This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 4
Out of all the franchise’s streaming era shows, Strange New Worlds is the one that is the most proud of its place in Star Trek canon. Now in its fourth year, the series has frequently made the most of the fact it is a prequel to The Original Series by squeezing in various connections, references, and homages to what is destined to occur in the future of the Trek timeline. With Season 5 set to conclude the show, Season 4 has hit maximum warp on this foreshadowing, even sneaking in a subtle nod to a favorite TOS character’s tragic fate.
It took a couple of seasons for Strange New Worlds to add Montgomery Scotty to its Enterprise crew, but since joining the main cast in Season 3, Martin Quinn has been a welcome addition to the cast. On top of being the first genuinely Scottish actor to play the part, Quinn has done a terrific job of portraying a younger Scotty, still an engineering prodigy but a little green and inexperienced. In its fourth episode, however, Strange New Worlds provides a direct link from the young Scotty to the man he will become in one loaded line of dialogue.
Strange New Worlds Easter Egg Hints at Scotty’s Ultimate Fate
In Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 4, “A Case of Chiaroscuro,” the Enterprise enters a region of space that is only able to be seen in monochrome, due to the radiation of a nearby star. While Una, M’Benga, and Uhura are sent on an increasingly dangerous away mission to a Klingon-occupied planet, back on the ship, La’an becomes convinced that one of the crew has tampered with a Federation data probe recently beamed aboard.
In the course of her investigation, she seeks out Scotty, but the clue turns out to be a dead end. When La’an asks him if he had anything to do with the probe, he promises he did not. “Cross my heart and hope to get stuck in a pattern buffer,” he says. Scotty chuckles after delivering this line, as if the idea of such an unlikely thing ever happening to him is absurd. What he doesn’t know, but fans do, is that the young engineer has just predicted his destiny with eerie accuracy. Unusually for SNW, this is not a callback to TOS but a reference to The Next Generation and what that revealed about Montgomery Scott’s unique fate.
What Happened to Scotty in Star Trek: The Next Generation?
James Doohan Reprised His Role in TNG Season 6, Episode 14, “Relics”
“Relics” is one of the most memorable latter-day episodes of The Next Generation because it sees James Doohan return as Scotty. As TNG is set so long after the events of TOS, a unique explanation is devised for how the character can team up with the Enterprise-D’s crew. Upon investigating the wreck of a long-lost Federation vessel, Picard’s crew discover Scotty’s molecular pattern saved in the ship’s transporter buffer. After he is beamed back to life, Scotty explains that he was able to rig the transporter to store his pattern indefinitely so he could be rescued at a later date. Except he could not have predicted just how much later that date would be.
As the title suggests, “Relics” is a somber, affecting episode which explores how obsolete Scotty feels upon finding himself in a very different galaxy from the one he knew. The new Enterprise is kitted with technology decades beyond what he is used to, and he struggles to come to terms with the enormous passage of time that he missed while he “slept.” The episode’s most moving moment has to be when Scotty uses the Holodeck to recreate the bridge of the original Enterprise, just so he can feel some kind of connection to his own time.
Scotty is one of only three TOS characters to appear in The Next Generation, following Bones (DeForest Kelley) in the show’s pilot and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in Season 5 two-parter “Reunification.”
Although it would have been fascinating if Scotty remained aboard the Enterprise-D, “Relics” ends with the legacy character saying goodbye to Picard’s crew and borrowing a shuttlecraft so he can go explore the galaxy as it is now. Scotty appears to rediscover his thirst for adventure by the episode’s end, having proven his worth by helping Geordi save the Enterprise from destruction, but that doesn’t entirely take away from the tragic quality of where TNG leaves him. A man who was defined by his dedication to his crew and his beloved ship is now cast adrift in a time period to which he doesn’t belong. Young Scotty may get a chuckle out of the idea of getting stuck in a pattern buffer, but his older self knows that it’s no laughing matter.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time SNW Season 4 has called back to James Doohan’s version of the character. In Episode 3, “Human Best Friend,” a nasty accident leaves Scotty’s thumb almost severed from his hand. The moment is played for laughs and the wonders of 23rd century medicine mean he is soon fully healed, but this appears to be a nod to the fact that Doohan was missing a finger in real-life, having lost it during his military service in World War II. The injury was never directly referenced on screen in TOS, but it’s not hard to notice if viewers pay close attention.
Just in case some still needed convincing, this Easter egg to Scotty’s future reminds viewers that it is worth rewatching every Strange New Worlds episode to catch every little hint at what’s to come for these characters as they boldly go towards a future that fans already know is coming.
- Release Date
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2022 – 2027-00-00
- Network
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Paramount+
- Showrunner
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Henry Alonso Myers, Akiva Goldsman
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Anson Mount
Captain Christopher Pike
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Jess Bush
Christine Chapel
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Christina Chong
La’an Noonien-Singh
