Does anyone know what was up with that? To me, that was the thing that really made him look different in The Motion Picture and beyond. Prior to that, in-universe, I can't recall one instance of facial hair portrayed among Starfleet personnel. It was obviously something he didn't care to shave off, but I just can't imagine, say Shatner or Nimoy doing that (thank goodnesss)! Was there a reason?
As a kid I remember thinking they'd got new actors to play Scotty and Kirk as they both looked so different to how I remembered them in TOS! bear in mind I was very young, had only seen a handful of episodes cowering behind the sofa (TOS was scary for a kid!), and the first movie I saw was TWOK (so everything looked way different/realer and both Kirk and Scotty looked noticeably different to TOS)
Never ceases to amaze me how obsessed Star Trek fans get with facial hair! Doohan had actually grown it between TOS and the movies (I've seen early sketches for TAS that even incorporated it into their cartoon Scotty designs, before the animators decided it'd be better to portray the actors as they'd appeared in TOS rather than update them). I think a couple others, Takei or maybe Koenig, were seen sporting regular facial hair during this period too... but they shaved it off before TMP began shooting. Doohan obviously wanted to keep his. I do agree, it is something that does a lot to change Doohan's face... the 'stache has become kind of iconic, but I prefer Scotty clean-shaven, to be honest. I do know for a fact that it's encouraged in the police services, as it's believed that neatly trimmed facial hair adds as sense of authority (don't know if that extends to military personnel though).
I think Doohan in TOS cut quite an imposing figure physically and he was very believeable as a guy you didn't screw with in those instances when he took command of the Enterprise. In the film when they put him in the engineering suit and his mustache he just looked like a kind of flustered middle age guy who hated his job and wanted to buy a ferrarri and find a 22 year old hardbody with big tits.
Well, putting on my "in-universe" hat, perhaps so many aliens had joined Starfleet by this point, and different aliens have hair in strange places and weird things protruding from their faces, so asking personnel not to have facial hair becomes...a hairy situation. Plus, Scotty was a trailblazer. Just look at how muststachey Starfleet was by TSFS...
^The middle guy looks like a porn star. Maybe he should shave. Doohan grew the mustache in the early '70s, and was seen with it firmly in place for his role of Commander Carnarvin in the Saturday morning Space Academy followup Jason of Star Command.
As I mentioned when this came up before, if you were a few years older you might have been already prepared for Scotty's new look:
I hate the term "facial hair". It sounds like it comes from women's cosmetics ("removes unwanted facial hair!"). It's a flipping beard and mustache, or "whiskers" even.
I agree, Maurice. It seems like such a...euphemistic way of putting it. Not unlike referring to 'bathroom tissue'. I became curious about the mustache thing because you had an actor returning to a role for which he'd become famous, I just wonder if the subject had come up behind the scenes prior to filming. Sure times change and someone may opt to alter their appearance, much as the other actors that doubleohfive was nice enough to post pictures of. I would imaging that if Shatner or Nimoy had come to the studio with one with the idea of keeping it, their wishes would have likely met with some resistance. Not knowing what goes through someone else's mind of course, I nevertheless wonder why Doohan didn't say, "Well, time to be Scotty again" and shave the thing. Heck, they managed to get Ms. Khambatta to shave her whole darned head!
Doohan looked cool in STAR TREK: The Motion Picture, but after that, Jimmy should've shaved his mustache. His head got too big and his hair went thin and limp, the stash started looking like it didn't belong, somehow.
Really?? It's a category. It's easier to say "facial hair" than it is to say "mustaches, beards, goatees, etc." It was mentioned in reference to all facial hair (er...mustaches, beards, goatees, etc.) in the military and likewise in Starfleet.
Maybe they kept the TOS cast clean-shaven in case the story ever called for one of them to put on a fake beard and pretend to be a crazy prospector, like the Lone Ranger. "Who was that pointy-eared man...?"