Star Trek: 10 MORE Characters Permanently Displaced In Time
You didn't REALLY think we'd forgotten poor Scotty, did you? He makes Star Trek work!
Recently we dropped our first ten examples of Characters Permanently Displaced In Time and, as we went through the examples, it became clear that Star Trek has a habit of trapping people outside of their established timeframes. It sort of feels like the gag joke we give our friends at Christmas - ha ha, you'll never see your loved ones again!
Um, thanks?
There's a really simple reason as to why there's so many examples in the franchise and that is because it's a very handy storytelling trope. Fish of water, so to speak. Take someone who was an expert in their time, then leave them hopelessly outdated and out of the loop in the new story. Now, that may seem fairly bloody cruel on the characters - and frankly, it is - but it does leave the door open for an excellent character study.
After all, one of the best ways of getting to know someone (other than getting drunk with them) is to see how they measure up against adversity. Much like our first ten examples, these next ten certainly managed that.
10. Scotty
Captain Montgomery Scott, chief engineer aboard the Enterprise and the Enterprise-A, trapped in the 24th century, having suffered a mild case of transporter pattern degradation. While the crossover event was a touching episode for fans of The Original Series and the accompanying movies, it was a bittersweet ending for the most famous Canadian-Scotsman in the fleet.
TrekCulture has addressed the discrepancies between The Next Generation and Generations before so for this entry, let us focus on just the story of Relics.
After being rescued from the transporter buffer of the USS Jenolan, Scotty materializes out of time. Decades have passed since he went in, so he is now, to his current knowledge, the last surviving member of his crew. While Spock is still out there on Romulus at this point, Scotty is not informed of that on screen, at least.
The beautiful scene on the holodeck, depicting the old engineer on the bridge of Matt Jefferies' original ship, is tinged with sadness, as both the character and the audience know that this is truly the end of an era. Though Scotty saves the day once more, helping Geordi save the Enterprise-D, he elects to spend the rest of his days on the Norfin Colony, learning what he can to live in the future.