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Stardate: 7-20-2005
Canadian actor James Doohan, best known as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (“Scotty”) of the USS Enterprise on the classic television show Star Trek, finally got “beamed up” permanently early this morning. The actor, long suffering from Parkinson’s, diabetes, lung fibrosis, and Alzheimer’s disease, died this morning (July 20) at 5:30 in the company of his wife, Wende, in their home in Redmond, Washington. The cause of death was a combination of Alzheimer’s and pneumonia.
James Doohan was a master of
dialects and accents, and it was his linguistic skills that landed him
the famous role of Scotty on Star Trek. Doohan remarked to
producer Gene Roddenberry that all the great engineers seemed to be
Scottish, and so the character’s nationality was born. Scotty gained
famed as “the miracle worker,” the 
constantly grousing engineer who still managed to pull out all the stops to get the Enterprise
out of danger no matter the odds. Scotty’s dedication to the ship,
which he treated like his closest family, was the driving force behind
his character. (The best example of his love of this most famous of all
spacecraft is his furious reaction to the Klingon who refers to the Enterprise
as “a garbage scow” in the classic episode “The Trouble with
Tribbles.”) The Milwaukee School of Engineering granted Doohan an
honorary Engineering Degree to celebrate the positive effect his
character had had on many students who chose to pursue engineering.
Doohan was born in Vancouver, BC. He served the Canadian Army in World War II and fought on the beaches at the invasion of Normandy. He lost a finger during the engagement (and took out two snipers); according to him he was the first soldier from his boat to charge onto the beach and got shot a total of eight times during the battle. Despite his injuries, he continued to serve in the military, joining the Royal Canadian Air Force. After the war, he started a career in radio, eventually moving to television. His facility with accents won him a tremendous amount of work; he could play literally any character that a script required. This eventually led to Star Trek and the six features films that spun out from it, cementing his fame in science fiction forever.
Doohan had a rocky relationship with Star Trek’s leading man, William Shatner, and the two were apparently not on speaking terms for many years.(He refused to let Shatner interview him for a book on the history of Star Trek.) Doohan, however, was on very amicable and freindly terms with science-fiction fans and made many appearances at Trek convetions, often doing different accents to show people what other choices might have been made for the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise.
In what may have been his last
interview, an ailing James Doohan appeared in a video interview on the
Season Three DVD box set of Star Trek. He
talked warmly
of his experiences on the show and the influence it had on many young
people who chose to follow the example of the brave Chief Engineer
Montgomery Scott. He also remembered how he formed a close relationship
with one fan whom he managed to talk out of committing suicide over the
phone one night. He closed the interview by commenting that Scotty was
probably bouncing around in space in his runabout, “looking for
something to fix.”
James Doohan brought joy to millions of people
and changed many lives. He was a war hero, a versatile actor, and grand
human being.
Let us not also not forget that James Doohan has now joined the first of the USS Enterprise crew to cross through the Great Barrier into the Undiscovered Country:
DeForest Kelley, 1920-1999