Confessing Evangelical

Highly recommended: Mark Steyn's obituary of James Doohan, the "Irishman who fought with the Canadians against the Germans [who] became a Scotsman who fought with the Americans against the Klingons". As Steyn writes:

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have great catchphrases said to them.

Although, of course, in Doohan's case the "great catchphrase" was never actually said to him, at least until the fourth Star Trek movie. It was certainly never intended to be the catchphrase for the show itself:

[T]hat honor was reserved for Gene Roddenberry’s portentous sonorous orotund grandiosity – the space-the-final-frontier-boldly-going-where-no-man’s-gone-before stuff.

I particularly enjoyed Steyn's insight into why the "beaming" was in there in the first place:

The beaming was neither here nor there: it was a colloquialism for matter-energy transit, or teleportation – or, more to the point, a way of getting from the inside of the space ship to the set of the planet without having to do a lot of expensive exterior shots in which you’ve got to show the USS Enterprise landing and Kirk, Spock et al disembarking.

Instead, the crew positioned themselves in what looked vaguely like a top-of-the-line shower, ordered Scotty to make with the beaming, and next thing you know they were standing next to some polystyrene rocks in front of a backcloth whose colors were the only way of telling this week’s planet from last week's.

"Beaming" was the special effect – the one that saved Star Trek from having to have any others.

For details of how "Beam me up, Scotty" can "help your marriage or destroy it", you'll have to read the obit.

As for Doohan himself, I knew he had lost a finger during the Juno beach landings on D-Day. I didn't know his life had been saved by the silver cigarette case that stopped a bullet that hit him on the chest. Nor did I know that they used a body double for his finger close-ups on Star Trek. ("So what do you do on the show?" "Oh, I'm James Doohan's finger double." Well, you've got to start somewhere, I suppose.)

It's just a shame Doohan won't be around for Star Trek XII: So Very Tired ("It's no use Cap'n! I canna' reach the control panel!"). I'm sure Doohan - who apparently disliked William Shatner intensely, and was in the habit of delighting "Trekkers" by beaming Shatner's toupee on to the stage at Star Trek conventions - would have enjoyed the following entry in Captain Kirk's log:

Captain's Log Stardate 6051: had trouble sleeping last night... my hiatal hernia is acting up again. The ship is drafty and damp; I complain, but nobody listens.