Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that “all great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity”.
While Eilidh Montgomery would argue that her “mask” is far from monstrous, she would admit that it has helped her become a more rounded person.
Her mask is one many of us would easily recognise. Hers is that of the Star Trek fictional character Spock.
As a child who grew up without television, Eilidh first came into contact with the starship Enterprise’s first officer in her late 20s while studying Gaelic Language and Culture at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye.
As one of 10 children, she was also home schooled until she was 15, but as we spoke at her home in the Skye village of Breakish, she said she thought her upbringing was “normal”.
“My dad is a church minister and we just grew up without outside influences,” Eilidh, 31, said.
“It was just normal to me though, I thought kids who watched TV were weird and didn’t know how to play games.”
But years later, while trying to distract herself from completing an essay, she found something on TV that would become a very big influence.
She said she had heard of Star Trek through her father and had seen pictures of it but had never seen the show. After finding it while flicking through the channels, she decided to give it a go.
“Instead of procrastinating, it made me do the essay,” she said.
“I was struggling with work at the time because I was older than the other students and I’m not naturally inclined to write at an academic level, I prefer novels, and I was trying to find an excuse to not do it but then Spock said something about doing things that you don’t want to do and I just had to do the essay after that. It was the motivation I was looking for.”
And as it turned out, Spock was what she had been looking for as well. After that, Eilidh decided to take on the half-Vulcan/half-human’s iconic look – complete with his eyebrows, fringe and ears.
She admitted on a daily basis she will dress in her uniform, especially while writing, but has also gone to the shops and even completed a university exam in the clothes.
She has also accumulated one of the biggest Star Trek collections in the country which includes around 300 photographs, books, dvds, coasters, mugs and even music that she can play on her flute and guitar.
PEOPLE CALL ME SPOCK
“I’ve always had hobbies; it was cowboys before,” Eilidh said.
“I would pick a hobby but I never found the one I really wanted. I would choose one and then end up ditching it and selling my stuff and move on to something else. But I’m not going to ditch this, this is what I was looking for.”
Dressing as this TV character may seem strange to many people, but Eilidh admits that it is in these clothes that she feels the most comfortable.
She said: “I had always struggled with trying to make people like me. I don’t think people naturally take to me sometimes and I was trying to do everything to make people like me, which made them dislike me and I’d have someone as a friend and then they’d turn against me because I was different to other people. I liked different things.
“I didn’t grow up with TV and people thought I was weird but watching Star Trek made me realise that you don’t have to try and be somebody, you just have to be yourself and people either accept it or not.
“For me, with Spock, he’s from two cultures – half human, half Vulcan – and I always felt like I was two people trying to come together. It just made me think, I can be like him, I can be what I want to be and without having to struggle all the time and doing what people expect me to do.
“The show is brilliant but it is Spock. Because of him being different, such as his pointed ears, he’s obviously alien, that’s what I always felt like. I never felt like I belonged anywhere.”
In the show, Spock’s race – the Vulcans – are known for being logical rather than emotional – another aspect that Eilidh was attracted to.
“I always struggled with my emotions. And of course Spock is very cool and logical and through university my emotions got worse and worse and things happened, such as a loss of job, and it was because I couldn’t keep complete control of myself.
“Since becoming not exactly obsessed with Spock, but you know what I mean, it has helped because I modelled myself on him and that has helped in the long run. I have noticed that I’ve actually changed, so Spock has had a very good influence on me.
“It was one of those things. You suddenly know you have been looking for something. I was looking for something that would make me, me.”
Many might question why Eilidh doesn’t get the comfort from simply watching the show. So why did she feel she had to “become” Spock?
“I don’t know. I just like the look of him,” she said.
“It was just I realised that I’ve got dark hair and pale skin and that I kind of looked like that anyway, so it was natural.
“When I watch something, I like to be part of it and be somebody in it. When I watch Star Trek, I completely forget the surroundings, I’m Spock, and then it’s just gone from there.
“I actually feel more comfortable in this than anything else, I know it’s really weird, I put on his personality so it is extremely comfortable and I feel sort of normal in it. People even call me Spock.”
IT IS AN ESCAPE
Eilidh’s transformation didn’t really come as a shock to her parents, being someone who has always dressed up from a young age.
She said during her first Skype call to her parents after she had cut her hair and plucked her eyebrows, it took them a while to notice.
“They didn’t even notice that my ears were pointed,” She laughed.
“I said ‘have you noticed anything different?’ And my mum started peering at me and she was like ‘Oh you are Spock, you look quite cute’. They just think it’s normal. My sisters think I’m weird but they are used to me dressing up and doing different things.
“I think my parents are just glad it isn’t anything dangerous. I’m not doing anything evil, it’s a good influence.”
Speaking to Eilidh, it seemed to me as if she really was happier in her Spock skin. But I asked her if there was a worry that rather than fixing her issues, she was simply hiding from them?
“I think it is fixing the problems that I had before rather than ignoring them,” she said.
“Anyone that knows me now wouldn’t have wanted to know me when I was in my teens and 20s. I used to smash things and I’ve thrown chairs through windows before, I don’t do that anymore and I wouldn’t like to go back to the way I was in my teens.”
Her passion for Star Trek played a vital role during the summer when she was going through an extremely painful part of her life.
She admitted that if she hadn’t had this hobby, she would have “done something drastic”.
And she admits that she is slowly becoming more comfortable with her own self, even when she is not wearing her Spock uniform.
The 31-year-old said: “I’ve always had trouble presenting myself so job interviews would always go badly because I would get tongue tied, but I had one recently, which I didn’t get, but they gave me feedback saying they thought I was one of the most confident people they have ever met.
“And that was nice to hear because I wasn’t like that before. I always knew that people would be judging me or talking about me and because I’m not conventional, I don’t dress like other people, my dress sense is set in the Sixties so I always felt like people were judging me against what they see as standard or normal.
“I hadn’t been to the cinema before I was 30 and people thought that was weird, but they were judging me by their standards of how they see society and I don’t behave like that.
“I have been called weird, not normal, and a friend of mine, who is no longer a friend, turned around and told me I had problems because I wasn’t normal, but I said to her, normal to whose standards?
“I think people don’t understand someone who has a hobby that is a passion rather than a hobby. I don’t just grow daffodils or collect stamps.
TO BOLDLY GO
“And I know the difference between this and real life. I know when not to make references to it and I know when it is and isn’t appropriate.
“It is an escape but it is just an escape, I can come out of it.”
Eilidh has managed to find a group, however, that completely understands her passion for all things Star Trek. During a trawl of the internet, she came across Scotland’s very own Starfleet Academy where she has been able to study different courses including physics. She has also made new friends through the programme and put together her own crew – the USS Alba, which has a motto in Gaelic.
“I have translated the To Boldly Go quote into Gaelic,” she added.
She also has another fan of her choice to go Spock – in the form of Spock himself, A.K.A Leonard Nimoy. Eilidh began talking to the actor on social networking sites – with her first message telling him how much he had changed her life.
“When things got really bad in the summer, I got really into Star Trek to try and find a way back to how life used to be,” she said.
“I messaged Leonard Nimoy and told him that it was his characterisation of Spock that had kept me from doing drastic things and that I was extremely grateful for that. And he thought that was really nice. He said it was so nice that a character that he played for 79 episodes and then into the movies had a positive impact on someone who wasn’t even born when Star Trek was out.”