real-lace could not have withstood on the live-action Star Trek's paltry hairstyling budget. Watch below:

Star Trek: TAS is often dissed for its low-budget animation, which put recycling on the map long before the environmental movement. However, the series has a particular aesthetic charm all of its own, managing to be even more "far out" than the original live-action series; also, some of the stories are surprisingly well written - we think that it is well worth watching. Star Trek: The Animated Series is available on DVD.

Note: Gene Roddenberry never actually said the above quote.