By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor James Doohan, best known as the feisty, Scottish-accented chief engineer on television's original "Star Trek" series -- a role immortalized by the catch phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" -- died on Wednesday at age 85, his manager said.
Doohan died at his home in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, Washington, of complications from pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, about a year after he was diagnosed with the degenerative neurological illness, manager Steve Stevens said in an interview.
The actor's wife of 28 years, Wende, was at his side. Doohan's last public appearance was in October, when he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The Canadian-born actor also had suffered from the chronic lung disease pulmonary fibrosis, which doctors believed was linked to Doohan's exposure to hazardous chemicals during his military service in World War Two.
Doohan was wounded as an infantryman during the D-Day invasion of Normandy and returned to action later in the war as a fighter pilot.
A native of Vancouver, British Columbia, Doohan was a prolific voice actor on Canadian radio before making his move into television in the 1950s.
But he will be remembered for playing Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott, or "Scotty," the can-do chief engineer aboard the starship USS Enterprise on the original "Star Trek" series, which ran from 1966-69 on NBC. He reprised the role for several big-screen "Star Trek" features.
One of Scotty's chief functions on the show was to operate the transporter device used to "beam" crew members aboard the Enterprise from distant planets -- often in response to an order that entered the pop culture as the catch phrase "Beam me up Scotty."
The often-excitable Scottish brogue effected by Doohan for his role became as much a signature element of the show as science officer Mr. Spock's logical stoicism or chief surgeon Dr. McCoy's irascibly folksy manner.
According to Stevens, Doohan auditioned for the part in several European accents before the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry, asked him what nationality he thought best suited the part.
"He said, 'It's got to be a Scotsman,' and so he did it and it ended up being a Scotsman," Stevens once recounted. He said Doohan learned to do a convincing brogue from a Scottish-born soldier he bunked with during the war.
Doohan is the second actor from the central cast of the original "Star Trek" to die -- DeForest Kelley, who played Lt. Cmdr. Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy, died in 1999.
Stevens said funeral services would be for family members only, but Doohan's wife plans to send the actor's ashes into space via the same private launch service that carried Roddenberry's remains into orbit after his 1991 death.
