Beamed up

Farewell, Scotty
By Joal Ryan

Once, at a convention of astronomers, James Doohan was asked what it felt like "to be beamed." The actor who'd abided by the order, "Beam me up, Scotty," countless times on the Star Trek set reported that it was "very pleasurable." "You end up beaming all over the place," Doohan said, per StarTrek.com.
Doohan, who sweated it out in the engine room of the U.S.S. Enterprise as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott on the original Trek TV series and, indeed, found himself beamed all over the world, via reruns, videos and DVDs, died Wednesday at his home in Washington state. He was 85, and had been battling Alzheimer's disease, and, most recently, pneumonia.

Per Doohan's request, said longtime agent Steve Stevens Sr., the sci-fi star will be cremated and his ashes launched into space by the same Houston-based aerospace company that shot the remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry into orbit following his 1991 death. Stevens said he didn't know precisely when Doohan's outer space memorial would occur. "As soon as the next flight goes up," he said.

In addition to the trailblazing 1966-69 series, the Canadian-born Doohan affected his Scotty brogue for the first seven Trek feature films and the 1973 animated series. And when he wasn't burring, he was grunting what would become the basis for the native tongue of the villainous Klingons in the big-screen adventures.

It was a year ago last July that Doohan's family disclosed the Trek star had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. That, combined with Parkinson's and diabetes, led Doohan to sign off from the lucrative convention and college circuit, which he had worked like few other Enterprise alums. But first there was to be a final farewell.

Last August, Doohan, his longtime costars and fans converged in Hollywood for three days of roasting, toasting and starring the actor on the Walk of Fame. With a nod to the signature phrase that Doohan himself never uttered at the transporter controls, the event was called "Beam Me Up Scotty...One Last Time."

At the time, Walter Koenig, who played the Russian navigator Chekov to Doohan's Scotsman on Trek, called the convention "a beautiful gesture." He told E! Online he wished DeForest Kelley, the starship's venerable Dr. McCoy, had had a similar public goodbye. Kelley died in 1999.

On Wednesday, Stevens said Doohan was very ill during "Beam Me Up Scotty," but that "he sucked it up" to be on the convention floor with the faithful.

"Nobody embraced the fans like James did," Stevens said. "He loved the fans, and they loved him. And he felt that he needed to give back what he got."

With Doohan's passing, the surviving original Trek crew members include: Koenig;
William Shatner (Captain Kirk);
Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock);
Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura); and
George Takei (Lieutenant Sulu).

Although they played a tight-knit bunch on TV and in the movies, in real life, the actors were not always on speaking terms, with Doohan and Shatner being chief exhibits. But last July, Doohan's son, Chris Doohan, told E! Online that the two men had patched up things, and "told each other how much they love each other."

Coming to terms--with costars, with fans, with the realities of typecasting--is a trick all Trek stars have had to master over the last 30-plus years. For his part, Doohan decided to embrace Scotty, something that perhaps was best evidenced by the title of his 1996 autobiography, Beam Me Up, Scotty.

"Many actors get upset when they are typecast, but that didn't concern him, because he was typecast as Scotty," Chris Doohan told the Los Angeles Times last year. "It's been his bread and butter."

Born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, Doohan came about Scotty's fiery personality and doggedness the old-fashioned way: The battlefield. Fighting with the Royal Canadian Artillery during World War II, the future Starfleet officer landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, as part of the U.S.-led D-Day invasion. He lost a finger; the Allies won the war.