'Shatner in Space' Puts Travel in Covid 2022 Into Perspective
Photo Caption: A screenshot of earth and space through a spacecraft window from the Amazon prime video 'Shatner in Space.' Source: Blue Origin
Skift Take
The best travel, whether it is a space jaunt by a famous actor or an unexpected u-turn or encounter during a weekend road trip, makes travelers question preconceived notions, and examine their lives anew. It's one of the reasons there will be a travel stampede if, and when, the pandemic fades.
You first need to get past the fact that Shatner in Space, a 46-minute Amazon original documentary that began running on Amazon Prime in the U.S., UK, Australia, and New Zealand a couple of weeks ago, is a public relations bone for Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.
After all, William Shatner, the 90-year-old actor who played Captain Kirk on Star Trek and was Priceline’s The Negotiator advertising character for many years, got a free ride into space with three other passengers, two paying, on Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft October 13, and the video is filled with sometimes cringe-worth, overly sappy moments with Bezos.
For example, in the run-up to the launch, Bezos shows Shatner some tricorders and communicator drawings, replicas of those used in Star Trek, that he crafted as a fourth grader in Texas, and he asks Shatner to bring them along on the suborbital voyage.
There is a Bezos pep talk to the space tourists while they are buckled in before the launch, and the Amazon founder closes the New Shepard hatch before takeoff. All in a day's work for the dude worth $200 billion and change.
There are also not-so-veiled comparisons of Blue Origin to the Wright Brothers and the first astronauts to walk on the moon.
But during the documentary, and in a New Year’s Eve interview that was not part
