HE will not be born for another 217 years and his Scottish brogue owes as much to Montreal as Montrose, but that has not stopped four Scots towns fighting to claim him as their own.

Star Trek’s Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, chief engineer of the USS Enterprise, has been declared an Aberdonian by the official historian of the television series in an intervention that should bring the unseemly spat to a close.

A scramble for Trekkie tourists broke out following the death last month of James Doohan, the Canadian actor who played Scotty in the cult television series and spin-off films. West Lothian council announced plans to erect a plaque in the town in memory of the character synonymous with the line “Beam me up, Scotty” and who the council claims was born in Linlithgow.

However, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Elgin followed suit, staking their own claims on the cantankerous engineer, whose despairing cry “the engines cannae take it” helped to make him one of television’s best-loved characters.

Richard Arnold, the Star Trek archivist, historian and former adviser to Gene Roddenberry, the series’s creator, has confirmed that the only official reference to Scotty’s provenance is in the episode Wolf in the Fold, in which the character refers to himself as an “old Aberdeen pub crawler”.

Arnold is backed by Professor Edward Sofranko, who runs a Star Trek course at the University of Rio Grande in Ohio. The psychologist has scoured the programme’s archives and concluded there is only one contender. “The winning city would be Aberdeen,” he said. “We certainly have several sources that give us a convergence of evidence that Scotty was from Aberdeen.”

Sofranko points to several references to the city in Doohan’s autobiography Beam Me Up Scotty. In the book the actor explains that Scotty’s accent and mannerisms were inspired by an Aberdonian named Andrew who he met during the second world war while stationed in Catterick, Yorkshire.

“The novel Star Trek III: The Search for Spock also refers to Scotty and his sister being raised in northern Scotland,” added Sofranko.

David Alexander, who wrote Roddenberry’s official biography, agreed that Aberdeen has the strongest claim. “With Scotty identifying himself as an Aberdeen pub-crawler and Jim Doohan’s deliberate Aberdonian accent I think Aberdeen has the edge,” he said.

“I am absolutely certain that Gene would have had a great laugh over several cities fighting over the right to claim the future birth of one of his characters. He probably would have chosen the city with the best Scotch and would have had a great time deciding.”

Even though Doohan was mocked for his accent and faux Scots phrases such as “that’ll put the haggis in the fire”, Sheena Blackhall, a dialect expert at Aberdeen University’s Elphinstone Institute, said that Scotty could pass for an Aberdonian.

“There is definitely the germ of a Aberdeen accent in the way he talked on screen,” she said. “But we must remember that Scotty comes from the future and maybe all Aberdonians will speak just like Scotty come the 23rd century.”

Councillor Pamela MacDonald, convener of Aberdeen city council’s education and leisure committee, said: “To have our claim vindicated like this is fantastic news. I would be in favour of having a statue or plaque put up somewhere in the city. Hopefully this will settle the argument once and for all.”

However, Willie Dunn, the West Lothian councillor who has spearheaded Linlithgow’s claim, remains bullish. “Scotty may well have grown up to be an Aberdeen pub crawler, but we remain convinced that he was born in Linlithgow, as stated in the Star Trek novel Vulcan’s Glory,” he said.

“We are going to go boldly forward with our plans to erect a tasteful memorial to Scotty and the actor James Doohan. Star Trek has really put Linlithgow on the map.”

Star Trek experts have dismissed Dunn’s claim because he relies on a Star Trek spin-off book that, they claim, does not count as part of the programme’s official history.

It was Doohan who decided to make the Enterprise’s chief engineer Scottish after trying out various accents while auditioning for the part. “I did about eight different accents for him and he asked me which one I liked the most,” he recalled.

“I said, well, if you want an engineer, he’d better be a Scotsman because, in my experience, all the world’s best engineers have been Scottish.”

Doohan’s championing of Scotland was to backfire on him, however. Typecast as Scotty, he struggled to land other roles when the original series came to an end in 1969.

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