James Doohan Basically Developed Star Trek’s Scotty Himself – Looper

In a 1976 interview on NBC’s “Tomorrow,” which was hosted by Tom Snyder, Doohan explained that when he auditioned for “Star Trek,” he was asked to do several different accents and they decided on the Scottish one. “And of course I was delighted with that because I think the tradition of an engineer is a Scotsman, because all the great motor ships and the steam ships of the world were built in the Clyde,” the actor explained. This is a little bit at odds with an interview Doohan did in 1989 where he insisted that, after he did the accents, Roddenberry asked which one Doohan preferred, and Doohan decided that the engineer would have to be Scottish.

In a 2015 thread in the r/Scotland subreddit, user u/Sensational_Al asked what actual Scottish people thought of the actor’s famous accent, and the consensus seemed to be that it was good, but not great. Redditor u/dangerousrockface called the accent “Decent for a Canadian in the 60s.” A Redditor with a now-deleted account called the accent “okay,” but also said, “We’re absolute suckers for being pandered to,” even when the accents in question aren’t very good. While Doohan’s accent isn’t perfect, it’s certainly iconic, and it’s interesting to know how much of a hand he had in choosing it.