Is it just me, or was Scotty unnecessary as a recurring role?

[A.V.I.A.F.]

Don't get me wrong, I love Doohan and the character he developed but there was only so much room for that development in TOS. I remember seeing something in a documentary (I think it is during one of the interviews that accompanied the DVD set that came out in 2003 or 2005) where someone said that originally Scotty and Kirk were going to be the main characters who interacted with each other (i.e., Kirk as the brash young Captain and Scotty as the seasoned veteran who would be at odds with Kirk over what the ship could and could not handle). Then, as the producers discovered the winning Shatner-Nimoy-Kelley chemistry, the importance of Scotty's role got bumped.

Whether or not this is true, I think that an argument can be made that for the most part Scotty's character was superfluous and his dialogue largely repetitive (the ship can't take it, we're going to explode, there's nothing that can be done, I can't hold her together much longer, we have X number of hours, minutes, seconds, before all hell breaks loose, etc....). There are exceptions of course (Wolf in the Fold or getting zapped by Nomad), but any other secondary character could have filled that role. For the most part, Scotty's lines could have been spoken by any engineer in engineering. Scotty was not often needed on the bridge (unless if he was relieving command) and spent most of his time in Engineering. Again, any other secondary character could have filled those shoes.

So, my point is, how different would TOS have been without a recurring engineer like Scotty? Would the show have been significantly different without him? Some might say that you could make the same argument for Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov, but I would argue that since they were regular bridge personnel whose tasks required them to be on the bridge that that puts them in a different league. What do you think?

 

[Maurice]

You could have done without Scotty. Hell, TNG tried it, and what you ended up with was a sense of the ship not actually having an engineers but a random guest-technician of the week. Scotty may not have been a well-developed character, but he was important for making the ship's crew seem more than the three leads and the couple of regular button-pushers on the bridge.

 

[spockrocks]

The original Enterprise without Scotty?????? That would be like a turkey dinner without the gravy!

 

[Deckerd]

Even as a child I thought he was dreadful. If you're going to have a Scot at least hire a fucking Scotsman. There's no reason why he couldn't have been a Canadian engineer if they want to to keep the actor.

 

[AFEK ESLCAFE W]

I am going to come to the character's defense, but considering his well-renowned reputation a defense probably isn't even necessary.

Scotty was important to the fact that he showed the viewers that in the future all machines were not just automatic and mechanized computerized components, but it was the careful talent, skills, and heart of a technician working passionately at his craft that kept the ship and engines running safely, soundly, and smoothly.

He was the human touch. Without him, the Enterprise would just be a well-run, but a lifeless machine. It was his love for the ole' gal (as well as Kirk) that humanized the entire ship and made her a beloved character in her own right.

You should also be thankful that the writers made him more of a multi-faceted human being who spoke his mind and was passionate about other interests alongside engineering (such as women and socialized drinking). If not that, then TOS would have been filled more with "button pushers" such as Uhura, Sulu, and Kyle, and thankfully we ended up seeing more well-rounded human characters onboard the ship because of the well-rounded way that he was written.

And I personally cannot see any other character defending the Enterprise against Klingon insults like he could in "The Trouble With Tribbles" because he was a character who did not take things lying down. He may have been a bit fussy at times at the amount of work he was ordered to do in a relatively short period of time, but he was always there to get the job done. Always -- even up to Generations and "Relics." Future engineer characters such as O'Brien and Trip owe a great deal to his characterization, to tell you the truth.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

AFEK's reasoning is extremely sound. The engineer character is the voice of the machine. The ship needs a personality, otherwise it is just a prop with no more impact than a wall full of flat screens or blinky lights. Scotty set the franchise mold followed best by Geordi and Trip. They brought the ship to life.

 

[Gov Kodos]

And when push comes to shove, Scotty is willing to bounce a dozen photon torpedoes off of an arsehole planet, so he gets many kudos in my book.

 

[Christopher]

Don't get me wrong, I love Doohan and the character he developed but there was only so much room for that development in TOS.

True, but that was characteristic of the era, and the amount of character development Scotty got was pretty good for a supporting character in a '60s adventure show.

I remember seeing something in a documentary (I think it is during one of the interviews that accompanied the DVD set that came out in 2003 or 2005) where someone said that originally Scotty and Kirk were going to be the main characters who interacted with each other (i.e., Kirk as the brash young Captain and Scotty as the seasoned veteran who would be at odds with Kirk over what the ship could and could not handle). Then, as the producers discovered the winning Shatner-Nimoy-Kelley chemistry, the importance of Scotty's role got bumped.

I've never heard that claimed before, and it doesn't fit the facts. Nimoy was billed as a regular from the second pilot onward, and Kelley was always the top-billed recurring player in the first season. Doohan was usually the second-last billed of the recurring cast through most of season 1, below everyone except Nichelle Nichols, with only a few exceptions (he was higher than Takei in a few episodes and lower than Nichols in "The Squire of Gothos"). It wasn't until "City on the Edge" that he began being consistently billed above Takei and Nichols (and eventually Koenig). And of course he was only in 18 of the first season's 29 episodes.

So far from being conceived as a major player who then got bumped, Doohan was initially a low-ranking member of the supporting ensemble whose role grew over time.

So maybe what you heard on that DVD was just someone's speculation about what they would've liked to see, rather than something that was actually planned.

Whether or not this is true, I think that an argument can be made that for the most part Scotty's character was superfluous and his dialogue largely repetitive (the ship can't take it, we're going to explode, there's nothing that can be done, I can't hold her together much longer, we have X number of hours, minutes, seconds, before all hell breaks loose, etc....). There are exceptions of course (Wolf in the Fold or getting zapped by Nomad), but any other secondary character could have filled that role. For the most part, Scotty's lines could have been spoken by any engineer in engineering.

But would they have carried as much weight for the viewer if they'd come from some stranger instead of a familiar, trusted face? Besides, Doohan was successful at making those warnings sound convincingly urgent. It was a job any character could theoretically have done, but Doohan did it well. If he hadn't, he would've been replaced rather than promoted.

So, my point is, how different would TOS have been without a recurring engineer like Scotty? Would the show have been significantly different without him? Some might say that you could make the same argument for Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov, but I would argue that since they were regular bridge personnel whose tasks required them to be on the bridge that that puts them in a different league. What do you think?

Bridge or engineering, I don't see that it's a critical difference. We were getting significant portions of the stories set in engineering as early as "The Enemy Within." Not to mention that the transporter was often important to the stories and that was also Scotty's domain. So it's an artificial distinction. The engineer/transporter chief is in the same "league" as the helmsman or the communications officer.

 

[sonak]

the chief engineer is a very important role on a ship, and as another poster mentioned, it helped TNG when they finally had a regular one. Plus, Scotty was just as important in his role as the guy who routinely took over when Kirk and Spock irresponsibly went off on another planetary adventure.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Even as a child I thought he was dreadful. If you're going to have a Scot at least hire a fucking Scotsman. There's no reason why he couldn't have been a Canadian engineer if they want to to keep the actor.

I used to complain that it has never been a main character from Italy: among Europeans we had a Scot (sorta), a Russian (sorta), a French (sorta), a Greek (sorta), an Irish, and a Brit, why never an Italian? But then I thought about the horrible job they would have done hiring an Italian (sorta), and I am now glad of it.

 

[BillJ]

Replace unnecessary with underrated.

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

AFEK's reasoning is extremely sound. The engineer character is the voice of the machine. The ship needs a personality, otherwise it is just a prop with no more impact than a wall full of flat screens or blinky lights. Scotty set the franchise mold followed best by Geordi and Trip. They brought the ship to life.

True, but McCoy's character did a fine job of injecting humanity into the highly mechanized universe of TOS. Was it really necessary to have another (secondary) character do the same thing?

Saying that Scotty was important to the development of Geordi and Trip creates a chicken-egg argument. If Scotty can be argued to have been superfluous, so would his predecessors. What I mean is, we never would have missed them if we hadn't had Scotty to begin with.

 

[Kamdan]

I remember seeing something in a documentary (I think it is during one of the interviews that accompanied the DVD set that came out in 2003 or 2005) where someone said that originally Scotty and Kirk were going to be the main characters who interacted with each other (i.e., Kirk as the brash young Captain and Scotty as the seasoned veteran who would be at odds with Kirk over what the ship could and could not handle). Then, as the producers discovered the winning Shatner-Nimoy-Kelley chemistry, the importance of Scotty's role got bumped.

I've never heard that claimed before, and it doesn't fit the facts. Nimoy was billed as a regular from the second pilot onward, and Kelley was always the top-billed recurring player in the first season. Doohan was usually the second-last billed of the recurring cast through most of season 1, below everyone except Nichelle Nichols, with only a few exceptions (he was higher than Takei in a few episodes and lower than Nichols in "The Squire of Gothos"). It wasn't until "City on the Edge" that he began being consistently billed above Takei and Nichols (and eventually Koenig). And of course he was only in 18 of the first season's 29 episodes.

So far from being conceived as a major player who then got bumped, Doohan was initially a low-ranking member of the supporting ensemble whose role grew over time.

So maybe what you heard on that DVD was just someone's speculation about what they would've liked to see, rather than something that was actually planned.

I think it was John D.F. Black who made that statement.

 

[Nerys Myk]

AFEK's reasoning is extremely sound. The engineer character is the voice of the machine. The ship needs a personality, otherwise it is just a prop with no more impact than a wall full of flat screens or blinky lights. Scotty set the franchise mold followed best by Geordi and Trip. They brought the ship to life.

True, but McCoy's character did a fine job of injecting humanity into the highly mechanized universe of TOS. Was it really necessary to have another (secondary) character do the same thing?

Saying that Scotty was important to the development of Geordi and Trip creates a chicken-egg argument. If Scotty can be argued to have been superfluous, so would his predecessors. What I mean is, we never would have missed them if we hadn't had Scotty to begin with.

I think you might have misunderstood Mutai Ro Shin's point. Scotty is the "voice" of the Enterprise not humanity. The ship is his pride and joy and he doesn't like it when Kirk ( or anyone else) abuses her. He's also the guy who has to fix her and diagnose her ailments. Thats needed for story purposes.

 

[Tom]

Even as a child I thought he was dreadful. If you're going to have a Scot at least hire a fucking Scotsman. There's no reason why he couldn't have been a Canadian engineer if they want to to keep the actor.

I used to complain that it has never been a main character from Italy: among Europeans we had a Scot (sorta), a Russian (sorta), a French (sorta), a Greek (sorta), an Irish, and a Brit, why never an Italian? But then I thought about the horrible job they would have done hiring an Italian (sorta), and I am now glad of it.

Maybe Italy was nuked out of existance in WW3 .. just saying.

 

[Lord Garth FOI]

Disagree

Scotty was a tweener. There was Shatner, Nimoy and Kelly. Then Doohan. He buffered the main stars from the peons. I think he was greatly developed in that role and every scene he was in offered something. Rewatch Fridays Child. He was never meant to be one of the big three but he was clearly the big forth all his own which was a pretty significant place to be

 

[Christopher]

Saying that Scotty was important to the development of Geordi and Trip creates a chicken-egg argument. If Scotty can be argued to have been superfluous, so would his predecessors.

You mean his successors, surely. Trip is technically a predecessor in-universe, but Geordi certainly isn't.

What I mean is, we never would have missed them if we hadn't had Scotty to begin with.

If we hadn't had Scotty at first, it would still have become necessary to create him. As I said, Doohan was initially a low-billed member of the supporting ensemble, but the fact that his role grew over time is evidence that the producers recognized it as an important role that was worth emphasizing. Remember, also, TNG's producers initially tried to get by without a chief engineer character, but found that it didn't work dramatically -- that the ship's technological abilities and failures were so important to the storytelling that there needed to be a regular character responsible for them. It couldn't just be some anonymous voice describing the problems over the intercom, it had to be a major character who was taking an active role in fixing the problems.

 

[Bob Karo]

Plus, Scotty was just as important in his role as the guy who routinely took over when Kirk and Spock irresponsibly went off on another planetary adventure.

Thanks, Sonak. This is something I don't think gets enough attention. While the main three were off ship, we needed a seasoned officer holding things down on the ship. Especially episodes where the threat was to the ship itself.

 

[Ronald Held]

Good point. Not only was he the voice of Engineering but seemed to be third in Command.

 

[nightwind1]

Even as a child I thought he was dreadful. If you're going to have a Scot at least hire a fucking Scotsman. There's no reason why he couldn't have been a Canadian engineer if they want to to keep the actor.

I used to complain that it has never been a main character from Italy: among Europeans we had a Scot (sorta), a Russian (sorta), a French (sorta), a Greek (sorta), an Irish, and a Brit, why never an Italian? But then I thought about the horrible job they would have done hiring an Italian (sorta), and I am now glad of it.

How about the Security Chief, Lt. Cmdr. Giotto, played by Barry Russo. Isn't Giotto an Italian name? Or Russo?