Really, though, how often did Spock tell Scotty how to do something? I just don't recall that many instances.
Is it just me, or was Scotty unnecessary as a recurring role?
- Thread starter A.V.I.A.F.
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I've been working "officially" as a scientist since 1984, and 25-ish years ago, you could find engineers and scientists in totally separate pigeonholes. But today, there are ever-increasingly fewer differences between them. Indeed, there are scientists who are practicing engineering and engineers who are practicing science. The only real difference today between the two are the degrees conferred upon the individuals. And I imagine that that trend will carry on, or be amplified, into the future. So....
It's very realistic to me that Spock and Scotty, and O'Brien and Dax, would work together. Been there, done that, and got the tunic...
^I realize now that I expressed myself ambiguously before. My problem wasn't that Jadzia and O'Brien worked together. My problem was that the writers kept making O'Brien smarter than Jadzia, had him come up with the brilliant solutions instead of her. That didn't make sense in light of her job and her professed scientific brilliance, and frankly I wondered if the writers were unthinkingly diminishing her role because she was female. But as I said, that was mainly a problem early on and it didn't last.
Just some quick ones I can come up with:
- "The Naked Time": Scott can't figure out how to make the cold start work until Spock is able to supply the formula and work with him to make it happen.
- "The Doomsday Machine": Down to the wire, Scott is taking too long to get the transporters working, until Spock, from the bridge, suggests he "try inverse phasing". Then it works.
- "The Ultimate Computer": Spock, not Scott, has the suggestion for how they might interrupt M5's control of the ship.
- "That Which Survives": Scott instinctively knows something is wrong with the ship, but only Spock is able to figure out what that something is and how to deal with it.
- "Obsession": Standing next to Scott, it is Spock, not Scott, who makes the necessary adjustments to the transporter to get Kirk and Garrovick back.
And, as has been mentioned, probably the worst offender...
- TMP: Scott, who has been overseeing the refit of the ship from the ground up for eighteen months, cannot figure out how to get the warp drive working properly. Spock shows up and everything is just peachy within hours.
And honorable mention:
- TWOK: Scott and all of his engineering staff and cadets are sitting around the engine room waiting to be blown to kingdom come. Not one person thinks to put on a radiation suit -- the biggest parts of which they are already wearing -- and go in and make the repairs. Spock has to end up sacrificing his life to do the repairs at the last minute.
- "The Naked Time": Scott can't figure out how to make the cold start work until Spock is able to supply the formula and work with him to make it happen.
- "The Doomsday Machine": Down to the wire, Scott is taking too long to get the transporters working, until Spock, from the bridge, suggests he "try inverse phasing". Then it works.
- "The Ultimate Computer": Spock, not Scott, has the suggestion for how they might interrupt M5's control of the ship.
- "That Which Survives": Scott instinctively knows something is wrong with the ship, but only Spock is able to figure out what that something is and how to deal with it.
- "Obsession": Standing next to Scott, it is Spock, not Scott, who makes the necessary adjustments to the transporter to get Kirk and Garrovick back.
And, as has been mentioned, probably the worst offender...
- TMP: Scott, who has been overseeing the refit of the ship from the ground up for eighteen months, cannot figure out how to get the warp drive working properly. Spock shows up and everything is just peachy within hours.
And honorable mention:
- TWOK: Scott and all of his engineering staff and cadets are sitting around the engine room waiting to be blown to kingdom come. Not one person thinks to put on a radiation suit -- the biggest parts of which they are already wearing -- and go in and make the repairs. Spock has to end up sacrificing his life to do the repairs at the last minute.
Well, that one makes sense. The cold-restart formula was theoretical physics, never tested. As an engineer, Scott would deal with known and established practice. Spock's the theoretician, the one whose job it is to devise whole new possibilities. Scott's job is to find a way to make those theoretical possibilities happen in real life.
But we have no indication that Scott couldn't have figured that out on his own. It could've just been Spock kibitzing.
That could simply be a chain-of-command issue. Spock is the first officer; it's his job to propose solutions to the captain. Scott's job is to follow orders from the command crew. If Spock hadn't thought of it, Scott probably would've suggested it, but of course Spock wouldn't have overlooked the possibility, and naturally Scott deferred to his superior officer.
Technically it was the computer analysis that figured out the root of the problem. Since Scott's attention was urgently needed in the service crawlway, obviously he couldn't be the one to run the computer analysis. That's Spock's job as science officer.
The process of adjusting the beam was clearly shown to be a two-person job. Again, Scott was already busy doing his part, and Spock was adjusting the controls along with him.
As with "The Naked Time," that could be a matter of theoretical physics versus practical engineering. Spock needed to devise a set of "fuel equations" in order to solve the problem.
Also, as you say, Scotty had spent 18 months rebuilding the engines. They wouldn't even exist without his efforts. All Spock did was finish calibrating them -- or rather, do so faster than Scotty's team could've done by themselves. The only reason the drive malfunctioned is because Kirk forced the ship to launch prematurely, against Scotty's advice. It's totally unfair to Scott to say that he "[could not] figure out how to get the warp drive working properly." He just needed more time to calibrate it than Kirk was willing to give him. All Spock did was speed up the process.
Aren't you forgetting that Scotty was incapacitated and under McCoy's care when Spock arrived? Heck, the whole reason Spock left the bridge in the first place was that there was no response from engineering when Kirk called them. Presumably everyone there was too injured from the battle or weakened by radiation to take action. (Granted, Scotty was able to recover pretty readily a few moments later, but that could be due to McCoy's ministrations.)
This was one of Doohan's oft-voiced complaints.
I, for one, want to know why Spock enlisted McCoy's help to rig a torpedo in STVI.
Because Nimoy and Kelly had good chemistry and I imagine Scott was needed in engineering to hold things together.
Nor do we know that "inverse phasing" was what did the trick. Spock was tossing out suggestions from the big chair while Scotty was down there, elbows deep in the problem. He probably already "reversed phased" and was onto "idea #5" when Spock mentioned it. Spock suggested solutions to their engine problems in Arena and Scotty had already tried them. It's no different than Kirk suggesting "try auxiliary power" in TWOK. The guy in command is going to fire off some ideas even if, odds are, the engineer already tried it because the real expert is downstairs and would have thought of it already. So, I always considered Doomday Machine's transporter issue fully solved by Scotty.
Because Nimoy and Kelly had good chemistry and I imagine Scott was needed in engineering to hold things together.
I just can't seriously picture Doohan crawling around in the torpedo tube with Nimoy. It was pretty cramped in there.
Because Nimoy and Kelly had good chemistry and I imagine Scott was needed in engineering to hold things together.
I just can't seriously picture Doohan crawling around in the torpedo tube with Nimoy. It was pretty cramped in there.
That would stretch credibility far more than having McCoy down there.
I have a problem with Jadzia's dialogues in the early seasons of DS9 being interchangeable with O'Brien's, but for the opposite reason: Jadzia has no business speaking those lines in the first place. All of those dialogues should have instead been spoken in their entirety by O'Brien alone. IMO the writers were assigning lines to Jadzia only to give the actress speaking time that her character did not merit.
The problem that you outline of Jadzia not demonstrating that she is smarter than anyone else, despite the show frequently professing her to be, is an all-encompassing one. She also failed to demonstrate that with anyone besides O'Brien, with anything she ever said, regarding any subject.
TOS is quite different, because Spock actually serves a useful purpose on his show, whereas Jadzia serves no useful purpose on hers.
As for the question that this thread is about: the TOS writers did a great job of giving Scotty a useful role that was separate to that of Spock's.
Technically, yes, random characters of the week could have done the same thing in the place of Scotty, but the same thing could be said of anyone else on the show too. That would make the show worse because no one cares about random characters of the week, unless perhaps they are played by a great actor, but even then, recurring characters are still way better.
Could Enterprise do without Scotty? Sure it could, but that's what you have recurring characters for - they're not entirely important, but they add the colour to the scenery. And then they can develop into something more. The first time I really noticed Scotty was when he stood up to that diplomat in the episode with the computer war with real casualties - but I already loved him since that very moment. 
I don't think that's true, nor does it make any sense as a criticism. It's not a question of intelligence, it's a question of specialization. Dax is the science officer, O'Brien the engineer. Those are two very different, complementary disciplines, not interchangeable at all. The problem is that O'Brien was coming up with the sort of ideas that should've been the science officer's purview, ideas involving theoretical physics rather than the workings of applied technology. It's like having Sulu tell Dr. McCoy how to perform surgery.
I suppose you could delegate Scotty's job to others on the ship (just like they do in the real, crappy, insensitive world today) but it wouldn't be the same.
The phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" didn't become immortal just because William Shatner said it. It was because we loved the guy who had to do the beaming.
The phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" didn't become immortal just because William Shatner said it. It was because we loved the guy who had to do the beaming.
He did say "Beam us up, Scotty" in two animated episodes, and "Scotty, beam me up!" in The Voyage Home. But overall, according to Chakoteya's transcripts, the phrase "beam me up" (even by itself) has only been used five times in all of ST (twice in TOS, once in TVH, twice in TNG). It's far more common to hear "beam us/them up" or just "beam up."
Irrespective of whether he was Canadian or not, Doohan had a "regular voice" that, when I met him at the only Trek convention I've been to (New York City, January 1975), was about as uninflected as anyone could possibly sound - even shockingly so (in retrospect). If he'd used that voice as Scotty, he would have sounded like Douglas Rain, another Canadian who was hired to be the voice of the HAL 9000 computer in 2001, although perhaps his line readings would have been faster.
Me too. Case in point: In "The Paradise Syndrome," after Spock wrecks the engines trying to deflect the asteroid, Scotty says with obvious and complete sincerity, "Ma bairns... ma poor bairns!"
My thoughts, too. Scotty was an essential character.
Terry Farrell, being fairly new to acting, did get a bit of a reputation for forgetting highly technobabbly dialogue, causing take after take after take. Time consuming! I can understand the writers/directors favouring O'Brien if it made things smoother on the soundstages. She definitely improved and relaxed into her role with time.
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