Here's To Ya, Lad

Montgomery Scott (Captain, SF ret.): 2222-2383

So would read the obituary of the character that made the now late James Doohan famous. And while Captain Scott was known for his Scottish burr, love for the starships he drove, excitability that became cool canniness in battle, fudging time estimates to put himself over as a "miracle worker," and the request most often made of him, "Beam me up, Scotty," the actor behind the legendary engineer led a life scarcely any less dramatic:

At 19, James escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. "The sea was rough," he recalled. "We were more afraid of drowning than the Germans."

The Canadians crossed a minefield laid for tanks; the soldiers weren't heavy enough to detonate the bombs. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on the screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. Fortunately the chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.

Pity more contemporary Canadians can't emulate Doohan's example. They appear to be a dying breed.

His acting origins were equally as distinguished:

After the war Doohan on a whim enrolled in a drama class in Toronto. He showed promise and won a two-year scholarship to New York's famed Neighborhood Playhouse, where fellow students included Leslie Nielsen, Tony Randall and Richard Boone.

Doohan's career never approached the heights of his classmates - or at least the breadth - but he didn't let his immutable typecasting as "Scotty" wound his professional ego and cause him to lose appreciation for all that the role did for him, even if he did hate William Shatner's guts:

In a 1998 interview, Doohan was asked if he ever got tired of hearing the line "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."

Had I had the chance to meet him, I would have been more circumspect than to be so cliched. Besides, that wasn't my favorite Scotty-related line.

In "By Any Other Name," a crew of fantastically advanced hostile aliens from the Andromeda galaxy hijack the Enterprise in order to return home and provide their people with the scouting report they need to invade the Milky Way. But in order to function on a humanoid ship, the aliens adapt (natch) to human form, and Captain Kirk (natch) figures out that their unaccustomedness to human senses and emotions is their achilles heel.

While McCoy hooks one of the aliens on amphetamines and Kirk (natch) seduces their hottest female, Scotty remains true to his character and tries to get the one called Tomar drunk. But such is Tomar's unexpected tolerance that between the two of them they empty out Scotty's (apparently enormous) stash of booze until all that's left is a bottle of alien whiskey the name of which the engineer, by that time, can't remember. When Tomar asks, in classic Foster Brookesian fashion, what's in the bottle, Scotty, equally hammered, peers blearily at the bottle and slurringly replies, "It's...it's...it's green."

So indellible a line and scene was that one that when Doohan reprised his role on an episode of Next Generation, he and Data (Bret Spiner) did a tribute to it in the Enterprise-D's Ten Forward lounge, only with Data delivering the line in his android way - a delightful counterpoint to the original.

StarTrek.com has a tribute page, including a six-minute video of Scotty highlights that on this sad day will brighten the view of all Trekkers through the mists of sorrow.

Another Cap'n gives a fitting sendoff: "The word is given, Mr. Scott. Warp speed."

But I prefer the one that Scotty himself gave to the holodeck fascimile of the bridge of the original Enterprise, modified for gender: "Here's to ya, lad."