This week William Shatner (90) was invited by an arrogant billionaire industrialist to ride in his rocket.
Over sixty years later, life imitates art, with a twist. Night of the Auk was a televised play from 1960 starring William Shatner as an "arrogant millionaire industrialist who has financed the first manned lunar expedition and has come along for the ride."
Unfortunately, this YouTube video is just a 3-minute clip from the show, but you get to see young Shatner's trademark understated acting at its best.
When the drama begins, the ship has already reached the moon and is now heading back to Earth. The mission was not a complete success: one member of the six-man expedition died on the moon, and his shipmates left him there. Now, on the way home, the five remaining spacemen make a terrible discovery: the ship has only enough oxygen left for TWO crewmen to reach Earth alive. Now, while the crewmen are arguing over which three of them should sacrifice themselves to save the other two, they also hear transmissions from their Earth base, describing events back home. An all-out nuclear holocaust has already begun, and the entire human race have been doomed by the radioactive fallout.
If you ask me, the story would be just as good without the "all-out nuclear holocaust part."
[via r/ObscureMedia]
