Riverside, Iowa—the small town that was the focus of a hoax perpetrated by William Shatner's new Spike TV reality series Invasion Iowa—didn't take kindly to being the butt of the joke, Zap2it reported. A Sept. 30, 2004, editorial in the Iowa City Press-Citizen was titled "Riverside, IA: Birthplace of Captain Jerk" and said, in part, "Shame on William Shatner (aka Capt. James T. Kirk) and Spike TV. On Tuesday evening, they revealed that their film project in Riverside—the self-proclaimed and now studio-sanctioned birthplace of Captain Kirk— was a big hoax. A prank. An April Fools' joke pulled in autumn."

Invasion Iowa, airing as a five-hour miniseries starting March 29, chronicles how the Star Trek star fooled a small town into thinking it was the shooting location of his independent SF film. The town of Riverside was selected in part because townspeople decreed that it was the future birthpace of Shatner's Capt. Kirk, based on a line from the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.


(There's a post on this when it happened if you search the back pages :))