Scotty beamed up into the great beyond

[Argyle]

What are some of the great quotes that the Trekies can remember from him and the engine room of the Starship Enterprize????

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Fans of the 1966 sci-fi TV classic Star Trek remember him as the excitable workaholic chief engineer of the starship Enterprise with the thick Scottish brogue and an easy name to remember - Scotty.

But to those who knew him, James Doohan was a warm, gregarious lifelong actor and family man, easy to be around, quick to laugh and devoted to the program that made him famous up until the day he died.
Doohan died Wednesday at his Redmond, Wash., home of pneumonia and complications from Alzheimer's disease.

He was 85.

Doohan's recent film and television work was limited to roles in the Star Trek spinoff films and straight-to-video thrillers like this year's Skinwalker: Curse of the Sham, as well as appearances in Star Trek documentaries like 1997's Trekkies and at film industry events. In his last public appearance, last August, he was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Doohan was an especially popular guest at numerous Star Trek conventions around the world, because of his gregarious nature, his beaming, broad grin and the willingness with which he shared war stories about his years making Star Trek.

When, in 1978, rumours first began circulating that Star Trek might be resurrected as a feature film, Doohan was among the first to call his castmates and close friends, Walter Koenig and George Takei, with the grapevine news.

Unlike some of the principal actors in Star Trek, Doohan, Takei and Koenig remained fast friends long after the original series was mothballed in 1969, after just three seasons.

Doohan, a native of Vancouver, got his start as a voice actor on Canadian radio before turning to television in the 1950s, first in the TV series Space Command in 1953, and then in numerous TV movies of the day, including Strike in Town (or La greve a minuit, as it was known in Quebec) and 1956's Flight Into Danger, based on the novella by Canadian author Arthur Hailey, who would later write the novel Airport.

Doohan was cast as Lt.-Cmdr. Montgomery (Scotty) Scott in 1966 in Star Trek, creator Gene Roddenberry's bid to reinvent the 1960s black-and-white classic The Twilight Zone as a kind of Wagon Train to the stars, filmed in colour.

Doohan was on the receiving end of what became Star Trek's signature catchphrase - "Beam me up, Scotty!" - though Star Trek purists point out, much like Humphrey Bogart's "Play it again, Sam," from Casablanca, that line was never actually spoken.

Doohan found it easy to laugh at himself, as in 1996, when he was cast as the excitable chief engineer aboard an intergalactic spaceship in the UPN sitcom Homeboys in Outer Space.

Doohan was the only white face in an all-black cast that featured Darryl M. Bell and Flex Alexander as a pair of mismatched halfwits who wing around the universe in a battered starship called the Space Hoopty, equipped with a smart-mouthed computer called Loquatio (Rhona Barrett). In interviews, Doohan appeared to be beside himself with joy at being cast in a hip-hop sitcom so many years after his Star Trek heydays.

It is often said of a recently deceased actor that they will be missed, but at the summer meetings of the Television Critics Association, when word of Doohan's passing was announced during a CBS news conference for the new sci-fi series Threshold, the emotion onstage was palpable.

Writer/producer Brannon Braga, who worked with Doohan on the feature film Star Trek: Generations, said it will take time for the news to sink in.

"It's obviously very sad," Braga said. "He was a very charming man, and a wonderful actor."

Brent Spiner, who played the character Data in the Star Trek series spinoff Star Trek: The Next Generation and its subsequent spinoff movies, was equally subdued.

"He was a lovely guy," Spiner said. "And I'm very sad we've lost him."

Doohan is survived by his wife Wende, his sons Eric and Thomas, and daughter Sarah, as well as four children from his first marriage, Larkin, Deirdre, Montgomery and Christopher.

RIP Scotty!