The Same Weird Thing Happened To Scotty In 2 Star Trek Universes

Chief of Engineering Montgomery Scott is one of the Star Trek characters with the most staying power; after his introduction in Star Trek: The Original Series, he has now reappeared in both Star Trek (2009) and most recently in the finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. From the very beginning, the Scotty of The Original Series (James Doohan) was something of a miracle worker: He solves seemingly unsolvable engineering problems impossibly quickly. It is hardly surprising, then, that Scotty keeps coming back to Star Trek.

Like many characters in TOS, Scotty’s backstory is left unspecified. It wasn’t even confirmed that he was born in Scotland until the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Relics.” For TOS, it was less important to specify how Scotty came to be than it was to show what adventures he faced with the crew of the Enterprise. This meant that when Scotty was re-introduced in 2009’s Star Trek and Strange New Worlds, writers were free to create their own introductions for the character. What’s interesting is that they both chose the same thing.

Scotty Met USS Enterprise Crew On An Alien Planet In Star Trek’s Prime Timeline

Scotty’s Cannon Backstory Sets Up His Character

In both Strange New Worlds and Star Trek, Scotty first joins up with the crew of the USS Enterprise after running into trouble on an alien world. The new Scotty in Strange New Worlds (Martin Quinn) is particularly important because the show is part of the Prime timeline. In other words, Strange New Worlds establishes the unrevealed backstory of The Original Series, making it canon. So now, nearly 60 years after his initial introduction, we know that Lieutenant Jr. Grade Scott first met the crew of the USS Enterprise while hiding from the Gorn on Parnassus Beta.

Scotty only managed to escape the USS Stardiver (its sole survivor) by making a transponder out of the stellar assessment array, and avoided the Gorn by taking apart a shuttle to create a “Gorn trap.” This sort of on-the-fly engineering is exactly what made Scotty so iconic in TOS, so it was only right that this talent is what led him to the Enterprise. When Strange New Worlds set out to introduce Scotty, they hit the nail on the head by putting him in a situation that lets him prove that he’s been an amazing engineer from the very beginning.

Scotty Met Kirk & Spock On An Alien Planet In Star Trek’s Kelvin Timeline

There Are More Parallels Than Just Scotty’s Circumstances In The Two Timelines

The same unspecified backstory that Strange New Worlds took advantage of in its season 2 finale was an opportunity for the Kelvin timeline. 2009’s Star Trek was largely a new take on the same set of characters as TOS. It introduces its own version of Scotty (Simon Pegg), yet the circumstances under which he is introduced have a lot of parallels with Strange New Worlds. In this movie, Scotty is in a lab on the frozen world of Delta Vega in the Vulcan system and uses transwarp beaming to board the Enterprise.

Once again, Scotty was stranded on a lethal planet and got himself out of it with a bit of improvised engineering. So not only did both versions of Scotty get introduced in the same way, but those introductions set up their characters almost identically. Interestingly, Star Trek happens in 2258, while Strange New Worlds happens around 2259 or 2260, so both versions of Scotty were in almost the same situation at the same time. In either Star Trek or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Scotty joined the crew in the same way and has served on the Enterprise for the same amount of time.

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  J.J. Abrams’ 2009 movie Star Trek rebooted the iconic sci-fi franchise in a totally new timeline. When a Romulan ship travels back in time and alters the past, the lives of James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), and the future crew of the USS Enterprise are drastically changed. In this new timeline, the Romulan Nero (Eric Bana) sets out for revenge on Spock, setting off a chain of events that reshape the entire universe.

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  Star Trek: Strange New Worlds follows Captain Christopher Pike, Science Officer Spock, and Number One in the years preceding Captain Kirk’s tenure on the U.S.S. Enterprise, as they venture across the galaxy to explore new worlds.