A day of mourning for Trek fans


James Doohan (a.k.a. everyone's favorite engineer "Scotty" on the original Star Trek) has died at age 85 from pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease. Little known about him was that he was also a veteran of D-Day on Juno Beach in Normandy. He was wounded in action, narrowly escaping death after being shot six times and losing a finger.

He will be missed. If I actually owned a bottle of fine old scotch, tonight would be the night to break it open and drink a toast to a dear departed friend.
Email Post

Comments

  1. Hereortogo7/20/2005 12:39 PM

    RIP Scotty!
    Hope to see you soon...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7/20/2005 1:05 PM

    I'm sorry to hear about this (though in fact, I was under the mistaken impression he had already passed away along with DeForest Kelley). His avuncular charm will be missed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7/20/2005 1:27 PM

    Scotty has been "beamed up" - he'll be missed. RIP

    ReplyDelete
  4. IAMB7/20/2005 1:35 PM

    RIP Scotty...
    He has always been my favorite Trek character, and he taught me how to make my bosses think I'm more talented than I really am!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous7/20/2005 1:42 PM

    It's hard to think of him as 85. It's as if he spun off a duplicate at a much younger age who is still around on the rare occasion that you see a Star Trek rerun.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous7/20/2005 4:20 PM

    You're an academic surgeon? Do you dissect academicians?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous7/20/2005 9:17 PM

    I met Jimmy when he came to Australia for a convention.

    Sad to see him go

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ahistoricality7/20/2005 9:46 PM

    I was very pleased at the NYTimes obituary. It sounds like he really enjoyed himself. Of course the character set a standard which has now become a cliche; it's hard to remember that he was the first, the great progenitor.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous7/21/2005 12:33 AM

    been a Trek fan since TOS debuted
    I wonder why no one is stating that markings on his body indicated a Romulan Disruptor had been used on him ??? I always thought that the UFP was an Interstellar Alliance , but now are ROmulans destroying us?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous7/21/2005 2:37 PM

    That was not disruptor markings. They were from when the Great Transporter beam failed to take his body as well.

    But his spirit is stuck in our pattern buffer; may it long reside before it dissolves!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Orac7/21/2005 2:43 PM

    You want to know what's cool, though? They're talking about shooting Doohan's remains into space, as they did with Gene Roddenberry!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous7/23/2005 3:52 PM

    It's not as widely known as it should be but Doohan also collaborated with S. M. Sterling on a nice series of 1950's Astounding style science fiction stories in a series about--what else--an engineer. For example, this is the first one: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/067131954X/qid=1122148198/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/103-8793757-8122250?v=glance&s=books
    How much he was involved, I can't say but for those who like 1950's style sci-fi (like me) they are great fun.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts