WWII lieutenant James Doohan with his grandmother. If that name sounds familiar to you, that’s because he later went on to play Scotty in Star Trek.
At the beginning of World War II, Doohan joined the Royal Canadian Artillery and was a member of the 14th (Midland) Field Battery, 2nd Canadian Infantry Division. He was commissioned a Lieutenant in the 14th Field Artillery Regiment of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. He was sent to England in 1940 for training. He first saw combat landing at Juno Beach on D-Day. Shooting two snipers, Doohan led his men to higher ground through a field of anti-tank mines, where they took defensive positions for the night. Crossing between command posts at 23:30 that night, Doohan was hit by six rounds fired from a Bren gun by a nervous Canadian sentry: four in his leg, one in the chest, and one through his right middle finger. The bullet to his chest was stopped by a silver cigarette case given to him by his brother. His right middle finger had to be amputated, something he would conceal on-screen during most of his career as an actor.
ViaMorgan Cameron Ross at Twitter: “78 years ago today, June 6, 1944, James M. Doohan of Vancouver, led D Company of Royal Winnipeg Rifles ashore at Juno Beach. He would be shot 6 times, survive and go on to become Scotty on Star Trek.”
Star Trek: the Motion Picture (1979). When an alien spacecraft of enormous power is spotted approaching Earth, Admiral James T. Kirk resumes command of the overhauled USS Enterprise in order to intercept it.
I love Star Trek a lot,but this is definitely not the franchise at its best. It’s a fairly generic space opera that never really grounds us in the crew we love, instead frequently sacrificing story for a lot of long, languid shots of space and a main plot that never really finds its footing. Not my favourite installment in the series by any stretch of the imagination, but still, it looks pretty good, and it’s still Star Trek. 6/10.
In the season three episodes “Is there in truth no beauty?” and “The Savage Curtain” we see Scotty in the rarely featured dress uniform. But his uniform is different from the others - he wears a kilt along with a belt and sporran.
As a proud tartan wearer myself I always loved this detail, but only recently did I wonder 1) if the tartan is real and 2) if so, whose clan does it belong to?
Luckily Trekcore has screencaps that make solving these mysteries a bit easier. The tartan is fairly simple, just black and white. Most tartans include a mix of warm and cool colors so this is somewhat unusual. (See samples below).
So is Scotty’s tartan real?
Yes! Not only is this a real (official) tartan, it’s from the real Scottclan!
