Plot Synopsis: The Enterprise discovers an old transport ship that crashed on a Dyson sphere more than seventy-five years prior with a single survivor suspended in the transporter buffer: Captain Montgomery Scott.
Plot A and B Analysis: The long teaser contains a lot of provocative info: The Enterprise encounters a Dyson sphere while investigating a distress signal from an old transport ship, and when on board the ship energizes the old transporter and guess who dematerializes? Scotty! Plot A is about Scotty, plot B is around the Dyson sphere. The plot starts out with Scotty trying to fit in to life on the ship in the 24th century, and doesn’t really succeed. Plot B doesn’t get going until the 28th minute, when the Enterprise is pulled inside the sphere. The star inside is unstable, and some jeopardy is generated for the ship. Luckily Scotty and Geordi are up to the task of saving them! The plot is well-paced, gives us all the moments we want from Scotty, and has an enjoyable ending with him setting off on another adventure.
Favorite Scenes: Scotty really is the star and focus of the episode, and rightly so. Every scene he is in is worth watching. There’s a nice line he has when he meets Data: “synthetic scotch…synthetic commanders.” A nice exchange occurs in the 16th minute:
Scotty: Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything now, and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.
Geordi: Yeah, well, I told the captain I’d have this analysis done in an hour.
Scotty: *leaning in, conspiratorially* How long would it really take?
Geordi: *surprised pause* An hour.
Scotty: *incredulous* Oh you didn’t tell him how long it would really take, did you?
Geordi: *nettled* Well of course I did.
Scotty: Oh, laddie, you’ve got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker!
The best set piece begins in the 20th minute, with a sauced-up Scotty heading to the Holodeck. The computer gives him some trouble, and he is about at the end of his patience when he recites the registry number for his Enterprise:
Scotty: *deliberately slowly* NCC-1701. No bloody A, B, C, or D!
What follows is a great scene on board the original bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
Use of Cast/Characters: Picard has one great scene with Scotty, and is instrumental in putting him and Geordi together so they can have some good scenes and ultimately save the crew’s bacon. Geordi has a lot of screen time, and he and Scotty teaming up is one of the many highlights of this episode. He’s frustrated by Scotty at first, and later we get to see them working together like a well-oiled machine, it’s great to watch. Data has one good scene with Scotty, memorably trying to identify Aldebaran whiskey: “It is…it is…it is green,” a reference to By Any Other Name. Beverly has one scene with Scotty and that’s about it. Riker, Worf and Troi have nothing to do. James Doohan may be the favorite guest star of the entire series for a lot of people. He’s still great to watch, and we get a lot of mileage out of him in this episode. His final blessing to Geordi is also great: “A fine ship. A credit to her name. But I’ve always found that a ship is only as good as the engineer who takes care of her and from what I can see, the Enterprise is in good hands.”
Blu Ray Version: A lot of nice touches and subtle enhancements were given to this episode (such as the solar flare), which is nice. If you pause at 27:51 you can see a piece of lighting equipment in the top left corner of the screen. Pause at 32:05 when viewing the star, and you’ll see a star field around the sun, even though we shouldn’t see any inside the Dyson sphere–if you are watching the Netflix version however, the stars were removed! There is a deleted scene involving Troi, and it takes place right after Geordi kicks Scotty out of engineering: he’s in his quarters and Troi comes in to check in on him and be helpful, but only makes things worse. It was cut for time, and I’m OK with it being in the episode or not. It’s a little incongruous that he’s kissing her at the end if they haven’t met, though. There is also a commentary track with Ron Moore.
Nitpicks: Is it just me, or is the shot of the Enterprise sliding alongside the Dyson sphere at 2:08 seem pretty darn long? I found myself wishing Guinan was in this episode, there could have been a good scene between the two somehow, reminiscing about the old days. There is a pretty famous mistake in this episode, and it happens in the 41st minute where Scotty and Geordi are beamed through their own shields back to the Enterprise, when of course you can’t beam people through shields.
Overall Impression: What an episode! Everyone likes Scotty, everyone likes adventure and great characters, and this one has it in spades. We have a creative way to bring Scotty back (which is just like something he would have done), a tough adjustment to the 24th century, an engineering marvel to be explored, and a crisis to avert. It has almost everything! This episode has a lot of great touches too, such as the beginning of the 44th minute when Scotty is saying goodbye to everyone, except Worf–they just stare at each other as he walks by. The set piece of the original bridge is awesome, and they even got the golden transporter sparkle right! For me this episode skirts the boundary between 4.5 or 5 stars, but what the heck. I rate this episode 5 stars.
Behind the Scenes/Trivia: The Next Generation can boast something that no other spinoff of the original can ever match. Four of the original cast have appeared on it! Kirk (Generations), Spock (Unification), McCoy (Encounter at Farpoint), and Scotty have appearances sprinkled throughout the series and the first film–not to mention Sarek (Sarek and Unification)! Scotty is the last we’ll see on the TV series and is, in my opinion, the best of the lot. This was listed in Star Trek 101 as one of the “10 essential episodes” from TNG. While this is an utterly excellent episode, I’d personally select Darmok instead.
Only a small portion of the bridge was recreated for this episode, but it looks like much more, and is great! The shot they used to recreate it is from This Side of Paradise, the shot from the view screen is from The Mark of Gideon. Really there could be an episode just about the story to recreate the bridge–I recommend reading the ST:TNG Companion for the full story. Scotty’s transport shuttle was originally in Star Trek VI and would later be relabeled, turned upside down and become the USS Nash in several DS9 episodes. The portal the Enterprise goes into and later out of is reused in the Voyager episode Non Sequitur. I love the idea of the Dyson sphere but could something like it really exist? Freeman Dyson himself (who didn’t take his own idea seriously) watched the episode and said the science was nonsense but that he enjoyed watching it. Scotty refers to three different TOS episodes in his stories: Elaan of Troyius, Wolf in the Fold, and The Naked Time. Geordi’s story is a reference to Galaxy’s Child.
Missable/Unmissable? Unmissable–try indispensable! This is an episode that deserves to be seen by every fan of Star Trek. The next one is decent, but could’ve been much better.