Posted on 02/15/2020 5:06:00 PM PST by Twotone
Some great men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have great catchphrases said to them. James Doohan is an honorary member of that last category. He was the guy who spent four decades on the receiving end of the request to "Beam me up, Scotty" – if not on TV, where no character on Star Trek ever actually uttered the words, at least in real life, where fans would cheerfully bark the injunction across crowded airport concourses in distant lands, and rush-hour freeway drivers would lurch across four lanes of traffic to yell it out the window at him. Elvis is said to have greeted him with the phrase, and Groucho, too. There are novels with the title, and cocktails. On Highway 375 to Roswell, New Mexico, you can stop at the Little A-Le-Inn and wash down your Alien Burger with a Beam Me Up, Scotty (Jim Beam, 7 Up and Scotch).
It wasn't supposed to be the catchphrase from the show: that honor was reserved for Gene Roddenberry's portentous sonorous orotund grandiosity – the space-the-final-frontier-boldly-going-where-no-man's-gone-before stuff. The beaming was neither here nor there: it was a colloquialism for matter-energy transit, or teleportation – or, more to the point, a way of getting from the inside of the space ship to the set of the planet without having to do a lot of expensive exterior shots in which you've got to show the USS Enterprise landing and Kirk, Spock et al disembarking. Instead, the crew positioned themselves in what looked vaguely like a top-of-the-line shower, ordered Scotty to make with the beaming, and next thing you know they were standing next to some polystyrene rocks in front of a backcloth whose colors were the only way of telling this week's planet from last week's.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Best Scotty line:
“The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2NsTi_43g4
I cannae chenge the laws of physics.
Fascinating.
A little Scotty trivia: James Doohan lost a finger from his right hand during the D-Day invasion in 1944 (friendly fire). So he always tried to cover his right hand during filming.
He was ashamed of his missing finger and always tried to hide it. He should have treated it as a badge of honor.
“Captain, There be Whales Here!”
I probably should have said “embarrassed” instead of “ashamed”.
Lived in NO. Virginia a lot of years. The exit name off to the Orbital Sciences Corp. campus is “Warp Drive”.......always smiled when I passed it....
I think my favorite Scotty scene is where part of the crew had been on leave at some space station and they had all gotten into a fight.
Kirk went down the line asking each man why they had fought. Each one gave some variation of the other side talking trash about Kirk.
When he got to Scotty he said (paraphrasing here) “Captain, I took all that and held the lads back. But when they called the Enterprise a garbage scow it was more than I could take!”
The Trouble With Tribbles I think was the episode.
“At Warp 10, we are going nowhere mighty fast.”
They had his character portrayed as a completely competent commander when Kirk and Spock were unavailable.
Met Doohan once, at a trade show. Got maybe an extra 10 seconds with him because I had the autographed promo sheet made out to a nephew whose name is in the Scottish Play...
Yeah, but they gave him some good scenes/lines along the way.
You win!
I was in an online chat with his son, Chris, a few years back, and I asked him if his father was as mechanically or technically inclined as his character Scotty was. Chris texted me a link to a pic of his father under the hood of his British roadster, wrench in hand, covered in grease. *chuckle* He also didn’t have any kind words about Shatner, either. The dislike between the two men was real, and ‘the hatchet’ wasn’t quite as buried as is publicly stated. Chris said that at his father’s final convention appearance (he was in a wheelchair and was pretty feeble), Chris said he was standing within earshot when Shatner initially balked at a group photo with his dad because he ‘didn’t want to be around someone dying’, but finally relented.
I met him at one of the last DragonCons he was at.
My memory is a little fuzzy but I think I spoke to him just a few seconds and shook his hand.
Very likeable fellow.
Shatner has always been a mixed bag to me.
Shatner’s ego is enormous and that’[s what made Kirk a great captain and explorer.
William Shatner has made a great career of being himself.
It seems last Christmas, he surprised the on duty LAPD with a big catered meal.
yes, yes he did. That doesn’t diminish his big ego about his job and his “success.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.