Saturday, September 01, 2012

JAMES DOOHAN: HIS ROCKY ROAD TO HAPPINESS


Here's the last Star Trek article from the 1968 issue of TV Star Parade. This one features James Doohan! Click on the pages to read.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Found this by accident and thought I'd share a personal anecdote.

Back in the 70's, when I was a student at UofI Chicago, Jimmy Doohan was invited to speak about his experiences as an actor. He brought out the requisite Star Trek bloopers and gag reel and talked about the upcoming "Star Trek - The Motion Picture" which had just wrapped production.

Afterwards, there was a long line to shake his hand and get an autograph. At that time, the UofI had a computer system called "PLATO" that was really advanced for its day. (Side note: some of the computer graphics in the first Star Wars (Episode 4) were created at UofI Chicago - different computer system, however.) There was a really neat interactive Star Trek game on PLATO but it was nothing like an XBox game...more like the original Asteroids...remember that this was before the original IBM PC came out. The Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 and the Apple II were the top computers at that time.

I finally got to the table where he was sitting and chatted with him for a couple of minutes before I blurted out something like "Jim, you haven't lived until you played Star Trek on our computer system". Immediately after I said it, I realized how idiotic I was. I was talking to the guy who played the engineer on the REAL thing...can't get any better than that!

D'oh.