Scottish Towns Fight Over Scotty

Several cities in Scotland are claiming the right to call themselves the future birthplace of engineer Montgomery Scott, the way Riverside, Iowa has declared itself to be the future birthplace of Captain Kirk.

The Scotsman reports that Aberdeen, Linlithgow, Elgin and Edinburgh all claim to have been Scotty's town of origin. Though the character played by the recently deceased James Doohan is, of course, fictional, there are very real financial issues attached to the question.

The Wikipedia notes that Riverside, with a population of under 1000, hosts an annual Star Trek convention with a Kirk look-alike contest and a "Spockapalooza" battle of the bands. William Shatner's Invasion Iowa was filmed in Riverside because of the Star Trek connection.

SciFi.com confirms that in the original Star Trek episode "Wolf in the Fold", Scotty describes himself as an "Aberdeen pub crawler", which has led Aberdeen Councillor Pamela MacDonald to propose that the city erect a statue in his honour. " "If he came from Aberdeen and there's a quotation to say that then we should claim him," she said.

However, Doohan gave an interview in the 1970s stating that Scotty came from "Elgin, near Aberdeen". Meanwhile, Linlithgow has become the first Scottish city to announce formal plans to erect a memorial to Scotty, where the fictional engineer's parents were reportedly from.

StarTrek.com says that Scotty was born in 2222, based on a line in the Next Generation episode "Relics", "is based on a line in 'Relics', thus considered 'canon', but the home town is apocryphal." The original series bible says that Scotty was born in Edinburgh.

And while the issue may not be definitively decided until there is a new incarnation of Star Trek, fans in the UK can see the Star Trek: Enterprise finale tonight on the Sky One network, according to icWales.

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