Lower the flags, please

[gridlore]

and fire off the 21-phaser salute.

James Doohan dies at 85

James Doohan, who played engineer Montgomery Scott, the scrappy Scotsman who repeatedly gave the Starship Enterprise "all she's got" in the original "Star Trek" TV series and motion pictures, died Wednesday, his publicist said here. He was 85.

Almost every week, the frazzled Scott was asked to perform an engineering miracle with the warp drive, shields or phasers to save the ship from certain death at the hands of Romulans, Klingons or other assorted aliens.

Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. at his Redmond, Wash., home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, he said.

Doohan inspired the phrase "Beam me up, Scotty," although Capt. Kirk never issued that order until the fourth movie. He told his family he wanted his ashes blasted into space, Stevens said. Houston-based Space Services Inc., which specializes in space memorials, said it would send Doohan's remains, along with 125 others, aboard a rocket later this year.

Doohan will join "Star Trek" series creator Gene Roddenberry, whose ashes were launched into space six years after he died in 1991.

The Canadian-born Doohan was enjoying a busy career as a character actor when he auditioned for a role as an engineer in a new space adventure on NBC in 1966. A master of dialects from his early years in radio, he tried seven different accents.

"The producers asked me which one I preferred," Doohan recalled 30 years later. "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.'"

One of nicest, most outgoing, fannish pros i've ever dealt with. Sitting around listening to him read Trek scripts in different accents one night will rank high on my list of great moments.