The Day Scotty Saved The Future
James Doohan died yesterday. My two young boys would tell you he played "Scotty" on the Star Trek original series. They would tell you he ruled the Engineering department, carried more brains and guts than tools, and knew how to massage life into fading dilithium crystals. They would tell you how he saved the Enterprise from certain warp core breach death, from Klingon and Romulan torpedos, from the bad choices of Captain Kirk himself. Scotty was The Man. My boys would tell you something else, too. Scotty was the only Star Trek character they met in real life.
A couple of years ago, when my boys first discovered Star Trek, I saw an ad in the newspaper. "Meet James Doohan" ran along the bottom of the page, in heavy black Helvetica. Why not? I thought. I grabbed the boys and we drove through the south canyons, to a book store stuffed in a new suburban strip mall. We parked between two white SUVs, in front of a cell tower shaped like a palm tree with antenna fronds and a hard green plastic exterior. Palm tree from the future, I thought. Just like Star Trek.
James Doohan sat at an elegant wooden table. He didn't wear his engineer's uniform. He wore beige Dockers and a blue knit sweater and had a few extra pounds and wrinkles, but it was Scotty just the same. A line snaked through the store, old men and young men and moms and teenagers carrying new Star Trek Original Series DVDs and copies of Doohan's Beam Me Up, Scotty book, all ripe for autographs. My son, then 9, carried rolled blueprints of the Enterprise I bought off of eBay, and my youngest boy, then 7, carried his Scotty action figure. We were set.
Scotty greeted each fan with a handshake. I watched him lean close to hear each name, and he took time and care signing each book and DVD. Some people made Star Trek jokes, or asked about William Shatner's behavior on set. Some stood quietly, shook his hand, then left without so much as a whisper. One man wore a Klingon communicator and addressed Scotty with the standard Klingon grunt, Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam - "today is a good day to die." My boys stared at Scotty, didn't notice the huge Harry Potter display or the cafe selling fresh chocolate chip cookies. They watched and listened as Scotty spoke with his crazy old world accent, as he focused on each individual person, one by one by one.
Soon it was our turn. 9 rolled his blueprints out on the table and pointed to the engineering section.
"Would you please sign my Enterprise blueprints, Sir?" Two rows of books framed my boy, as if he stood in one of the starship corridors. He spelled his name slowly, and Scotty smiled and bent down, scribbled a personal note and a signature in great flourish. 9 thanked him, and then paused. Oh, no, I thought, here it comes.
"Uh, Sir, may I ask a question?" I closed my eyes and bit my tongue and sent a quick prayer to whoever might be listening that 9 didn't put Scotty on the spot. The old man nodded and grinned. 9 plowed ahead, asked a question about a specific time-traveling episode where Scotty pulled a miracle out of his uniformed butt, saved the Enterprise, the crew, a lost-cause planet, and the whole friggen universe at large. "So," 9 continued, "how is this possible?" He didn't stop talking, pointed out the temporal inconsistencies, the ways in which science declares These Things Impossible.
Oh man, I thought. Here it comes. I waited for Scotty to tell 9 that these things simply aren't real, they are figments of some writer's imagination, and he just acted, just pretended to fix a starship. 9 knows this already, I knew. But who wants to hear it from an idol?
Scotty motioned for 9 to come closer, to lean his head in for a big secret. 9 did, tipped one ear toward Scotty's mouth, and to this day I remember word for word what he said.
"Son, all of these ideas come from the future. All of the people of Star Trek used the power of their own minds to discover what might be possible. Now it's your turn to think about the future and to work at going boldly where no one has gone before. You can make these things possible."
He leaned back as 9 nodded his head. 7 held out his action figure, and Scotty signed his own miniature chest. And me, I mouthed Thank You at Mr. James Doohan, and lifted my hand in the Live Long and Prosper Vulcan salute.
I don't know anything more about James Doohan other than his work on the screen and that three minute intersection of galactic wonder. But in my heart, I know he changed the world for three simple people, made us think about the ways we can challenge our present, pull it into a wondrous future.
Thank you, Scotty. I miss you.
11:17:56 AM 
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