Star Trek’s Scotty, James Doohan, dies at 85

STAR TREK fans the world over bade a fond farewell to James Doohan, better known as Scotty, who passed the final frontier at age 85 yesterday.

Doohan died at 5.30am (2.30pm Irish time) at his Redmond, Washington, home with his wife Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease, he said.

Canadian-born Doohan was a busy character actor when he auditioned as an engineer in the original Star Trek TV series in 1966.

A master of dialects from his early years in radio, he tried seven different accents.

“I told them, ‘If this character is going to be an engineer, you’d better make him a Scotsman’,” Doohan recalled 30 years later.

When the series ended in 1969, the D-Day veteran found himself typecast as Montgomery Scott, the canny engineer with a burr in his voice.

In a 1998 interview, Doohan was asked if he ever got tired of hearing “Beam me up, Scotty”.

“I’m not tired of it at all,” he replied. “Good gracious, it’s been said to me for just about 31 years. It’s been said to me at 70 miles an hour across four lanes on the freeway. I hear it from just about everybody. It’s been fun.”

James Montgomery Doohan was born March 3, 1920.

Doohan’s first marriage to Judy Doohan produced four children. He had two by his second marriage to Anita Yagel. Both marriages ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Wende Braunberger, and had Eric, Thomas and Sarah, who was born in 2000.