“Beam me up, Scotty” is a popular phrase from the TV show Star Trek, used to initiate teleportation. The phrase has become an idiom for escaping unpleasant situations and has spread into popular culture, including bumper stickers. Although the exact phrase was not used in the show, it has taken on a life of its own. The actor who played Scotty wrote an autobiography with a similar title. The phrase has even been used by a US Congressman in the House of Representatives.
“Beam me up, Scotty,” a line based on the popular 1960s science fiction television series known as Star Trek, is a reference to a line allegedly spoken by the show’s captain, James T. Kirk, to the chief engineer, the Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, known as “Scotty”. After saying the phrase, Scotty would initiate a form of teleportation that would return the captain and those with him to the ship, which was in orbit around a planet they were on. In other circumstances, some people use the phrase to convey a desire to escape unpleasant circumstances or to end local tangle of problems by radiating away from them.
The phrase is well known to fans of the Star Trek television series. Like many idiomatic expressions whose origins are difficult to trace, the phrase itself was not used in any episode of the series in that exact form. It is often compared to another common phrase attributed to the series character of the chief medical officer, Dr. McCoy. McCoy supposedly said many times after examining a crew member that he was dead: “He’s dead, Jim.” While the two sentences weren’t written into dialogue exactly as the idioms suggest, these derivatives of the original utterances have taken on a life of their own far beyond the confines of science fiction.
Bumper stickers are an example of how the phrase has spread in popular culture. Such stickers often read: “Transmit me, Scotty. There is no intelligent life down here.” They are a reference to someone who wants to escape from his daily problems and relationships.
The phrase gained such popularity that the actor who played Montgomery Scott in the Star Trek series, James Doohan, went on to write an autobiography which was published in 1996. It had a similar title, which was Beam Me Up, Scotty : Trek’s Star Scotty – in his own words. Doohan enjoyed the role and the fan base it generated, so the line was never one he disputed as to its origins.
The meaning of idioms often takes on a broader scope. Fiction can affect the real world when phrases like this spread, as they have in American culture. A US Congressman in the House of Representatives who served from 1985 to 2002 for the state of Ohio, James Traficant, has often used the slogan as a conclusion to his arguments in the House.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
