What does a Starfleet captain do after their five-year mission is cut short after three? If you're Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise, you park it in the space dock and return to your normal life as William Shatner, whose career in television kicked off with his role as Ranger Bob in the Canadian version of The Howdy Doody Show in 1954. Following the iconic role, Shatner would go on to make appearances as a guest star on episodes for a host of television series, including Gunsmoke and The Six Million Dollar Man. It would take six years before Shatner settled back into a television series as the lead, a Western/adventure/spy/dramedy series called Barbary Coast.
William Shatner's 'Barbary Coast' is a Family-Friendly 'The Wild Wild West'
Barbary Coast is an ambitious series set in the infamous Barbary Coast district of San Francisco in the 1870s. Shatner stars as Jeff Cable, an undercover government agent with a penchant for hiding behind disguises. He operates out of a secret suite in the Golden Gate Casino, owned by his friend and accomplice Cash Conover, played by Doug McClure (Richard Kiel of James Bond fame was in the show as well, playing bouncer Moose Moran). The pair work together on dangerous missions, with Cable frequently needing to appeal to Conover's sense of duty (and his eye for the ladies) to coerce his risk-averse friend's participation. It is, for all intents and purposes, a rehash of the 1965-69 multi-genre series The Wild Wild West, but the character traits are mixed around. Cable is a government agent, like Robert Conrad's James West, and a master of disguise like West's partner Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin), and Conover takes on West's cover as a "dandy, high-roller from the East."
Unlike that series, which fell prey to political pressure over its violent content, Barbary Coast aired in ABC's family viewing hour, and as such was limited to how much violence they could use in the show. Of the limitations, Shatner is quoted as saying, "What we have heard about family viewing, and what we can and cannot do on the show, is innumerable and unending." Even the name of the series came under the microscope, with Shatner explaining, in the same article, that ABC believed the name conjured up a violent image, so they renamed it Cash and Cable, only to reinstate the original name after test screenings confirmed that people like it better.
William Shatner and Cast Felt Relief After ABC Canceled 'Barbary Coast'
Of the series, Shatner says, "On paper, it [Barbary Coast] looked really good - all those disguises, and different characters." And there were a lot of disguises Cable used to aid his attempts at cleaning up the infamous district. In one episode alone called "Arson and Old Lace," Cable, to take down a dockside extortion racket, takes on the guise of a ratty and drunken Scottish sailor, a stylish gambler replete with a white suit and pencil-thin mustache, a gray-haired fight promoter of Irish descent, sporting a top hat; and a vagrant beset with scars and a hook nose. The disguises were well done, with Shatner giving kudos to "terrific" makeup man Tom Burman in the previously cited TV Insider. They also made for hectic shooting days on set, with Shatner explaining that he'd put on a disguise and get into character, holding up shooting as he did so. He'd come back, shoot the scene, and run back to the makeup room again "three times a day, every day, every week, to the point of everyone's exhaustion."
The chemistry between Shatner and McClure is one of Barbary Coast's positive assets, as are the costumes, but that's pretty much where it ends. The New York Times deemed the series as being a "reasonable candidate for the disaster bin," with bad production throughout, and even substituting the casino's dancing girls with the Bolshoi Ballet wouldn't be enough to salvage it. Based on the first episode alone. As the first season progressed, it was clear that the Times' initial assessment still rang true, and ABC canceled the series after 13 episodes. Shatner, however, admits that rather than being downhearted about the series being axed, there was a "collective sigh of relief" (per TV Insider), given the exhausting amount of work that went into filming.
While Barbary Coast is all but forgotten, Shatner remembers it fondly despite taking weeks for his skin to heal from the prosthetics. "Running to set, and everybody laughing, applauding, or whistling," he recounts, "gave me more energy than I should have had." Shatner would return to the role of lawman, and much more successfully, in his next series, playing Sergeant Thomas Jefferson "T.J." Hooker in the hit series T.J. Hooker. No costumes necessary.
