William Shatner coming to Bloomington for solar eclipse
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — William Shatner has spent his life in space. Now, most of that is fictional in the Star Trek franchise, but he recently joined an elite group of people who can say they traveled to space.
Shatner will share his unique perspective on space and the planet during the Hoosier Cosmic Celebration at Indiana University on April 8 during the total solar eclipse.
He will get the chance to shed light on what it was like when he broke the record as the oldest person to go to space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Space Shuttle.
“The magic of the eclipse, the extraordinary events that all took in the heavenly bodies to cause this eclipse, should make us ponder the mystery of existence, of our own existence of the existence of everything else, and how unified everything is,” said Shatner.
Shatner is now 93. He was 90 when he set the record as the oldest person in space.
News 8 got a chance to ask him how the experience shaped how he views life now.
“The news is the earth is facing a really bad time, and we don’t have any time,” Shatner said. “Very little time left to do something about it. People on Earth are beginning to see what is necessitated to save our children’s lives. So, science is really working on taking care of the ills we have on Earth.”
Shatner said going from exploring space in a fictional world to doing it in real-life reinforced his beliefs about the planet.
“Looking at death and the blackness of space, and looking at the face of life on the planet and being so filled with sorrow, with ineffable sorrow about what we are doing to the beauty of the earth,” said Shatner
When asked if this event will get people interested in space exploration again, he said that is already happening.
“All the countries that are trying to land on the moon and get a survey of the moon and how far advanced America is, at this point,” Shatner said. “We will land on the moon. We will make a colony on the moon.”
Shatner is most notably known as Captain Kirk in the Star Trek series. He said science fiction has staying power because it can provide hope.
“Good science fiction will make you think all about the human condition, and then if it’s done in imaginative terms, about what that writer thinks the future will be, then people today are looking at what could be the future,” Shatner said. “I mean, it’s anybody’s guess, right? Is there a future? That alone is going to be good news, and that’s why science fiction is popular, because 100 years from now exists in the writer’s mind.”
William Shatner will join Janelle Monáe, a singer-songwriter and actress, and Dr. Mae Jemison, the first woman of color in space, at the Hoosier Cosmic Celebration.
Shatner will perform a spoken word performance before the eclipse.
The event will be held at Memorial Stadium from 1-4 p.m. on April 8 in Bloomington, Indiana.
IU will also host a sold-out red-carpet screening of “William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill,” a documentary about the actor’s decades-long career, at the IU cinema.