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These Stars Traded Hollywood Glamor for Wartime Glory

Khalid Elhassan March 31, 2022 37 min

26. The Man Behind an Iconic Star Trek Phrase

James Doohan as Star Trek's Scotty — James Doohan as Star Trek’s Scotty. CBS

“Beam me up, Scotty” is probably Star Trek’s most iconic phrase. To hear it instantly conjures up the Enterprise’s miracle worker chief engineer, who commanded the spaceship and recorded its log when the captain and first officer were absent. The franchise’s second-most memorable phrase is probably “I’m giving it all she’s got, captain! She can’nae take any more!“, delivered in a thick Scottish burr by the Enterprise’s engineer. It is ironic, because the actor who played Montgomery “Scotty” Scott did not have a Scottish accent in real life.

For that matter, James Montgomery Doohan (1920 – 2005) was not even from Scotland. Instead, Doohan was a Canadian who had earned a reputation as the most versatile voice actor in the business before he was cast for his defining role in Star Trek. Before he took up acting, however, Doohan had been a real-life, honest-to-goodness World War II hero who personally killed Nazis in combat, was struck by bullets multiple times on D-Day, and had a middle finger shot off.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.