Sad news

Just heard the sad news about James Doohan. Star Trek's "Scotty". I'm sure there are loads of kids out there that grew up wanting to be engineers because of him. I hadn't known he had been landed on D-Day with the Canadians. He took

6 machine gun rounds and lost a finger. 30 year I've been watching him and never noticed he was missing a finger.
Reply to
Les Pickstock
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Yes very Sad indeed. I just found it out on the T.V. news at noon myself here in New York. He really helped to make that Show what it was right from the begining.

Star Trek has Always been -&- will Always be the Best Sci-Fi. out there IMHO that is.

... Carl ..........

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Reply to
cyberborg 4000

Yes, he can be said to have had a pretty full life. Sad thing is, he couldn't enjoy it to the end because, as I understand it, he was an Alzheimer's victim. I lost a good friend to AZ several years ago and it is really devastating what that condition does to a person before they die.

Bill Shuey

Reply to
William H. Shuey

damn.....while i'm neither a trekkie nor trekker, i do appreciate the ground st broke in helping popularize sf. i has english teachers grade me down because i read it.st helped end that. while many of st's stories were blatant useage of sf story cliches, they weren't known to massmind and really helped acceptance of a truly great literary field. i hope he beamed up somewhere cool.

Reply to
e

if i ever get as, i will kill myself while i still have enough marbles. cannot accept the idea of living with it.

Reply to
e

Wasn't he also a pilot?

And I had read about the missing finger. Many of the "close up" shots of his hands, in TOS, was reportedly a "stand in" (actually, common practice, even for actors who have a complete set of fingers...lol)

Reply to
Greg Heilers

After his injuries on Juno Beach he retrained as a pilot, despite the fact that his injuries entitled him to be repatriated. He flew operations as an AOP pilot and was considered to be "the craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Force"!

This is true. However very occasionally, when there is a long shot of Scotty operating the transporter, you can see his injury. The close up of Scotty's hands were used for just about every person who operated the transporter, whether or not they were a Lt Cdr.

Reply to
Enzo Matrix

My threshold will be when I start thinking [misnomer] like V*ss Irv*ne.

;-)D

As for Scotty, I just got a chance last week to look at the DVD extras on the ST-TOS DVDs. Scotty's main interview was shot late 2003 and while he was not in good health, he appeared to be quite cognizant of events surrounding ST both now and 40 yrs ago. He even got in a subtle dig on both Nimoy and Shatner. He and Shatner were not on good terms when Shatner wrote his ST Memories memoirs - I wonder if they ever buried the hatchet?

In the interview he mentions that he was the first man to disembark from his boat on D-Day and that he was shot 9 times - those two points sort of agree with each other, huh. He holds up his hand to the camera and shows the 4 remaining digits on that paw. As far as I can recall, his hand with the missing finger can be seen in only two ST episodes. I recall one being "Catspaw" - the Halloween Trek episode of sorts. They were normally very careful to keep that hand off camera.

RIP Scotty

WmB

Reply to
WmB

Oddly, I was watching the Jane Pauley Show this morning and Alzheimer's was the topic. Scotty knew he had it and said goodbye to the public about a year ago. Sadly, the folks we've lost from ST/TOS have been my favourites. Kirk I like, Shatner I don't.

Warp speed, Scotty.

Bill Banaszak

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

shatner doesn't seem to have the size 10 ego in a size 4 house he used to have. i've heard his second, (was it number

2) wife shrunk his head a lot. doohan played the cliche scottish engineer without making it a cliche. a class act.
Reply to
e

Shatner seems to have spent the last ten or so years taking the Mick out of himself. He is currently starring in a series of breakfast cereal ads in the UK that are extremely silly.

I think the Scots engineer-type character only became a cilche when others copied it.

Reply to
Enzo Matrix

Enzo wrote.

Shatner seems to have spent the last ten or so years taking the Mick out of himself. He is currently starring in a series of breakfast cereal ads in the UK that are extremely silly.

I think the Scots engineer-type character only became a cilche when others copied it. --------

The older I got, still watching ST TOS, I realised that there was some subtlty to the performances given by the cast. Doohans "Scotty" seemed to me to be a man perfectly at home in his own domain and a little adrift outside it. My own favourite "Scotty" moment from TOS comes in "The Trouble with Tribbles" he walks up to Kirk with an armfull of Tribbles "Aye! They're in the machinery!" Classic. He shows up in ST The Next Generation episode "Relics" having survived 75 years in a Transporter Pattern Buffer. The scene in the Holodeck was brilliant.

William Shatner has become much more tolerable since he stopped taking himslf so seriously He was very good in "Miss Congeniality" and "Showtime" and to hear DeNiro's tough New York cop deliver the line "You OK there TJ?" just cracked me up. The breakfast cereal advert shown here are quite good, Shatner plays it almost as a pastiche of himself.

Reply to
Les Pickstock

I think the Scottish Engineer is an archetype from much further back, stemming perhaps from James Watt himself, not to mention Thomas Telford, John McAdam, John Rennie, or scientists like Kelvin and Maxwell. Certainly Kipling recognised the stereotype, and gave it prominence with "McAndrews Hymn".

Reply to
Alan Dicey

Just picked up a little tidbit that says Doohan is making it into space after all - his ashes are to be shot into space as was done with Gene Roddenberry.

Fitting.

WmB

Reply to
WmB

I'm not sure about the Alzheimers diagnosis but he suffered from a pulmonary disease and had been confined to a wheelchair for the last couple of years at least.

MB

Reply to
Milton Bell

"Enzo Matrix" wrote in news:7IadnSr2kI snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

"Scotty".

wanting to be

Canadians.

been watching

despite the

flew

craziest pilot

"close up"

long shot of

The close up

operated

AOP?

Frank

Reply to
Gray Ghost

Airborne Observation Post, as in Cubs, Voyagers, Austers, etc.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

Airborne Observation Post. Probably an Auster.

Reply to
Enzo Matrix

Mad-Modeller wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@nextline.com:

etc.

Geez, how did those guys get thier balls into such small planes? 8)

Reply to
Gray Ghost

I know a highly educated person who said he would do that after being diagnosed with early alzheimers, could not stand the idea that he would not have his faculties. Unfortunately the condition sneaks up on you and by the time his symptoms were obvious to everyone else(it is usually the spouse that sees the initial symptoms six months to a year before anyone else notices) he was no longer conscious of any change and "forgot" any desires to end his life as a dependent. He is now a muddled and forgetful human being that does not know that anything is wrong and is a constant source of worry to his family. Now his worst fear is being realized (without him knowing it)...his family is going to remember him as a muddled and forgetful person, not the vibrant intelligence he once was.

The rule is: Once diagnosed with alzheimers, if you truly intend to end it, pick a date not too long in the future, live largely in the way you choose... and then get it done....even then, its a crap shoot, a race between diminishing capacity and determination.

Not advocating suicide for alz patience, just information for those who thump their chest saying they will do it..... that they will commit suicide if they get it....only the most determined and courageous will actually do it...because you have to do it when your mind is still very clear....and it always appears to be another day for which it could be delayed, and then one day, you wake up and you forgot how sharp your mind once was and your determination to do it. Even if you leave yourself a reminder you will not remember how impassioned was your intent at the time you initially determined to end your life.

I don't know the stats on how many people swore they would commit suicide if they got alz, and actually did it, but based on what I have seen of several alz patients, none would have ever wanted to be what they became even in the second quarter of the symptoms but by then they had no idea of their degeneration, only a fuddled memory of what was once their life.

e wrote:

Reply to
old hoodoo

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