Godspeed James Doohan

...Sigh... The legendary James Doohan passed away yesterday. He had made peace with his type-casting as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, he had made peace with William Shatner being a jackass. He had found, after three tries, a woman with whom he could spend the rest of his life. I guess that settles it... But even so, and even though I had never met the man, I will miss him. There was a special love about him. A sweetness that I imagine was not just the Scotty character, and not just the polished front of his autobiography. Like all of the actors in that campy reprisentation of that perfect world, I love him, because he, and all the other parts, were and are uplifting, and rich. Deep in how paper-thin it all was. Like listening to a favorite album on vinyl, there's a hue, and a blood to original Star Trek that transcends beneath the nerddom and the fanaticism. It's the hope of Gene Roddenberry, and the earnestness of the cast and crew. A lack of the current attempts to be cool, or tongue-in-cheek. It's certainly hip to watch the show iromically, laughing at the unintended jokes, but I cringe at the underhandedness of derisive laughter. And I smile at the blaring horns of any dramatic cue, the superimposed model of the Enterprise flying impossibly through space, past blindingly vibrant planets (whether bright green or bright red). The film quality, the sound quality. How straight-forward the stories were. No narrative tricks (other than the transporter stranding the crew in a dangerous situation over and over and over again). It was a gentle attempt to wow us, and to makes us laugh, and somehow, for me, it still works.

The show feels like love. And though the loss of one of it's actors doesn't do anything to the episodes and films that have long already been made, I still mourn his death. Just as the death of DeForrest Kelly knocked me on my ass. And more recently, Jerry Goldsmith. Three of the sweetest old men I'd never met (much to my dissapointment), that are now probably on the most amazing adventure yet, whatever it is, out there, beyond our imaginations. How fitting.