James Doohan Is Gone

By Joshua Tyler: 2005-07-20 00:00:00

We don’t regularly report on celebrity deaths in our news section, unless it’s someone that’s really meant something to one of us. Every year great actors and artists pass on, and while it’s always a shame to see talent leave the world, it’s rare that any really touch me personally. The celebrity deaths I remember hitting me hardest were people like Jim Henson, Douglas Adams, or Phil Hartman; incredibly talented people who were cut down long before their time, people who’d brought a lot of joy and happiness into my life on what to me is a really personal level. It’s never quite as jarring when you lose someone due to old age, still when DeForest Kelly died a few years ago it hurt. Today we’ve lost another member of the Enterprise bridge crew, and though I knew it was coming it still feels like a punch in the gut.

James Doohan, the husky Canadian actor who was not at all Scottish but played it pretty well in all the best incarnations of Star Trek, died early this morning at age 85. He’d been battling Alzheimer’s for several years now. I remember an audio clip of him at what was to be his last Star Trek convention… it must have been about a year ago now, and it was absolutely heart-wrenching. The disease had ravaged the once sharp actor’s mind to the point where he could barely understand the questions being thrown at him, let alone coalesce his thoughts into any sort of an answer. We all knew it wouldn’t be long then.

Today he passed away in his Redmond, Washington home, in part from pneumonia and in part from Alzheimer’s and of course every obituary you read will say something glib about him being “beamed up”. Annoying fact… the phrase “beam me up Scotty” was never actually uttered on the show. Maybe James Doohan was a one note actor, he’s only famous for one thing, but dammit that one thing really meant something to a lot of people, including me. Despite the animosity he felt towards a lot of his fellow Trek cast mates, the guy really embraced his persona as chief engineer of the U.S.S. Enterprise (no bloody A, B, C, or D!) and the fans who loved him for it. That’s so rare, most actors in that situation try to distance themselves. I can’t recall Doohan ever really doing that. He was happy to be Scotty, right till the very end. That says something special about him I think. He understood what he was and accepted it, and because of it he’ll be long remembered.

It was Star Trek that first hooked me on Science Fiction and I, like a lot of people will always be a fan of the stalwart James Doohan. He’s part of our pop culture lexicon, an enduring character that’ll never go away. How many other, more varied actors can say that? After a long and happy life, James Doohan finally encountered something he couldn’t fix. Scotty, you’ll be missed.

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