Scotty Crosses The Final Frontier

It's a sad day for science fiction fans, with the news announced yesterday that James Doohan died of Alzheimers and pneumonia. Despite a wealth of early work in radio and on television and film, Doohan will forever be synonymous with the role of plain-spoken engineer Scotty on the cult show Star Trek. Chief Engineer Montgomery 'Scotty' Scott was a role created for and by Doohan, who was asked to choose which accent he would use for the role. He was accomplished in a wide variety of dialects after years working in radio, and chose Scottish for the engineer as he thought it would sound authoritative. The character was then built around that