Spock And Sherlock Holmes Are Deeply Important To Each Other
In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Spock indirectly mentions Sherlock Holmes by quoting someone he claims was his ancestor. While that kicked off some fun speculation about the two characters being literally related, director Nicholas Meyer recently pointed out the real reason why the famous detective is so important to the famous Vulcan. According to Sherlock novelist Meyer, “if you know how to write Sherlock, then you’ll know how to write Spock because they’re very similar.”
The Undiscovered Country
If his name doesn’t immediately ring some bells, Nicholas Meyer is one of Trek’s best writers and directors: he effectively saved the franchise by directing The Wrath of Khan, a movie whose script he rewrote in only 12 days. Later, he wrote and directed The Undiscovered Country, going out of his way to have Spock credit a Sherlock Holmes quote to his ancestor: “if you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
The director felt that linking the characters was very important, and channeling the popular detective when writing for our favorite Vulcan got some very high praise from Leonard Nimoy.
A Great Compliment
According to Meyer, the beloved actor “paid me a great compliment” when “He said I knew how to write Spock.” One of the reasons the director thought this was such an awesome compliment was because Nimoy knew what his character was about more than anyone else. “I never had to direct Leonard as Spock,” he said, because Nimoy “knew cold what that was all about.”
Meyer Used Holmes To Find Spock
In other words, Nimoy had the definitive idea of what Spock would and wouldn’t say, which is part of why he helped develop the story for both Star Trek IV and Star Trek VI.
Reflecting on the compliment, Meyer claims that when writing Spock, he “modeled it a lot on Sherlock Holmes.” He believes the characters are similar enough that having a handle on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s deductive detective gave him the edge when writing for Gene Roddenberry’s logical alien.
A Holmes Writer Himself
Incidentally, Nicholas Meyer is likely the only person with extensive experience writing for both Spock and Sherlock Holmes. On top of his Star Trek credentials, Meyer is someone who has been writing Sherlock novels for decades and just released a brand new one titled Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell.
In short, he has extensive experience writing for a character with a perfectly logical mind, and his approach to writing Spock that same way was enough to win the approval of Leonard Nimoy.
Star Trek VI Had A Lot Of Fun With Quotes
As mentioned before, Spock’s throwaway allusion to Sherlock Holmes in The Undiscovered Country prompted some fans to furiously speculate that the fictional human could somehow be Spock’s real ancestor.
Such speculation is crazy, though, because that final Original Series film was one where Spock was lowkey having fun messing with his human colleagues. He even claims “only Nixon could go to China” is an “old Vulcan proverb,” so nobody should take Spock’s super-obvious jokes in that film very seriously.
Sherlock Vs. Sherlock
In addition to Meyer linking Sherlock and Spock, the franchise reboot later did so in a weird way, with Star Trek Into Darkness ending with a showdown between Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch and Spock actor Zachary Quinto.
Of course, an emotional fistfight wasn’t exactly what anybody expected from the normally calm and collected Vulcan. But given how the Robert Downey Jr. movies reminded us that Sherlock was an expert boxer, we can deduce that Spock throwing hands in the later film was perfectly logical.
Source: TrekMovie
