Please join us in welcoming Chase Masterson to STO!

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In his work on $#*! My Dad Says, William Shatner is exploring a whole new frontier in a new age of television show production.

Shatner began his career on live television, but how shows were made was very different back then. “I was there when the cameras were as big as this table had internal fans that were whirring because of the heat of the tubes and had to come as close as this for a close up,” he said. “Now we’re talking about green screen and putting us on locations we’ll never visit, unfortunately. We can put us in Paris on this show and never leave the warmth of Warner Bros. It is beyond irony. It is trying to catch the tiger by the tail. The miracle is our inventiveness and the tragedy of our lives is the inventiveness. It’s beyond irony. It’s whatever term you guys can come up with.”

In addition to a different way of making live television, Shatner is appearing on his first sitcom. “You cannot begin to imagine the shock I had when I came down on that floor for the first time,” he said. “First of all, there’s this whole thing about playing sitcom comedy. A lot of people, writers, directors and actors, have got into a sitcom thing. I didn’t want to do the sitcom thing but I didn’t know what else to do. So I was starting low and slow and not enough of that comedic energy but you don’t want to do too much. I went slowly through the week of rehearsals. Then we got on the floor with the cameras which I’m used to from my live TV days.”

Taping a live show meant discovering the energy of doing so in front of a live crowd. “There’s the cameras and two hundred people wandering around: agents, actors, mothers-in-law, party, eating pizza. We’re doing the circus up here. It was stunning. The fourth wall was totally gone. I’m talking to the audience. We now correct lines, the writers come up with other lines to try and the audience is aware of the process. I’ve got to learn the other line, I’ve got to say it a couple of times, everybody laughs. It was exciting, chaotic, totally stunning. I’ve never experienced that before as an actor. I was part minstrel, part actor.”

$#*! My Dad Says airs this fall on CBS.

Interviewing one of the D.C. snipers responsible for seventeen deaths was something that will remain with William Shatner for a long time.

Shatner interviewed Lee Boyd Malvo, who was seventeen at the time of the shootings, for Aftermath with William Shatner, a show that examines “what happens when people are tragically or infamously transformed from unknown citizens into household names overnight.”

The interview was conducted via telephone from a southwest Virginia prison cell where Malvo is serving a life sentence for his role in the October 2002 murders. “Getting the opportunity to speak with Lee Malvo is a moment I’ll never forget,” said Shatner in an A&E press statement. “He was only seventeen when he committed these horrific acts, a monster forged by the only father figure in his life, and it was simply astonishing that he’s found the maturity and humility to admit so many new crimes in his effort to make amends.”

According to Malvo, three other co-conspirators were to have worked with Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, to “create terror along the entire Eastern Seaboard,” using rifles with silencers. The would-be conspirators backed out however, and Malvo shot two of them on orders from Muhammad. Malvo also told Shatner that one of the men was killed, but by Muhammad. The whereabouts of the third man is unknown.

Muhammad and Malvo had been linked to twenty-seven shootings, resulting in the seventeen deaths, but Malvo claimed that the duo had carried out approximately forty-two shootings.

Muhammad was sentenced to death and was executed in 2009 by lethal injection.

Confessions of the D.C. Sniper with William Shatner: An Aftermath Special, will air on Thursday at 10 P.M. on A&E.

A campaign started by a fan on the Star Trek Online messageboards to have the voice talents of actress Chase Masterson (Leeta) included in Star Trek Online was successful and players can now hear her as “Holo Leeta.”

The campaign began back in March, when the fan, Kirkfat, contacted Masterson and got her permission to try to convince Cryptic. “I’d love to do this,” Masterson said. Kirkfat started a thread on the STO messageboards to gather support.

At first, those involved with Star Trek Online told the fans that while they had no objection to the plan, not to get their hopes up. “They will contact her and see if this might be a possibility. … This doesn’t mean it will happen, in fact there is a very, very good change that it probably won’t. We don’t have huge budgets for VO, soooo there is a good chance that she might be too expensive.”

Later, word came that Star Trek Online was “contact with Chase Masterson and do plan to get some audio recorded for “Holo” Leeta.” In May, Masterston let fans know that she had been contacted by Cryptic regarding her participation in the game.

Finally, last week, fans heard the voice of Masterson as “Holo” Leeta. According to poster Z3R0B4Ng, “I couldn’t believe my ears when I walked into Quarks after the build today…I opened the door and heard a voice saying “DABO”!”

“Kudos to Cryptic,” said Kirkfat. “We love you Chase.”

Masterson is the third Star Trek actor to do voice work for Star Trek Online, following Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto.