Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Scotty is "Beamed Up" - RIP


CNN.com - James Doohan, 'Star Trek's' Scotty, dead
Although I am not a "Trekkie", a devout Star Trek fan appearing in many cases to have lost all grips on reality (joking), I did enjoy the Star Trek series and it's contribution to our "pop culture" in our younger days... Farewell Mr. Doohan and God's speed to the "Final Frontier".
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original 'Star Trek' TV series and motion pictures who responded to the apocryphal command 'Beam me up, Scotty,' died early Wednesday. He was 85.
Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) at his Redmond, Washington, home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, he said.
The Canadian-born Doohan fought in World War II and was wounded during the D-Day invasion, according to the StarTrek.com Web site. He was enjoying a busy career as a character actor when he auditioned for a role as an engineer in a new space adventure on NBC in 1966. A master of dialects from his early years in radio, he tried seven different accents.
'The producers asked me which one I preferred,' Doohan recalled 30 years later. 'I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding. So I told them, 'If this character is going to be an engineer, you'd better make him a Scotsman.

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