Forget Leno vs. Conan. I’m much more interested in Shatner vs. Takei.

That’s right. I said it.

It all began on Tuesday, January 12 2010, when the dish array atop the Shatner Observatory locked on and pulled down the signals of Sirius XM Satellite Radio and The Howard Stern Show. And the word coming down from on high was this:

Howard Stern agreed, live on the air, to guest-host William Shatner’s Raw Nerve interview show on Bio for the express purpose of mediating the long-standing feud between Star Trek’s William “Admiral Kirk” Shatner and George “Captain Sulu” Takei.

The feud goes back decades. Basically, it started when George Takei started to make it known that William Shatner possesses “a big, shiny, demanding ego” and that ego emboldens an entitled William Shatner to treat other actors (i.e Takei) like so much set-dressing.

Over the years, Takei’s accused Shatner of being rude on the set; of line-counting; of “tanking” takes to make scenes unusable; of treating Takei and his fellow Star Trek supporting actors (James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig) like glorified day-players and extras.

Mr. Shatner’s always shrugged it off, noting that he (Shatner) starred in all 79 Star Trek shows, while Takei appeared only in a handful of scenes in just 51 of the episodes. To Shatner, the characters of Kirk, Spock and McCoy were Star Trek. They were the series stars and their character drove the stories. All those other people on the bridge of the Enterprise? They were there, Shatner said, “to do what they do.”

There have been other hurt feelings. Takei was miffed because Shatner didn’t come to his wedding. Shatner claimed that he never got an invitation. Takei was irritated that Shatner didn’t call Takei inquiring about the missing invitation. Shatner released a YouTube-rant declaring that Takei must have “some kind of psychosis.”

Mind you, these are grown men. In their seventies.

Is it any wonder, then, why Howard Stern would agree to leave behind his Sirius XM channels and Howard-TV pay network to re-enter the mainstream media in the form of Bio (Bio!) for the singular purpose of playing referee at The Big Kirk/Sulu Smackdown?

I personally cannot wait. But wait we must. Schedules have to be cleared, contracts need to be signed, the Raw Nerve set has to be re-configured before Mr. Stern can knock some sense into those two maniacs.

In the meantime, let’s all enjoy this, four minutes and fifty seconds of William Shatner’s own unique view of the Shatner/Takei feud…