George Takei and William Shatner have seen so much together – like new planets, new civilisations and possibly Uhura’s labia.

But despite their 40-year professional obligations to each other, George Takei and William Shatner are still happy to take chunks out of each other in public. Like yesterday, for instance, when William Shatner went on the internet to endlessly bitch about how psychotic George Takei was for not inviting him to his wedding.

At the time, George Takei told everyone that actually he had invited William Shatner to his wedding but, just in case anyone missed it, he’s decided to reassert his claim – while throwing in some new jabs about Shatner’s stability for good measure. On television. Honestly, this is just like that movie Grumpy Old Men, only worse because neither of them are dead yet.

Just a quick heads up, everyone – it looks like we might be heading into a new Phase Of Shatner. The old phases of Shatner were pretty good – like the one where William Shatner’s ego heavily outweighed his hammy talents, and the one where he countered all the ridicule he gained from the first phase by pretending to be in on the joke – but this one looks like it might be a doozy.

That’s because in the Third Phase Of Shatner, William Shatner has let the ego back in and he’s old enough not to care. We first saw flashes of this when William Shatner didn’t get a role in the new Star Trek movie and went slightly berserk about it, but this stuff about George Takei’s wedding invite seems to have pushed Shatner over the edge.

For the uninitiated, George Takei gay-married his partner last month, and William Shatner didn’t turn up. And in a completely confusing internet video this week, William Shatner claimed that he wasn’t invited to the wedding because George Takei suffered from ‘psychosis’.

In the wake of this, George Takei had already issued a counter-statement claiming that he did invite William Shatner to the wedding, but that didn’t really hit the mark, so instead he went on TV and repeated it. The LA Times quotes:

“It is absolutely baffling to us because, in fact, we did invite Bill and we didn’t hear from him… I think his stability is quite questionable. … Bill likes to be the star of the show. He likes the attention that is focused on him. It’s a big, shiny, demanding ego. … It’s all typical of Bill. … [His] ranting and raving is just silliness.”

What happens now is anyone’s guess. Technically it should be William Shatner’s turn to lay into George Takei again, but we get the feeling that if he got angrier about it all he’d end up squirting jets of burning blood out of his bumhole, so maybe that option is out.

In a way it’s upsetting that two old men like William Shatner and George Takei have resorted to slagging each other off in such a humiliatingly public way. But really we’re just upset that this fall-out didn’t happen back in the mid-1980s – because then we’re pretty sure that the bloody awful Star Trek film about those poxy whales wouldn’t have ever been sodding made.

When you invite William Shatner to your wedding, you only give yourself two possible outcomes.

The first outcome involves him trying to convince the big, white cake he really is a lawyer – and that he absolutely understands all the legal jargon and everything – for the complete duration of your first dance. The second possible outcome involves him crashing a life-size mock-up of the Starship Enterprise through the beautiful gazebo your grandfather lovingly finished building for you the day before his last heart attack.

We heard that last one he actually did to Leonard Nemoy. Seriously – there were tractor beam parts all over the roof, gutters, guest cars and lawn. This is why, we assume, Bill Shatner was not invited to Helmsman Sulu‘s big gay history-book wedding. Shatner doesn’t understand this though, and he seems kinda pissed about his lack of an invite.

Off the top of our heads we can think of three things Ringo Starr and William Shatner have in common. The first two have to do mostly with penile stripes and a shared love for cookies. The third one though, well the third one is the only one you really need to know about – they both seem to dislike people in whatever forms they may be encountered in.

Ringo, for instance, has the grump with his fans. He maybe even wishes they’d all throw themselves over the trembling ledge of a train station, if you catch our meaning. Shatner likes his fans enough, apparently, but only if he’s never worked with any of them ever in his whole life. This includes the shop keep who hired a young Billy Shatner to restock his scarce food shelves during the height of the great depression.

Imagine the darkness of heart that could dislike someone who helped feed your family during such a tumultuous time. Unthinkable!

Untrue too!

Shatner does think his old coworker George Takei has a beef with him though. According to Bill, Takei refused to allow Shatner within 100 yards of anyplace he ever planned to marry, and even tried to get him deported for the entire duration of the honeymoon. That or the captain was just pissed for not getting an invite. Whatever. Here’s a Kirk-quote:

“The whole thing makes me feel badly. Poor man. There is such a sickness there. It’s so patently obvious that there is a psychosis there. I don’t know what his original thing about me was. I have no idea.”

We peeled that quote out of a video Shatner posted on his own website. The whole thing doesn’t end with Shatner’s hurt feelings though – Takei has a retort:

“It is unfortunate that Bill was unable to join us for our wedding as he indeed was invited to attend. It is our hope that at this point he joins us in voting no on Proposition 8, which seeks to [absorb all of Texas into California, and then turn the whole thing into a giant movie studio with tremendous tax breaks.]“

We lost the last part of the quote there, but we know Hollywood types, and feel pretty secure in our assumption of how that stupid speech probably ended. We also feel secure in our knowledge of geography.

Now get down there and watch Shatner’s weird rant:

Ladies, we know that when someone’s making love to you, you’re really fantasising about George Takei – but it’s too late.

That’s because, ladies, we’re sorry to admit that George Takei has got married. Your dreams of Mr Sulu appearing at your doorstep on a white steed to whisk you away to a life on unparalleled luxury are worthless now, because this weekend George Takei got married to a very lucky lady by the name of Brad Altman.

Huh, Brad Altman. That’s a funny and oddly-masculine name for a lady to have. In fact, looking at George Takei’s wedding pictures, his new wife bears an uncanny resemblance to a balding grey-haired man in his mid-fifties. Poor woman. Still, she must be great in the sack to snag a pussy-magnet like George Takei, so who are we to judge.

Oh, alright. Look, we know George Takei is gay. How could he not be? His most famous, career-defining role was as an overdramatic spacemen who wore campy, brightly-coloured unitards – and we all know that everyone who does that is clearly as gay as can be. Everyone. Everyone.

But before he announced his homosexuality to the world a couple of years ago, George Takei had managed to do a pretty incredible job of fooling the world, by living in perfect happiness with his boyfriend for over 20 years. Fiendish, fiendish man Takei.

However, you can’t say that of George Takei any more, because he no longer lives with his boyfriend. No, now George Takei lives with his husband, because he and Brad Altman got married last night in a Buddhist ceremony in Los Angeles so perfect that not even an unexpected slick of Lieutenant Uhuru‘s disgusting conjunctivitis gunge could derail it. People reports:

“All I can remember is what the priest said,” Takei told PEOPLE after the ceremony. “That this moment will never happen again. It’s something to savor.” “I was fighting back the tears,” said Nichols, who played Uhura on the Star Trek series. “But they came oozing out anyway. I’m so happy that they’re both able to legally proclaim their commitment to one another after spending the past 21 years together.”

We’re sure that George Takei and Brad Altman will love married life because, as demonstrated when they announced their engagement, the two of them are in love. Completely in love. The kind of love that makes everyone who’s not them secretly wish they one of them would fall down a hill and shatter their pelvis, just because it’d make them shut up about how much they love each other, if only for a second. It’s sweet, really.

But anyway, as well as being a lovely ceremony between a loving couple, George Takei’s marriage to Brad Altman also had a deeper meaning. No, not that civil partnerships between loving homosexual couples can no longer be denied, but that Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson can kiss it if they think they can beat George Takei to all the exclusive magazine gay marriage photoshoot cash. Ah, romance.

Everyone loves a good homemade honeymoon sex video that’s been leaked onto the internet, don’t they?

Which is why everyone should prepare themselves for the holy grail of honeymoon sex tapes. Or, to be more precise, the holy grail of honeymoon sex tapes featuring a 71-year-old Asian man humping his 54-year-old husband with every ounce of strength left in his feeble body. That’s right – George Takei fron Star Trek is getting married!

News of George Takei’s wedding comes hot on the heels of California overturning its ban on gay marriage. And, as happy as we are that George Takei can formalise a relationship he’s had for 21 years, maybe this new law will make it easier for other closeted gay actors to finally come out and stop living a lie. That’s right, Doogie Howser, we’re looking at you.

If you’re a 71-year-old who has to spend most of his free time trundling around awful godforsaken small-town sci-fi conventions answering questions about a TV show you stopped making almost 40 years ago, you could probably do with a little happiness in your life.

And that’s it’s so nice that George Takei – Mr Sulu from Star Trek – is now allowed to get married to his boyfriend of 21 years, Brad Altman. Hot on the heels of Ellen announcing her upcoming marriage to Portia de Rossi, George Takei has also seized on California’s new ruling to overturn the ban on gay marriage and announced his own impending wedding as well. E! Online reports:

“This is something we’ve been passionately committed to, so, no, there’s no cold feet,” Takei told E! News today. Altman proposed last Thursday, shortly after the California Supreme Court struck down a state law banning same-sex unions. “I was planning on asking Brad, but he got down on one knee, and, of course, I said, yes,” Takei said. “I told Brad, ‘You beat me to it.’ “

We know – crazy huh? Who’d have thought that big macho beer-chugging blue collar monster truck enthusiast George Takei was gay. Especially when he goes around posting burly clumps of undoubtedly heterosexual words on his website like this:

For now, Brad and I are enjoying the delicious dilemma of deciding where, when, and how we will be married. Marriage equality took a long time, but, like fine wine, its bouquet is simply exquisite.

Oh, we’re just kidding – of course George Takei is gay. He’s been openly gay since 2005, although he obviously did an exceptional job of hiding his homosexuality prior to that by living with the same man in a loving relationship for almost two decades. Who could have seen through a disguise like that?

Weird how the stars of Star Trek turned out, though, isn’t it? Captain Kirk started pissing crystals, Scotty‘s ashes got lost up a hill and now Mr Sulu is marrying a man. The shocks just keep coming. They’ll be telling us that Uhura‘s one of those black people next.

Read more:

Star Trek Star Boldly Goes Where Ellen Goes – E! Online