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

[Nerys Myk]

Being from Canada, Doohan could just use his regular voice.

True, but there is nothing especially Canadian about his voice, unless if he were to end every sentence with "eh."

So? Neither Sulu nor Uhura had accents that shouted "Asian" or "African".

 

[Mysterion]

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'm in favor of remastrering TOS and having Billy Connolly digitally inserted over Dohann where needed.

 

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

Being from Canada, Doohan could just use his regular voice.

True, but there is nothing especially Canadian about his voice, unless if he were to end every sentence with "eh."

So? Neither Sulu nor Uhura had accents that shouted "Asian" or "African".

They didn't need accents, they were visibly representative of their ethnic backgrounds.

 

[Nerys Myk]

True, but there is nothing especially Canadian about his voice, unless if he were to end every sentence with "eh."

So? Neither Sulu nor Uhura had accents that shouted "Asian" or "African".

They didn't need accents, they were visibly representative of their ethnic backgrounds.

I don't think Canadian is an ethic background. Sulu and Uhura sounded like Americans. We are told they aren't, but that not the same as showing it. Of course later we find out Sulu is an American ( or born there).

 

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

So? Neither Sulu nor Uhura had accents that shouted "Asian" or "African".

They didn't need accents, they were visibly representative of their ethnic backgrounds.

I don't think Canadian is an ethic background. Sulu and Uhura sounded like Americans. We are told they aren't, but that not the same as showing it. Of course later we find out Sulu is an American ( or born there).

Its a nationality for Anglo-Canadians, and both an ethnic background and nationality for Quebecois. Granted, Sulu or Uhura could have been Canadians, but in order for that to work, they would have to have some character traits that screamed: Canadian!

 

[Nerys Myk]

They didn't need accents, they were visibly representative of their ethnic backgrounds.

I don't think Canadian is an ethic background. Sulu and Uhura sounded like Americans. We are told they aren't, but that not the same as showing it. Of course later we find out Sulu is an American ( or born there).

Its a nationality for Anglo-Canadians, and both an ethnic background and nationality for Quebecois. Granted, Sulu or Uhura could have been Canadians, but in order for that to work, they would have to have some character traits that screamed: Canadian!

Yeah there are sub categories for Canadians based on background and location, But taken as a whole "Canadian" is not a ethnic designation.

 

[AFEK ESLCAFE W]

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.

TNG ran into its own problems during its first season without a regular chief engineer. Someone actually listened to your argument there for TNG and look what happened to that show until Geordi was promoted up to engineering?

I had also heard that the suits at NBC wanted to originally can James Doohan because they thought that the show did not need a chief engineer. Well, since they had that set built and a ship always needs fixing and maintenance -- especially during crisis -- Gene Roddenberry's defense for the necessity of the character prevailed.

 

[Bob Karo]

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.

What kind of Canadian? We're not all homogenous, ethnically or linguistically. For instance, you take somebody from the Prairies and somebody who's a multi-generations native of Newfoundland. The Prairies person will find it quite challenging to understand the Newfoundland person unless he's been around a lot of Maritimers.

And would you have this hypothetical "Canadian" be anglophone or francophone? I would sincerely hope such divisions would cease to exist in another 300 years, but you'd be hard-pressed to sell that to a Canadian audience in the 1960s.

Besides, to the average American, a Canadian is exactly like an American, just with a few funny quirks. Roddenberry would not have felt any particular need to include somebody specifically Canadian - and in any case, why not simply have KIRK be the Canadian?

Scotty gave us a line that I have always thought of when under stress and nothing seems to be going right. The ship is traveling in a big circle, "and at Warp 10, we're going nowhere, mighty fast!"

Can't remember which episode that was from, darnit!

It's from Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. Having a Canadian character would have been a bad move precisely because of American ignorance as to the diversity among Canadians. At best, we would have had a Dudley Do-Right type character. At worst, a French-Canadian character who would have spoken either with a Cajun accent or a Parisian one (both wrong by the way) and probably would have been played by Doohan, the so-called "master" of accents.

Oh, dear God! I still haven't heard a convincing Cajun accent from someone non-native to this area. And that doesn't even account for the huge diversity in Cajun accents from as little and 20 miles apart. I get this mental image of Alec Baldwin's "attempt" as Dave Robicheaux or every American character JCVD's played in the last 30 years. Two sides of the same poorly counterfeit coin really.

 

[Kamdan]

My memory (faulty at times, I admit) tells me it was George Clayton Johnson who said something of that nature in an interview. Seems he got that impression when first pitching, but soon realized it was not so.

I think...
Sir Rhosis

Johnson wasn't interviewed for the DVDs.

 

[Maurice]

My memory (faulty at times, I admit) tells me it was George Clayton Johnson who said something of that nature in an interview. Seems he got that impression when first pitching, but soon realized it was not so.

I think...
Sir Rhosis

Johnson wasn't interviewed for the DVDs.

The interview in question is on the Archive of American Television. I just watched it the other week.

 

[A beaker full of death]

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

This is a very relevant point. Though he was an officer, Scotty essentially filled the age-old position of Chief of the Boat. He was the face of the officers to the crew, and the face of the crew to the commanding officers. This was a standard role any any navy movie of the time. To mix metaphors (but not dramatic purposes, which track perfectly), he was the guy who minded the store, the one who kept the home fires burning. It's to Doohan's credit that the character became more than a mere cliche.

 

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

My memory (faulty at times, I admit) tells me it was George Clayton Johnson who said something of that nature in an interview. Seems he got that impression when first pitching, but soon realized it was not so.

I think...
Sir Rhosis

Johnson wasn't interviewed for the DVDs.

The interview in question is on the Archive of American Television. I just watched it the other week.

Thank-you for finding this. Scotty as engineer (logically) should have had that close relationship with Kirk, but GR bumped Scotty in favor for Spock (and later McCoy was added into the chemistry equation--see DC Fontana's interview in the special feature interview entitled "Kirk, Spock & Bones Star Trek's Great Trio" from the DVD's special features section) which logically makes no sense.

Therefore, Scotty (an otherwise important character) just becomes a repetitive role...the guy who freaks out whenever the ship is about to do something more than coast along at Warp 1. Scotty was robbed and therefore became irrelevant. Someone on the boards likened him to gravy, that is precisely my point, he is just gravy (no meat, no potatoes).

Sorry, he's just another red shirt who made it.

 

[22 Stars]

I will agree with those that reaffirm that Scotty is the voice of the Enterprise, and the Enterprise is certainly a pivotal character/piece of the show.

 

[Christopher]

Thank-you for finding this. Scotty as engineer (logically) should have had that close relationship with Kirk, but GR bumped Scotty in favor for Spock (and later McCoy was added into the chemistry equation...)

How can that be? Spock was created before Kirk or Scotty. And Kirk was initially just a renamed/recast Pike; he didn't develop a distinct personality until later under Shatner's influence. Pike's closest confidant was Dr. Boyce, and Boyce was just a first draft for McCoy (Roddenberry always wanted Kelley to play the doctor but it wasn't until the network's first two recommendations fell through that GR fought for Kelley). We saw McCoy as Kirk's confidant in McCoy's very first episode produced, "The Corbomite Maneuver," and frequently thereafter. The close rapport between the captain and the doctor was there from the start; it was only gradually that the Kirk-Spock friendship surpassed it, as Spock became the breakout character and it was deemed necessary to link Kirk to him more closely to keep Kirk central.

Therefore, Scotty (an otherwise important character) just becomes a repetitive role...the guy who freaks out whenever the ship is about to do something more than coast along at Warp 1. Scotty was robbed and therefore became irrelevant.

I don't think that's a fair or accurate assessment at all. Scotty did a lot more than that.

 

[spooky spice]

Even as a child I thought he was dreadful. If you're going to have a Scot at least hire a fucking Scotsman.

When I was a kid Scotty was the only character I could understand Star Trek being my first exposure to American accents. My father was Scottish and from the same general area Scotty was supposedly from (I believe Doohan copied the accent of an Aberdonian)

~(".)~

 

[Noname Given]

I don't think that complaining about how ethnicity was handled on TOS is a valid arguement. Folks tend to forget that ethnicity was handled very roughly on most all 1960's era tv shows. Trek was the first to show people of other cultures, races and genders working together in harmony as respected professionals and getting the job done!

Excluding all the other shows on before or at the same time as Star Trek that is: I Spy, Mission Impossible, Hogan's Heroes...

Don't forget: The Bill Cosby Show (yes he had one in 1969), Julia (the main character was black)

The statement that Star Trek was the first show to show people of multiple ethnicities working together is harminy is a false one. Hell, if you look at the ORIGINAL pilot The Cage the crew is a carbon copy of the C57-D's crew of Forbidden Planet (all WASP)

The fact is - the ethnicity was added because of a memo that NBC execs sent out to production staff asking that more ethnicities be included in show casts to more mirror society, and that WHY you saw bill Cosby as a main character in the I Spy TV series which premired on NBC in 1965 (the same year TOS was originally pitched to the network - although as we all know it wasn't picked up and pit on the schedule until 1966), and the memo was one of the issues brought up when NBC commisssioned the second pilot.)

As for whether 'Scotty' was necessary; honestly, he was a background character (and many shows of teh era had these - Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea had a number of reccuring caracters like Chip Morton as the Exec; and crewman Kowoski.) ALL of the cast who became known as the 'Four' were that way - and had Star Trek not attained a cult following, I doubt these four would have played up their involvement that much.

Honestly, the show would have gotten along fine without ANY of them as it LOST a couple of reccuring cast members after the first season (Yeoman Rand and Lt. Riley) <---- No, do people remember them? Yes, but not as much as the other four background characters because whe nthe series first started getting a following, Grace Whitney was having real life issues (IE unable to join the starting convention circut and play her rolse up; and the actor behind Riley didn't do much at the start of the Star Trek convention circut either - BUT BOTH these characters had major plolines and a story devoted to them in season one (Rand's would have been Dagger of the Mind if she hadn't been written out and Riley's was both The Naked Time and The Conscience of the King.

That why when the 'Gang of Four' take pot shots at William Shatner; and start to claim how the show wouldn't have survived as well over the years; or that Shatner 'treated them poorly' - I laugh as they WERE ALL character actors and were working in hollywood and KNEW the score and how 1960ies TV shows ran. William Shatmer WAS the headliner and star of the show. Spock was his sidekick AND (because he was such a talented character actor) DeForest Kelly managed to get a headline credit as well starting in Season 2.

The rest were all window dressing and interchangeable. Want proof? Does anyone think less of the Star Trek episode The Doomsday Machine because Uhura isn't at teh Comm station - and instead we have a 'one off' of Lt. Palmer (Elizabeeth Rogers)? And yes, this IS a story where the background Engineer Scotty is needed, but again not unusual for 1960ies TV. Sulu is at the helm; BUT no Chekov either (but againb do you really notice and does it detract from the episode as a whole?

And remember; George Takei (Lt. Sulu) to the last half of the second season and a good portion of the third season OFF from Star Trek to go play a vietnamise character in the John Wayne film The Green Berets -(which WAS a great carrer move at the time for George Takei to be sure); but again, given this I laugh when George Takei goes into 'how special' Star Trek was for him - yep, so special he took MAJOR time off to go do a feature film; whioch required Star Trek scripts to be rewritten and Chekov given Sulu's spot in those stories when The Green Berets production took longer than expected.

So yeah, honestly, Star Treek would have done fine and IMO have been JUST AS popular as long as Kirk, Spock and McCoy were there. The rest opf the background characters could have been swapped and yes, it would have been different, but wouldn't have been affected much. (IMO)

 

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

Thank-you for finding this. Scotty as engineer (logically) should have had that close relationship with Kirk, but GR bumped Scotty in favor for Spock (and later McCoy was added into the chemistry equation...)

How can that be? Spock was created before Kirk or Scotty. And Kirk was initially just a renamed/recast Pike; he didn't develop a distinct personality until later under Shatner's influence. Pike's closest confidant was Dr. Boyce, and Boyce was just a first draft for McCoy (Roddenberry always wanted Kelley to play the doctor but it wasn't until the network's first two recommendations fell through that GR fought for Kelley). We saw McCoy as Kirk's confidant in McCoy's very first episode produced, "The Corbomite Maneuver," and frequently thereafter. The close rapport between the captain and the doctor was there from the start; it was only gradually that the Kirk-Spock friendship surpassed it, as Spock became the breakout character and it was deemed necessary to link Kirk to him more closely to keep Kirk central.

Therefore, Scotty (an otherwise important character) just becomes a repetitive role...the guy who freaks out whenever the ship is about to do something more than coast along at Warp 1. Scotty was robbed and therefore became irrelevant.

I don't think that's a fair or accurate assessment at all. Scotty did a lot more than that.

It is as it is. I think Scotty should have had a much, much, bigger part in the series as a whole.

 

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

Thank-you for finding this. Scotty as engineer (logically) should have had that close relationship with Kirk, but GR bumped Scotty in favor for Spock (and later McCoy was added into the chemistry equation...)

How can that be? Spock was created before Kirk or Scotty. And Kirk was initially just a renamed/recast Pike; he didn't develop a distinct personality until later under Shatner's influence. Pike's closest confidant was Dr. Boyce, and Boyce was just a first draft for McCoy (Roddenberry always wanted Kelley to play the doctor but it wasn't until the network's first two recommendations fell through that GR fought for Kelley). We saw McCoy as Kirk's confidant in McCoy's very first episode produced, "The Corbomite Maneuver," and frequently thereafter. The close rapport between the captain and the doctor was there from the start; it was only gradually that the Kirk-Spock friendship surpassed it, as Spock became the breakout character and it was deemed necessary to link Kirk to him more closely to keep Kirk central.

Therefore, Scotty (an otherwise important character) just becomes a repetitive role...the guy who freaks out whenever the ship is about to do something more than coast along at Warp 1. Scotty was robbed and therefore became irrelevant.

I don't think that's a fair or accurate assessment at all. Scotty did a lot more than that.

It is as it is. I think Scotty should have had a much, much, bigger part in the series as a whole.

I will add that ENT got it right. Archer and Trip being fast friends feels right and makes much more sense than the Captain and the doctor kicking back and pounding away a few drinks. While doctors are important, the chief engineer's work is the most directly related to the Captain's and since they are heads of different parts of the ship, it makes sense for them to seek camaraderie with each other. The fact that Pike and Boyce hit off as the "buddy team" in The Cage just shows that GR made that mistake the first time and then made it again with Shatner and Kelley.

 

[Christopher]

The fact is - the ethnicity was added because of a memo that NBC execs sent out to production staff asking that more ethnicities be included in show casts to more mirror society, and that WHY you saw bill Cosby as a main character in the I Spy TV series which premired on NBC in 1965 (the same year TOS was originally pitched to the network - although as we all know it wasn't picked up and pit on the schedule until 1966), and the memo was one of the issues brought up when NBC commisssioned the second pilot.)

Actually TOS was pitched and "The Cage" was produced in 1964. But otherwise you're right.

As for whether 'Scotty' was necessary; honestly, he was a background character (and many shows of teh era had these - Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea had a number of reccuring caracters like Chip Morton as the Exec; and crewman Kowoski.)

Yup. It was common for shows to have recurring minor/supporting players even back then. If you've found actors who work well in their roles and that you have a good relationship with, why not bring them back? Why go to the trouble of casting new people every week?

Honestly, the show would have gotten along fine without ANY of them as it LOST a couple of reccuring cast members after the first season (Yeoman Rand and Lt. Riley)

I wouldn't really call Riley a recurring character. His return happened by accident. The character in "The Conscience of the King" was scripted as Robert Leighton, but when they cast Bruce Hyde in the role, they decided to rename him as Riley for the sake of continuity. The same thing happened with a couple of other actors -- Michael Barrier as DeSalle and Barbara Baldavin as Angela Martine (though the character's original name "Teller" slipped through once in "Shore Leave"). And probably others as well. I'll bet a lot of bit characters in various scripts were renamed "Leslie" when Eddie Paskey was assigned to them.

So Rand is the only one who was intended as a major character (she was usually billed right below DeForest Kelley) and then got dropped.

 

[CaptainMatt]

As much as to this argument as to my own thought for the day:

I would have loved to have seen Sulu get more screen-time with the scripts Roddenberry promised him but were later done with Chekov shortly after Walter Koenig joined the cast, and George Takei was busy elsewhere filming the John Wayne film The Green Berets. Always wonder how that might have turned out...