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In the Next Generation Season 6 episode 'Relics' Montgomery Scott is famously found by the Enterprise-D crew suspended in a transporter buffer for 75 years. He is released and adjusts somewhat to life in that time during the course of the episode. This is of course just a fun way to get Scotty into a TNG episode, but it has pretty drastic consequences on the original series crew in my view.

Is Scotty missed? Is he assumed dead? Do any of his legendary science fiction friends and colleagues try to find him? I know Scotty is in retirement at this point and I suppose Generations means that Kirk is dead, but still, I was surprised how this episode ended when I rewatched it recently.

So, was Scotty missed and did any of his former crewmates do anything about it?

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    There is no canonical answer to this question possible. The only other member of the "classic" cast who is absolutely known to have survived to see Scotty's re-emergence is Spock, whom we see before that re-emergence in "Unification" and then after in Star Trek (2009). No mention is made of any interaction between him and Scotty-from-the-past. The EU includes several stories in which Scotty interacts with Spock and even Kirk (because Shatner refused to accept Kirk's death and wrote stories in which Kirk somehow survived), but I'm not personally familiar with them.
    – Michael Scott Shappe
    Commented Oct 3, 2015 at 23:53
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    @UncleMikey McCoy was still alive in the TNG era, so maybe they interacted, though not sure if on screen. In those EU stories Scotty was missed, and attended several "out of time" gatherings for people who had been displaced through transporter buffers, Nexus ribbons, or other time traveling accidents.
    – Dave Johnson
    Commented Oct 5, 2015 at 16:37
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    McCoy was alive in 2364; Scotty re-emerged in 2369. There is no canonical evidence either way to suggest McCoy is still alive or not. The fact that McCoy is alive in 2364 suggests that younger members of the Old Crew (Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, Rand, Chapel) might conceivably still be alive, but we never see them or hear about them. So, in terms of answering the question from canonical sources, we're still stuck with: "there aren't any".
    – Michael Scott Shappe
    Commented Oct 5, 2015 at 17:07
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    Admittedly the ST novels are not canon, but there is one book where Kirk (of course) sets the galaxy at risk to go back and rescue Scotty before his death.
    – JohnP
    Commented Oct 5, 2015 at 19:49
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    This question is impossible to answer as the writers bungled keeping a consistent timeline on the fate of the original ST officers. When Scotty is rescued from the transporter, he asks about Captain Kirk- a question which makes no sense given he is shown in Generations to have witnessed Kirk's apparent death.
    – MgSam
    Commented Oct 26, 2015 at 4:31

1 Answer 1

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Canon: Unknown

There is nothing in the Star Trek canon that tells us how any Original Series-era characters reacted to Scotty's original disappearance on the USS Jenolan, or how any surviving crew reacted to his return and subsequent desire to travel around space on his own.

Pure speculation: It could very well be that Scotty used the Enterprise-D computer to look up surviving members of the original Enterprise and found that there were none other than Spock, who was inaccessible on Romulus. (The extremely old Dr. McCoy, for instance, could have died in the years between "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Relics".) In that case, there would be no reactions to his return and he would have felt free to go travelling about the quadrant.

Extended Universe: Yes!

According to the Star Trek short story "Ancient History", Scotty knew Morgan Bateson, the 23rd-Century Starfleet captain whose vessel was displaced into the 24th Century in "Cause and Effect" (where it kept crashing into the Enterprise-D).

In that story, Scotty and Bateson reconnected shortly after the events of "Relics". It seems that Bateson was quite happy to discover that Scotty was alive, suggesting that Bateson probably missed him.

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    Glad to see this question finally has an answer; +1
    – Often Right
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 4:55
  • I thought it was spelt Jenolan
    – IG_42
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 18:07
  • @IG_42: Just a typo. Thanks.
    – Praxis
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 18:40
  • @The Doc - Me too! I've been surprised more hasn't been said about it. I feel it's a strange way to sort of end Scotty's story. Surely they could have just sent him back where he wouldn't have been such a loner.
    – ThruGog
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 20:07
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    @ThruGog : Glad to be of help! (I somehow missed this question --- otherwise, I would have answered it sooner.) :-)
    – Praxis
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 23:22

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