William Shatner, The Negotiator, Returns To Priceline Ads (VIDEO)

The Negotiator is back, but he's not on screen yet.

William Shatner's hilarious character for Priceline's blind-booking service has made a triumphant return to the airwaves after a controversial canning at the beginning of 2012.

While Shatner himself doesn't appear in the new ads, Teresa Caputo, from Long Island Medium does, doing her best diddy of the Priceline jingle.

Shatner's character, who embodies Priceline's value proposition of letting users bid on hotels, was a fan favorite. But new advertising centers around the site's Express Deals feature, which doesn't involve bidding and more closely resembles flash-sale sites that have stormed the online travel market in recent years.

Industry site Tnooz writes that the new round of buzz-building advertising makes perfect sense for the travel search company:

Anyone that has seen how Shatner and Priceline have become synonymous with each other over the years, and understand how the Priceline marketing ... machine works, would predict that there was always going to be more [Shatner] to come.