Thought I’d post a couple more links and some photos related to James “Scotty” Doohan’s slow, sad fade from the public eye.
As I anticipated, the very funny Next Gen alum Wil Wheaton has written about his experiences at (and getting to) Jimmy’s farewell dinner. Wil doesn’t use “permalinks” (at least not that I could find), so you’ll just have to click on over to his site and scroll down to the entry called “farewell, mister scott.” Be aware that Wil often uses “colorful metaphors” in his blogging, just in case that sort of thing bothers you.
I also recommend this article about Doohan receiving his star on the Walk of Fame on Tuesday. Unlike the other news stories I read about the event, this one is respectful and doesn’t recycle the usual lame-ass Trekkie cliches like how the event was attended by overweight fanboys in Klingon garb or similar rot. It actually focuses on Jimmy and his former co-stars who attended the ceremony. The last couple of paragraphs — which recount an exchange between Jimmy and Nichelle “Uhura” Nichols — were quite touching, a rarity in non-insider writing about the Trek scene.
Surprisingly (and disappointingly, since I love reconciliatory endings), Shatner and Nimoy chose not to attend the Walk of Fame ceremony, leaving Jimmy in the company of his fellow supporting cast members: the aforementioned Nichols, George “Sulu” Takei, Walter “Chekov” Koenig, and Grace Lee “Yeoman Rand” Whitney. I suppose that’s appropriate. Just as Shatner and Nimoy have forever been paired together in the public imagination, so also have the secondary characters who manned the bridge while Kirk did his planetside gallivanting often been lumped together in a strange kind of fraternity. (Doohan, Takei, Nichols and Koenig are sometimes referred to in fan circles as “The Big Four,” a variant of “The Big Three” title bestowed on Star Trek‘s stars, Shatner, Nimoy and the late DeForest “Bones” Kelly. Grace Lee Whitney left the show midway through the first season, and while she’s loved by the fans, she wasn’t in the show long enough to become identified with the group like the others did.)
There’s really not much else that can be said about Jimmy Doohan or his situation. I’ve already said that it’s a damn shame what’s happening to him, and I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to spend an entire lifetime accumulating rich memories of experiences and adventures, only to have them robbed from you in your twilight years. It’s a terrifying concept, and it just plain sucks.
The following photographs are probably the last images we’ll ever see of the remaining crew of the Enterprise together and relatively healthy. Jimmy looks a little confused — I think the disease has already got him in its grips — but he looks happy, and that’s how this aging Trekkie wants to remember him. So let us now bid farewell to a man who contributed so many catch phrases to our modern idiom, a man who is what most people think of when they hear the word “engineer.” The word is given, Mr. Scott — warp speed.
Disclaimer: I have culled the preceding photos from various sources on the InterWeb. For copyright purposes they officially belong to whoever took them so don’t sic John Ashcroft on me.
