Doohan, whose role was immortalised in the line “Beam me up, Scotty”, had been suffering from pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease, his agent said. —Star Trek’s Scotty dies aged 85 (BBC)
Just as Sherlock Holmes never said, “It’s elementary, my dear Watson,” nobody in the original show ever said “Beam me up, Scotty,” but that’s OK.
(Favorite line: “It’s… green.”)
Scotty was definitely my favorite character when I was a kid. I actually managed to work a reference to Scotty into my dissertation, in reference to a machine-loving engineer character in an early Eugene O’Neill play.
Thanks for telling me about the sad news, Rosemary.
View Comments
I was watching Star Wars later today and I get your point--I kept waiting for Darth to say "Luke, I am your father." I kept thinking I heard it, so i rewound the tape and asked my mom if she heard it-she didn't hear it.
I never saw the orginial star trek, except for in reruns and in today's day and age the show seemed a little too far fetched.
I will always remember saying, in a perfect Scottish accent, "Captain, she can't take no more. She needs more power!" But I don't think Scotty say that either.
For the same reason people say "Play it again, Sam" when they think they're quoting Rick from Casablanca, or "Luke, I am your father" when they think they're quoting Darth Vader. The character said something else in a context, but when you take the quotation out of the context, it doesn't make as much sense. If you change the quotation slightly, adding in the missing bit of information, your brain starts to "remember" the quotation that never existed, since the manufactured quotation makes more sense out of context. I'm not an expert in the congnitive/linguistic details behind the phenomenon, but I've observed it many times (and made the same kinds of mistakes myself).
If no one ever said, why is it so famous that even a kid like me who never liked Star Trek says it?
Also, if you'll read my blog, I got to the news before you. lol. just pointing that out.