When Reagan had it he described him as a brainless fool sitting in his own
diaper full of dung.

Now lets see what he says:

Title: Sad Trek news: James Doohan has Alzheimer's
Source: San Diego Union Tribune
URL Source:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/w...es/000531.html
Published: Jul 3, 2004
Author: Jeff Dillon



James Doohan, the actor who created the inexhaustible engineer Montgomery
"Scotty" Scott for the original Star Trek, is suffering from Alzheimers,
according to this report from E! Online.

Doohan, 84, is "doing fine" in the early stages of the neurological ailment,
son Chris Doohan told E! Online. James Doohan was already living with
Parkinson's disease and diabetes.

The "Beam Me Up Scotty" farewell convention and tribute for Doohan had
already been scheduled for Aug. 28-30 in Hollywood to coincide with the
actor's induction to the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Aug. 31. Trek luminaries
William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter
Koenig, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, and Grace Lee Whitney and "dozens of
guest stars from the classic Trek series and movies" are scheduled to
attend. (Trek creator Gene Roddenberry died in 1991; DeForest Kelley, who
first bridged the original series and The Next Generation with a cameo
appearance, died in 1999.)



Sad Trek news: James Doohan has Alzheimer's

Doohan is still scheduled to attend both the convention and the induction
ceremony, his son said.

Like Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Spock and Kirk himself, the character of Scotty
was carried forward from the original series and movies into The Next
Generation universe when Capt. Picard's Enterprise-D finds him hidden in the
transporter system of a starship that had crashed into a Dyson sphere 75
years earlier. Scotty also put in an appearance in the inter-series "Star
Trek: Generations" film, in which Kirk vanishes into the Nexus and
reappears - temporarily - in Picard's time.

Like many other Trek figures, Doohan also ventured into writing - co-authori
ng the non-Trek "The Rising" and "The Privateer" books about a starship
engineer and the memoir "Beam Me Up, Scotty: Star Trek's 'Scotty' - In His
Own Words'."

Doohan's memories may fade, but our memories of him never will. My favorite
Scotty moment among many: In "The Trouble With Tribbles," when Scotty
explains he got involved in a bar fight with Klingons not because they
insulted Kirk, but because they insulted the Enterprise. My worst Scotty
moment: In the cringe-inducing "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier," when the
venerable actor is forced to savage his character by declaring "I know this
ship like the back of my hand," turning around and then knocking himself out
and hitting his head on a low-hanging pipe.

In related Trek news, E! Online reported that Paramount declined to respond
to a comment Trek executive producer Rick Berman made to Starburst magazine
that he wanted to discuss ways of involving Shatner in the fourth season of
Enterprise.

Sounds like desperation time to me. I don't see how you can reasonably put
Shatner back on screen as anyone other than Kirk, and, despite the
proliferation of time travel in Enterprise, I don't think it's worth further
violating the continuity of the "real" post-Enterprise Trek universe to have
Kirk visit the past. (Though, since time has no meaning in the Nexus Kirk
fell into in "Generations," the Enterprise Enterprise could always run into
an incarnation of Kirk while coping with the galaxy-travelling ribbon of
energy.) And, as beloved as Shatner is in some quarters, would you really
want to turn the director's chair over to the man responsible for "The Final
Frontier," widely credited as the worst Star Trek movie ever?