[Audience murmuring]
ANNOUNCER: Could I have your attention, please?
Could we have the aisleways cleared for fire reasons?
We have to have the exits cleared.
So if you'd just leave a pathway down the center it'd be fine.
[Applause and cheering]
EMCEE: In the interest of the poor
people that are stuffed out there
outside the doors, if some of you could come into the aisleway.
Make sure you leave an aisle open.
But maybe some of you could sit along the edge, or get to know people
so some of those poor people could at least get into the room.
I'd appreciate it.
But just try to keep a line open to the doors.
But maybe we can sit single file along the aisle there.
JAMES DOOHAN: There's room, there's room. [Laughter]
Are you moving in?
I'll wait!
EMCEE: Not that he needs a formal introduction or anything, but--
[Unintelligible] we thought it would be kind of neat
if the current head of engineering would introduce one of the future
heads of engineering.
[Laughter and applause]
TOM HUBER: You can't have my job!
[Applause]
HUBER: Well what a crowd, what a crowd.
Uh, this is the CFC [Combined Federal Campaign] pledge presentation.
[Laughter]
Sign 'em up!
Aldo was so gracious to let me introduce
"Scotty," or "Jim," or whatever we want to call him, to Goddard.
I'm so happy. He was one of my heroes
and one of my heroes for my children throughout the years.
But let me give you a little bit of background.
His real name is Jim Doohan.
JIM DOOHAN: Doohan. [Correcting pronunciation]
[Laughter]
HUBER: Yeah, you're stealing everything up here, buddy!
I tell ya.
Doohan! Doohan.
And he was born in Vancouver, British Columbia.
When I met Jim today for the first time at lunch,
there was about 15 or 20 of us, sat around a table
and we were all introduced, and Jim showed me a real feat of memory.
I mean, he-- we introduced ourselves, and Jim,
right in the middle of lunch says, "Well, how you doing, Tom? Jim? Phil? Karen?"
Boom, boom, boom, all the way around.
And I said, "How
do you do that?" And he says, "Well, you know, I just have a very good memory."
So what I want to do is have each of you stand up-- [Laughter]
--and
give 'im your name, and after the lecture he'll repeat them all.
Yeah, never make it.
DOOHAN: Isn't that right, Jim, Phil, and Mary, and Tom, and Peter? Right?
HUBER: And Harry.
DOOHAN: And Harry.
HUBER: Yeah, Harry got there.
Just quickly, Jim had an acting career early
in his age, 15, and--early in his youth,
he played Robin Hood in a school play.
I'm sure Kevin Costner could have taken some notes on that
if he was born at that time.
[Laughter]
That's for mispronouncing your name.
He continued acting,
and he won a scholarship at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York.
And he taught there for three years.
Uh, he then, after that, he went into the Canadian Army.
DOOHAN: No, no, no.
HUBER: The artillery.
DOOHAN: No.
HUBER: No? That's what they gave me.
DOOHAN: Well, they gave it to you wrong.
[Laughter and applause]
DOOHAN: No, let me tell you: I played Robin Hood in high school,
and I played master of ceremonies for two of the high school years
at the skits thing, where we did reviews and skits
and all that sort of stuff.
Never did any more acting after that or even something
that could be called acting.
I was always a good singer.
I was a boy soprano and everything else.
And I started too late in life.
So my voice changed and I couldn't I couldn't get up to
the peaks
that were necessary to start this song.
If anybody has ever heard Schubert's "Hark, Hark the Lark," they'll know why.
Because it starts on a hell of a high note.
And anyway, anyway, so I got second place
anyway.
Then the war came, for Canada, was in September of 1939,
and I was the 11th person to go.
I was the 11th person to sign up
in my area, and four or five months after that
I was sent early over to England to go to a signal school.
And by that time I was a corporal.
I had signed as a private, and
in the artillery we were called corporals bombardiers.
Then I became a land sergeant and then I was sent to a British officer school
and then I was an aide-de-camp to a general and then I got tired of that
because I told him, I said, I'm not doing anything
here, you know, and so I said, get me out to a unit.
So he sent me to the 13th field regiment, and I whipped them into shape,
and I landed on D-Day,
number one off on my beach at Juno Beach.
And I was in charge of an LCA,
number -- No. 5 LCA of the Winnipeg Rifles.
The other four contained infantry.
I had specialists aboard, people such as you.
I had
beach commandos,
I had engineers, I had beach signals people there.
I had my own assistant officer at that time, and I had to go in and survey
in the gun positions, which on the guns were supposed to come in at 10:00.
Actually didn't arrive until 1:00,
and only half of them arrived.
But however,
that night I was wounded
and a machine gun opened up on me and I was sent back to hospital
and I got out five weeks later out of convalescent hospital
and I saw a notice on the notice board at the reinforcement depot
and it had asked artillery officers to volunteer for air observation.
And I said, "Whoops!
They're going to teach me to fly!" You know.
And that's what they did.
And that was the, the -- physically to me,
absolutely: flying, the greatest year of my life.
And that includes even acting.
OK, there you are, Tom.
[Laughter and applause] HUBER: Thanks so much.
I just want to make a couple more comments.
You know, you noticed in the flier that he was considered
the craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Force.
I asked him at lunch, I said, "How did you get that title?"
He said, "I don't know how I got that title," he says, "but I used to
take the airplane up and stall it out and drop it down
and then come in for a landing as I weaved through telephone poles."
DOOHAN: You elaborate beautifully.
HUBER: So that's, that's the reason.
A couple other things.
You did work in 4,000, over 4,000 radio shows up in Canada.
Yes, I did.
And you also made many TV appearances.
Now, a lot of you might not know, recognize these names.
I do: I'm a little more senior.
"The Fugitive," "The Virginian," "Peyton Place,"
"Marcus Bobby, M.D.," "Gunsmoke." And my favorite, "Hazel." [Laughter]
And then he finally got the major role as Scotty in Star Trek.
And the rest is history.
Just a couple of personal things I want to say.
I feel NASA owes Scotty
and that group a tremendous credit, debt of gratitude.
It, it brought the challenge of space in our living rooms every week.
And it was the right show at the right time, for space was just getting started.
And Star Trek just continued the support
and brought to people's attentions the excitement of space.
We also,
you know, we saw him in a movie, or at least I did, where he was
making Plexiglas tanks for a couple humpback whales
to keep us in the future to save the civilization.
And also, he was, in one scene -- and I remember -- where
Captain Kirk fired him on the radio.
He said that he couldn't break this beam
that was run by a computer named Vaal.
It was holding the spacecraft in space.
And finally, old reliable Scotty
got his laser beams out and shot that computer to bits.
It was that type of imagination.
And that is a pioneer of space.
And the last thing I have to say is I did read the, the interview
in the Smithsonian where we -- It was last week.
I hope most of you read it.
Where they were taking
the characters of Star Trek and putting them in the Smithsonian.
It's first time
that I know that fictional characters would be displayed in the museum,
and I heartily endorse it, because he is as part of space
as anybody in this room or the pioneers before us.
So, I mean, Star Trek is
is my favorite and always will be, and the characters in it.
So without further ado, I would like to introduce
and welcome to Goddard, the chief engineer of space, Mr.
James "Scotty"
... Doohoon.
[Laughter and applause]
DOOHAN: Thank you. [Applause continues]
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
You have absolutely no idea
how coming to a place like the Goddard Space Center,
what it means to me, because
I'm behind you 100%
all the way, no matter what you do.
[Laughter] It's just -- it's something
that I think I have in my bones.
Ever since I read Buck Rogers in the Detroit Times,
which used to be our Sunday paper in Sarnia, Ontario.
And it was just fabulous to me to think about it.
And whether it was
Buck Rogers or whatever, I don't know.
But I became highly proficient
in mathematics, chemistry, physics,
and just about never failed to get 100% in those subjects.
I left most of the other subjects, literature, et cetera,
fall by the wayside.
But to me,
somehow I seemed to be able to do things
for certain branches of the armed forces and certain people
and I get rewarded by coming to a place like this.
And it certainly is a reward for me.
I have been to Lewis in Cleveland a couple of times.
I've been to the China Lake, I've been to many other -- I've been to Hughes ...
all sorts of experimental labs that I have been to.
It thrills me.
I have also
had an eight-hour cruise on a nuclear submarine.
I've been aboard three aircraft carriers landing out on them,
and they -- in the ocean, they fly me out, and
it's just fabulous. You know, to me.
I can't think of anything that satisfies me more than that.
However, there are to me just a few
little serious
things that I want to talk about, such as
when we harness the
matter-antimatter,
[Laughter]
which of course,
when we get to fusion with it, that'll make the hydrogen fusion
look like a candle, and -- but you know what?
We will get there. I know we will.
And we have to get there because we only have a billion years
left in this Earth, and we've got to get out of here somehow.
[Laughter]
And let me tell you,
is that I don't want -- I would not like to see
-- I have no idea what is in the plans, but
I would never like to see
us have years and years
of satellite training
without manned spacecraft.
To me, I think manned spacecraft,
we have to do, because it would be like
the, shall we say, the city of Los Angeles
that allowed all their interurban trains to go,
which is General Motors' fault in the first place.
And because -- no, they bought them up and then they let them run down
so that they could build buses.
And, and, you know, hey, we're managed by some of these big corporations, and,
and that's not good.
So consequently,
Los Angeles, very late in life,
has to build subway trains and fast urban trains.
Now, they had them before.
You take the city of Toronto,
they never let go of anything.
They just keep on improving everything they have.
They sell their 55 mile an hour streetcars
to cities like Pittsburgh and San Francisco.
And they buy 70 mile an hour ones.
And when I tell you that --
who wants a 70 mile an hour streetcar? You
wait 'til you're stuck on a
Toronto street at 2:00 in the morning.
That's when they do 70 miles an hour.
That is absolutely amazing.
They have subways.
They have electrical buses. They have buses.
They have GO trains, they have just about everything
you can possibly imagine, that Los Angeles let go.
And if we ever let go of manned spacecraft we're going to be in the same problem
maybe 50 years from now or 100 years from now.
To me, I think it's vitally important and that's
the only serious thing I really have to say.
OK, now.
The next problem -- [Applause] The next problem is I usually find that
parents
push their children to ask the questions
when it comes to a question-and-answer period.
And the reason is that
I think the parents are shy and they don't really know how to ask questions.
So what I
will do will be to train you how to ask questions and then,
you know, sort of bring you into it gently so that you won't feel uncomfortable.
You understand?
[Murmured laughter] I hope you do.
So what I will do is, will --
I will pose a question, then I'll answer it.
You'll find out how easy it is.
[Laughter] So
we take the case of the person
who has the diagrams of the Enterprise, and they check them out
and they get the magnifying glass also, and they say, "Hmm, hmm... Nope.
No toilets."
[Laughter]
You must understand,
of course, that we do have phasers.
[Laughter]
Need I say more?
All right.
The next question, you can all hear me, can you not?
Raise your hand in the back if you can't hear me.
[Laughter]
Then I'll go back to this.
I hate these things.
But anyway, this is a darn good one, by the way.
I know it is.
You can hear me now.
Yeah. Somebody is going like this.
All right, um...
A lot of people also
ask the question was, what would I do if I were captain?
[Laughter]
The very first thing I would do would be to limit Ensign
Kirk [Laughter and applause]
to one girl every five years.
[Laughter]
I mean, that used to get boring.
Except when of course when I would get a girl.
And then it -- all it means depends on what you mean
by "get," you know.
Chekov
would never be allowed to scream again.
[Laughter] He got too good at it.
As a matter of fact, when
we read Star Trek VI for the first time, we all let out a cheer at the end
because there never was a line in there saying, "Chekov screams"!
So, good.
Sulu would never be allowed to carry arms.
You see the finished product, right?
And it all looks as if it was so easy.
Thirty takes.
Oh, George is just one of these people that if you went hunting with him,
you're walking along beside him, you'd find his shotgun right here.
All right.
Now, he knows I tell this story on him and he gets a good laugh.
And if you've never heard George laugh, it's something else, it's just, "AHH,
AHH, AHH, AHH," marvelous.
The next thing, we would hire a couple of writers
[Laughter and applause]
to give Uhura some other lines
other than, "Hailing frequencies open, sir,"
because she's so
pretty, she's so good, she sings beautifully.
And besides that, she loves me.
So then the -- Bones
would never be allowed to say, "He's dead, Jim."
[Laughter and applause]
Because basically
he doesn't really know what he's talking about, you know?
I mean, all he has to do is bring out his little salt
and pepper shaker and, you know, and all of a sudden you're alive
and you look up and say, "Well, what's going on here?" You know, that's about it.
And finally, Mr.
Spock would never, ever, ever, ever,
be allowed in my engine room.
[Laughter]
Uh, way back in the old days
when this engineer who built the ship, who knows how everything works and,
you know, did everything, knows, knows what every computer will do
and everything else, we would run into trouble.
They'd send Mr.
Spock down to the engine room, and there would be
Scotty off in the corner saying, "Aw, gee, Mr. Spock.
You're so marvelous.
All I have to do is just watch you, and one of these days,
they will call me a miracle worker."
The next question that a lot of people ask
is, how did I get the role of Scotty?
Well, to cut a long story short,
my agent sent me to read
for the part of a Scotland Yard inspector
to -- on "Burke's Law."
Everybody, a lot of people've seen "Burke's Law," right?
With Gene Barry in the lead,
and so I did about three British accents for them.
And at the end they said, "Well, you know,
you know, you uh,
you just look like Gene's younger brother."
I said, "I'm much better looking than he is."
And anyway, I didn't get that job.
But about 10 days later,
the director of that
called me and said -- and his name was Jim Goldstone.
He said, "Jimmy," he said, "I'd like you to come and do some of your accents
for these Star Trek people." I said, "Who are they?"
So, he told me.
I went down.
I said, "Fine." So I went down there on a Saturday morning, which is unusual
because they wanted to start shooting on Tuesday.
And so I went down there
and they handed me a page of the script with some words on it.
Nothing to do with engineering or anything else.
And I proceeded to do seven or eight different accents for them.
And at the end, Gene Roddenberry said to me, "Well," he said,
"which accent do you like?"
I said, "Well," I said, "if he's going to be an engineer,
I think he'd better be a Scotsman." Because in my, in my history of that
time, Scotsmen were great engineers, you know. And
so he said,
"Well, we rather like that one, too." I said, "Fine." Well, I jumped right in.
I said, I'll call him Montgomery Scott after my maternal grandfather.
And so on, and so on, and
I went on with a few other things, and Gene
said, "Not now, not now, not -- whoa, hold everything."
Gene's one of these guys, of course, who doesn't like the wind taken
out of his sails, you know,
and, either than that, I hadn't signed a contract or anything else.
However,
supposing, though,
that instead of a Scotsman, they had picked some other dialect.
And when Captain Kirk calls down to engineering
and says, "Give me warp 12!"
Instead of hearing the familiar, "Warp 12, Captain?!
My engines just can't take that!" Instead of that you hear,
"Sí."
[Laughter]
Or you hear, "Oy vey, vhat is dis Warp 12 business?"
"I can give you a three-fourths.
I can give you four threes."
"I'm gonna let 'em to ya wholesale!
You know about that, oh you cheap-o."
Or, we have, "Whatever you say, sweetie." [Laughter]
Or we have, "Now listen, 'ere captain,
I tell you many times before I don't like to go above that warp 8.
Oh, that's an order.
Well, all right."
Or, we have, "HAha!
Ye be young Kirk, eh?
Well, sir, I'll see ye hanging from the highest yardarm
in Starfleet before I'll give you a warp 12!"
Or we have [imitated French accent], "Heh, heh, Captain!
You are playing with me, huh?"
"And also, I noticed that on the last planet you did not get the girl."
[Laughter and applause]
"You should have come to lucky Pierre."
My favorite, though, would have been rather lots of fun.
And I have a name for him.
We call him Reggie, and he would answer the captain
something like this: "I'm terribly sorry, sah, but I can't seem
to get the little buggers to move any faster!"
Now you see, I thought you all did quite well, you know, so
if you have a little nerve now, you're going to ask a question, all right?
Yes, sir.
AUDIENCE: Is there any possibility of you going to appear on [Star Trek] The Next Generation?
DOOHAN: Is there any possibility of me appearing on The Next Generation?
No, I do not want to look that old.
[Laughter and applause]
You saw what they did to DeForest Kelley.
There wasn't one centimeter, one square centimeter of his face
that didn't have a wrinkle in it, you know?
Oh, that's terrible.
You have to sit in the chair for about four hours,
you know, and I don't want to earn money just by sitting in a chair.
Actually, you know,
there will probably be someway they, they'll, they'll get me in eventually.
I don't know.
I know some people are writing scripts about that, but
they just like the way I act, that's all.
OK? Yes, ma'am.
AUDIENCE: What's your favorite episode?
DOOHAN: What do I think of what?
My favorite episode?
Actually,
it's a very fine line, you know.
But I like the one -- everybody here should like this answer.
I like the one that has in more scientific terms,
which was the one called "The Doomsday Machine."
And -- because that's the way I like it to be, because to me,
science fiction that -- you should underline
the word "science" 50 times, and then say the word "fiction" at the end.
But, you know,
Gene Roddenberry used to say to me, "No, Jimmy, this is science
fiction." He says, "Fantasy must be in there, too." You know.
I said, "Well, eh, I don't like it." Well,
he says, "You still want the job?" Yes?
See? I told you!
Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE: Is there gonna be another Star Trek or [unintelligible]?
DOOHAN: To tell you the honest truth, well, I really don't know.
Usually we have to give Paramount about a year and a half to think about it.
You know, they put 75 or 80 or 100 million dollars into the bank,
and then they start thinking, well, what are we going to do?
You know, they just they sit there, and they sit there, and they sit there.
You know, I -- it's unbelievable how long they sit.
I mean, the -- we should've -- we just finished No. 6, and it's out.
We should have been doing at least No. 10.
Well, instead of six. Right.
But that's the way. Yes.
Any more questions?
Yes sir?
AUDIENCE: What kinds of scientific and technical advice went
into the making of the episodes...
DOOHAN: What kind of scientific effects?
AUDIENCE: What kind of scientific and technical advice
[unintelligible] trying to achieve would go into a given episode?
DOOHAN: Oh, what kind of technical advice would go into making a show like that?
Actually, to start it all off, Gene Roddenberry went to the Rand Corporation
in Santa Monica, which is the big think tank out there.
And he asked them what was possible and probable, and,
and they told him,
and that's where matter-antimatter came in and,
you know, and all sorts of other things, lasers.
By that time where you would have maybe a different name for them,
and you call them phasers, and -- but the only thing that they didn't
have on, probably the only thing that will never happen,
would be the fact that the transporter
got to breaking the human body down into,
you know, powder and sending it some place, you know.
So in a way, a little ridiculous.
But I mean, Roddenberry wanted a fast way
to, to get from the ship to the planet and the planet back to the ship again.
So that was that, you know, and it was
terribly simple to do,
but, you know, it's absolutely amazing
the number of people who say, "Wh-- how does the transporter work?"
So anyway,
any more questions?
Yes? One, two, and three.
AUDIENCE: About how long did it take to film an episode?
DOOHAN: About how long did it take to film one episode for television?
If we did it in six days,
we were in budget.
We did that once.
[Laughter] The next question.
AUDIENCE: My fiancé loves the Star Trek books on cassette.
Have you done any, and if you have, do you plan on doing--
DOOHAN: Excuse me, done?
AUDIENCE: I'm sorry, my fiancé loves to hear the Star
Trek characters do the Star Trek books on cassette.
And I was wondering-- DOOHAN: Star Trek the book on the set?
AUDIENCE: On cassette and CDs.
On tape.
On tape-- DOOHAN: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: --and stuff like that.
I was wondering if you had read
for any of those and if you have, do you plan on making more.
DOOHAN: I do an awful lot of reading of novels
for Simon and Schuster, all science fiction novels.
And they're, they're under the Star Trek aegis.
But I mean, I did the last one, I just, I did Star Trek VI, and then the last one
I did just about five or six weeks ago was "Probe."
You know, if you ever read that book called "Probe,"
"Probe" was the satellite or spaceship in Star Trek IV
that came and, you know, nearly wrecked our planet,
you know. But, we got rid of them somehow.
OK, all right.
AUDIENCE: Do you have plans to do something else,
or are you going to stay with Star Trek from now on? DOOHAN: Ah.
Do I have plans to do something else or am I going to stay
with Star Trek from now on?
To tell you the truth, ah, no, dear.
I am -- if Star Trek is still going to do more, I will do those.
But I'm really making a concentrated effort to
do characters
far away from
doing one with an accent
or certainly one with a Scottish accent.
Because I have been typecast, and it is absolutely deadly.
There's no way that it isn't deadly.
And that happened to me, seriously, by 1971
-- I was telling people at lunch today -- that
I was called up on January of 1971
by a director that I had worked for where I did an English accent, and he called me
and said, "Jimmy, can you do a French Canadian accent?" And I said yes.
He said, "OK," he says, "let your beard grow
and be over here in five days." And it was a movie with Richard
Harris called "Man in the Wilderness." And a very good movie it was, too.
And -- but when I came back from that -- I was over there for five
and a half months. I had an apartment in Madrid.
And we also went -- we shot most of it just outside Madrid.
And then we went to Segovia,
and we went to Soria up in the north,
and we had 10 days off because there was so much snow,
and we couldn't handle all that snow, they said.
So I took off and went to London.
But anyway, when I got back
I would walk into producers' offices
hoping to get a chance to read for a part,
and the secretary would say, which he never -- they never did before,
says, "Oh, hi, Scotty."
You know, and the producer would say, "Well, Mr. Scott." Yeah,
that sort of thing, you know.
And I'd say, "Well, are you going -- do I get a chance to read here?" "Well,
oh no.
Well, no, you're awfully nice, but thanks very much, no." And, you know.
Hey, listen,
for the next five years, I didn't work in the business at all, and that is deadly.
I don't know --
when any one of you don't work in the business, your business at all.
That also is deadly.
And I would not, never like to see it because it's, it's terrible.
Fortunately, around that time, the Program Corporation of America
hired me -- or sent me a letter and said,
"You know, we are getting a
lot of requests for you from universities and colleges and so on.
And would you like to sign up with us?
And, and we take 30%." So
I said,
"Well, thanks very much," because that was 70% I wasn't getting, you know.
So I did a lot of that.
I also did a couple of plays and one of which ran for 11 months and
another one ran for three months and so,
you know, I certainly existed anyway, but the Program Corporation,
it was in, in 1977, I did 42 universities.
That's not bad.
The IR-- IRS said that was a good year. OK.
Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE: How does the transporter work?
[Laughter] How did the transporter -- it worked like this.
AUDIENCE: I have a serious question, and it has to do with politics.
To build all these wonderful things, we need money, and the money is
managed by the politicians.
How can we get them to understand the things that I think
people around here understand, about the importance of this,
of space?
DOOHAN: Well, I tell you, I have been told
because of, of the --
you know, I did,
I narrated
a shuttle movie
that was made, which was not really seen in this country,
but I did it for NASA, and, and
I charged them instead of $5,000, I charged them 500,
which was the basic minimum, which I had to charge.
Right. And my agent didn't even get 10%.
So anyway,
but I have, by showing it
to all these universities, I've been told that I am probably the, the
most prolific private pusher of NASA in the whole world.
And I, I push it every chance I get.
But the, the thing about the transporter is that
this country, it certainly needs to be told,
because to me, I would love to see NASA's budget doubled,
because at least it needs to be doubled for sure.
[Applause]
Because we, we, we cannot put ourselves in the position
of falling back and not keep everything going.
It's the same as the city of Los Angeles.
You know, you just can't do that.
You can't afford to do it because to get back there again,
that's tough, really tough
and an awful lot more expensive.
OK. All right.
Yes, dear.
AUDIENCE: Do you think it's possible for one of our probes to malfunction
the way Voyager did in Star Trek I?
[Laughter]
DOOHAN: I dunno how can, you can hear that. I can't.
[Laughter and murmuring]
DOOHAN: Do I think it's possible for what?
AUDIENCE: For one of our probes to malfunction the way Voyager did
in Star Trek I?
DOOHAN: One of the probes to malfunction.
One of -- you mean the real probe?
[Laughter]
I think that we always have to keep learning.
I think there is a possibility
that we will have a future malfunction of one sort or another.
But the point is that we don't want them, and, uh,
You know, and that's why we do our best not to have them. OK.
Over here and then here.
Wait, wait, wait.
AUDIENCE: I read somewhere, I think it might have been a TV Guide,
that they might be planning another Star Trek spinoff of some sort.
Do you know anything about that?
DOOHAN: As a matter of fact, Paramount shortly, about five, four
or five weeks ago announced that they were going to do another
Star Trek show, which would be based on a planet.
I mean, based on a space base, a space platform of some sort.
Right. And hopefully that will
keep on in promoting space because,
you know, certainly the effect that we had,
I think, is, is a true effect
and I know very well as, as I said
when I was in Washington at the space museum there, I said,
"There is not a week that goes by that someone doesn't say,
'Thank you, because, you know, you are the reason that I became
an engineer.'" And [Applause]
it's abs-- and the same happened with McCoy
with medicine and with Nurse Chapel. OK.
Yes, dear?
AUDIENCE: If some alien race up there is watching on its version of SETI,
and it gets over one of the Star Trek episodes, which one would you like them to see?
["Oohs" and laughter from audience]
DOOHAN: Which alien race would I like to see out there that's out there?
Well, to tell you the honest truth, dear, so far, I really do not believe in UFOs.
Oh, excuse me. I got it wrong somehow.
AUDIENCE: If there's some alien race up there watching on its version of SETI,
you know, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
and they, and they, and their radio transmitters
caught a version, an episode of Star Trek, which one would you like them to see?
DOOHAN: Oh... Oh. Which episode of Star Trek would --
if there was an alien race out there that --
what would I want them to see if they, if they caught
one of the episodes of Star Trek, right?
Ha, hm.
Very difficult, very difficult question.
Probably 15 or 20 of them, actually, that would serve the purpose --
I don't think we should
want them to see "The Trouble with Tribbles." [Laughter]
I don't think we should have them -- maybe "City on the Edge of Forever," or
possibly "The Doomsday Machine," which is my favorite, you know.
What I also think No. 6 movie
would be a very good one, because there, there's a tremendous
effort for peace throughout the universe, in Star Trek VI, right?
So I think that's a real good one, OK?
Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE: How does one get to be a writer for Star Trek?
DOOHAN: How does one get to be a writer for Star Trek?
To tell you the honest truth, I think you just have to sit down
and write, and put your ideas on paper.
A lot of people ask me if I'm a writer, and I say no.
I say when I was -- first did the -- after the war,
when I first went to Toronto to that school
where I eventually won a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse,
and that was in January of 1946,
I said, "Well, I better start learning to write."
So I sat down and I wrote the word "the,"
and that just didn't even look right.
And I've been a failure ever since.
Today, I really dislike writing in all shapes
and forms, except autographing,
and I'm good at that.
You know, as a matter of fact, you know, my --
when I'm -- I have to have something to do all the time, you know?
I mean, I got a million things to do.
I used to do a lot of wood carving, but I -- last May,
when I moved into the present house, I lost my,
my, all my woodworking tools and everything else.
And, and
so I'm going to have to do that again
in the new house up in Washington state.
So we're going to be building up there.
And um, but I was a pretty good carver and,
you know, I like working with wood.
As a matter of fact, uh, Gene Roddenberry's library,
in the, the second-last house that he had was all my work.
And I just said, hey, you pay for the materials, I'll do it.
I just have to be busy, you know?
And sometimes when I have nothing else to do, my wife will say, "Oh,
why don't you just go and autograph your pictures?"
So that's what I do.
Yes, dear?
AUDIENCE: Jim, you said you wanted to get away from a stereotyped role,
such as you did on Star Trek.
What type of role would you like to play?
Oh, well, let me tell you,
I read a role about three months ago.
The question was, what sort of role would I like to play if,
if I want to get away from doing Star Trek roles.
I read a role about three months ago,
and about three and a half weeks ago, I did the role,
and it was of a, a deranged, retired chief of police,
and all I could think of is, "oh, boy,
I'm going to eat that one up." And I did.
And, and I did it for a low budget film.
They had to pay my fee, but the -- I did it
for low-budget people and
I knocked their pants off,
and I know because I know that I am
one heck of an actor.
[Laughter and applause]
And that is, that is not, that had nothing to do with false modesty,
because, you know, I -- or even, you know, overdone modesty or whatever.
I know the work that I have done long before I ever did Star Trek.
And I ache, really ache, to do that work again.
And I have another part from the same people.
They just sent me out about a week ago or 10 days ago.
They sent me another script, and I like that part, too.
And it's [tape garbled] also I can do any accent in the world,
you know, so it's not a question of accent.
It's just such a gorgeously powerful thing,
to do a character that when,
when you say a certain sound,
just a sound, that's all you need at certain moments in a certain play when,
whether with what has been built up, you can say, "Ohh,"
and before you know it, the audience is either laughing or crying.
And you did it.
Marvelous feeling.
And I'm telling you, I've seen the handkerchiefs come up.
A lot of males, too.
Yes, dear?
AUDIENCE: How did you develop the different accents?
DOOHAN: How did I develop my different accents?
God gave them to me, dear.
He gave me the ear, which can hear the music, and
I just
-- I can, I just happened to be able to hear
not only what people say, but what sounds they don't make,
which are very important.
There's -- like a lot of
dialects, they leave off -- like a Cockney.
You say, "That's all right,"
and you think you've heard the "all right,"
you think you've heard the T on the end, but you haven't.
I hear that he doesn't say it.
And that is also fun-- but I've been able to do it
ever since I can remember, 5 or 6 years of age.
My mother told me that
when I started reading, I would read out loud and walk
from the living room to the hallway,
to the kitchen, to the dining room, to the living room, to the hallway, you know.
And she said, "Every time you go through a door, you change your accent."
You know?
So, you know, that was just --
God forbid, that I would ever become an actor.
You know,
because I must have been out of my mind
to become an actor.
Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE: Can you do a Klingon accent for us?
[Laughter]
AUDIENCE: Can you do a Klingon accent for us?
DOOHAN: Uh, well, to tell you the honest truth,
I invented the Klingon language.
[Laughter] I did!
That was in Star Trek I.
[Doohan imitates guttural Klingon language] [Laughter]
OK, does that match that enough?
[Applause] As a matter of fact,
the Simon and Schuster, they haven't sent me the tape yet.
Simon and Schuster at the end, when I finished reading Star Trek VI
for them, they, they said to me, "Would you,
would you create a different language than the Klingons?"
and, and I said, sure.
[Doohan imitates fast-paced alien dialect]
You understand?
[Laughter]
Yes, dear?
AUDIENCE: How did they make the shimmering and fading effect of the transporter?
DOOHAN: How do they do what?
AUDIENCE: The shimmering and fading effect of the transporter.
DOOHAN How is the shimmering and the fading effect on the transporters done?
You shoot it first, right?
They run the camera for about 30 seconds.
You stand there,
right?
Then you get away from there.
And they run the camera with nothing there.
Then they edit that
with you there.
They want to put you in or they want to gradually take you out.
You're like one in 10 when you start to appear,
and then you're eight in 10, six in 10 and so on, until you gradually appear.
You got it? OK.
The same thing was done in reverse.
When they want you to disappear.
And then they, they -- this is the old-fashioned method.
Then they, they would send the film
to the optical company and the optical company
would put the shimmering in there and, and the, the, the sparkle.
Now it's all done by computers.
Piece of cake!
Right.
Yes, sir. Tom.
TOM: Oh, what a memory!
If, if you could have worked for NASA,
would you have been an engineer, and if so, what type of engineer?
DOOHAN: I more than likely, if I had worked for NASA,
I would probably
more than likely have been a chemist of some sort,
you know, uh ...
that's -- but my father was a great chemist,
you know, he was a terrific man.
As a matter of fact, the first man to invent high-octane gasoline:
tiny little refinery in British Columbia.
1923.
Yeah. Yes?
Ma'am, and then, then you.
AUDIENCE: What do you think about the space station?
DOOHAN: I have, I've seen the space station at, down in Houston.
And, and, what do I think about it?
I think it's absolutely necessary that we have it, and we have to have
people who can stay up there and do these experiments,
you know, for two or three months, or six months, or whatever.
I don't know. You know, it depends.
We have to find out how long the human being can last.
But then again, we also will find
human beings who will automatically adjust
to all these things.
And not everybody would probably be good in space-- [video cuts]
DOOHAN: --going to give you a Scottish toast,
and then I'm going to translate it,
and you're going to have a tough job.
[Laughter]
I'll say it twice and then I'll translate it.
[in Scots] "Here’s tae us! Wha’s like us?
Gey few, and they’re a’ deid!"
"Here’s tae us! Wha’s like us? Gey few, and they’re a’ deid!"
[In English] "Nobody could possibly be as good as we are.
To be that good, they'd have to be dead." Thank you.
[Laughter and applause]
[Audio fades out]