Character Insight No. 189: Best of Montgomery Scott

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue the "Best Of" series for The Original Series characters with a look at Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott. Here are some of his most memorable quotes and appearances.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp189


While Scotty is of course known for his engineering prowess, he is also high on the chain of command for the Enterprise. We see his diplomacy style when in charge of the ship in the episode A Taste of Armageddon:

Scott: The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.

While Scotty earns a reputation for his engineering, one of his low moments as a character was found in Spock's Brain, where the flat dialogue indicates he can see engineering prowess in others based solely on gender (ah, the 60's):

Scott: Those women could never have set up anything as complex as this has to be – that takes engineering genius but there's no sign of engineering genius in any of those women.

It does get better for Scotty though, as even when he gets into trouble by starting a bar fight to defend the honor of the Enterprise in The Trouble With Tribbles, he turns it into a positive by being happy to review his beloved technical manuals some more.

Capt. Kirk: Another technical journal, Scotty?
Scott: Aye.
Capt. Kirk: Don't you ever relax?
Scott: I am relaxing.

One of Scotty's most interesting character pieces is Wolf in the Fold, in which Scotty is essential put on trial for murder, and his character is at issue. At one point, he loses all faith in the process of justice on Argelius II:

Scott: Captain, you mean my neck is gonna have to depend on some spooky mumbo-jumbo?

Just like other TOS characters, we also get to see Scotty develop further in the movies as well as in an appearance on The Next Generation. However, my favorite late Scotty scene is a funny one from The Voyage Home, in which Scotty expresses his distaste for the backwards non-voice recognition computers of the era:

Scotty: Computer! Computer?
[He's handed a mouse, and he speaks into it]
Scotty: Hello, computer.
Dr. Nichols: Just use the keyboard.
Scotty: Keyboard. How quaint.

Scotty adds yet another interesting dose of diversity and uniqueness to the cast of the original show, and he of course will always be remembered for the meme or phrase "Beam me up, Scotty." That's more than most characters have accomplished, and as such, Montgomery Scott and James Doohan made one of the best characters in Star Trek lore. Doohan would also go on to voice many of the side roles in The Animated Series as well.