S#*! that Shatner says

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Cyberspace is the next final frontier for William Shatner. But he will not tweet.

"I can't even remember my password," says Canada's coolest near-octogenarian and star of the upcoming television series $#*! My Dad Says, based on California writer Justin Halpern's enormously popular Twitter feed - more brusquely titled Shit My Dad Says - that chronicles the blunt, bleep-worthy utterances of Halpern's father.

"I have a problem with electronics," continues Shatner, in Los Angeles for the TV Critics Tour that's showcasing the American networks' new fall shows. "I understand the technology, but I could never find the time to spend on sites like Twitter. It's not my world."

Perhaps not surprisingly for the man who once commandeered the Starship Enterprise, Shatner surmounted the too-little-time issue by delegating someone to do his tweeting for him: Several months ago, he hired a college student "whose very fingers are the extension of computer keys, and he Twitters for me. He does the mechanics, but I very carefully modulate what I say and have used Twitter to publicize stuff, to have conversations and instigate competition. It's been an exploration in the immediate language of being short-termed and pithy."

At 79, Shatner - in person - can still talk up a storm.

As for CBS and CTV, they're banking that the grandkids of viewers who grew up watching the Montreal-born TV icon battle Klingons on Star Trek will now accept him as the crusty patriarch on $#*! My Father Says, a series the American mother network has officially decreed will be pronounced Bleep My Father Says. "I strongly oppose any form of censorship," says Shatner of that decision. "It's ridiculous when you can't say 'shit,' but I suppose there are rules when kids are watching."

By the time Shatner's TV series premiers in September, the Twitter version of Shit My Dad Says will be seven years old. Launched when Halpern was working as a struggling comedy writer who had moved back home with his parents, its success was fuelled by mentions on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and by word of mouth.

In May, Halpern released a whole whack of his tweets - each one consisting of one of his dad's saltily amusing observations on the human condition - into a book. A random sample: "A parent's only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize, but the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed."

Shit My Dad Says now has more than 1.5 million Twitter followers. That's nothing short of demographic catnip to CBS. The network has scheduled the series for Thursday nights to follow one of TV's highest-rated comedies, The Big Bang Theory, which already skews strongly to a younger audience.

$#*! is co-produced and co-written by the veteran TV team of David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, the creators of Will & Grace. For the small-screen version of Halpern's Twitter creation, the pair has, à la the retitling, toned down the cuss factor. "It's not about the profanity, but the voice of the father," said Kohan during the Critics Tour. "So far, we've not come up with the need to use curse words on the show. You can always find different ways to say things."

Each episode of $#*! My Father Says will open with Shatner delivering one of Sam's pointed opinions, with more inserted as the show unfolds. And as one-of-a-kind as Halpern Senior may be, Shatner is putting his own stamp on the character, Mutchnick promises. "As we've gone through the process of the pilot," he said in an interview, "we've realized that Mr. Shatner really is the only actor to play this father."

Shatner himself is dad to three grown daughters, and also has several grandchildren. "I know what it's like to want to pass on that experience to your children," he says of Sam Halpern's many maxims. "I know the role of being a father."

It's perhaps inevitable that the choice of Shatner has prodded some debate among Justin Halpern's loyal Twitter followers. But then, no star can be everything to everybody. A few months back, Prime Minister Stephen Harper doomed a Facebook campaign aimed at launching Shatner into Rideau Hall. "All out of my control. I was honoured, of course, that many Canadians felt that way," he says.

Not that he needs to win any popularity contests. Shatner's been a pop-culture staple for decades. Most recently, he won two Emmys and a Golden Globe for his role as lawyer Denny Crane on The Practice and Boston Legal. Through much of the eighties, he starred as the title character in the cop drama T.J. Hooker - all after attaining fame on Star Trek, in a role he long ago made his peace with. Captain James Tiberius Kirk, he says, "was a one-of-a-kind character whose popularity seems to keep growing with these new Star Trek films."

$#*! My Dad Says is the actor's first major foray into the world of TV comedy (if you don't count his pitches for bran cereal). His response to working in the sitcom genre: "It was enthralling. It was exciting. It was chaotic, totally stunning. I had never experienced anything like that before as an actor. I was part minstrel, part actor."

And does he think younger audiences will turn on, and tune in, to the late-in-life wisdom of his latest persona? Shatner thinks so. "There's a great deal of wisdom in what Ed says," suggests Shatner (Sam has been renamed Ed for TV). "He's seen the world; he sees no reason to filter his opinions. He's an original."

One the original Sam Halpern would approve of?

Justin Halpern is a co-executive producer of the new series, and after weeks of prodding his dad, he finally got the old man to attend a taping of the show and meet Shatner in person. "I really didn't know what was going to happen," Halpern the younger recalls. I was terrified.

"Mr. Shatner says 'Hello' to my father, and my father says 'Hello' to Mr. Shatner. Then they took a picture and walked away. It was the perfect meeting of two guys really comfortable being themselves."