Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Kept Its Biggest Surprise For The Finale
This post contains major spoilers for the season 2 finale of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
The more time passes, the closer "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" gets to the original 1966 TV series. "Strange New Worlds" takes place seven or eight years prior to "Star Trek" and its second season has already teased some of the eventual connective tissue to its forebear. Kirk (Paul Wesley) is still only a first officer aboard the U.S.S. Farragut, but has been on the Enterprise an awful lot, and has already met future crewmates Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and Spock (Ethan Peck). The series has been fleshing out the romance between Spock and Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), but is carefully arranging their relationship to be more professional as it will be seen later in the "Star Trek" timeline. It's also likely that, before "Strange New Worlds" comes to an end, the Enterprise will be massively damaged and have to be refit and rebuilt so that it more closely resembles the ship we have all been familiar with for the last 57 years.
Ten bucks says that the final shot of the series is a wide-angle crane shot/wistful zoom-out of the original Enterprise bridge, now staffed by the original series characters.
A few question marks have remained in the inevitable connective tissue between "Star Trek" and "Strange New Worlds," however. Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and Chapel are accounted for, but no one has heard tell of Sulu, Dr. McCoy, Yeoman Rand, or Chekhov (who might still be too young to attend Starfleet Academy at this point in "Star Trek" chronology). It's entirely likely that some of these characters are already serving on board Pike's Enterprise, and we merely haven't seen them yet.
As of "Hegemony," however, the season 2 finale of "Strange New Worlds," Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn) is now located. Meet the young Scotty.
A Martin Quinn Production
No, Scottish actor Martin Quinn is not related to the famous Desilu TV producer Quinn Martin. Their names are a mere (astonishing) coincidence.
Scotty was, of course, the chief engineer on board the U.S.S. Enterprise from the start of the series in 1966 and last appeared in "Star Trek: Generations" in 1994. Scotty also appeared on an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," having been kept alive in a transporter buffer for many years. Throughout, Scotty was played by actor James Doohan. In 2009, an alternate-universe version of Scotty was played by Simon Pegg.
Here's a fun piece of trivia (culled from the 1997 book "Inside Star Trek: The Real Story"): Gene Roddenberry nearly cut Scotty from the series, thinking that the Enterprise didn't require an engineer. It wasn't until Doohan's agent confronted Roddenberry that Scotty was allowed to remain a part of the show. Doohan has told the tale numerous times at conventions, but he was prepared to give his character one of numerous dialects. He nearly made Scotty Russian, as he could do a good Russian accent. Eventually, Doohan decided that his character should be a Scot, as he knew several clever Scottish engineers in the War (Doohan fought at D-Day).
Quinn is the first actor of actual Scottish descent to play Montgomery Scott. He is currently 28 years old, although Doohan was already 44 at the start of Trek. In "Hegemony," Scotty is able to build, from scratch, a lantern-like device that lures Gorn monsters into a trap. When he is rescued from a desperate situation and brought on board the Enterprise (for the first time!), he is recognized by Pelia (Carol Kane) a former teacher of his. Evidently, Scotty was a brilliant engineer who got terrible grades.
Scotty's history
Going by the information given in "Relics" (October 12, 1992), Scotty was born in 2222 in Scotland, and he said that the Enterprise was his first gig as chief engineer, a position he held for decades. He was also the Enterprise's second officer, often sitting in the captain's chair when Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) were on away missions. Unlike Kirk, Scotty was typically violent and trigger-happy, as his first command decisions were often to ready weapons. Scotty also employed a lot of strange colloquialisms ("Fuzz-faced goons!" "The haggis is in the fire!"), and could outdrink anyone on the Enterprise; in "By Any Other Name" (February 23rd, 1968) it was revealed he had a lot of rare hard liquor in his quarters. The Scottish Scotty loved Scotch.
Scotty was also a clever criminal, having helped to steal the Enterprise in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock," and sabotaged the new-fangled U.S.S. Excelsior by merely removing a few vital computer chips from the vessel's trans-warp drive. In certain corners of expanded universe lore, Scotty was presented as a clever badass from the start. In the 1989 tie-in novel "The Kobayashi Maru," written by Julia Ecklar, several members of the Enterprise senior staff related their experience with the notorious Starfleet command test. The test, as Trekkies know, is designed to be failed, gauging students' character under pressure more than their abilities. Scotty employed a lot of strange theoretical engineering ideas to transform a distressed shuttlecraft into a black hole (!). The test moved Scotty from the Academy's command track to its engineering track.
Scotty also appeared — in voice form — in the "Strange New Worlds" episode "A Quality of Mercy."
The actor
Actor Martin Quinn has been appearing in Scottish stage productions ever since he was a child and received a lot of acclaim for his performance as Oskar in a stage adaptation of "Let the Right One In." He appeared on a few episodes of Scottish and Irish TV shows like "Derry Girls" and "Scot Squad." He also played voice roles in the new video game "Diablo IV." It seems that he and Doohan have voice acting in common; Doohan played multiple roles on "Star Trek: The Animated Series." For Quinn, "Star Trek" seems to be his highest-profile acting gig to date.
It was never stated in Trek lore when exactly Scotty began his career on the Enterprise, so there's every reason to believe that Quinn will appear in future episodes of "Strange New Worlds," studying engineering under Pelia, the current chief engineer. Like in the third season of "Star Trek: Picard," it seems that the function of "Strange New Worlds" moving forward will be to slowly introduce familiar characters one by one until they're all finally in the same room. Also to assure Pike is grievously injured, as seen in "The Menagerie." Once all that is taken care of, "Star Trek" proper can begin.
While it's exciting to see new actors in classic roles, there is a vaguely disappointing sense of fatalism to all this. "Strange New Worlds" has been grand and clever and exhilarating, and is moving into a realm where they have to line up with events that are already known. As such, it won't have the freedom to be wholly creative; Pike cannot abscond with the Enterprise and prevent "Star Trek" from happening.
Or perhaps he can. Perhaps the showrunners will be that daring.