How James Doohan's Scotty Solved A Major Star Trek Storytelling Problem
Montgomery Scott, the Starfleet engineer better known as Scotty, solved countless problems aboard the USS Enterprise. He also solved a big problem for "Star Trek" itself. Whenever the action on the Enterprise's bridge threatened to get repetitive, the show could cut to James Doohan's Scotty working in the engine room for a change of scenery.
When "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry first envisioned the sci-fi series, which originally aired on NBC, he didn't expect to make the Enterprise's chief engineer a major character. In a 1996 interview with Cinefantastique, Doohan recalled that Roddenberry sent him a letter after his audition for the "Star Trek" pilot episode, saying he didn't think the show needed an engineer, after all. Doohan's agent got Roddenberry to change his mind.
"Gene found out, as time went by, that he really did need an engineer," Doohan said. "Everybody was saying, 'Look, there's no place to cut to. If you're on the bridge, we can cut to the engine room, where something is always going on.'"
Even though Scotty became important for Star Trek, James Doohan didn't get a raise
Despite Scotty's unexpectedly increased prominence and importance on "Star Trek," James Doohan said he received "no increase in salary after they found out they really needed me," according to that same Cinefantastique interview. When the show was renewed for a second season, he was told he wouldn't be getting a bump then, either. ("And Paramount wonders why we hate them," he said of the studio behind the series.)
Luckily for everyone who ever needed Scotty to repair the engines or beam them up, that didn't stop Doohan from continuing to come aboard. He may have disliked Paramount but he "loved" the show. Scotty appeared in all but a handful of episodes of "The Original Series" Doohan reprised the role in the first run of "Star Trek" films and he continued to provide somewhere to cut to that wasn't the bridge.