James Doohan, who is probably best known for his role of Scotty on Star Trek, died today at the age of 85. There’s an obituary story up on CNN here.
He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s awhile back, and was in declining health for awhile. If you bought the third season box set for the original Star Trek series, there’s an interview with him conducted about a year ago at this point. You can see how bad his health was. His mind still seemed to be there, but his body was definitely ravaged.
I have to confess to not knowing much of his work outside of Star Trek, so to me he was Scotty. Will probably have to dig out some episodes to watch now that he’s passed on. One of my all time favorite episodes of Star Trek was The Doomsday Machine, and it had a lot of good stuff by Scotty. “It’s the Main Junction Circuitry, I’ll get it” is a favorite, and the bit at the beginning about him shoring out the communciations on the Constellation was amusing. Not to mention “30 seconds later, POOF!”
As a side note, he leaves behind a 5 year old daughter. Yup, he was 85 when he died, and has a 5 year old daughter (not adopted).