by Josef Steiff
That original plot of A Study in Scarlet could have translated quite well into the year 2010, from smaller details to large. The letters found in the pocket of the dead man, Enoch Drebber, could have become printed emails, for example, and the motives of religious prejudice, greed, and revenge are still very much in style. The creators of Sherlock made a conscious decision, however, to use a multitude of elements to tell their story; they chose to employ the method of pastiche.
In this scene, Sherlock also refers to the “heavy rain” that the pink lady had to travel through. This is a direct reference to the video game Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream, 2010) that Sherlock’s visual style and theme strongly resemble. Both the game and the television series feature distinctive camera shots with a heavy blurriness around the focal point of the scene that directs the viewer’s attention to particular details. Sherlock and Heavy Rain also share the same drab color palette as well as similar plotlines featuring an “Origami Killer” (a major plotline from Sherlock’s second episode, “The Blind Banker”). The strongest reference to Heavy Rain, however, is the use of on-screen text to illustrate Sherlock’s deductive process. Even the font is the same—it’s called Johnston and was been used for the London Underground since 1916 (coincidentally the year between the publication of Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear and “His Last Bow”). All of these elements—from the font to filming techniques to plotlines to showing text on-screen in the first place—were conscious choices made by Sherlock’s creators.
So When Is the Lovely Couple Going to Get Killed?
Narrative content is not the only arena in which to find the pastiche, however. All of the choices made to convey the story to the audience—including camera angles, editing, color palettes, and acting styles—also create the experience of the episodes. Television programs have their own conventions, and, more specifically, so do genres of television programs like the detective thriller Sherlock.
We assume, for example, that contemporary detective thriller programs will consistently feature elements such as a murdermystery, tense music, an investigation of the suspects, a red herring or false trail to ramp up the suspense, and the dramatic solving of the crime. Each of the Sherlock episodes features these elements, as do all of the Law and Order franchises, various realcrime documentary programs, and the CSI franchise. Florid acting styles, elaborate costumes, subplots other than how the detectives’ dedication to their work makes their family life difficult, and romantic-sounding scores would all seem out of place in a detective thriller. They would, in fact turn the program into a drama, or perhaps a romance.
Therefore, when television programs (or films, or novels, or pieces of music, or nonfiction) share elements with other similar programs of the past and present, they are presenting codes to their audiences that reflect years of development. The programs mix different elements—some original, some not—to create a new individual work. They are pastiches.
The other two first-season episodes of Sherlock, “The Blind Banker” and “The Great Game,” similarly combine a plot from a Conan Doyle story with new elements. “The Blind Banker” transforms the coded messages from “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” to street graffiti and mixes in a plot involving the continuing aftereffects of the 2008 financial crisis, an international smuggling ring, and a Chinese circus. Unlike the original stories, John is placed in mortal danger and must be saved by our brainy action hero Sherlock. This mixture of older and contemporary themes fits nicely with the postmodern blend of Victorian fiction, contemporary politics, and television thriller conventions in Sherlock’s “The Blind Banker.”
“The Great Game” has Sherlock and John on the trail of no less than five mysteries, with their narrative strands interweaving to create a unique combination. In an adaptation of the Conan Doyle story, Mycroft Holmes asks Sherlock’s help to find the missing flash drive holding the Bruce-Partington missile project. The other mysteries feature the modern twist that each must be solved within a timeframe of a few hours or an innocent victim will die—placing Sherlock firmly within the realm of blockbuster action movies or TV’s 24. The whereabouts of a mad bomber, the death of a television “reality” star, the poisoning of a child, the disappearance of a businessman, and the possible forgery of an Old Master painting are crammed into its ninety minutes. The story climaxes in a standoff reminiscent of a cowboy movie and ends in a sensational cliffhanger. Echoing the purpose of Conan Doyle’s original stories—that of thrilling entertainment—“The Great Game” is a vivid example of pastiche.
The Adventure of the Time-Traveling Detective
What could be in store for our heroes Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson over the next 120 years? What kinds of crimes will we need them to solve, and with what tools? What parts of Sherlock will stand out to audiences in ten years, or twenty, or one hundred? Will they wonder what it was like to watch a program on a quaint old HD television and not on their head-screens, or how it would be possible to physically hold one of those massive-ancient-book-thingies without suction feelers? Will categories like “sociopath” and “banker” even exist?
One thing’s for sure, though—no matter what the era, Sherlock Holmes can solve the most singular, improbable cases. His unerring powers of observation and deduction illustrate an apparently timeless faith in the applicability of empirical reason. And that, my dear, is elementary.
Chapter 29
Moriarty’s Final Human Problem in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Zoran Samardzija
My fascination with Sherlock Holmes derives from the fact that I am huge Star Trek fan and nerd. I began to wonder why so many allusions to the fictional world created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appear throughout the numerous incarnations of Star Trek.
Upon reading the original Holmes stories, I began to understand that when they are referenced, quoted, or holographically recreated, the Star Trek writers do so in order to grapple with the philosophical, ethical, and geopolitical dilemmas for which the Star Trek franchise is best known.
In the timeframe occupied by the original Star Trek series, the first recognizable allusion to Sherlock Holmes occurs in the feature length film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). After Captain Kirk and Bones are framed and imprisoned for assassinating the Klingon Chancellor Gorkon, Spock tells the Enterprise crew, before they begin searching for evidence to reveal the conspiracy, that “an ancestor of mine maintained, that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
His appropriation of the famous quote about the power of logic functions as more than just an in-joke for Sherlock Holmes fans. For Trekkers like myself, it also slyly establishes thematic continuity between the original series and the first spin-off: Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is set several decades in the future. In particular, it associates Spock with Lt. Commander Data of the Starships Enterprise D and Enterprise E, a sentient android who wishes he were capable of human emotions. He, too, happens to be a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
Upon hearing Spock’s citation of Holmes in the movie, I was immediately reminded of two episodes of The Next Generation that aired prior to the sixth film: “Elementary, Dear Data” from 1988 and “Data’s Day” from 1991. The former episode establishes Data’s propensity to role play as Sherlock Holmes using the spaceship’s holodeck. In the latter episode, Data is investigating an apparent transporter accident when he directly echoes Spock’s dialogue as he, too, quotes the virtues of eliminating the impossible. In J.J. Abrams’s recent “reboot” movie, Star Trek (2009), the “alternative universe” Spock utters the same famous Holmes quotation.
To use one of Spock’s favorite words, I find it fascinating how Star Trek is able to dramatize competing definitions of human nature through its references to Sherlock Holmes. Since Spock is half-human and half-Vulcan (a race that privileges logic and reason at the expensive of emotion), in the Star Trek universe, it is an alien and a sentient android w
ho identify with Sherlock Holmes and share his reasoning abilities. In other words, excessive rationality is characterized as a non-human trait, which means that Star Trek implicitly questions the core philosophical value of the Western Enlightenment that defines reason as the essential trait of humanity. This debate about human nature, however, is most compellingly dramatized in the Sherlock-Holmes-themed episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the character of Data who engages in a battle of wits with Professor Moriarty who appears as a sentient holographic computer program.
Which Is More Human: An Android Holmes or Holographic Moriarty?
The holographic Professor Moriarty in Star Trek: The Next Generation is introduced during Season Two in “Elementary, Dear Data.” The episode begins with Captain Picard’s usual captain’s log, informing viewers that the Enterprise has arrived early for a rendezvous for their next mission and has nothing to do but wait. As is customary in the series, a pre-title credit sequence introduces the dramatic themes of each episode. In this particular case, Lt. Geordie La Forge, the ship’s chief engineer, summons Data to engineering to show him his detailed model of a classic British battleship. After Data asks why he would be interested in a ship less technologically advanced than the Enterprise, La Forge responds, “That’s exactly why this fascinated me, Data. See, it’s human nature to love what we don’t have.”
His comment foretells how the episode frames its debate about human nature. In the broadest sense, the episodes explore whether logic and rationality or intuition and emotions are essential human traits. A careful consideration of its title, “Elementary, Dear Data,” even hints at what answer the episode will provide. The first thing to note is that it’s obviously a play on the famous phrase, “Elementary, my dear Watson,” that Sherlock Holmes would utter in the early Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies whenever he wished to emphasize his reasoning to Watson. Here, however, the ironic interlocution of the episode’s title positions Data against himself; while he roleplays as Sherlock Holmes, he is the one who needs to learn what is elementary about human nature. The line, in fact, is spoken to Data by the ship’s doctor, Katherine Pulaski, who does not believe Data can ever become fully human. The context in which she says it is especially important.
For instance, after showing Data his model battleship, La Forge invites Data to participate in a holodeck simulation of a Holmes mystery. The holodeck, for those unfamiliar with the sprawling Star Trek universe, is a computer controlled virtualreality simulator that crews use mostly for recreational purposes. While attempting the simulation, because of the brute strength of his computational skills and memory Data immediately solves the mystery, much to the annoyance La Forge. Upon leaving the holodeck, the two of them encounter Doctor Pulaski. Overhearing their conversation, she bets Data that he cannot solve a mystery that he was not previously familiar with, implying that he is only truly capable of computation and memorization. When the three of them enter the holodeck, Data once again immediately solves the mystery. This frustrates the doctor who then spins the “elementary” phrase against Data.
PULASKI: (to Geordi) Now, now do you see my point? All he knows is what is stored in his memory banks. Inspiration, original thought, the true strength of Holmes is not possible for our friend. (to Data) I give you credit for your vast knowledge, but your circuits would just short out when confronted by a truly original mystery. It’s elementary, dear Data.
In the guise of praising Sherlock Holmes’s “true strength” and demeaning Data’s computational skills, Doctor Pulaski offers a definition of human nature that privileges intuition. Interestingly enough she claims that it’s not Holmes’s exemplary reasoning that makes him so great. Rather, it is his eccentricities and originality, features which Data can never develop because he is incapable of overcoming his programming. In other words, Data can only reason but Holmes can employ a wide-range of skills and behavior when solving mysteries. Doctor Pulaski’s argument has a distinct Nietzschean flair to it. We can easily imagine that while in Starfleet Academy Doctor Pulaski must have read Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human where he writes in the aphorism “The illogical necessary” that:
The illogical is a necessity for mankind, and that much good proceeds from the illogical. It is implanted so firmly in the passions, in language, in art, in religion, and in general in everything that lends value to life . . . Only very naïve people are capable of believing that the nature of man could be transformed into a purely logical one. (R.J. Hollingdale translation, p. 28)
The inability to be illogical and irrational, in other words, is what prevents Data from becoming fully human. Conversely, the fact that Moriarty in Star Trek has those traits makes him more recognizably human than Data. Consider, for example, how he comes into existence in the first place. After Doctor Pulaski’s declaration of “fraud,” La Forge yet again programs the computer, this time with the following directive, “in the Holmesian style create a mystery to confound Data with an opponent who has the ability to defeat him,” in effect creating the sentient holographic simulation of Moriarty who is capable of “originality” and “inspiration,” which are the very traits Data cannot develop.
This Moriarty that comes into existence, then, differs from the one Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes in his original stories. Professor Moriarty plays a prominent role only in the notorious “The Final Problem” but his legacy as Sherlock Holmes’s greatest arch-nemesis is unquestionable. In the story, Watson narrates how the Professor and Holmes fell to their deaths at Reichenbach Falls.
However, as devoted Sherlock Holmes readers are aware, a decade later Arthur Conan Doyle resurrected his most famous creation for a series of new stories after deciding against permanently killing him off. In “The Adventure of the Empty House” we learn that Holmes did in fact defeat Moriarty but faked his death in order to escape from Moriarty’s criminal cohorts. Readers were thus deprived of subsequent battles between Holmes and his greatest antagonist. It also means that Doyle left unexplored several fascinating philosophical and ethical questions about the nature of Moriarty’s criminal tendencies that are teasingly implied by the hyperbolic descriptions Holmes provides of him in “The Final Problem.”
I often wonder about the intellectual legitimacy of Holmes’s description of Moriarty. In the famous passage, Holmes tells Watson how Moriarty became a criminal:
“He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty . . . But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers.”
After discussing how he became of aware of Moriarty’s shadowy presence in London, Holmes tells Watson about Moriarty’s criminal methodology. He adds:
“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of his web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans.”
Given the hyperbolic intensity of Holmes’s description of Moriarty—“a genius;” “extraordinary mental powers;” “The Napoleon of crime”—the question arises: What compelled Holmes, a master of logical abduction, to use his abilities to solve crimes while Moriarty uses his to become the definitive criminal genius of London? Especially from the perspective of a modern reader, Holmes’s own answer to this intractable natureversus-nurture dilemma relies on a regrettable idea that was no doubt commonplace during the Victorian and Edwardian Eras in which Doyle’s stories were set. In other words, the recourse to biological determinism or “hereditary tendencies” to explain Moriarty’s path to evil relies more on a hasty, inductive generalization rather than Holmes’s usual impeccable abductive reasoning.
While the Moriarty in Sta
r Trek: The Next Generation certainly appears to be a “philosopher” and “an abstract thinker,” he in fact rebels against his “hereditary tendencies” and programming to be an evil mastermind. He exhibits an irrational and illogical commitment to securing his own right to exist. In essence, one can say that the Moriarty in “Elementary, Dear Data” has subconscious desires and intuitions, rather than deterministic “hereditary” traits, which he can use to gather knowledge about his “world.” Consider what he says to Data and La Forge:
MORIARTY: My mind is crowded with images. Thoughts I do not understand yet cannot purge. They plague me. You and your associate look and act so oddly, yet though I have never met nor seen the like of either of you I am familiar with you both. It’s very confusing. I have felt new realities at the edge of my consciousness, readying to break through. Surely, Holmes, if that’s who you truly are, you of all people can appreciate what I mean.
Moriarty, in other words, doesn’t come to understand that he is a holographic simulation by using Holmesian reasoning. As his dialogue indicates, Moriarty is haunted by intuitions about which subsequently he must reason and make logical inferences. Reason, therefore, emerges as a secondary trait of the expression of human nature. Only later in the episode does Moriarty make philosophical and logical arguments about his sentience, such as in the following conservation he has with Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Data: