He provided the ‘bloops’ and ‘bleeps’ on Star Trek

Emmy-winning sound editor Douglas Grindstaff died July 23 in Arizona. He was 87.

Douglas Grindstaff had numerous sound credits to his name, including the Mission: Impossible television series, Max Headroom and Dallas. But it was his work in helping to bring the Starship Enterprise to life on Star Trek that had the most lasting impact, on decades of science-fiction films and TV shows and generations of Trekkies.

There was the whoosh of the automatic doors opening on the spaceship’s bridge, the gentle coos of furry Tribbles in one of the show’s most famous epi- sodes, and the unsettling wail of sirens when it was time to shift to red alert — not to mention the growl of the cartoonish reptilian alien Gorn (pieced together using, in part, the sound of vomiting) and the high-pitched tinkling of a transporter beam.

The control panel bleeps and bloops provided a familiar ambience for Star Trek while the stars of the show — William Shatner (Capt. James T. Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Spock) and DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard McCoy) — provided its heart and soul.

Grindstaff, an Emmy Award-winning sound editor, died July 23 in Peoria, Arizona. He was 87.

Grindstaff had been working as an audio editor at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio in Hollywood in 1965 when Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, sought his help.

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” Grindstaff said in 2012.

“I had no idea what Star Trek would turn out to be.”

He went to work with other sound editors, including Joseph Sorokin and Jack Finlay.

For Roddenberry, how the show sounded was essential. Grindstaff recalled that on arriving for work one morning “the secretary gave me11pages of notes that he had dictated to her on one episode.”

Grindstaff was nominated for an Emmy in 1967 for his work on Star Trek, the first of his 14 career nominations.