William Shatner

Collision Course (Star Trek: Academy)
$25.00
Much as the recent Star Trek film gave us a slightly off canon version of Star Trek, this book does likewise, having Kirk and Spock meeting and joining Starfleet at the same time. Kirk has anti-Starfleet baggage and Spock is trying to find his true identify and path in life. The story is spun around Kirk and Spock doing their own investigations into a smuggling ring, both coming at it from different directions and eventually working together.
Well, Mr Shatner knows his character and Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens know how to churn out a good Trek novel, but in the end, this didn't really work for me. Having said that I am a Trek fan of old, but gave up on the books a few years ago, only occasionally dipping into one, so maybe I am asking too much.
With this one, the target audience seemed to sit between YA Trek fans and adult fans, but sat uncomfortably on the fence between the two. Kirk is portrayed as a young technological genius (never saw that in the series or films!) and it didn't sit right with the Kirk we eventually saw on screen. Spock is better in the way he is pitched although some of the Vulcans (including some Vulcan bad guys) just did not feel right with what we know about the Vulcans.
So Kirk and Spock scamper through the story, brushing against both Starfleet, assorted family and the bad guys and (in Kirk's case) the trauma of a past incident. Obviously the climax takes place on.... well you can guess where before we slip back into Trek Canon with our heroes joining different branches of Starfleet.
This just felt very average, and I was never really engaged and in summary, it did remind me why I gave up reading Trek books.....

Up Till Now: The Autobiography
$15.95
I enjoyed this book very much with its emphasis on his personal life (as opposed to the Star Trek Memories books he wrote back in the 90's which were slightly more just about the making of the ST:TOS TV show and films). As I read this book I noticed that very early on Shatner's life contained adventure (from the fighting bouts he was in as a young child to that publicized boat ride he and his mutual companions took from Canada to New York years later).
I also loved much of the photo section (concluding with a photo of Shatner with his current beautiful wife, Elizabeth).
He's just about as really amazing as his alterego Capt. Kirk!

The Transformed Man
$9.98
God probably would have advised Bill not to take the brown acid.

However, Bill took the brown acid.

Fortunately for the rest of us, he then promptly waltzed straight into a recording studio.

And thus a masterpiece was born.

Alexander the Great
$6.98
The Shatman is Al the Great, the favorite of the gods, fighting for peace and freedom by, er, invading Persia in this 52-minute TV pilot from 1964 that ABC were so impressed with that they sat on it until 1968... As if that isn't enough of a casting leap, there's Adam West as his special friend Cleander, a very worse-for-wear Joseph Cotten as the surrogate father figure, John Cassavettes as a treacherous Greek general after Al's job, Simon Oakland as Cassavettes' sidekick and Cliff Osmond as a Persian general in command of an army four times the size of Al's - which, in real terms, means about 25 if you don't count the stock footage. Filmed in the kind of Californian foothills locations you'd later find Captain Kirk slugging it out with Abraham Lincoln and a lizard man and directed by Phil Karlson (The Phenix City Story, Kansas City Confidential), it all plays rather like a poor episode of The Time Tunnel with the sci-fi elements removed. It's easy to imagine Oliver Stone watching it to cheer himself up whenever he thinks about how his version(s) reception...

Timeless' DVD release is less than great - after the main titles it takes you straight to a menu rather than the rest of the show, while the running time is padded out with a cut and paste 'documentary' made up of trailer footage from other epics. Transfer quality is acceptable but nothing more.