Montgomery Scott
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Scotty redirects here. For other uses of "Scotty", please see Scotty (disambiguation).
| Montgomery Scott | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Species: | Human |
| Gender: | Male |
| Hair color: | Black |
| Eye color: | Brown |
| Home planet: | Earth |
| Affiliation: | Starfleet |
| Posting: | USS Enterprise chief engineer/second officer USS Excelsior chief engineer USS Enterprise-A chief engineer/second officer |
| Rank: | Lieutenant commander Commander Captain |
| Portrayed by: | James Doohan |
Montgomery Scott, nicknamed Scotty, is a fictional character Starfleet officer in the fictional Star Trek universe, best known as the "miracle working" chief engineer aboard the USS Enterprise. Scotty was born in Scotland and speaks with a thick Lowland Scottish accent. He was played by the late Irish-Canadian actor James Doohan, whose ability to speak in a variety of accents and voices led him to voice many characters, in addition to Scotty, in Star Trek: The Animated Series.
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[edit] Career and retirement
Scotty holds the rank of lieutenant commander and serves as the Enterprise's chief engineer and second officer. Scotty admits that he got his reputation as a "miracle worker" by padding his estimates of how long it would take to fix a problem (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, TNG: "Relics"). Nevertheless, his solutions are often both unconventional and effective.
Scotty routinely takes command of the ship when Captain James T. Kirk and Commander Spock are unavailable. On one occasion when Kirk and Spock are trapped on an alien world, Scotty uses the ship's power to shut down the planet's electrical grid for a few seconds, enabling Enterprise crewmen to rescue Kirk and Spock without violating the Prime Directive. Kirk places a commendation in Scotty's personnel record for this innovative tactic. (TOS: "Bread and Circuses")
His personality tends to be dedicated to his profession to the point of being almost obsessive that is coupled with a fierce attachment to the Enterprise. For instance, in the episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles," Kirk found him reading engineering technical journals for relaxation and had to be ordered to take shore leave at the space station in order to prevent trouble between the crew and the Klingons. Scotty manages to do so when a drunken Klingon almost provokes a fight when he insults Captain Kirk.; however, he himself loses his composure and personally starts a brawl when the Klingon dares to insult his beloved ship. Kirk confines Scotty to quarters for the incident, but for him, that just means he has an excuse to continue his journal reading.
In addition, Scott tended to be less inclined to humor Spock and McCoy's quirks than Kirk. For instance, in "That Which Survives," when Scott is performing a dangerous repair task with Spock announcing the precise time remaining, the engineer muttered, "I know what time it is, I don't need a bloody cuckoo clock!"
Scotty was promoted to commander and involved in the Enterprise's eighteen-month refit prior to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He remains part of the crew while the Enterprise serves as a Starfleet Academy training ship (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan). (A scene cut from the theatrical release of Star Trek II but restored in the ABC television version and the Director's Cut DVD details that Midshipman First Class Peter Preston was his nephew. Since Star Trek canon rules state that only what is seen on screen is canon, the presence of this scene in some editions of the film but not others makes its status as strict canon unclear. Scott's relationship to the Preston family is elaborated on in the film's novelization and other works, and has been widely adopted as fanon.) After the Enterprise returns to earth, the aging ship is scheduled to be decommissioned, and Scott is promoted to captain of engineering aboard the USS Excelsior. This places him in the ideal position to sabotage the Excelsior, which facilitates Kirk's theft of the Enterprise and recovery of Spock from the Genesis Planet (The Search for Spock). Scott is not prosecuted for his crimes (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home) and goes on to serve under Kirk as chief engineer aboard the Enterprise-A, presumably until that ship's decommissioning at the end of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Oddly, in-between The Search For Spock and The Voyage Home, the rank pins on Scotty's uniform jacket switch from Captain back to Commander). He, along with Kirk and Pavel Chekov, is a guest aboard the Enterprise-B durings its maiden voyage.
Scott took passage on the transport Jenolan to reach the Norpin colony, where he planned to retire. However, the Jenolan crashed onto a Dyson Sphere, an impact that only Scott and another crewman survived. Using his knowledge of transporter systems, Scott rigged the ship's transporter to keep them in suspended animation for 75 years. Although the other crewman's pattern deteriorated beyond the point of recovery, the crew of the Enterprise-D recover Scotty. Scott and his Enterprise chief engineer successor, Geordi La Forge, rescue the Enterprise from the interior of the Dyson Sphere. In thanks, the ship's crew give him the shuttlecraft Goddard. (TNG: "Relics")
Although not canon, several works explore Scotty's life after leaving the Enterprise-D. According to these books and comics, Scotty helped design the Enterprise-E and, in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novel series, he leads the Corps of Engineers and issues the characters' assignments.
A comic book chronicling the death of Leonard McCoy was published soon after DeForest Kelley's death although he continues to live in the Shatner Trek penned novels; it remains to be seen if James Doohan's death will result in Scotty's demise. Worth noting, however, is that McCoy at the time is 137 years old (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint"); Scott did not age while suspended in the transporter.
[edit] Generations-Relics continuity
Scotty's presence at the christening of the Enterprise-B, where he witnessed James Kirk's presumed death (Star Trek: Generations), conflicts with this belief 75 years later, upon learning that his rescuers are from "the starship Enterprise", that "...it was Jim Kirk himself who hauled the old girl out of mothballs to come looking for me!" (TNG: "Relics"). This is usually ascribed to confusion and disorientation after 75 years in a transporter buffer, or perhaps the result of partial pattern degredation while in the transporter's memory. Or, Scott may be cognizant of Kirk's death and is simply being colorful, in the same way that someone might evoke a dead person's name in extreme circumstances (i.e. stating "I'll bet it was Jim Kirk himself, come back from the dead, who hauled the old girl out of mothballs"). Additionally, he may either have forgotten about Kirk's loss or simply does not wish to acknowledge or believe it.
The real world explanation for this discontinuity is that Relics was filmed before Generations; Kirk's fate was not known when the TNG episode was filmed. Also, Scotty and Chekov were not originally slated to be with Kirk when he was "lost" on the Enterprise-B's maiden voyage. The two characters were substituted for Spock and McCoy and the filmmakers and cast may have forgotten or ignored Scotty's words when they made the switch.
[edit] Birthplace debate
Following James Doohan's death, several towns in Scotland began campaigning to be named Scotty's "official birthplace."
The most vocal of the claimants is Linlithgow, where the novel Vulcan's Glory states Scotty was born. Both the city's and the book's claims are supported by script and production material[1]. However, none of this material ever appears or is spoken on screen, and Star Trek historians and others claim that Scotty's birthplace is Aberdeen, Scotland, due in large part to Scotty's claim in "Wolf in the Fold" that he is "an old Aberdeen pub crawler". Indeed, city leaders in Aberdeen have put forward plans to erect a monument to James Doohan/Scotty in the city, although there have been no official announcements to date. [2] However, of historical relevance is the fact that the chief engineer is Scottish; reference to the fact that most ship's engineers aboard steam ships around the turn of the 20th century were from, or educated in Scotland.
[edit] Popular impact
Scotty became a kind of general cliché for any chief engineer in the movie genre of science fiction parodies. It has also become something of a cliché for starship engineers to be Celtic – even Star Trek: The Next Generation briefly has an Irish engineer aboard the USS Enterprise-D and Miles O'Brien (played by Colm Meany who is Irish himself) fulfills the same functions such as being transporter chief on the ship and an Ops manager on Deep Space 9.
Scotty's operation of the Enterprise transporter system inspired the catch phrase "Beam me up, Scotty", which gained currency in pop culture even beyond Star Trek fans. Ironically, that exact phrase is never spoken in any episode or film, the closest utterance being Kirk's "Scotty, Beam me up!" in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The line was written as both a homage and in-joke.
[edit] External links
- StarTrek.com: Montgomery Scott
- Montgomery Scott article at Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.
| Regular characters on Star Trek | |||
| The Original Series | Kirk | Spock | McCoy | Scott | Uhura | Sulu | Chekov | Chapel | Rand — Animated Series: Arex | M'Ress | ||
| The Next Generation | Picard | Riker | Data | La Forge | Worf | B. Crusher | Troi | W. Crusher | Yar | Pulaski | ||
| Deep Space Nine | B. Sisko | Kira | J. Dax | Odo | Bashir | O'Brien | Worf | J. Sisko | Quark | Rom | Nog | E. Dax | Garak | Martok | Damar | Dukat | Weyoun | Winn | ||
| Voyager | Janeway | Chakotay | Tuvok | Paris | Torres | Kim | Doctor | Neelix | Seven | Kes | ||
| Enterprise | Archer | T'Pol | Tucker | Reed | Phlox | Sato | Mayweather | ||
it:Montgomery Scott nl:Montgomery Scott ja:モンゴメリー・スコット pl:Montgomery Scott pt:Montgomery Scott zh:蒙哥馬利·史考特
