Star Trek Theory: Spock And Sherlock Holmes Are Related
As fan theories go, it's an oldie but a goodie, with roots deep in the parts of "Star Trek" history where the writers had long since given up on trying to make sense: What if Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Sherlock Holmes (lots of actors) were related?
"Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" seems like as good a place to start as any. During the events of the final "TOS" movie, Spock — with the subtlety historically exhibited by most people trying to imply that they have a famous relative without actually name-dropping them — states the following:
"An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." In a rambly kind of way, it's a great quote. It's also from "The Sign of the Four," a Sherlock Holmes novel published in 1890, and attributed to London's own consulting detective. That can only mean one thing, right?
Spock, by way of Homes' genealogy as stated in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter," is related to the French landscape artist Claude-Joseph Vernet.
Also, you know. To Sherlock Holmes. Spock is a relative of Sherlock Holmes. Does the theory hold water?
Is Spock related to Sherlock Holmes? Fascinating, but highly illogical
No, it doesn't. Not at all.
Like, there are technical aspects of the theory that hold up. Spock is half-human, so Sherlock Holmes could be a member of his family, assuming that Holmes was a real person in the "Star Trek" universe — which he was not. In the season one "Next Generation" episode "Lonely Among Us," Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) describes "the immortal Sherlock Holmes" as an aspect of literature. In "Elementary, Dear Data," Data (Brent Spiner) specifically instructs the holodeck to construct a Holmes-style mystery for him to solve, "but not one written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."
So if Holmes is fictional, what's really going on with Spock? The obvious answer is that he was actually inferring that he was related to Doyle, which would be sort of a bummer. It's more fun to imagine that two of fiction's most iconic logicians were distant relatives than it is to think that Spock was the great-great-grandson of a guy who believed in fairies. Then again, maybe Spock was just messing with the bridge crew when he implied that he had ties to the Holmes family. The guy got kind of sassy in his later years.