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Scotty is Lost In Space!

Actually, no. It’s worse:

Scotty is slowly sinking to the bottom of the South Pacific in a fine grey cloud of ash.

My God, It's Full of Stars!

My God, It's Full of Stars!

Dignified and strange, in its own way, and somehow an almost-adequate substitute for the original plan, which was for the cremains of James Doohan, proud Vancouverite, former Canadian war hero, and the actor who played Montgomery Scott, Chief Engineer of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701, to be shot into space in a private SpaceX spacecraft. Goddam dilithium crystals!

The Falcon 1 owned by Musk’s private space exploration company, SpaceX, left the ground and stayed off it for 2 minutes and 20 seconds before second- and third-stage rockets failed to ignite. The whole thing, including Scotty’s ashes, plunged back to earth.

Well, back to the Pacific Ocean anyway. But nothing, particularly not the fate of a legend, is simple, and it seems there had already been a couple of false starts and a frantic search leading up to the ultimate un-ternment. For a man who claimed (falsely, but amusingly) that he was kicked out of the Canadian Air Force for slaloming his plane between hydro poles on a bet, the rolling swells of the unfettered tropical ocean are indeed the Final Frontier.

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13 Comments

  1. Posted August 5, 2008 at 10:57 am | Permalink

    Well, I’m glad he at least had a sub-orbital flight under his belt. But the depths of the ocean are the Final Frontier here on Earth, so perhaps it is fitting.

    Do you think William Shatner is more embarrassed by that video, or by playing the mad-cow infected Denny Crane?

  2. Posted August 5, 2008 at 11:25 am | Permalink

    I think William Shatner is embarrassed by nothing whatsoever.

  3. Posted August 5, 2008 at 12:44 pm | Permalink

    I thought David Bowie already beat Doohan in that regard . . .

  4. Posted August 5, 2008 at 12:45 pm | Permalink

    and are you sure that wasn’t Cliff Robertson?

  5. Posted August 5, 2008 at 1:20 pm | Permalink

    She’s breaking up captain, I can’t hold her together much longer.

    Art imitates life…..

  6. Posted August 5, 2008 at 1:45 pm | Permalink

    Beam yourself up, Scotty!

    Shut up, Danny Crane - - -

  7. Posted August 5, 2008 at 3:28 pm | Permalink

    and you’ve got that whole biological lights of Zetar thing going there too . . .

  8. Posted August 5, 2008 at 11:15 pm | Permalink

    “Dammit Jim! I’m a funeral director–not a flight engineer!”

  9. Posted August 6, 2008 at 4:58 am | Permalink

    Apparently, he’s just a very serious figure; too much gravitas. I mean gravity.

  10. Posted August 6, 2008 at 6:22 am | Permalink

    OK, that video is just weird. Now you’ve just gone and ruined “Rocket Man” for me 4EVR!!! Like, thank you SO much, raincoaster!

  11. Posted August 6, 2008 at 7:42 am | Permalink

    You mean you liked it before? If The Shat is good enough for Bernie Taupin, he’s good enough for you, dammit!

  12. Posted August 6, 2008 at 10:04 pm | Permalink

    He had a fair bit of gravity, indeed–I think he had himself cremated to spare his friends the hernias.

  13. Posted August 6, 2008 at 11:06 pm | Permalink

    Naw, it’s that casket manufacturers charge by the foot. He could fit in a couple of tricorders by the time they were done with him.

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