This may have been asked before but this is my first post. I've often wondered if they could have used Scotty on DS9 as a recurring character a couple of times a season. He had a shuttle and could have gone to DS9 to resupply for his continued travels and upgrades to the shuttle. Also would have been a good chance to develop the character more. Any thoughts?
1. Welcome aboard. 2. I think that would have been awesome, if James Doohan had been available to periodically return in a repeating role. I could TOTALLY imagine him and O'Brien hoisting pints and picking each other's brain about engineering matters.
What if McCoy showed up (He was alive at least 5 1/2 years prior to DS9) to inspect the infirmary? Would McCoy and Bashir get along?
Welcome! It's an interesting idea and I like it but I imagine if you were pitching that to the writers their next question would be "What's the story?" Scotty coming to DS9 and X happens but what is the X? When you look at how they used the TOS characters on TNG it wasn't just about them showing up and hanging out, you had Sarek with a story about alzheimers, Spock with the reunification story, and Scotty about becoming obselete. They wanted to use Chekov in Season 7 and the hook was him as a POW. I personally would loved it if he just hung out in scenes at Quarks, you saw him wandering around the Promenade, and he was basically just a background extra. I just have hard time believing the writers/producers would go for it.
^I'd also note that while it was great to see the TOS characters still alive and well, the episodes in which they appeared aren't necessarily among the series' best or even especially well-regarded overall. I guess the $25K question is whether the writing of the episode overall is lackluster because the writers were focused on bringing the characters back at the expense of telling a better story. You also had Sulu and Rand in VOY's "Flashback", and obviously Kirk in GEN. Not so much, "I wish they hadn't appeared rather than appearing in that", as, "If they had to appear, couldn't they appear in a better episode?"
Not only should we have seen more Scotty, but also more Dyson Sphere. That thing would have had more territory than a few thousand M-class planets. It was the find of the century, and no one mentioned it again.
It reminds me of the identical Earth in “Miri”, but that got completely forgotten in its own episode.
Honestly, instead of shipping it off with a "loaned" shuttlecraft he could have been assigned a team of engineers to study the Sphere.
If assigned to the project, Scotty would have said he could have it ready to accept colonists in 20 years, and then had them there in five. Because, you know, Scotty.
I wonder how McCoy would have responded to the discovery of Bashir being genetically enhanced. As for the Dyson sphere, yes, it was an amazing find, but Trek was replete with discoveries that should have been gamechangers that we never saw again either. I guess the Dyson sphere just went in the same bin. I'm not even sure the Federation would need to settle it, though. Also because it probably was abandoned because of the star's instability and moreover they don't exactly seem to have a lack of habitable planets. But research it -- most definitely.
It was weird that the sphere was built around a yellow star to begin with, with no previous efforts. For a first time at building such a thing, a red dwarf in the 0.08 solar mass range would be better, for two reasons: 1. The tighter habitable zone would allow for a much smaller sphere, but still the same amount of energy hitting each square meter of it. 2. Yellow main sequence stars last about ten billion years. Red dwarfs will last for about five trillion. Why use a much short-lived energy source?
Heh, I was thinking the same thing. I think it's because when the episode was written 30+ years ago the general belief was you needed a sun-like star to support life. Larry Niven basically made the same mistake with Ringworld. I feel that the long lives of red dwarf stars wasn't particularly appreciated until more recently.
I’ll take my thoughts on Scotty a little further. Have a two part episode set after Generations where Scotty arrives to restock, have shuttle maintenance or something else. McCoy arrives regarding Bashir being the last cadet he sponsored and checking on his status. Both not knowing the other is there until Sisko brings them together early on. Spock arrives due to a Vulcan artifact or race similar to Vulcans being found on the other side of the wormhole so Spock investigates. At the end of the second episode the three find out that Kirk had in fact died on Veridian III due to the Nexus. Spock, McCoy and Scotty gather together at the highest point of the station where you can the see into the stars and toast to their absent friend(s). Episode ends that way.
Yeah the counsellor probably should have said let's not send this time displaced bloke out on his own with only a shuttlecraft. There's a book where he's so depressed about getting Kirk killed he does his own slingshot around the sun to save Kirk and inadvertently helps the Borg take over the Alpha Quadrant.
So much wasted potential but that's nothing new for classic Trek. I wish I had a $1 for every time they dropped the potential story ball. As for Scotty, I try to be content imagining he used the shuttle to finish his mission, go to the colony and enjoy a well earned retirement, sailing his boat and building model ships.
I didn't like how Scotty was treated in the TNG episode "Relics" where he's treated like a person who would risk crew personnel's lives by lying to his commanding officer just to keep some dumb reputation of being a "Miracle Worker". Scotty from TOS told the truth and wasn't some bullshit artist who needed to get brown points with his Captain, he was valued, respected officer and a great engineer. I felt the whole exercise was to take a dump on a legendary character just to make THEIR CHARACTER Geordi look better. I would be in complete fear if Ronald D Moore had more stories to tell on DS9 with Scotty; probably would have him meet up with Kirk where he ended up in the 1st half of Star Trek: Generations - kill him off. That feels like a fannish episode, I'd prefer a Scotty episode where he somehow got caught up or was imprisoned in a Cardassian political dilemma, forcing Sisko to take action. How does the Cardassians deal with a man who shouldn't exist in their timeline and would they have disputes to why he's in their space or planet?
Well blame the TOS films for the miracle worker/lying thing if you have to, because it was III that came up with it, and V that added to it. Ron Moore was just referencing that stuff. I personally don't think he's lying but just working nonstop to get the job done. Eight weeks they estimate in III becomes two because he's going to get it done on his scale not theirs, no matter if he sleeps two hours a night or something. He loves his job and ship.
To be fair to Scotty, I'm in a line of work now where I tend to inflate my estimates as well, because it's a heck of a lot better to say, "I'll get this done for you in the next couple of days", and have it done in the afternoon, than it is to overpromise and underdeliver...but also because I often simply don't know what the exact shape of my workload will be. My highest priority at the time can get entirely sidelined if I get a high-priority email.