William Shatner's T.J. Hooker Premiered 39 Years Ago Today

On March 13th, 1982, ABC premiered T.J. Hooker, a cop show that aimed for action drama and often ended up unintentionally hilarious. Originally entitled The Protectors and intended as a procedural rework of the 1970s drama The Rookies, it instead became a vehicle for the one and only William Shatner.

Shatner starred as Sgt. Thomas Jefferson Hooker, a hard-bitten 15-year veteran detective who decided he'd rather patrol the streets as a uniformed cop to confront scum where they live after his partner was killed during a bank robbery. In this first scene of the first episode, Hooker explains to a class of raw recruits (including series star Adrian Zmed as Vince Romano) that he's here to weed out "airheads and marshmallows."

This is Shatner at the peak of the pomposity for which his Star Trek co-star George Takei has often mocked him, before he really understood how to take himself less seriously. That's what makes action scenes like this sequence below so funny. T.J. Hooker jumps on a bus full of nuns being taken hostage, and the bad guy spends a full 30 seconds of television airtime repeatedly trying to slam the bus doors closed on him while the passengers just watch it happen.

In Season 2, Heather Locklear joined the cast as Officer Stacy Sheridan, and created moments as indelible as this unmistakably '80s attempt at sexy dancing.

T.J. Hooker ran for 4 seasons on ABC, and was picked up for a fifth season on CBS before being canceled in 1986.

Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.