Space

"Hello Computer." - Scotty: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

For years James Doohan, in his role as Scotty, kept the Starship Enterprise, NCC-1701, going. As Montgomery Scott he insisted that reading technical journals was relaxing, was andament that you could not change the laws of physics, and always sqeezed just a little more from the Enterprise's engines, usually after protesting that the ship could not take any more.

Scotty fought Klingons hand to hand for insulting his ship while turning the other cheek to anything they said about his captain. And James Doohan is credited, in the Director's Edition DVD for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), as having come up with an unrefined version of the Klingon language.

James Doohan was with the Royal Canadian Artillery when they landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. The landing left Doohan with a missing finger and nearly cost him his life. He was hit by four bullets to the leg, the middle finger of his right hand was shot off, and a bullet struck his chest and is reported to have been stopped from killing him by a silver cigarette case his brother had given to him.

Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in July 2004, James Doohan would also face Parkinson's disease, diabetes and lung fibrosis.

James Montgomery Doohan died on July 20, 2005, the anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 on the Moon. On April 28, 2007 some of his ashes were launched to the outer reaches of Earth's atmosphere on a suborbital mission. The spacecraft will then fall back to Earth.

"We launch his remains into space and return them so there's a keepsake of a little bit of Scotty who has flown to space," said Charles Chafer, owner of Space Services Inc., the company behind the launch.

Chafer goes on to say that another portion of Doohan's ashes will fly on a future mission, when they will be released into orbit.

"NCC 1701. No bloody A, B, C, or D."

Scotty
yelling at
the Enterprise-D's holodeck computer
Episode: Relics