Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 finale, “Hegemony,” are ahead!
Although Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has introduced its fair share of prominent new characters, including La’an Noonien Singh, Erica Ortegas, the late Hemmer and Pelia, most of the show’s primary characters are ones Trek fans grew to be acquainted with from The Original Series. Now there’s yet another character from that era who’s received the Strange New Worlds treatment, as the Season 2 finale, titled “Hegemony,” brought Montgomery Scott, a.k.a. “Scotty,” the Enterprise’s future Chief Engineer, into the fold. Now that the episode has been released to Paramount+ subscribers, co-showrunner and executive producer Henry Alonso Myers has shared why he and the show’s team decided to bring in Scotty.
Rather than his inclusion being announced ahead of time, like when it was revealed that Paul Wesley had been cast as James T. Kirk, Scotty’s appearance in the Strange New Worlds Season 2 finale was a surprise, with Martin Quinn bringing this younger version of the character to life. Christopher Pike, Ortegas, La'an, Joseph M'Benga, and Sam Kirk met him on the surface of Parnassus Beta while on their mission to rescue crew members from the Cayuga, including Captain Marie Batel and on-loan Christine Chapel. Matthew Wolf previously voiced Scotty in the Strange New Worlds Season 1 finale, and as Myers informed TV Line, “Hegemony” was the perfect platform to finally show a Scotty who’s a ways off from becoming the seasoned veteran fans remember from The Original Series:
We’ve been talking about him for a while as a general idea. As we were going into the finale, it suddenly became a weird, rare opportunity to introduce him for a lot of different reasons. What we’d like to do with the characters [from the original Star Trek series]… We don’t meet our understanding of who they are in that series, we meet who they are before. They don’t know who they will be, and they aren’t that person yet. They have some stuff to go through.
At this point in the Star Trek timeline (a little over half a decade before The Original Series), Scotty is a lieutenant who’d been aboard the Stardiver for a science expedition to observe coronal mass ejections on a nearby red supergiant star. Unfortunately, this phenomena resulted in the Gorn swarming the area and attacking the ship. Scott was the only crew member to escape because he fashioned a Gorn transponder to hide himself from these reptilian antagonists, though he ended up being stranded on Parnassus Beta and had to leave the device on his shuttle. Fortunately, upon meeting Pike, Ortegas, La’an, M’Benga, and Sam, he was able to retrieve the transponder and vowed to fix it so the Enterprise could use it for their rescue mission. This episode also saw Scotty reuniting with Carol Kane’s Pelia, the Enterprise’s current Chief Engineer and his instructor at Starfleet Academy, who paradoxically described the young man as one of her best students who received some of her worst grades.
Martin Quinn is the third actor to play Scotty on screen, with James Doohan originating the role and Simon Pegg playing him in the Kelvin timeline-set Star Trek film series. Unlike those other two actors though, Quinn is actually Scottish, which was a key void to fill in the casting process, as Henry Alonso Myers shared with these words:
We also had a great opportunity to cast someone who’s from Scotland who can do that Scotty, but also who can go through all of the things that we want to see him go through before he becomes the person that we know.
Although Montgomery Scott is now aboard the Enterprise and we know he’ll eventually reside on the ship permanently, it’s unclear what the future holds in store for him on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. On the one hand, with the Stardiver destroyed, perhaps Scotty will be officially transferred to the Enterprise after this mess with the Gorn is settled, and he’ll work directly under Pelia, thus setting him up to directly succeed her as Chief Engineer. On the other hand, maybe he’ll end being like Paul Wesley’s Kirk, i.e. spend some time on another ship first, but occasionally visit the Enterprise. For now, it’s just nice for the Enterprise crew to have another brilliant mind around to aid them in this trying time.
Keep visiting CinemaBlend for more Star Trek: Strange New Worlds coverage, including what’s being planned for Season 3 and when it will debut on Paramount+. Scan through our 2023 TV schedule to see what programming is currently on the air/streaming and will be arriving soon.
