Monday, October 30, 2023

A Brief Quote from Hamlet in a Sherlock Holmes–Related Episode of Star Trek (and it's Not the Quote You're Thinking of)

“Elementary, Dear Data.” By Brian Alan Lane. Perf. Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Diana Muldaur, and Brent Spiner. Dir. Rob Bowman. Star Trek: The Next Generation. Season 2, episode 3. Syndicated television. 3 December 1988. DVD. Paramount, 2002.
I've spent (probably) far more time than I should compiling all the Shakespeare references in Star Trek (for which, q.v.). And every time I think I've reached the end, one more quotation or allusion or reference comes my way.

I recently finished reading Sir Patrick Stewart's Making it So, a fascining memoir that has even more Shakespeare than Star Trek. I also occasionally listen to audiobooks or television shows when I'm having trouble sleeping. The former led me to listening to the latter this week. In other words, I wasn't setting out to re-watch all the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which makes it very serindipitous that I happened to hear a Shakespeare quote that I hadn't noticed before. 

The quote occurs in the first Sherlock Holmes episode—the one where Data quotes Sherlock Holmes quoting Henry V (for which, q.v.). Let's give it a try:


There you have it! A Sherlock Holmes–Related Episode of Star Trek with a brief quote from Hamlet's father's ghost: "Murder most fowl" comes in Act I, scene v, line 27.
Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

 —The Tempest