Day By Day

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Beam me up....



One by one they are leaving us, the heroes of our youth. First Bones..., now Scotty..., Kirk ain't lookin' good these days, I fear. I was never a big fan of Star Trek. Back in those days I favored lit'rary SF. But I was aware of the phenomenon, watched the show occasionally, and enjoyed it..., and as the cast passes away a part of my youth goes with them.

Lileks puts it all in perspective...,

It’s impossible to understate Doohan's appeal - if you sneak into a NASA control room during a mission and ask the controllers how many chose their profession because of Scotty, half the hands in the room would go up. No one wanted to go into space because of that whiny little red-head kid on Lost in Space. It takes something indefinable to be a Kirk, it takes med school to be a McCoy, it takes green blood to be Spock, but Scotty – aye. Any man could be Scotty, if he applied himself. And he'd be among manly things, too.

I
n a hundred years from now, no one will remember Brad Pitt. But they’ll have a picture of Scotty taped up in the break room off the moon shuttle.
Read the whole thing here. There's a fascinating story about James Doohan's D-Day experience [yes, he really was a real-life hero].


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