It's true! And it's just awful how it happened. This is no April Fool's joke. William Shatner croaked this afternoon in front of a studio full of horrified extras and film crew, while filming a scene in a blockbuster movie intended to be released next Christmas.

The film, "Telstar 3000", is an outer space epic, featuring groundbreaking special effects. Its plot has to do with an Earth expedition in the year 3000 to the outermost rim of the Galaxy, where Hallie Berry and Tom Cruise lead a crew of American misfits into the swamps of Telstar, a strange new alien world, peopled by bizarre creatures and semi-human shape-shifters.

The veteran Shatner, a space movie icon, was portraying the leader of the diabolical shape-shifters...a hugely bloated, semi-human swamp creature resembling a gigantic and disgusting toad-frog-man with a penchant for interspecies sexual antics. The part required Shatner to puff out his throat and thorax and bug out his eyes...at which he is frankly already quite adept...and then to utter a series of strange, guttural sounds, while attempting to force his attentions on Miss Berry, fetchingly clad in a skintight jumpsuit.

Never one to hold back, Shatner bulged his eyes out hideously, sucked in a big breath of air...and CROAKED!

"It was awful," said a sobbing extra. "I've been a fan of his for years, and I never expected to see something like this happen on a soundstage in Hollywood. Never. I am completely shattered."

Ripples of shock are spreading across Lala Land even as I speak, and this promises to be a very big story to kick off the month of April here in Tinseltown.

- Tekman