Scotty beams up at age 85

FOR a generation of TV viewers, he was Scotty, the stoic Scottish engineer who made the Starship Enterprise fly. Fans of the sci-fi epic were in mourning last night after the actor James Doohan, who will forever be associated with the line "beam me up, Scotty", died aged 85 at his home in the United States.

Doohan was cast as the chief engineer Montgomery Scott on Star Trek after he auditioned in 1966 for a new space adventure series being filmed by US network NBC.

The Scottish accent in which he would regularly protest "the engines cannae take it!" to Captain James T Kirk was as fake as the special effects on the show. Doohan was in fact Canadian, born in Vancouver, and had perfected a range of accents as a character actor on radio earlier in his career.

Three decades after the late 1960s version of the show closed, Doohan revealed he had tried out seven accents for his Star Trek audition.

"The producers asked me which one I preferred," the actor said. "I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding. So I told them, 'If this character is going to be an engineer, you'd better make him a Scotsman'."

Contrary to popular myth, Captain Kirk never actually uttered the command "Beam Me Up, Scotty" during the original series, instead saying "Beam us up, Mr Scott," in just one episode.

Doohan was a veteran of the D-Day landings who managed to hide a war injury on screen. As an artillery lieutenant in the Canadian army, he was hit by six machine-gun bullets, one of which removed his middle right finger.

Despite its later cult following, NBC cancelled the show in 1969 after three seasons because it was not pulling in enough viewers.

Doohan found himself typecast as the unflappable Scotty for years afterwards. He recalled complaining about the fact to his dentist in 1973, who advised him: "Jimmy, you're going to be Scotty long after you're dead. If I were you, I'd go with the flow."

Doohan did just that and went on to star in more than 100 movies, including five full-length Star Trek films. He also appeared in TV series including The Twilight Zone, Fantasy Island and Outer Limits. However he regularly delighted diehard Trekkies by turning up to Star Trek conventions held in the US.

While Star Trek made Doohan a household name, he later revealed the off-camera tensions which often existed on the bridge of the Enterprise. The Canadian said he had wanted to "thump" Captain Kirk star William Shatner "on more than one occasion", quipping: "He believes the world orbits him."

Doohan's personal life boldly went where few had gone before. He fathered his seventh child, Sarah, at the age of 80 at a time when he was already a great-grandfather.

Scotty made his last public appearance in 2004 when, wheelchair bound, he appeared with cast members of Star Trek to receive a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

Doohan died at his home in Redmond, Washington, with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease.

The couple had moved to the area in 1990 and lived a quiet life, although the former Star Trek star appeared in several commercials.

In a 1998 interview, the actor was asked if he ever got tired of hearing the line "Beam me up, Scotty," which was also the title of his autobiography.

"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."

Doohan's wife plans to send the actor's ashes into space via the same private launch service that carried the remains of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, into orbit after his death in 1991.