Gene Roddenberry Isn't Who We Should Be Thanking For Star Trek's Scotty

The legend is well-known to Trekkies. When actor James Doohan was first hired to play Montgomery "Scotty" Scott on the original "Star Trek" series, show creator Gene Roddenberry asked the actor to perform his audition using multiple accents, a talent Doohan had always tried to cultivate. After cycling through his catalog of regional dialects, Roddenberry asked Doohan which of the voices he liked best, and which one was most befitting of a futuristic engineer. Doohan said that he liked his Scots accent best, saying that he felt Scotland created the best engineers. Perhaps Doohan was thinking of Alexander Graham Bell, James Watt, or, most likely, Sir William Fairbairn; Doohan cited Scotland's many notable shipbuilders as his primary inspiration. Once the dialect was settled, the character emerged. Doohan claims to have named the character Montogmery Scott himself, after his own grandfather.

Some Scottish "Star Trek" fans have noted that Doohan's accent, while acceptable, is hardly authentic. His Scots accent, it has been indicated, is sort of an amalgam of sounds from around the Isles, with The Scotsman comparing it to Dick Van Dyke's weirdly Australian-sounding cockney accent in "Mary Poppins." Doohan, at conventions, defended his accent by saying it's the way Scots will sound in several centuries' time. Accents, after all, do evolve. Many people in the U.S., meanwhile, were hoodwinked by Doohan's Scots voice. According to Marc Cushman's invaluable book "These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s, Volume 1 (1970-75)," Doohan shocked several U.S. casting agents, post "Star Trek," by revealing he was, in fact, Canadian.

So it seems that Roddenberry gave little input into the process of inventing Scotty. He knew that the Enterprise needed an engineer, and that's kind of where his input stopped. 

It's worth remembering that the "Star Trek" we all know and love was born of a secondary pilot. Then original pilot — the one with Captain Pike — was rejected for being too cerebral and not action-packed enough. Only Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was carried over from the original pilot into the secondary one with Captain Kirk. It seems Roddenberry needed to invent several characters in a hurry, likely assembling his new ensemble in less time than he had to construct his first. Hence the Enterprise's engineer didn't have a name or nationality while auditions were being held.

Doohan was a soldier in the Canadian army during World War II and stormed the Normandy beach on D-Day. In his memoir, "Beam Me Up, Scotty," Doohan tells the story of how a nervous Canadian sentry accidentally opened fire on him, shooting him in the legs, chest, and right middle finger. A cigarette case blocked the bullet to his chest, but he did lose his finger in the accident. Doohan always kept his right hand turned away from the camera throughout "Star Trek," so that no one would not notice his injury. He occasionally wore a flesh-colored glove to hide it as well.

It was during his army service, according to an interview with Sci-Fi Online, that Doohan learned his Scots accent. He worked alongside a Scottish soldier from Aberdeen, and his Montgomery Scott voice was largely an imitation of that soldier. Inspired by a military friend, his talent for accents, and his admiration for Scots, Scotty was born. Roddenberry, it seems, merely rubber-stamped all these decisions.

Other small pieces of Doohan's personal life also began to infiltrate Scotty. According to the same interview with Sci-Fi Online, Scotty was said to subscribe to various technical journals once the "Star Trek" writers learned that Doohan had similar subscriptions in real life.

As noted above, Doohan's accent was so striking that it caused many U.S. viewers to assume that he was actually Scottish, a misapprehension that ultimately cost the actor jobs. Doohan noted that in the early 1970s, after "Star Trek" had been canceled, he auditioned for a movie, and the filmmakers greeted him with language that suggested pretty clearly that he had been typecast. Doohan said in the Sci-Fi Online interview:

"I did a movie called 'Man in the Wilderness' in Spain with Richard Harris in 1971. When I came back, I would go to producers' offices to read for parts and the secretaries would say, 'Oh, hi Scotty!' and everything else. And then the producers would say, 'I'm sorry, but we don't have a part for a Scotsman.' I only did a Scottish accent once before 'Star Trek,' and that included 450 live television shows and 4,000 radio shows! But by 1972 I had been typecast and was flat broke! Fortunately, I was able to make a living out of personal appearances."

Doohan's accent was, then, a blessing and a curse. However, he noted that he was relieved when, in 1978, Paramount decided to start making "Star Trek" movies. Since the original series paid so little, he was happy to finally use his status as Scotty to finally make a little money.

Here's a fun piece of trivia: In the 1950s, Doohan appeared as a character named Timber Tom in the Canadian version of "Howdy Doody." At the exact same time, in the U.S. version of "Howdy Doody," a character named Ranger Bill was played by Doohan's future "Star Trek" co-star William Shatner.