R.I.P. Scotty
James Doohan died today. He was 85.
His ashes will be launched into space. Roddenberry had the same thing done.
I didn’t realize how old he was until today. He doesn’t (didn’t) look that old. Then I remembered how old the original Star Trek is. He’s the second member of the original crew to go, after DeForest Kelly, who died in 1999.
Doohan was Canadian, and he served in Canada’s army on D-Day. He was shot six (!) times. He lost a finger, and the bullet to his chest was blocked by a silver cigarette case (I guess smoking can save lives).
From the E! Online article:
In 1965, Doohan shot a pilot for a proposed series that NBC had already rejected once on the basis that it was too good, and too smart for TV. The second time around, the network bit. Star Trek premiered on Sept. 8, 1966.
In a story he told countless times, Doohan claimed responsibility for Scotty’s ancestry. “I did about eight different accents when I was reading,” he told Los Angeles writer Sean Doorly in 1996. “Gene [Roddenberry] asked me which one I liked…I said, ‘If you want an engineer, you’ll want a Scotsman! He liked it, and I said fine.”