Who will beam me up now that Scotty is gone?

Many of you readers out there are familiar with a popular television series that ran from 1966-1969 called Star Trek. The show was extremely nerdy and was quite popular with nerds at the time, as well as young children and jocks.

It should be explained that this show featured a spaceship with a crew on board, similar to how seafaring ships were years ago. Except that this crew had a 5 year mission of "space exploration", which usually took them in the vicinity of a great many alien races, robots, and floating heads of President Abraham Lincoln.

Nerds were immediately attracted to the premise of the show because there were many supposedly hi-tech specs on the ship that they could write down and commit to memory as well as debate the oxygen content versus carbon dioxide levels of whatever planet that the crew happened to land on. Additionally, nerds are instantly attracted to anything nerdy, or nerd-like, which helps explain their immediate attraction to Star Trek.

Jocks at the time were busy cramming into telephone booths, and since integration hadn't fully taken over the country yet at the time, many of them still had positions on their local high school basketball teams. A lot of them also liked Star Trek, but for vastly different reasons than their nerd compatriots did - it was because of the girls. Yes, a dirty little secret of Star Trek is that there were a variety of hot and bothered women from crew members to green skinned seductresses, all of which the nerds had to tolerate in order to find out more about the universe. It is also well known that jocks enjoy ogling girls and imagining what exactly they would do with these girls if they had half a chance.

The children then were like children now, they liked whatever their parents made them watch or whatever the commercials made look fun and exciting. Back then, Play-doh was fun and exciting, so you can imagine how much kids freeked out when Star Trek was on.

And the characters, the stars of the show - wow were they somethin. There was a space captain that got all the women, and the love of the jocks. There was a doctor that was clearly not a psychologist or a plumber. There was a science officer that was an alien, which means that nerds were generally attracted to him because they could see how he would be made fun of if he lived on earth. There was this Chinese guy who I swear did something, but all I can remember now is that one time he ripped his shirt off and was running around the ship with a sword. Jocks thought he was tough. There was a beautiful black skinned communications officer that won the hearts of men on both sides of the math lab. Naturally it was decided that there must be a character to entertain the kids other than the alien on board. So of course a Russian character was introduced, along with his catch phrase "Sir, there's a wessel approaching." Truly, Chekhov was glasnost at work!

But....he wasn't the star of the show. There was one character who shown brightly above all others who had his own much more popular catch phrase and was the only one who could get those damn dylithium crystals up and running which were the power source of the ship. I'm talking about Scottie!

If you don't know who I am referring to by now then it is high time I introduced the saviour of the known galaxy, and the Starship Enterprise. Please refer to the picture that I have conveniently placed at the top of the page. Oh yes, you are saying to yourself. I recognize this person. He singlehandedly saved the Starship Enterprise more times than I can count, and fortunately I cannot count that high.

Tragically, Scottie was not powerful enough to save Star Trek from being cancelled in the month of June, 1969; nor it seems were the combined viewing powers of nerds, jocks, and children enough to stop what was now a cult favorite from being cancelled. This was roughly due to the fact that almost no adults were watching the show at the time because the available amount of cowboys, six gun shooters, and characters named Marshall Dillon were in very short supply on Star Trek. For reasons known to absolutely no one the producers of the show turned to wackiness in an effort to woo the adults by introducing guest appearances by Spock's brain, a 50 foot tall Greek god, and of course Abraham Lincoln.

Why Abraham Lincoln didn't cause an immediate spike in the ratings is beyond my feeble comprehension. Why just imagine if Abraham Lincoln appeared in some of today's shows, what would that be like? I think he would make a great guest star on E.R. as a mysterious stranger who appears out of nowhere to donate a kidney to help a poor boy who's mother was raped and killed and now has nothing to live for. And if that doesn't work, then there is already a spot practically gift wrapped for him on the West Wing

Well, the kids loved Abraham Lincoln and Scottie but it appeared that they had few other fans.

That is, until 1979 when Star Trek: The Motion Picture premiered, bringing with it all of the wacky characters that high school jocks/nerds and children from the 60's loved, except by then all of the fans were grown up and Scottie had put on a few pounds and now resembled Captain Kangaroo without the ping pong balls, or Mr. Moose or Mr. Green Jeans.

And then a strange thing happened that still happens with kids everywhere - they started watching Star Trek with their parents and Scottie's popular catch phrase was co-opted to insult middle school kids who did something dumb - "Beam me up Scottie there's no intelligent life on this planet."

Even though the dylithium crystals still didn't work half the time, what with the ship always being blown up and all, everybody loved Scottie, and he loved them.

Not many actors have been more associated with their characters as James Doohan was as Scottie, and not many have been more beloved by the average man walking down the street.

James Doohan departed from this mortal life on July 20th, 2005, but Alzheimers really stole his life from him years ago. But then again, there was a new cast and crew now and the dylithium crystals were hardly ever mentioned. They didn't need Scottie, but Scottie needed us, and we needed him. We all need someone like that who can reach down deep and get things working again when it looks like nothing will help.

I know sometimes I look around these days at reality shows seemingly about vacuousness, at terrorists plotting to destroy us in our homes, at celebrity gossip makeovers, and this old nerd/jock/child at heart often wonders if there really is any intelligent life left on this planet.

But now I've got no one to beam me up.

Goodbye old friend.

James "Scottie" Doohan
March 3, 1920 - July 20, 2005
Boldly Going for 85 years
Rest in Peace