Montgomery Scott


 * "Back home, we call him 'the miracle worker'."
 * - Leonard H. McCoy

Montgomery Scott (referred to as Scotty by his shipmates), serial number SE 19754 T, was the chief engineer of both the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) and the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A) for a period of nearly thirty years. Having the reputation as a "miracle worker", he was a man of superior technical and engineering skill, experience and ingenuity. Despite his superior talents as an Engineer, he was often the source of comic relief amongst the crew.

Early life and career
Montgomery Scott was born in Scotland, part of Great Britain, on Earth in 2222. He spent part of his life in Aberdeen, once referring to himself as an "old Aberdeen pub-crawler." 

Upon being asked how he adjusted to space travel, Scott once admitted, "I was practically born to it." He joined Starfleet and began his engineering career in 2241. During his 51-year career in Starfleet, he served on a total of eleven ships, including various freighters, cruisers and starships. He also briefly served as an engineering adviser on the freight line between the Deneva colony and the outlying asteroid belts. 

The five-year mission
In 2265, Scott was assigned to the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) where he served as second officer and chief engineer under Captain James Kirk. The Enterprise was the first ship on which he was the chief engineer.

His duties also included maintenance and operation of the Enterprise's transporter systems. Three of his top engineers included Lieutenants Kyle, Leslie and Gabler.

As the ship's second officer, Scott assumed command when both Kirk and Spock left the ship, or they both were incapacitated. Thus, he often faced critical diplomatic and military situations. In 2268 Kirk noted him to commendation for his outstanding command performance without disobeying the Prime Directive and saving the landing party on planet 892-IV. However in 2267, Kirk jokingly "fired" Scott when he couldn't repair the ship's engines and break out of orbit around Gamma Trianguli VI. After the destruction of Vaal Kirk immediately "re-hired" him. Despite being a capable command officer he never pursued his own command post because he "...never wanted to be anythin' else but an engineer." 

By the late 2260s, Scott knew more about the warp engines aboard a starship than the men who designed them. This knowledge and ability to save the ship in a jam eventually led to his reputation aboard the Enterprise as a "miracle worker." This was brought about by his reputation for being able to effect starship repairs faster than usually required. Scott later admitted that he often padded his estimates of time needed for repairs by a factor of four in order to appear that much faster. 

In 2268, Scott stated that he knew the Enterprise better than Larry Marvick, the man who designed the starship. When Marvick visited the ship, escorting the Medusan Ambassador Kollos, Scott made a bet, that he won't find his way around the engine room. When Scott allowed him to the warp engine controls, Marvick, under the madness brought on by the sight of the Medusan, attempted to take over the vessel, and hurled it into the void surrounding our galaxy. 

In 2267, Scott was thrown against a bulkhead of the Enterprise during an explosion. This resulted in a severe concussion and possible amnesia. He was ordered to take time off for therapeutic shore leave on the planet Argelius II. While on Argelius he got into "a wee bit of trouble," as he later described it, when he was accused of murdering an Argelian woman named Kara. Scott's situation worsened when he was accused of two more murders, those of another Argelian, Sybo, and fellow officer Karen Tracy. Scott was later acquitted of the murder charges, following the discovery of a non-humanoid lifeform called Redjac in the form of Mr. Hengist, who was found to be responsible for the murders, and who admitted to being Jack the Ripper and other serial killers in previous incarnations. 

Scott was extremely proud of the Enterprise. In fact, he was so proud that he once started a bar fight aboard Deep Space Station K-7 when the Klingon named Korax suggested that the ship should be hauled away as garbage. As a result, he was confined to his quarters by Kirk. Scott smiled and told Kirk the punishment would give him a chance to catch up on technical journals he had not had time to read. Shortly after the incident at K-7, Scott managed to rid the Enterprise of the tribbles which had infested the ship. Much to the pleasure of Captain Kirk, Scott, in collaboration with Spock and McCoy, beamed the tribbles aboard a Klingon ship where they would be "no tribble at all". 

In 2268, Scott helped Kirk, Spock and McCoy regain control of the Enterprise after the ship was invaded by agents of the Kelvan Empire and set on a course to the Andromeda Galaxy. Before leaving the Milky Way Galaxy, Scott and Spock devised a plan to destroy the Enterprise at the galactic barrier, but Kirk decided against it. Later Scott tried to incapacitate the Kelvan agent Tomar by drinking various alcoholic beverages with him. He got Tomar so drunk that the alien passed out, but his plan was foiled when Scott passed out before he could leave his quarters. 

In the same year the Enterprise was hurled hundreds of light years away from a Kalandan outpost, and sabotage accelerated the ship to dangerously high warp speeds. Scott risked his life by entering the access crawlspace to the matter-antimatter reaction chamber to repair the fused matter-antimatter integrator, a procedure so dangerous that it was not to be undertaken while the integrator was in operation. When a faulty magnetic probe nearly ruined the procedure, Scott demanded that Spock eject him from the chamber into space, but Spock risked critical seconds to allow the engineer to successfully complete his task. 

Later career
In 2270, Commander Scott played an instrumental role in the massive refit of the USS Enterprise while serving under Captain Will Decker. 

In 2285, Scott was promoted and reassigned to the USS Excelsior as Captain of engineering during the ship's early test runs. Scott detested his assignment aboard the Excelsior, citing the ship as little more than a "bucket of bolts", and didn't particularly care for Captain Styles either. He later sabotaged the Excelsior, removing components from her transwarp computer drive. This prevented the ship from jumping to transwarp drive when the Enterprise was stolen for an unauthorized mission to the Genesis planet.

When arriving at the Genesis planet, a Klingon Bird-of-Prey ambushed the Enterprise and opened fire, disabling Scott's automation system and leaving the ship as "a sitting duck". Scott, along with Kirk and Chekov, initiated the Enterprise's auto-destruct sequence to prevent it from falling into Klingon hands. The crew beamed down to the planet, where they watched their beloved ship burn up in the atmosphere. This would later in life affect Scott emotionally, when he comments that the Enterprise was "his home and where he had a purpose". 

In 2286, Scott traveled back in time to 1986 along with the rest of the Enterprise crew to find a pair of humpback whales. In order to construct a water tank for them, he visited the Plexicorp facility as "Professor Scott" from Edinburgh. Making a deal with plant manager Nichols he gave him the formula of transparent aluminum in exchange for a sheet of plexiglass. When Dr. McCoy objected against "changing the future," Scott pointed out "How do we know he didn't invent the thing?". After returning home he was reassigned as chief engineer of the newly commissioned USS Enterprise-A. He then spent nearly a year refitting the ship for service. 

Scott played a role in exposing the Khitomer conspiracy in 2293. Upon beaming down to the surface of Khitomer, he shot Colonel West, who was about to assassinate the Federation president, out of a window and several stories to his death. 

Retirement
In 2293, Scott obtained a boat in anticipation of his retirement from the Enterprise-A. 

Scott appeared as a "guest of honor" aboard the launch of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-B). When the Enterprise-B responded to the distress call of two El-Aurian transports, he assisted in rescuing a small group of survivors. 

In 2294, following his retirement from Starfleet, Scott traveled aboard the USS Jenolan to the Norpin colony, where he planned to spend his retirement. The Jenolan, however, encountered a Dyson sphere en route, and while attempting to investigate it, the transport crashed on its surface. Scott and fellow engineer Matt Franklin were the only survivors. Together they rigged the Jenolan's transporter systems, and existed for nearly 75 years in the ship's transporter buffer. 

In 2369, Montgomery Scott was rescued by the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), but Franklin's pattern was too degraded to be recovered. After Scott helped rescue the Enterprise-D from the Dyson sphere, Captain Picard rewarded him with the Enterprise's shuttlecraft Goddard. 

Sometime before 2387, Montgomery Scott discovered the necessary formulas enabling transwarp beaming, which Spock would later give to a younger Scott in 2258 of an alternate reality. 

Family and personal life
Scott had at least one sister, whose youngest child, Peter Preston, served aboard the Enterprise in 2285 as a midshipman during a Starfleet Academy training cruise. Preston was killed when the Enterprise was attacked and severely damaged by the USS Reliant in a surprise attack by Khan Noonien Singh. Scott was grief-stricken after the tragedy. 

Scott had a love for good Scotch whisky, often making references to drinking or frequenting drinking establishments on more than one planet, even referring to himself once as an "old Aberdeen pub-crawler." He considered Scotch a drink for real men as opposed to, for instance, vodka which he referred to as "sodapop" and "milk diet". 

He took shore leave reluctantly, and ran into trouble during shore leave on at least three occasions: a fistfight on Deep Space Station K-7, an arrest for murder on Argelius,  and a "wee bout" requiring Dr. McCoy's attention. 

He also played bagpipes, most notably playing "Amazing Grace" at the funeral for Captain Spock in 2285. He was also fascinated to be handling an old fashioned Scottish claymore. 

Relationships
Although a gentleman at heart, life as an engineer for Scott was often lonely, as he often attempted to pursue hopeless relationships with much younger female officers that were often perceived as being out of his league.

Scott was first attracted to Carolyn Palamas and reacted bitterly to the Greek god Apollo's infatuation with her. 

Scott later became infatuated with the newly transferred Mira Romaine in 2269. 

Years later, Commander Uhura began to show some romantic interest in Scott, but their relationship was never pursued. 

Memorable Quotes
"I cannae change the laws of physics! I've got'' to have thirty minutes!"

"Of course I could treat them to a few dozen photon torpedoes."

"Diplomacy! (Derisive snort.) The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank!"

"Aye, the haggis is in the fire for sure."

"It's armed now. Press this one--thirty seconds later, poof. Once it's activated, there's no way to stop it." (telling Kirk about the delay detonation device hooked into the Constellation's impulse engines)

"Before they went into warp I transported the whole kit 'n' kaboodle into their engine room...where they'll be no tribble at all."

"You mind your place, mister, or you'll be wearing concrete galoshes."

"It's--uh... (sniffs contents of bottle) Well, it's green." (later paraphrased by Data in )

"All right, you lovelies. Hold together."

"That Vulcan won't be satisfied until these panels are a puddle of lead!"

"Oh, my bairns! My poor, poor bairns..."

"The Enterprise takes no orders, except those of Captain Kirk. And if you make any attempt to board or commandeer the Enterprise, it will be blown to bits along with as many of you as we can take with us!"

"I'll not take that, Mr. Spock! That transporter was functioning perfectly! Transport me down right now and I'll explain to those... gentlemen..."

"President Lincoln indeed! No doubt to be followed by Louis of France and Robert the Bruce."

"Mad! Loony as an Arcturian dogbird!"

"Give the word Admiral!"

'"Mr. Scott, the word is given."''

"Aye, Sir!"


 * - Scotty, Kirk

"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."

"Up your shaft..." (Scotty to Excelsior's computer in the turbolift)

"Hello, computer!"

"A keyboard. (in disgust) How quaint."

"Why? How do we know he didn't invent the thing?" (speaking with Dr. McCoy on the temporal consequences of giving 23rd century technology to Doctor Nichols)

"Give me one more day, Sir. Damage control's easy - reading Klingon, that's hard!" (to Kirk regarding the HMS Bounty)

"Admiral! There be whales here!" (commenting in glee after the two humpback whales named George and Gracie beam into their cargo hold)

"Don't you worry, captain. We'll beat those Klingon devils, even if I have to get out and push!"

"I know this ship like the back o' me hand!" (at which point Scott knocks himself out cold on a low hanging pipe)

"WHATTAYA STANDING AROUND FOR??? Ye not know a jailbreak when ye SEE one???" (after rescuing Kirk, McCoy, and Spock from the brig)

"Borgus Frat! "Let's see what she's got," said the captain! And then we found out, didn't we?" (lamenting the fact that the new Enterprise is far from fully functional yet)

"USS Enterprise shakedown cruise report. I think this "new" ship was put together by monkeys. Oh, she's got a fine engine, but half the doors won't open, and guess whose job it is to make it right?" (log entry on the status of USS Enterprise-A)

"I'll bet that Klingon bitch killed her father!"

"N-C-C 1-7-0-1. No bloody A, B, C, or D."

"I have spent my whole life trying to figure out crazy ways of doing things."

"Starship captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. The secret is to give them what they need, not what they want."- Scotty, offering La Forge advice on handling Starfleet captains''"

"The tank can't handle that much pressure."

"Where'd you get that idea?"

"It's in the impulse specifications."

"Regulation 42/15: 'Pressure Variances in IRC Tank Storage'?"

"Right."

"Oh, that. Forget it. I WROTE it!"

- La Forge and Scotty

""A good Engineer is always a wee bit conservative, at least on paper." - Scotty, to La Forge, regarding IRC Tank Pressure Variances Regulation 42/15 "

"I may be captain by rank... but I never wanted to be anything else but an engineer."

"Synthetic scotch, synthetic commanders..." (aloud to himself on synthehol and Data)

Chronology

 * 2222: Montgomery Scott is born
 * 2242: Begins his Starfleet career
 * 2265: Assigned as chief engineer of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701); rank: lieutenant commander
 * 2270: Assigned to refit crew of the USS Enterprise; rank: commander
 * 2285: Promoted to captain while assigned to the USS Excelsior; remained the rank of captain following theft of the Enterprise and hijacking of HMS Bounty
 * 2286: Assigned as chief engineer of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A)
 * 2293: Guest of honor aboard the newly-commissioned USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-B)
 * 2294: Retires from Starfleet with the rank of captain; lost aboard USS Jenolan on Dyson sphere
 * 2369: Discovered by the crew of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D)

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Background

 * Montgomery Scott was played by actor James Doohan in all of the character's television and cinematic appearances set in the "prime" universe. Doohan lost the middle finger on his right hand during the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day. However, Scott has a right middle finger within the Star Trek storyline: any time a closeup is seen of Scott's right hand (working the transporter controls, etc.) someone else's hands are used, and when Scott appeared in wide shots he usually hid his right hand from the camera. His loss was most evident in, where the missing finger can be clearly seen in wide shots while talking to Captain Picard on the holodeck recreation of the original Enterprise bridge and in , when Scotty is holding a bag of food.
 * The character of Scotty mostly originated from James Doohan himself. Doohan was asked by director James Goldstone, to whom he auditioned for another role only ten days prior, to come in and read a few lines from the script of for him, Gene Roddenberry, Robert Justman, Joseph D'Agosta and Morris Chapnick. The role he was proposed for was the unnamed Chief Engineer. Goldstone asked him to do some accents, while Doohan did several ones, including Irish, Scottish, English, Russian, etc. Roddenberry asked him which one he would choose, and he said Scottish, because of Scotsmen's great engineering skills. Thus, the character became Scottish, and Doohan apparenty named him "Scotty". (The World of Star Trek),
 * Gene Roddenberry nearly dropped Scott from the series after the second pilot. He informed Doohan's agent, Paul Wilkins, that "we don't think we need an engineer in the series". Wilkins became irate and met with Roddenberry that day, and insisted on returning Doohan to the Enterprise, which turned out to be a favorable decision. (Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, pp 152-153)
 * NBC's early- press brochure about Star Trek described Scott as:


 * Engineer Officer Scott is a wizard at repairing everything from the reading light on the captain's bunk to the ship's huge "space warp" engines. In an era of almost complete automation, his ability to fix things with a piece of baling wire or a rubber band has proven invaluable on more than one occasion. (reprinted in Inside Star Trek: The Real Story)


 * The series writer's guide (third revision, dated described the character as:


 * ENGINEERING OFFICER MONTGOMERY SCOTT: Played by James Doohan, Scott holds the rank of lieutenant commander, senior engineering officer on the U.S.S. Enterprise. With an accent that drips of heather and the Highlands, he is known to most as "Scotty".


 * Scotty came up through the ranks, and his practical education is as broad as his formal training in engineering. He has rare mechanical capacity - many claim he can put an engine together with baling wire and glue... and make it run. He regards the U.S.S. Enterprise as his personal vessel and the engineering section as his private world, where even Captain James Kirk is merely a privileged trespasser.


 * Engineering and spaceships are his life. His idea of a pleasant afternoon is tinkering in any engineering section of the vessel; he is totally unable to understand why any sane man would spend reading time on anything but technical manuals. He is strong minded, strong willed, and not incapable of telling off even a Starfleet captain who intrudes into what Scotty regards as his own private province and area of responsibilities. (Star Trek: The Original Series 365)


 * There is much debate, especially in Scotland, as to which Scottish city Montgomery Scott was born in. The character once described himself as an "Aberdeen pub crawler" in . Confusing the matter is a 1970s interview with actor James Doohan in which he stated his belief that Scott came from Elgin, a town forty miles west of Aberdeen. Linlithgow, twenty miles west of Edinburgh has also been vocal in its claim, citing D.C. Fontana's novel Vulcan's Glory. If either of these claims are correct, it would imply Scott had a relatively genteel upbringing, as the regional accent of Aberdeenshire is far more coarse and Gaelicised than Scott's.  On the death of James Doohan, the local West Lothian Council announced plans to open a memorial exhibition for James Doohan in Linlithgow to commemorate his contribution to the Trek universe and make the town's claim to be the future birthplace of Montgomery Scott concrete. The exhibition, held at Annet House, Scott's "official" future childhood home opened in the summer of 2007. It is worth noting that in the non-canon story published in the UK comic magazine TV21 & Joe 90 #21 in 1970, Scott describes his ancestors as "".  According to Who's Who in Star Trek #2 (DC Comics, April 1987), Scott was born in Glasgow.  His actual accent implies he was raised in or near Edinburgh.
 * Simon Pegg, who portrayed Scotty's alternate self in 2009's, concocted his own backstory for the character to settle the debate over the character's accent.
 * One inconsistency that involves Scott is that when the USS Enterprise-D rescued him from the from the transporter buffer of the USS Jenolan in "Relics", Commander William T. Riker said that he was from the "USS Enterprise". Hearing this, Scott assumed "Jim Kirk himself" had arrived to find him; however, before Scott embarked on his trip on the Jenolan, he witnessed Kirk get blown off the Enterprise-B, and though not known to him, into the Nexus, so he should have known Kirk wasn't alive to be able to find him. This was caused by the fact that the movie Generations was filmed after Relics, causing a . (In what may have been an attempt to address the discrepancy, in the novelization of Generations, Guinan tells Chekov that Kirk is, in fact, alive within the Nexus, though this information may not have reached Scotty.) According to Ronald D. Moore, who wrote both "Relics" and Generations, Scott was included in the latter despite the inconsistency out of affection for the character. (Star Trek Chronology)
 * Another minor inconsistency can be spotted in, where Scott wears uniforms with commander's insignia instead of captain's.
 * In the unfilmed Star Trek: The First Adventure script, Scott is depicted as working with George Kirk on an experimental dilithium-fuelled warp jump before his disappearance.

Apocrypha
With the introduction of Scott's origin story in the alternate reality, several novels set in the prime reality detail Scott's origins there:

In the novel The Kobayashi Maru, Cadet Scott less-than-voluntarily entered the Command School at Starfleet Academy, but was reassigned to Engineering after a Kobayashi Maru attempt in which he reprogrammed the test to make it so that a strategy he knew would never work might be effective – though in truth he had known engineering was his dream job long before enrolling at the Academy, and therefore deliberately used a disproved solution so that he would be sent to train for that specialty.

In the D.C. Fontana novel Vulcan's Glory, in 2253, Lieutenant Scott signed aboard the Enterprise as a junior engineer under Lieutenant Commander Caitlin Barry. In his early days aboard the ship he set up a still in main engineering for producing Engine Room Hooch. Despite the popularity of the beverage, it was produced by an illegal still, and Scott along with the other engineers were warned never to produce the beverage again.

In the novel Enterprise: The First Adventure, by 2264, Scott assumed the responsibilities of being chief engineer and was promoted to lieutenant commander under the command of Captain James T. Kirk. Scott was fiercely loyal to Captain Christopher Pike and initially he did not warm up to Kirk as he felt that the young captain could place the ship in jeopardy. Over time, the two officers put their initial differences behind them and became close friends.

In the comic issue Retrospect, Scotty had an on-again, off-again relationship with a woman he'd known all his life named Glynnis Campbell. The comic tells the story of how they met and fell in love, went their separate ways, and eventually got married years later. They married shortly before the events of, and she died in a shuttle accident during the Enterprise crew's period of exile on Vulcan.

By the novel Ship of the Line, Scotty has become a teacher at Starfleet Academy, but stands in as a temporary chief engineer aboard the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E) for its inaugural voyage under Morgan Bateson.

The Star Trek novelization has Spock revealing that the Prime Scott was also stationed at Delta Vega, which Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman stated on the film's audio commentary were meant to be for the same reasons.

In the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novels, Scotty is given command of the unit sometime after his retrieval from the Jenolan.