This holiday season, fans looking for a new dose of William Shatner merchandise will be able to make their pick from the Kirk actor spoofing Christmas, reading part of the Bible, and converting the Darfur tragedy into a Star Trek story.

"So many things" are still exciting to Shatner, he explained in a new interview with 411 Mania. "I think what an actor needs, or an entertainer in any of the various media, is a sort of childlike attitude of awe and wonder. And so as I move through the days and the week and the year, I find myself doing a variety of things that when they are finished and they have some success, I'm almost surprised."

One of the more unusual projects Shatner has recently been involved in is Exodus, which features Shatner narrating a revised version of the Bible's Book of Exodus, backed by nothing less than a full symphony and three-hundred and fifty singers. "It took two years to put this project together and issue the recording," Shatner said. "I've done it myself, found a release, and it will be out there in Wal-Mart sort of thing, and it's a really good performance of a, something that's totally different, and it's got a religious overtone, or a religious-historical overtone, and yet it's entertaining."

Despite the different tone, Shatner said he was just as excited by Exodus as by his new Trek novel, The Academy--Collision Course. "[It deals] with the adolescents Kirk and Spock, and I started writing about a 17-year-old Jim Kirk and a 19-year-old Spock and took the Soldiers of Darfur, the tragedy that's going there, the children soldiers, made them, updated them 300 years to a scourge that was happening then, and what the plans were going to be with Kirk and Spock adolescents."

In film, Shatner also has a new project out -- the Christmas spoof Stalking Santa, in which he serves as an unseen narrator. Beyond expressing the hope it would sell a lot of copies, Shatner said little about the film, but did explain that the great variety of things he still does is what keeps him enjoying his career. "So my year goes by, and you say, 'Why pick that project?' and I sort of reverse the question and say, 'Why not?' If I've got the time and energy, I like to do these variable things."

For the full interview with Shatner, please follow this link to 411Mania.

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