He’ll always have it

What, was Alec Baldwin not available?

After blowing up its Negotiator pitchman played by actor William Shatner in a Super Bowl spot last February, having his bus go off a cliff, Priceline.com Inc. resurrected the character in a new TV ad.

The Norwalk-based dotcom said it did so after a survey suggested 94 percent of its customers wanted to see the character again.

There”™s no publicity like free publicity, and Priceline scored with headlines in hundreds of publications from coast to coast (memo to Priceline”™s longtime marketing chief Brent Keller: Add one more to the list.)

If Shatner”™s run with Priceline since the late 1990s has easily eclipsed the starship Enterprise”™s “five-year mission to boldly go where no man has gone before,” the question remains how much longer the most famous advertising voyage by any Connecticut company in recent memory will continue.

The Negotiator”™s latest position appeared to be the Left Coast, where a man finds him at the base of a cliff, attired in coat, tie and wetsuit shorts, with surfboard in hand.

“You still have it,” the man tells the apparently immortal Negotiator.

“I”™ll always have it,” Shatner responds, as he paddles off into the incoming waves.