Busy Shatner talks to Nimoy, plays host on new 'Iron Chef USA'

For William Shatner, the voyage continues at warp speed.

Just check him out at breakfast earlier this week. Even sitting still, the once-and-forever Captain Kirk is on a quest. He presides. He glows. He rhapsodizes, seemingly as thrilled to discuss his slice of multi-grain toast as his latest batch of projects.

Is there another pop-culture presence more enduring and adaptive than Shatner at age 70?

Indefatigably bridging kitsch and cosmology for nearly 40 years, he is a TV star, memoirist and sci-fi novelist, movie actor and filmmaker (he directed a "Star Trek" feature, and currently has a couple of films in the works), novelty recording artist, and, of course, self-spoofing product spokesman: "If saving money is wrong," he wailed in one of his goofy Priceline commercials, "I don't want to be right!"

When asked his greatest strength, Shatner replies, with rare brevity, "my strength." Now he is weighing in with "Iron Chef USA," an English-language version of the kookie culinary clash that has proved a cult sensation in its Japanese original.

But wait! There's more!

Shatner and pal Leonard Nimoy, who co-starred as pointy-eared Mr. Spock in the "Star Trek" TV series and feature films, recently met to tape "Mind Meld: Secrets Behind the Voyage of a Lifetime." A coupla gents sitting around talking, this confessional is for sale in VHS and DVD formats on Shatner's Web site.

Shatner explains: "I went to Leonard to say, 'Let's do an interview where we don't have to put up our guard, that leaves us both very vulnerable, with the idea that there's nothing you can't reveal -- because you're living in truth.'"

Old friends converse

On Sept. 5, the old friends sat down (in lawn chairs in Nimoy's front yard) for a session that yielded about two hours of tape, 80 minutes of it making up "Mind Meld."

Among the subjects they address: Nimoy's battles with the bottle; family problems that arose for both of them from "Star Trek" work pressures; friction with other members of the cast.

They also revisit age-old concerns about how their indelible "Star Trek" identities might mark them in their subsequent careers.

After all, both had come to the sci-fi series (which aired on NBC from 1966 to '69) clinging to dreams of someday tackling quote-unquote serious roles. They applied that ambition to their "Star Trek" portrayals.

An exercise in futility? With regard to "Star Trek's" dramatic limitations, the word "cartoonish" crosses Shatner's lips during "Mind Meld."

Strike that. "I never thought it was a cartoon," he insists to a reporter. "I never thought it was beneath me."

He and Nimoy, Shatner continues, "were and are serious actors who can bring life-experience the writer may not know about to a scene -- even if it IS a commercial role."

"Commercial" is the word. The original "Star Trek" launched a vast and profitable starship enterprise whose fifth-but-who's-counting TV series, "Enterprise," began on UPN this fall.

"In my proudest moments, I think, 'I had a real hand in the creative force of making 'Star Trek,"' says Shatner, whose run lasted until Kirk's demise in the umpteenth film sequel, "Star Trek: Generations," back in 1994. "But most of the time, I don't think about it."

'Weirdest thing'

Nonetheless, Shatner somehow got a glimpse of the Japanese "Iron Chef," which, airing on cable's Food Network, he appreciatively calls "the weirdest thing you've ever seen."

Could its chop-socky wackiness survive a translation?

"Iron Chef USA," with its own recipe of food, celebrity, extreme sport and mock-spectacle (it could have been called "Irony Chef") turns out to be a treat.