Remembering Scotty

One of my comrades has beat me to the obit news punch, but here is the formal New York Times obituary of James Doohan, whose remains will be shot up into space a la Gene Roddenberry and Timothy Leary.

Tidbit:

The Milwaukee School of Engineering awarded Mr. Doohan an honorary doctor of engineering degree in 1993 "after a survey of students revealed that a large number of respondents said the character Scotty's 'engineer' title piqued their interest in the field," said Kathleen McCann, a spokeswoman for the school. "He brought the field of engineering to the forefront of pop culture," she said in an e-mail response to questions.

In terms of Trek lore, Scotty was always third in command in the TV series and he would routinely mind the ship when Kirk and Spock were on the away team.

That gravitas seemed to be shot to pieces in the films, where he primarily served as an object of humor -- getting treatment for a "wee bout" of shore leave in The Wrath of Khan; stealing the navigation chips from the Excelsior to facilitate the hijacking of the Enterprise in The Search for Spock; talking to a mid-80's Macintosh computer and shouting "Admiral, there be whales here!" in The Voyage Home; getting it on (sorta) with Uhuru in The Final Frontier. At least he got to kill the Chancellor's assasin in The Undiscovered Country.

Also, sci-fi geeks -- I prefer to call them "aficionados" -- are probably well-aware that Yoda crawled through what amounted to a Jeffries tube in Revenge of the Sith. For those who need the low down on what a Jeffries tube is, your answer awaits.