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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Redeeming Star Trek

  
  

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Seth
07:55 / 05.02.05
There are enough people here with a vested interest in Star Trek in at least one of its incarnations at least one point in their lives, so I was thinking…

If money were no object, what ideas would you bring to Star Trek to make it watchable TV again? (You know, assuming you had writers who were good enough to carry those ideas through, and that the brief is to do something that broadly honours the ST ethos, a pretty wide remit when you consider that DS9 seemingly didn’t care much for the supposed ST ideology.)

If you think it should be off the air for a few years, or should have new creative teams, all well and good. Assuming those were in place, what would your dream ideas be?
 
 
Benny the Ball
08:10 / 05.02.05
The problem for me was the repetition of the format, trying to shoe-horn in the standard blue-print, and make it interesting (ie in the past! it's a woman! etc).

What I would do is work with the assumption that the universe is established, and then have mini-series or stories set up in that universe playing, re-occuring characters, but not just have it set on a ship going boldly and meeting new people week in week out. You could have a running story about a conspiracy within the UFP or whatever it's called, and little pieces of info coming out, or murder mysteries, whatever, without having the clunky holo-deck crap. Plus new writers new ideas, new characters keeping it fresh.

There was talk of an Academy spin off to appeal to the teen market more, which is an idea.

My plan would be to combine Star Trek with Band of Brothers and Dirty Dozen.

A new threat, the federation is tied up because of diplomacy, so they select a crew from within their prison system, give them training, a clunky old prototype ship that was designed as a heavy battle ship to fight the borg or something, and send them out to fight the threat. make it grubbier. Have it play out as a 12 part story or something, and then move on.

They seem trapped in the cliff-hanger format at the moment, and it doesn't work because most people just don't care about about the characters enough.

Either that or start a series that sees a ship come through the worm hole of DS9, no response when they try to contact it, they send a party over to search, find a body with it's chest blown out and a chamber full of eggs, one of the eggs opens... it's Aliens V Sisko!
 
 
sleazenation
08:55 / 05.02.05
Certainly I think Star Trek needs a bit of a break before it can renew itself.

And when it does come back I think it would profit from returning to a more DS9esque route - perhaps we need to see another leap into the future - A future where the Federation is bitterly divided amongst itself about how best to spread its values throughout the galaxy. The Federation that is shrinking in influence and size in comparison to the Romulan Empire... and newly ressurgent Cardassia has joined with Bajor and a number of other worlds to form its own Union of soveriegn planets... Meanwhile, Dilithium crystals are becoming increasingly rare... And then a desperate faction wiithib th Federation launch a violent and desperate bid to assure Dilithium supply and Federation influence on a small world world...
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
09:58 / 05.02.05
Yeah, a break of a few years is good. I vote for a return in the form of several mini-series, maybe half, a third of the size of the current hefty seasons. Cut out the filler episodes, make every ep have to matter. You'd probably lose some money on syndication, as it wouldn't be quite as marketable, but gain it again on swift DVD sales (IIRC, the DVD market is what made the bosses sit up and take notice of Firefly, Farscape and I think the new Battlestar Galactica mini, and the rumour is it's about the only thing keeping Babylon 5's numerous spin-offs moving). Get a couple of fading stars or famous character actors involved to get the media to pick up on it, market it as a relaunch/rethink.

With, say, three being developed serially, you can tap into the different kinds of Trek fans - the Gene freaks can have their 'exploration, ain't humanity cool' bullshit, we can get our down and dirty DS9-style trip, maybe a third with an entirely different spin on Trek. How about a Klingon Bird Of Prey on an espionage/recon operation that turns into a suicide mission, with a Starfleet intelligence officer along for the ride - mob hardman Chaz Palminteri? Wall of granite Kris Kristofferson? Magnetic/myopic (you decide) Christophe Lambert? Linda Hamilton (recently diagnosed bipolar, but still good value as a cut-price Sigourney Weaver)? How about going a little bit more left field - scary quirkqueen Joan Cusack? Hunky dancing bear Patrick Swayze? Ice-muthafuckin'-T, bitch? How about making it Lieutenant Commander Crusher, battlescarred (literally) from the Dominion Wars, reckless, jaded and bitter, with a possible death-wish to overcome/fall prey to? Give Wheaton the chance he deserves to play the character out with some decent writing for once.

There was virtually no thought put into Voyager or Enterprise. Of the three spin-off shows after TNG's phenomenally successful relaunch, only DS9 started off with more than a high-concept one line pitch - Voyager never even attempted to be more than "misfit crew stranded on the other side of the galaxy struggle to get home" (which is the plot of the 'Dungeons & Dragons' cartoon. I mean, the fuck?), and Enterprise's struggle to define itself after the tag "Star Trek before Star Trek" has, ironically, seen it desperately cling onto the history and mythos it tried to move beyond. DS9 started out with an ensemble cast who weren't just there because they were part of the same crew, and threw us into the middle of an ongoing political crisis, with the pilot episode establishing that the station and its crew would be catalysts for change. In fact, that's the watchword - change. Trek is famous for hitting the reset button more often than a badly chipped X-box. Give us stories, for Christ's sake...
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
14:15 / 05.02.05
Certainly I think Star Trek needs a bit of a break before it can renew itself.

I completely agree.

The problem is that they have had pretty much the same people on the creative end since 1987, and if you think a show goes bad after 5 years, imagine how stale they must be after almost 20.

The biggest problem with ratings is that there is Star Trek every where now...not only are there near constant re-runs of the different series, but there are so many SF shows that are treading the same ground that the series isn't special anymore. If you look at the SF from before ST:TNG on TV, it all was pretty cheap and tended to be aimed at kids. ST:TNG changed that, and then everyone got in the act. I think at one point in the 90's, there were 10 different syndicated SF shows.

When the series is brougth back, it needs a number of import things before they ever consider doing it again:

-An all new creative staff

-A "return to its roots" approach. Not so much exploring, but dealing with issues of today in an allegorical way, which is how ST: TOS was able to attract non-genre fans for a while.

-A solid approach to character, rather than just throwing a bunch of people in the mix and hoping you get something interesting. It's been said that Kirk, Spock and McCoy were thought of as the Id, Ego and Superego when the show was being written, and the main reason I quit watching Enterprise was because NONE of the characters were at all interesting, and I didn't care about their interaction.

-Surprise the long-time fans. ST:TNG got a HUGE bump when there was a Kingon on the bridge, and it's hard to remember how big a shock that was at the time

There are a LOT of good ideas in the ST Universe that could be used. I like the Peter David "Excalibur" books and think they could make a decent TV series, as would the Starfleet Acadamy series that was floated a number of years ago. But I also think it's a good thing to let the damn thing lay fallow for a while so that the fans WANT it back, rather than just expecting it to be there.
 
 
Seth
17:02 / 05.02.05
I entirely agree that the show needs to take a bit of a break so the next move can be planned and so that people are hungry for more. I also agree that a break from the traditional ST format is required, and that there is a glut of hour-long sci-fi on the market.

The writers and creative team is a huge issue. I’d advise them to set up a list of the most acclaimed writers and producers who have worked on the show and to try to form a team based around talent that has previously been associated with the franchise. I’m thinking Ira Behr, Ron Moore, Manny Coto, Jane Espenson, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Robert Hewitt Wolfe… I reckon even Andrew J Robinson and other actor/writers could be given a crack of the whip. I’d like to see respected SF writers contacted for potential pitches. These people know what they’re doing and have given quality to the series in the past. Coto might make a decent show-runner if he’s able to balance an ensemble, as I liked his work towards the end of the run of Enterprise and don’t think he had a fair chance to spread his wings.

My ideal choice for the series is that it stops trying to compete with the other hour-longs. Or the other live-action shows, period. I’d like to see the return of the half-hour Star Trek Animated Series, a complete break in format. I might be a lunatic, but I also reckon the show should be based in the extended ST universe, same timeline as TNG, DS9 and V (another jump into the future will make the tech too advanced for decent storytelling… I mean, it is already, but that would be ludicrous), telling short stories from areas that haven’t been explored over a single episode, or over longer serialised arcs. Section 31? Orion Syndicate? Whatever happened to Riker’s transporter clone after the fall of Cardassia? Did Moriarty ever escape?

The idea is to create something fast, fun, intelligent and super-stylised, borrowing from the compressed storytelling techniques of Cowboy Bebop or Evangelion. It has to look and sound so freakin’ cool that you’d be stupid to pass it up, and marketed in such a way as to create real buzz. My ideal scenario would be not only to crib decent pacing and storytelling techniques from anime, but to farm it out to Gainax to be made as a digital animation (because Gainax need the money). Digital cell-shaded sets can be constructed for all the places we’re familiar with (reconstructing the interior sets from old series from their blueprints), and the original cast members can be re-employed as voice actors where necessary.

The idea is for Trek to innovate again, creating a new market in the States in which it clears up because it is the sole competitor, using a format in which viewers expect short stories in which arc plots are set up in advance (borrowing from anime, a “next week’s episode” feature will prime people if they want to follow the story).

Think about it. Traditionally Trek has been hamstrung into some dull talky episodes because of budgetary constraints. These constraints also exist for animation, but not nearly so much: you’d be able to give screen space to ideas, aliens and space battles that you could never do on film. The show would be controversial again, pick up viewers out of curiosity, it’d be able to do stories it never could have done before.

I know, it’s a dumb idea and could never happen. But think how freakin’ cool it’d be!
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
17:21 / 05.02.05
Part of the problem is that they lied about what Enterprise was going to be and this is what sunk them. Now, this is from memory and so I may be mistaken but-

* Das Boot in space. A smaller ship, people on top of one another, pressure cooker situation. Um, no. Even when half the ship was destroyed by the wossnames in series three you didn't see T'Pol having to bunk up with anyone did you?
* It's Pre-Federation, therefore Gene Rodenbury's rule about how humankind has evolved beyond fighting amongst itself doesn't apply. We see practically no humans who aren't Enterprise crew. And as, nominally, Archer picks the crew they get on well with one another, even when half the ship is blown up. What we do get is about a season and a half of everyone staring at T'Pol with hate in their eyes.
* The Enterprise is lower-tech, so we'll concentrate on stories about the individuals. Leaving aside the bringing in of the Temporal Cold War as an excuse to bring in the higher-tech of the future, we have an array of cardboard characters. Lieutenant Reed who is English and therefore is crap with women and has emotionally distant parents and wants to shoot anything. Ensign Mayweather who's family are traders and is so integral to the plot he doesn't appear in the last episode of season 1/first of season 2. And Ensign Sato who we learn nothing about over the course of three years at all. And Lieutenant Tucker who's the engineer and hates any alien species that won't sleep with him. By the end of series three everything we've learned about most of these characters fills a paragraph, and what passes for a character arc for T'Pol is to follow the subtext of Spock and Tuvok, struggling with the fierce Vulcan emotions underneath the surface.

Character-led storylines about a ship trying to prove both humanities worth to the Vulcans and to act as a symbol to themselves to overcome their differences to see what they can achieve whilst caught up in a war from centuries into the future, does the creative team have special mutant powers to fuck it up so badly?
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
20:53 / 05.02.05
absolutely a jump in timeframe...my inclination would be to leap forward at least 200 years, to clear the baggage of the current continuity a bit.

someone mentioned the federation being divided against itself. i agree. the show could benefit for much more politics and much less technology. i'm so sick of the climax of every story being something that involves whether or not they can get some something or other to work. wtf? why is everything broken all the time?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
00:59 / 06.02.05
Actually, a more "broken" universe, less clean and less shiny, might not be a bad thing.

Some kind of major bad thing rocks the federation, so all the aliens are trying to get their hands on the peices left over. Maybe? And we follow some refugees, or a vigilante spacecraft?

Either way: rougher,faster,uglier.
 
 
bio k9
01:33 / 06.02.05
I'm not much of a Star trek fan but "rougher,faster,uglier" seems like the wrong way to go. It's Star Trek not Warhammer 40K.
 
 
misterpc
06:21 / 06.02.05
I always thought it would work if they really did "Star Trek: Frontier", looking at the worlds on the fringes of the Federation, places and people that didn't necessarily benefit from the full benevolence of the UFP, using technology that tends to break, cutting the aliens out completely, etc. Then Joss Whedon went and did it with'Firefly', and guess what?

It was really watchable TV.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
11:38 / 06.02.05
I did think, years ago, before Enterprise was announced that the only way forward was to break the Federation, more or less what Andromeda started from, even if the final episode was some sort of horrible travel back in time thing to stop whatever fractured the Federation from happening. I do remember rumours that either Andromeda was originally a Star Trek series that Majel Barret was able to veto being made or that they were sorting through Roodenbury's unused concept draws, found this idea for a show called Andromeda which they considered sticking on to a Star Trek template.
 
 
Seth
11:45 / 06.02.05
absolutely a jump in timeframe...my inclination would be to leap forward at least 200 years, to clear the baggage of the current continuity a bit.

One of the things I like about the short story format is that you can jump all over the place in the timeline, and tell stories from established continuity, past and future. You could even have a season in which there are a whole bunch of stories around a theme or which have a core thread running through them, but which are self-contained and episodic.

I also like the animated format because it’s easy to go back and tell a story about Kirk in his prime, or pick up on the years between TOS and the first movie.

the show could benefit for much more politics and much less technology

…

Actually, a more "broken" universe, less clean and less shiny, might not be a bad thing.

…

I always thought it would work if they really did "Star Trek: Frontier", looking at the worlds on the fringes of the Federation, places and people that didn't necessarily benefit from the full benevolence of the UFP, using technology that tends to break

DS9 cut the best balance between this and maintaining an identity as Star Trek as you’re probably going to get. Politics, Federation as highly questionable if not downright despicable, ongoing arcs, frontier worlds, broken technology from several cultures held together with gaffa tape, alien station, a cast which was set up for fighting and espionage rather than science and exploration. Go too far beyond DS9 and you lose the ideas that make Trek what it is. Once your there, pretty much any sci-fi meets those criteria.

It’s also worth pointing out that most of the touches that Whedon used for Firefly were stylistic more than anything, no aliens, documentary style space battles, sound effects, etc. The morality of the show is a pretty well established sci-fi cliché of a Western in space – nothing that hasn’t been seen before ad nauseum. The real strength of Whedon is not in his ideas, which are almost invariably well-used and rather pedestrian: it’s his execution, which is often funny, clever and unexpected.
 
 
FinderWolf
18:19 / 07.02.05
I have two friends who are determined to take over the Trek franchise eventually. Given that one of them is a VP of development at Miramax and has mucho connections in the business, it might actually happen. They've told me their ideas for a next Trek movie and they sound pretty good. (as many have speculated, these guys favor a new Trek movie with characters from DS9, Voyager and Next Gen, a few from each cast, although leaning more heavily on DS9).
 
 
XXII:X:II = XXX
05:04 / 08.02.05
Not terribly subtle in the modern allegory, Sleaze, but I like it nonetheless.

I was pondering the future of Trek as long ago as a decade, since it became clear that DS9 was likely not going to catch on well with the fans. The idea I came up with is, in fact, so much like Andromeda that I'm inclined to believe that it did in fact begin as a Trek concept that Majel Roddenberry figured she could probably get off the ground without needing to share the rights with Paramount and their army of Mengeles who've kept Trek on life support for the better part of 10 years.

That all said, I feel that we're still owed the big throwdown between the Alpha Quadrant and the Borg. First Contact was not it. It's never been really explored where the Borg came from in the first place. MY theory, or at least the one that I think would make for a great flick, was that they were the logical offspring of Ilya and Decker in the bowels of the V'Ger probe at the end of The Motion Picture. And who made Voyager into V'Ger? The same beings who built the probe in The Voyage Home and the orbital arrays from Voyager. So you have Steven Collins come back a broken man, making wild claims of human/machine hybrids, but Kirk-era Federation people have never heard of this Borg menace, so they ignore him, save perhaps for a certain time-displaced oceanologist from the 20th Century played by Katherine Hicks. (Yes, it's a 7th Heaven riff. You want asses in seats? Shut up.) So the only beings in the universe who'd hold greater sway over the Borg than the Queen are the whale-lovers, who'd need to form an allegiance with Hugh the Borg and 7 of 9's Cell 000 homies. At the end, the preserved consciousness of Data come online within the Borg groupmind to give him his Search For Spock resurrection.

Don't even get me started on how ignored the whole prospect of a film centered around the Q would be. If Nimoy was game he could mindmeld with deLancie in order to prevent the outright destruction of the Romulan Empire, for which the Romulans find themselves uncomfortably indebted to the Federation, giving an opening for a third act save from their fleet.

Maybe the next Trek series could emphasize a more spiritual type of exploration as befits an advanced civilization, and a symbiotic relationship with their vessel... or is that Farscape?

/+,
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
13:26 / 08.02.05
What's the official position on the connection between the ST universe on screen and the extended universe' of books and comics, because I heard that the Shat killed off Spock in one of his novels.

I must say that Voyager managed to kill off any enthusiasm I had remaining for the Borg and another film with them, especially an origin film, well, only if they called it Star Trek XI: The One Only Rabid Fanboys Will Give a Shit About.
 
 
sleazenation
13:42 / 08.02.05
Not terribly subtle in the modern allegory, Sleaze, but I like it nonetheless.

Dude, Star Trek has a long tradition of not-too-subtle modern allegories to uphold...
 
 
diz
04:42 / 09.02.05
Dude, Star Trek has a long tradition of not-too-subtle modern allegories to uphold...

can't you see? his face is white on the left side and black on the right side, while mine is black on the left side and white on the right side!

anyway, as much as i enjoy Trek, especially DS9, i don't know if Trek is really fixable in the way that i'd like to fix it. the main problem, to me, is that it just doesn't look like the future anymore.

i think one of its weak points is that it basically transplants 20th century American culture into the future and into space, without taking into account the ways technological change and contact with strange cultures change a society. after a few centuries of extensive contact with alien civilizations and technological changes which would force them to radically rethink their relationship with matter, time, and space on a fundamental level, human society should be fucking weird, but they're basically just a quiet bunch of Midwestern suburbanites in cozy sweaters sipping lattes in space. Japan in the real world is weirder than their far future society which is the hub of an interstellar empire.

they also decided long ago (in the days of TOS) that their future world would have nothing to do with the branches of technology which are the most interesting right now from a story perspective: genetic modification and bioengineering and such, not to mention cyborging and artificial intelligence. a friend of mine already has an implant in his finger that detects electromagnetism and is working on designs for trying to get a cellphone surgically implanted in his throat, and plenty of other people all over the world are playing with designer gene technologies and implants and such, but the Federation folks are a bunch of bioluddites. i think any future that's not actively transhumanist is just too dated to work now.

i think the best way out of this is to just admit that Star Trek is now a dated and slightly cheesy retrofuture, and have some tongue-in-cheek fun with it, just go balls out with over-the-top bare-chested Klingon-brawling Orion-slave-girl-nailing space action. take some ship full of drunks and send them out to kick some ass and pound some shots of the local green alien's moonshine.

except, of course, you'd have to queer it up big-time. tkae your usual Captain Kirk hetero action, but then throw in some randy space dykes, Vulcan slave boys in positronic neutrino-beam bondage collars, and omnipotent aliens who capture the crew and subject them to strange probes. maybe have the ship's doctor be a hermaphrodite.

yeah, i guess that's what i'd do.
 
 
Triplets
12:07 / 09.02.05
i think the best way out of this is to just admit that Star Trek is now a dated and slightly cheesy retrofuture, and have some tongue-in-cheek fun with it, just go balls out with over-the-top bare-chested Klingon-brawling Orion-slave-girl-nailing space action. take some ship full of drunks and send them out to kick some ass and pound some shots of the local green alien's moonshine.

I give you STAR WARS
 
 
fluid_state
17:04 / 09.02.05
I had hope for the series(Enterprise) when it started; They were planting little memes I'd wanted to see explored. The Captain on the bridge giving the command "Let's go" with barely restrained enthusiasm was a good omen, at the time. I liked the compromise between "old-earth" military culture and the new frontier of peaceful exploration (I'd hoped it would come to gently suggest that we could still organize ourselves around familiar patterns, but that we wouldn't have to adopt all the ugly baggage associated with it). Dug the crappy technology (although it looked great): no-one's willing to get in the transporter for good reason. Should have stuck with that for the whole damn series. The "desert-planet-with-terrorists" episode from season 1 was great, IMHO: Archer says something at the end about how he's unsure which side is "right", and I thought that was a great use of the episode's thinly-veiled allegory. Plus, they played lacrosse. With the Kurgan! Future-guy (Daniels?) had some one-off line about learning to build a time-machine in high school that sparked 2 days discussion in a class I was teaching. Oh, and the doctor(Best. doctor. ever.) So, yeah, I had hope for the show.

Then they shoehorned in a ridiculous "war" storyline in what seemed to be a transparent attempt at polishing the show with a coat of George Lucas. Not to mention the hackneyed "T'Pol is the One True Sex Object" vibe that passed for character development. Apparently, they had a Nazi episode in there too. A two-parter. Cliffhanger, or so I'm told.

I'm still wondering at what point you can unequivocally determine that the people in charge lost their minds. My guess would be the introduction of the Xindi plotline.
 
 
Seth
21:51 / 09.02.05
So what would you do about redeeming Star Trek?
 
 
lekvar
22:15 / 09.02.05
I'd give it to Peter Chung along with a blank check and full artistic license. I think that would nicely satisfy all of the above criteria, stylistically. I might let William Gibson contribute general ideas, themes and story-arc outlines, but he would by no mens be allowed to write actual dialogue or suggest character names.
 
 
Seth
07:00 / 10.02.05
Great article on the current state of Trek on Ron Moore's blog.
 
 
XXII:X:II = XXX
04:36 / 14.02.05
I kind of hate myself for coming up with this idea, but it would probably generate obscenely huge ratings, from both the Trekkies and lovers of trainwreck television:

"Reality TV" Star Trek.

No, wait, come back.

Dig it: You get a bunch of hardcore Trekkies, and at least a few people generally apathetic to the phenomenon, you build a large, more or less functional set in which they live for X amount of time, and you make these poor fuckers live and "work" together as a crew. Obviously, you also need a small army of extras, actors who've been utterly programmed with Trek canon and lingo (as well as a canny ability to improv and bullshit when necessary), and a production crew to create certain effects. After a certain requisite time to allow for acclimation of all involved, you throw some wild scenario at them that they must Kobayashi-Maru their way out of, either by one of the apathetics utterly accepting this reality and/or one of the Trekkies utterly breaking out of it.

What, like reality shows based around Gilligan's Island and The Partridge Family are any less insane? Remember, someone gave Stan Lee a reality show, for fuck's sake.

I swear to God, that would be telecast crack cocaine. The audition part would trump anything American Idol can scrape off their cutting room floors. It would be a landmark shattering of consensual reality. All it needs is Mini-Me pissing in a corner to make it complete.

/+,
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
11:21 / 15.02.05
I love that Ron Moore believes that the future of Star Trek is fan fiction... that's just wonderful.
 
 
Shrug
21:30 / 24.02.05
I'd like to see a massive shot into the future the predominantly human federation basically rule the galaxy, crushing terrorist operations in ala Team America forcing "tolerance and understanding" down species throats with an iron fist.
We focus on a small group of Off World Anti-Terrorist-Attack grunts who basically beat down said terrorist attacks. Some of this grunt group are co-opted into the terrorist group, (they're tired and disillusioned and just generally pissed off the federation has become like ancient rome endless "bettering" every society in their ever expanding empire).
Also there are rumours of Borg Control at the highest level of the Federation and hidden Borg colonies etc.
Every season they fuck with our heads as to the ambiguous natures of both the Federation and the Terrorist Group. Loads of Death.
I'd throw in performance enhancing drugs and the seedier sides of lesser developed societies that the gorilla group travel to.
And could we have an extremely thin parody Southern Senator type as the one of the Federtion High Council.
Well it would certainly be topical and if something like this was done by someone with any actual writerly talent, subtleness and or political knowledge (i.e. not me) coupled with zany leftist ideals well I think it would be both sucessful controversial and watchable.
Of course it might as well not be Star Trek.
 
 
FinderWolf
14:58 / 20.07.05
'Star Trek's' Doohan Dies
By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer

Yahoo news

LOS ANGELES - James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series and movies who responded to the command "Beam me up, Scotty," died Wednesday.

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 had said farewell to public life in August 2004, a few months after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

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.'"

The series, which starred William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as the enigmatic Mr. Spock, attracted an enthusiastic following of science fiction fans, especially among teenagers and children, but not enough ratings power. NBC canceled it after three seasons.

When the series ended in 1969, Doohan found himself typecast as Montgomery Scott, the canny engineer with a burr in his voice. In 1973, he complained to his dentist, 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."

"I took his advice," said Doohan, "and since then everything's been just lovely."
----------------------------------------------------

Doohan seemed pretty cool, and of course the character of Scotty is legendary. I remember his guest appearance on ST:TNG - was kind of cheesy but fun to see Scotty interacting with the cast of TNG.
 
 
FinderWolf
18:32 / 20.07.05
from the CNN article:

>> The Canadian-born Doohan fought in World War II and was wounded during the D-Day invasion, according to the StarTrek.com Web site.

and also:

>> He accused Shatner of hogging the camera, adding: "I like Captain Kirk, but I sure don't like Bill. He's so insecure that all he can think about is himself."

James Montgomery Doohan was born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia, youngest of four children of William Doohan, a pharmacist, veterinarian and dentist, and his wife Sarah. As he wrote in his autobiography, "Beam Me Up, Scotty," his father was a drunk who made life miserable for his wife and children.

At 19, James escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. "The sea was rough," he recalled. "We were more afraid of drowning than the Germans."

The Canadians crossed a minefield laid for tanks; the soldiers weren't heavy enough to detonate the bombs. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. The chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.

After the war Doohan on a whim enrolled in a drama class in Toronto. He showed promise and won a two-year scholarship to New York's famed Neighborhood Playhouse, where fellow students included Leslie Nielsen, Tony Randall and Richard Boone.

His commanding presence and booming voice brought him work as a character actor in films and television, both in Canada and the United States.

Oddly, his only other TV series besides "Star Trek" was another space adventure, "Space Command," in 1953.

Doohan's first marriage to Judy Doohan produced four children. He had two children by his second marriage to Anita Yagel. Both marriages ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Wende Braunberger, and their children were Eric, Thomas and Sarah, who was born in 2000, when Doohan was 80.

In a 1998 interview, Doohan was asked if he ever got tired of hearing the line "Beam me up, Scotty" -- a line that, reportedly, was never actually spoken on the TV show.

"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."
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
18:52 / 20.07.05
doohan, sheer genius, at a CON:

trek fan: do you understand the theory behind a warp engine?
doohan: (in scotty accent) no son. do you?
trek fan: yes.
doohan: then why are you asking me? I'm just an actor.

for the series - aliens that aren't humanoids. Kurt Vonnegut came up with some goodies (although, he was writing novels, and the budgeting is slightly different).

something like intelligent microstrings that are light years long.

and so on.

ten ix
 
 
grant
19:50 / 20.07.05
To save the series: redo the first one.

Cut out the soap opera crap, stop reusing the same damn tired familiar aliens and give us something Cosmic and Different every damn week. I don't care what the engineer is doing during his day off, unless it matters in some way to what the Weird Fucking Alien of the week is doing.

That's the way to make interesting stories.
 
 
gridley
01:35 / 21.07.05
That would be really cool to see, Grant, but I can't think of any producers (or networks) with the guts to do it. Mostly, because, they'd have to hire real science fiction writers to write the scripts (like they did for old Star Trek). It seems like these days American TV execs only want to hire the same old tv writers, regardless of whether they have any background or interest in sci-fi.

I think they also need multiple-episode story arcs to tell really brilliant sci-fi episodes. Even two-episode arcs can give a story so much more chance to develop.

Man, how fun would it be to have a Trek series where one story arc is written by Terry Bisson and then the next is by Dan Simmons and then then one after that is by Neal Stephenson...
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
02:12 / 21.07.05
I can't disagree more with the people who think Trek should be grittier and more ambiguous. To me, the best Star trek was TNG, where Picard always did the right thing, no matter what. The Star Trek universe should be shiny and utopian. Period. There's plenty of gritty in-the-trenches sci-fi if that's what you like. I've always enjoyed Trek because it has a hopeful demeanor. I can come home from the shittiest day at work, pop in a TNG DVD and I will feel better about the world- that the future is a good thing. That's what Star Trek should be about- the future as a good thing.

As for fixing it, I agree that it needs a hiatus. TNG was so ridiculously successful because people had been gagging for a new trek series for more than twenty years. I can wait, if the wait yields quality product.
 
 
Seth
04:41 / 21.07.05
"Oh, enjoy these times, Geordi. You're the chief engineer of a starship and it's a time of your life that'll never come again. When it's gone, it's gone."
 
 
sleazenation
08:35 / 21.07.05
It does seem like we have entered the mirror universe where Star Trek is tired and old whereas Dr Who is the hip new thing that all the cool kids love...
 
 
grant
18:49 / 21.07.05
Heheh -- yeah, you're right on with that one.

The Star Trek universe should be shiny and utopian. Period.

I don't know about that -- I always bought the utopianism of the first two series as part of the ideology that goes along with serving in a military unit, even if it's a military unit dedicated to exploration. The characters were utopians, but I don't think the writers were. There were a few things that were fairly horrifying in those series... but they were always confined to whatever alien planet was being dealt with that week.

The one where Kirk's abducted and set up on a replica of the Enterprise bridge because he has to introduce deadly diseases to an overpopulated planet... not a utopian vision. An ugly problem with an ugly solution.
 
  

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