‘Star Trek’s Best Captain Is … Scotty?

For as long as there have been chat rooms and Comic-Con back alleys, sci-fi fans have been duking it out over who’s the best captain on Star Trek: Kirk versus Picard versus Crusher. But all that petty squabbling is pointless as there is a definitive and indisputable answer to this question: it’s Captain James “Scotty” Doohan.

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The above Star Trek clip is from “The Trouble With Tribbles,” one of the worst episodes in television history. It’s also one of the only episodes where Kelpian-eyed viewers can spot that James Doohan, the actor playing Chief Excruciating Accent Officer Scotty, appears to be missing a digit on his right hand. What had happened to his middle finger? According to Doohan, he gave it to Hitler. 

At the age of 19, James Doohan kissed his parents goodbye, tucked away his brother’s lucky silver cigarette case, and left to fight World War II. A Vancouver boy, he joined the Royal Canadian Artillery, where he beamed through the ranks and quickly made lieutenant. On D-Day, Lt. Doohan led a unit of 3rd Canadian Infantry as they apologetically stormed Juno Beach. His further exploits in the army included running across an anti-tank minefield that he was juuuuuust light enough for not to trigger, killing two German snipers, seeing a tank explode containing several of his mates (and a small fortune in card winnings), and being taught to do a Scottish accent by a British soldier.

Doug Banksy, Imgur

Listening to Scotty, we can assume that soldier was Welsh. 

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And that was all in a single day! At 11:30 PM on D-Day, Doohan was badly wounded by a barrage of bullets returning from a forward operation. His attacker wasn’t a German ambusher but a spooked Canadian sentry who didn’t realize his Bren Gun was set to “kill.” One of the bullets struck Doohan in the chest, another went through his finger, and he had hiked a quarter-mile to a medic tent before someone told him he also had four slugs in his left leg. Doohan was also informed that the bullet to the chest should have killed him. Fortunately, it had been stopped by the silver cigarette case he kept in his jacket.

CBS

The luckiest redshirt in the world.