William Shatner Is Searching For Major Tom

I think my spaceship knows which way to go…

In a piece entitled The making of William Shatner in The Times back on March 12th, Captain Kirk himself announced how he planned to take on fellow space traveller, Major Tom, in a rock opera.

Well, at the time I thought I had dreamt it and the suggestion seemed to go away. But, with the recent announcement on his website of a collection of space-themed cover songs, entitled Searching For Major Tom, it seems The Shat is one step closer to that realisation.

Here’s what the 80-year-old star of sitcom, Shit My Dad Says, said about Space Oddity in aforementioned Times piece…

“Major Tom is a character in several David Bowie songs. I?m doing a rock opera, if you will, that involves what happened to Major Tom. What was he thinking out there in space? He begins to think about how he learnt to fly and the love of his wife; as he dies he begins to imagine Heaven and Hell. All these are dramatised by the songs I?ve chosen. It?s either going to be the best thing you?ve ever heard or terrible things will be written about it.”

Well, I will do William the honour of at least hearing the track before I judge it. I won’t even take into account his previous convictions that saw him make the main protagonist of Elton John‘s Space Oddity…I mean Rocket Bloke, glad he was no longer of this Earth.

Space Oddity features Alan Parsons on keyboards and ex-Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore…you’d think they would know better.

Searching For Major Tom is scheduled for release later in the year via Cleopatra Records. You can check out the full tracklisting on williamshatner.com and read some background to the project on EW.com.