An Evil Prospero Analogue Quotes from The Tempest in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

“Our Man Bashir.” By Ronald D. Moore. Perf. Avery Brooks, Rene Auberjonois, Alexander Siddig, Terry Farrell, Colm Meaney, Nana Visitor, Andrew Robinson, Carlos Lacamara, Joseph Ruskin, Darwyn Carson, Julianna McCarthy, and Paul Dooley. Dir. Avery Brooks. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Season 4, episode 9. Syndicated television. 27 November 1995. DVD. Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment, 2021.

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Inspired by the podcast Star Trek: The Next Conversation, I've been re-watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, this time with an eye more peeled for Shakespeare.

At this point, I'm well ahead of the podcast, but I'll be certain to call their attention to the Shakespeare in "Our Man Bashir."

Unfortunately, there's not much Shakespeare here. In this episode, something (imagine that) has gone wrong with the holosuite. I won't trouble you with the details, but Dr. Bashir is playing (essentially) James Bond, Kira is the Russian femme fatal, and Captain Sisko is the evil villain.

The Shakespeare comes in when the evil villain reveals his dastardly plot:

For those of you who aren't terribly fond of Prospero, this can be taken as an interpretation of his twisted vision of his power over the island (even though he appropriates Miranda's line for his idea of the future). Through science (rather than magic), he'll have complete authority over the vastly-geographically-reduced brave new world.

To provide much-needed additional depth to what is otherwise a pretty disappointing episode, we're given a biblical allusion as well: The evil genius is named Dr. Noah.

Beyond that, there's not much positive to say about the episode. But the allusions to Shakespeare and the Bible do raise the overall tone somewhat.

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Links: The Episode at IMDB. Subscribe to Star Trek: The Next Conversation.

For more connections between Star Trek and Shakespeare, head to Shakespeare and Star Trek Complete.

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Book Note (Short Story Note, Really): "Dead in Deptford"

Aird, Catherine. "Dead in Deptford." In Playing Dead: Short Stories in Honor of Simon Brett by Members of the Detection Club. Edited by Martin Edwards. Severn House, 2025. 133–40.

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The short story "Dead in Depford" is, for me, doubly tangential: It's tangentially connected to Shakespeare, and it's tangentially connected to mystery and detective fiction.

The plot involves a group—or club, really—of retired police officers who gather to talk about all sorts of things. In this instance, they're discussing the death of Christopher Marlowe in 1593. Our main character claims to have solved the mystery of his murder.

Therein lie both the tangents. Marlowe was a contemporary of Shakespeare (who is dismissively mentioned on page 135); that's the first. The second is that the mystery of Marlowe's death isn't addressed in any particularly definitive "detective story" manner. The "solution" isn't terribly interesting, nor is it genuinely based in any sort of detection from the facts of the case.

Indeed, it all comes down to one simple—and not terribly convincing or compelling—idea about Marlowe's death. Note: It isn't a conspiracy-theory solution. That's all.

The story attempt to overcome this defect by breaking up what could be one paragraph with interruptions and reactions from the other retired police officers. That's amusing, but it doesn't manage to elevate the story significantly.

Here are a few pages to give you an idea:

Although I do like the individual characterization worked in throughout, there's just not much here.

But feel free to discuss this in the comments!

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An Elementary Error about Shakespeare's Signature in Elementary?

“Pushing Buttons.” By Jeffrey Paul King. Perf. Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu Jon Michael Hill, and Aidan Quinn. Dir. Christine Moore. Elementary. Season 6, episode 3. CBS. 14 May, 2018. DVD. Paramount, 2019.

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Recently, it's all about the mysteries, isn't it?

Shakespeare has made his way into the modernized Sherlock Holmes show Elementary before (for which, q.v.), and that by way of a relatively-obscure quotation.

Here, Shakespeare appears by way of example in claim is about the relative values of signatures:

But I'm not sure that's accurate. The show says that there are fifty-one authenticated signatures of Button Gwinnett. There are six Shakespeare signatures extant (seven, if you count the one on the Folger Shakespeare Library's copy of William Lambarde’s Archaionomia). I've done some searching, and I can't find anything about any of those being sold as a signature of Shakespeare's (the sixth was discovered in 1909, and, had it been sold around that date, it would have likely sold for considerably less than it would today). Note: Please let me know in the comments if I'm overlooking something.

But there are records of Gwinnett's signature being sold at auction: One sold at Christie's in 2002 for $270,000 (with free shipping, I see); another sold for $722,500 at Sotheby’s in 2010 (this may be the signature Elementary is referencing, though they've rounded up considerably—or else the show's stated price includes shipping costs).

In a sense, then, Sherlock's claim is correct. Button Gwinnett's signatures have sold for more than any one of Shakespeare's. 

But imagine that an eighth Shakespeare signature were discovered and authenticated. Even though I acknowledge that my bias leans more toward Shakespeare than toward obscure Revolutionary War figures, don't you imagine that one of eight highly-sought-after signatures would fetch more than one of fifty-one?

Sherlock knows a lot about what he knows about—types of tobacco ash, types of municipal gravel—but when it comes to knowledge about his own national poet, I think he misses the mark.

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Book Note: Bullets for Macbeth

Kaye, Marvin. Bullets for Macbeth. Saturday Review Press / E. P. Dutton & Company, 1976.

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Alert readers will have noticed an uptick in posts on Shakespeare-related mysteries on Bardfilm. I've been working on a possibility for a new course on mystery and detective fiction, and, as is my modus operandi, I've been exploring ways to incorporate Shakespeare into the course.

I'll certainly have James Thurber's "Macbeth Murder Mystery" (for which, q.v.) as a reading early in the course, and I'm thinking of assigning Ngaio Marsh's Death at the Dolphin (for which, q.v.)  as the novel representing her work—it may not be her best work, but it's representative, and it's better than Light Thickens (for which, q.v.).

But I also want to branch out and explore some mysteries I haven't read. Bullets for Macbeth is unlikely to make the main list, but it might serve as a choice for a supplementary novel. It has its flaws (the relationship between the two main characters seems generic and forced), but it's quite compelling and, at least for the Shakespeare scholar, it falls into the "genuine page-turner" category.

The first interesting twist is that our two detectives, while falling clearly into the classification "Private Investigators," aren't actually PIs. Gene, our narrator, has an investigator's license, but he's actually working as an assistant to Hilary Quayle, who runs a Public Relations firm but has an affinity for detective work.

The second is that the mystery's plot depends on the scholarly debate over the identity of the Third Murderer (which is also a key point in Thurber's short story). The director has a theory about who Shakespeare would have intended to double that role, but he won't reveal it to anyone until opening night—and the actor isn't called on to play the role until the dress rehearsal. And I'm not giving much of a spoiler to say that that's when the murder occurs.

If you know who the Third Murderer is, you know who the mystery's murder is.

Let me give you a fair bit of Chapter Two so you can see how this starts to play out:

That's more than I normally provide in a post, but it provides a very good sense of how the novel works.

I do recommend the novel. It's relatively short and quite compelling. And the overal solution is quite clever and convincing.

But that doesn't mean that I agree with the director's argument about which character in the play doubles as Third Murderer.

Feel free to join the conversation in the comments—unlike this post, they are not a spoiler-free zone.

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