LogFAQs > #933550458

17. Montgomery Scott
Och, aye, ohm inna woch nahw.

I will admit straight off the bat that Scotty doesnt deserve to be anywhere near this high, but I just love him anyway. Hes the most fleshed out of TOS non-core cast, which is to say that he gets more of a personality than nothing, and he has the benefit of having the best actor of the non-core cast. Unlike Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, Chapel, and Rand, Scotty has the benefit of having a very extreme personality that leads to a lot of silly overacting, so he ends up being way more memorable as a result.

Scotty exists for two reasons. The first is so he can say the ship will explode unless you do X, and then Kirk has to do X. The second is so that someone will be sitting in the captains chair when Kirk and Spock are down on the whatever planet. Thats it. Hes not so much a character as a plot device, and James Doohan made the wise decision to make him as wacky as possible to compensate for that.

You know who the closest analogy is? Emperor Palpatine. Imagine if Palpatine was just a run-of-the-mill evil emperor. You will obey me or Ill kill you. I survive on the shadows cast by goodness and love. I will conquer the galaxy. Hed be awful and no one would remember him. But because Ian McDiarmid plays him so ridiculous and hammy, everyone loves him, even in the prequels. I guess what Im saying is that weirdos like me like bad acting and silliness, and Scotty gives me that in spades. We havent gotten to Kirk yet, but boy oh boy will we have something to talk about then.

Speaking of acting, this doesnt relate directly to Scotty, but in the animated series, James Doohan was the only one of the core cast with experience voice acting, so almost every male character outside of the main characters is voiced by him. He tries to disguise his voice, but you can clearly tell that everyone in the galaxy is Scotty, which is wonderful.

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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005