[4] His most successful album was his third, Seeking Major Tom (2011), which includes covers of Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly", David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".

Guthrie too rated the young Shatner very highly, later recalling him as the most promising actor that his Festival employed, and for a time, he was seen as a potential peer of Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

He was soon offered the chance to make his first appearance on American television: in a children's program called The Howdy Doody Show, he created the role of Ranger Bob, co-starring with a cast of puppets and Clarabell the Clown, whose dialogue with Shatner consisted entirely of honks on a bicycle horn.

In December 1958, directed by Kirk Browning, he appeared opposite Ralph Bellamy as a Roman tax collector in Bethlehem on the day of Jesus's birth in a Hallmark Hall of Fame live television production entitled The Christmas Tree, the cast list of which included Jessica Tandy, Margaret Hamilton, Bernadette Peters, Richard Thomas, Cyril Ritchard, and Carol Channing.

Also that year, he appeared in an episode of the CBS drama The Reporter, "He Stuck in His Thumb", and played a supporting role in the Western feature film The Outrage, a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon starring Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom and Edward G. Robinson.

In 1968, he starred in the little known Spaghetti Western White Comanche, playing both a white-hat character and his black-hat evil twin: Johnny Moon, a virtuous half-Comanche gunslinger, and Notah, a bloodthirsty warlord.

On television, he made a critically praised appearance as a prosecutor in a 1971 PBS adaptation of Saul Levitt's play The Andersonville Trial, and was also seen in major parts in the movies The People (1972) and The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973).

He had a starring role too in the western-themed secret agent series Barbary Coast during 1975 and 1976, and appeared as a guest of the week in many popular shows of that decade, including Columbo, Ironside, Kung Fu, Mission: Impossible, The Rookies and The Six Million Dollar Man.

[28] His curriculum vitae in this genre included several visits to The $10,000 Pyramid and its more generous sequels, shows in which contestants attempted to guess a word or phrase with the help of hints from a famous partner.

Running for five seasons and ninety-one episodes until 1986, the series partnered Shatner with Heather Locklear and James Darren, later to be a recurring cast member of the third live-action Star Trek show, Deep Space Nine.

When the production of Star Trek V was delayed by a Writer's Guild strike, Shatner began transforming his initial concept into a novel, assisted by an established author of pulp science fiction, Ron Goulart.

In the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun, Shatner appeared in several 1999–2000 episodes as the "Big Giant Head", a high-ranking officer from the same alien planet as the Solomon family who becomes a womanizing party-animal on Earth.

In Osmosis Jones (2001), a high-concept satirical movie that blended live action with animation, Shatner voiced Mayor Phlegmming; the film depicted the cells and microbiota of a human body as the citizens of a community, the city of Frank, governed by an egoistic politician who prioritizes his convenience and political self-interest over the welfare of his public.

[73] 2011 also saw him guest-starring in one episode of the USA Network's Psych, "In for a Penny", playing the estranged father of Junior Detective Juliet O'Hara (Maggie Lawson) (a role that he reprised in the show's 2012 season).

[84] Premiering on August 23, 2016, the NBC reality miniseries Better Late Than Never followed Shatner and a quartet of other aging celebrities—Terry Bradshaw, Jeff Dye, George Foreman and Henry Winkler—as they took a grand tour around Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.

Criticized by a Russian journalist for his involvement with the government-controlled outlet, Shatner branded his accuser a hypocrite and compared his contract with RT to the arrangement through which the channel had acquired the right to broadcast American football games.

She labeled it as "horribly racist"; and wrote "as it turns out, 'A great archaeological mystery' is a code phrase for 'We are too lazy to read or even Google and honestly, racism is far easier than admitting non white people were/are brilliant innovators.

The LPs' bill of fare included him reminiscing about his work on Star Trek and reading excerpts from Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds and Bertolt Brecht's Galileo.

Devoid of Star Trek branding because of licensing restrictions, the album's sleeve was decorated with a photograph of Shatner brandishing an upturned camera tripod in the style of Jim Kirk going into battle with a phaser rifle.

[100][101] Shatner's colleagues on the project included several notable musicians: the country star Brad Paisley, Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society, Peter Frampton, Brian May of Queen, Steve Howe from Yes, John Wetton from King Crimson and Asia, Ritchie Blackmore from Deep Purple, Alan Parsons and Bootsy Collins of Parliament-Funkadelic.

[101] Astronautically themed and with a general flavour of heavy metal, the album featured covers of Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly", David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".

[112] Among the music videos for other artists that featured him were one for Ben Folds's "Landed", in which he played the part of a producer, and two for Brad Paisley, one promoting "Celebrity" and the other "Online", with the latter containing a meta-reference in which Shatner appeared to be heartbroken when told that he could not sing.

In 1978, while hosting the fifth presentation of Saturn Awards bestowed by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, he performed a version of Elton John's Rocket Man that went on to become a staple of comedic parody.

On June 9, 2005, he contributed his version of "My Way" to the presentation of George Lucas's AFI Life Achievement Award, backed by a chorus line of dancers in Imperial Stormtrooper costumes who ended Shatner's segment by picking him up and carrying him offstage.

In a televised post-flight conversation with Bezos, Shatner articulated experiencing the overview effect, a deepened understanding of the fact that the ecosphere of the Earth is but a thin, fragile skin enveloping its planet.

Once an autopsy had revealed that her blood contained both alcohol and diazepam, the coroner decided that the cause of her death was accidental drowning and the Los Angeles Police Department, agreeing that there was no evidence of foul play, closed its file on the case.

Leonard (sober many years) took Nerine to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but she did not want to quit.In 2000, a Reuters story reported that Shatner was planning to write and direct The Shiva Club, a dark comedy about the grieving process inspired by his wife's death.

Sky Conway, the organizer of the penultimate convention attended by Doohan, was a witness to their burying the hatchet: "At our show: 'The Great Bird of the Galaxy' in El Paso, Texas in November 2003, a celebration of Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek, Bill and Jimmy went on stage together.

Researchers think that tinnitus can be triggered by exposure to very loud noise, and Shatner believes that his falling prey to it might be the result of a pyrotechnical accident that happened during the shooting of the 1967 Star Trek episode "Arena".

[154] In 2006, Shatner sold a kidney stone that had been surgically extracted from him to the online auction company GoldenPalace.com for $25,000, after rejecting an earlier bid of $15,000 with the observation that collectors had paid more than $100,000 for one of his Star Trek tunics.