He saw combat in Europe during World War II, including the D-Day invasion of Normandy, in which he was wounded, apparently by friendly fire.

[5][6][7] William Doohan owned a chemist shop in Main Street in Bangor beside Trinity Presbyterian Church and reportedly invented an early form of high-octane gasoline in 1923.

After shooting two snipers, Doohan led his men to higher ground through a field of anti-tank mines, where they took defensive positions for the night.

Crossing between command posts at 23:30 that night, Doohan was hit by six rounds fired from a Bren gun by a nervous Canadian sentry:[2] four in his leg, one in the chest, and one through his right middle finger.

In the late spring of 1945, on Salisbury Plain north of RAF Andover, he slalomed a plane between telegraph poles "to prove it could be done", earning himself a serious reprimand.

There he won a two-year scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City,[15] where his classmates included Leslie Nielsen, Tony Randall, and Richard Boone.

[18] In the mid-1950s, he appeared as forest ranger Timber Tom (the northern counterpart of Buffalo Bob) in the Canadian version of Howdy Doody.

Coincidentally, fellow Star Trek cast member William Shatner appeared simultaneously as Ranger Bill in the American version.

For GM Presents, he played the lead role in the CBC Television drama Flight into Danger (1956) by Arthur Hailey, then in The Night they Killed Joe Howe (1960).

In the Bonanza episode "Gift of Water" (1962), he co-starred with actress Majel Barrett who would later play Star Trek's Nurse Christine Chapel.

He had an uncredited role in The Satan Bug (1965), appeared in the Daniel Boone episode "A Perilous Passage" (1970), appeared as a state trooper in Roger Vadim's film Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971, which was produced by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry), and played opposite Richard Harris in the movie Man in the Wilderness (1971).

[20] In later years, Doohan reenacted the casting process at Star Trek conventions, demonstrating a variety of possible voices and characters.

He continued in the role of Scotty for sequels The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country.

In 1992, he guest-starred in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics", playing an elderly Scotty reminiscing about his time on the Enterprise.

[24] Most of the roles Doohan subsequently played made at least oblique references to his Star Trek connection and engineering reputation.

Many of Doohan's film appearances centred on the role of Scotty, such as a cameo in National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, where he plays a policeman doing repair work who tells his superior officer "I am giving it all she has got, Captain!"

Although he continued to work with William Shatner in the Star Trek films, Doohan did not get along well with him and was once quoted in 1998 as saying, "I like Captain Kirk, but I sure don't like Bill.

Doohan says that he convinced her to attend his next convention appearance, and later learned that his encouragement and kind words had not only saved her life, but inspired her to go back to school and become an electronics engineer.

[34] On July 20, 2005, at 5:30 in the morning, Doohan died at his home in Redmond, Washington, due to complications of pulmonary fibrosis, which was believed to be from exposure to noxious substances during World War II.

A portion of his ashes, ¼ ounce (7 grams), was scheduled the following fall for a memorial flight to space with 308 others, including Project Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper.

[40] Some of Doohan's ashes are hidden under the floor cladding of the International Space Station's Columbus module – after being smuggled aboard in 2008 by Richard Garriott.

[42][43] On May 22, 2012, a small urn containing some of Doohan's ashes was flown into space aboard the Falcon 9 rocket as part of COTS Demo Flight 2.