It has been nearly three months since James Doohan died, but only now has Mark Steyn been able to post the full version of the obituary he wrote for last month’s Atlantic Monthly. It’s a fun read.
One slight correction, though, if I may. Steyn writes:
With the Congressional Record awash in “Beam me up, Scottys”, eventually somebody decided it was time for Star Trek to put the famous words belatedly in Captain Kirk’s mouth. So, after the best part of quarter of a century, he finally delivered them to his engineer in the fourth Trek movie.
Not quite. What Kirk actually says to Scotty in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) — AKA “the one with the whales” — is, “Scotty, beam me up.” It is the closest he ever came to uttering the famous phrase, but it’s not quite there yet. Click here for proof.
And, incidentally, in context, it’s a somewhat odd phrase, since at the time Kirk says it, Scotty is standing inside a Klingon Bird of Prey in Golden Gate Park, and Kirk is standing beside the ship — so he’s really going sideways, not “up”. (Then again, why is he beaming into a cloaked ship, when he could simply walk up the ramp? Well, because the writers couldn’t think of any other way for Dr. Gillian Taylor to trick Kirk into bringing her aboard…)
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