3rd March: Beam me up, Scotty!

This date in 2222 will be the birthdate of Montgomery Scott, “Scotty” Star Trek's engineer. Here are some facts about him:

1. Scotty's role was almost written out of the original Star Trek series when Gene Roddenberry decided the series didn't really need an engineer. James Doohan's agent persuaded him otherwise.
2. Doohan had been good at accents since he was a child and experimented with a few before deciding on the Scottish one. Doohan is actually from Canada. As to Scotty's precise birthplace in Scotland, several Scottish towns have claimed the distinction although Linlithgow is the place Doohan's family and various production notes seem to suggest while Scotty himself described himself in one episode as "an old Aberdeen pub crawler".
3. The accent wasn't the only thing James Doohan contributed to the show. He came up with his character's first name, Montogomery, after his maternal grandfather James Montgomery. Montgomery was also the actor's middle name. He also helped develop the Klingon and Vulcan languages.
4. James Doohan had a finger missing, something he did his best to hide on screen. He'd seen action during World War II, invading Juno Beach on D-Day with the Royal Canadian Artillery. He was shot four times in the leg, one in the hand, and one in the chest. The one in the hand resulted in him losing a finger. Later, in 1945, although not a member of the Air Force, he took a plane and slalomed it between telegraph poles near Salisbury Plain, just to prove it could be done. This earned him a severe reprimand and the title the "craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Force".
5. Scotty is Second Officer, third in command of the Enterprise, meaning he takes over if both Kirk and Spock are absent. However, the character declared during an appearance in Star Trek The Next Generation that he wasn't interested in command, but "never wanted to be anything else but an engineer".
6. He managed to appear in TNG, set much later than the original series, because, according to the storyline, he'd been involved in a crash on his way to a retirement colony and been stranded - so he stored himself in the buffer of the transporter for 75 years until the crew of the new Enterprise rescued him.
7. The catch phrase, "Beam me up, Scotty" was never uttered in the original series of Star Trek, although characters in later animated versions have said it.
8. The dour Scottish engineer has become somewhat iconic. Parodies of Scotty appear in World of Warcraft, Spaceballs, Goof Troop, The Simpsons, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Beavis and Butt-Head and All That. Scotty has even appeared in a Far Side comic and is mentioned in songs by Jimmy Buffett, D4L and Relient K.
9. After Star Trek, Doohan's acting career didn't get the boost the actor had hoped for. The few roles he had afterwards tended to be similar to Scotty. However, he became popular making appearances at conventions as Scotty and enjoyed interacting with fans. He inspired many young people to choose engineering as a career. He even saved one fan's life - he persuaded the suicidal young woman to attend his next convention appearance, and she was inspired to go on living and to go back to school and become an electronics engineer.
10. Astronaut Neil Armstrong was an engineer before the Apollo missions. At Doohan's last public appearance in 2004, Armstrong said to him on stage, "From one old engineer to another, thanks, mate."

See Also

James T Kirk

Lieutenant Uhura 

Mr Spock 

Star Trek 

Tribbles

I write fiction, too! My characters include some British superheroes and a psychic detective. You never know, your new favourite could be here! You won't know unless you look...

See details of all my books

Browse other topics I've covered in this blog - HERE.

Like my Facebook page for news of Topical Ten posts, posts on my writing blog, and news of upcoming publications.