Star Trek and History (35 page)

The Sherlock Holmes stories that Data re-creates are fictional, but they are heavily based on the events of Doyle's time. Doyle referred to real locations in the Holmes stories, described contemporary social customs, and used real (late-nineteenth-century) criminal investigation procedures in his stories. Holmes is more intimately rooted in his particular historical context than most other fictional detectives; as a result, many of his methods would be impossible to use in the twentieth century. As Christopher Redmond points out, Holmes's time was one in which most people had distinct trades that gave them recognizable ways of dressing, physical abnormalities, and ways of speaking.
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These subtle differences, which Holmes uses to solve mysteries, also provide his readers with a glimpse into the characteristics of the various people living in London during the 1890s. By using these traits to solve puzzles, Data is forced to pay close attention to his setting.

It is interesting that Dr. Pulaski is among those who show an interest in visiting this time period, as the Sherlock Holmes stories were written at a time when medical science was beginning to play a greater role in solving crimes. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the field known as medical jurisprudence or legal medicine was becoming increasingly popular. As E. J. Wagner points out, “An accurate understanding of fingerprint and trace evidence was still in the future, but a few adventurous physicians versed in anatomy, pharmacy, and microscopy were beginning to use their skills in the study of unexplained sudden death.”
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Doyle himself was a doctor and interested in new investigative techniques, which explains why Holmes is a master of drawing inferences from forensic evidence. Dr. Joseph Bell, one of Doyle's instructors at Edinburgh University, was among the influences that shaped the Holmes character.
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Bell attempted to discover patients' symptoms by drawing inferences from their appearance. He was reportedly very accurate in drawing these inferences and in making a correct diagnosis on little more than his astute observations.
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The greatest historical significance of simulating the late nineteenth century may be in experiencing the intellectual shifts that were reshaping various professions and public intellectual life.
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These new ideas transformed people's sense of what it means to be human and introduced new ways of understanding human psychology.
14
Moriarty's character in the episode can be seen as a metaphor for this intellectual transition. The self-aware holographic Moriarty raises deep questions about the nature of consciousness and the moral responsibilities toward intelligent computer programs.
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Just as Victorian Londoners were presented with new ideas about what it means to be human, the crewmembers' conceptions of consciousness and humanity are challenged by Moriarty's consciousness.

In
Next Generation
's episode “Emergence,” the various historical settings the crew has visited come together in the holodeck simulation of the
Orient Express
, and the train becomes linked to the
Enterprise
itself. Outside the holodeck, the crew realizes that a series of nodes are taking control of some of the ship's systems and that they are protecting themselves from removal with force fields. The crew discovers that the nodes converge on the holodeck and that there is a connection between the events that take place in the holodeck and what the nodes cause the ship to do. This leads them to enter the holodeck in an attempt to regain control of the
Enterprise
by interacting with the characters onboard the train. When the holodeck characters resist the crew's efforts, they realize that the nodes are actually part of a new life-form and that it must find a source of vertion particles before it dies.

The way the crewmembers refer to the
Orient Express
is somewhat misleading, because there was no single
Orient Express
train. The
Orient Express
was a line that had multiple trains following different routes over a history extending from 1883 to 2007. Although the crewmembers overlook these details of the train's history, they are correct in describing the train and its passengers as exotic and mysterious. The
Orient Express
has a reputation for luxurious accommodations and for the air of mystery that pervaded its passengers and the locations it passed through. The train's reputation as a setting for intrigue was well deserved, as spies often took advantage of the train's comfort and its range, using it for transportation across Europe. This led some great novelists to use the train as a setting for mysteries.
16
Dr. Crusher, who is responsible for creating the
Orient Express
simulation, explains that she made the program because she enjoys interacting with the variety of people that the train attracts. There is always the possibility of finding interesting strangers and even famous historical figures on the
Orient Express
.

Crusher explains that she is especially fascinated by the conversations that may have taken place between Sigmund Freud and Gertrude Stein, who shared a car during one of their journeys. The diverse range of people who rode the train has much to do with the routes the train followed. Georges Nagelmackers, the Belgian banker who was responsible for creating the
Orient Express
, wanted to create a train that could span the continent, and he decided to bring long-distance rail travel to Europe and to introduce long routes and sleeper cars.
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Newspapers called it the “Orient Express,” because no train had previously traveled so far toward the Orient.

The holodeck train turns out to be even more diverse than the real
Orient Express
, as it is populated by a knight in armor, a cowboy, flappers from the 1920s, a farmer, and a gangster. Data estimates that seven different programs merged to create the assortment of characters. Each of the characters embodies the same stereotypical forms as those used in other holodeck simulations, but they are motivated by the needs of the new alien life-form. The gangster protects the nodes with force, shooting anyone who attempts to interfere with his journey. The farmer is presented as a naive country boy leaving home for the first time and eager to find food in New Vertiform City. The conductor and the engineer control the
Enterprise
, and the flappers sit in the car and patiently assemble puzzle pieces into an image of the nodes. Each character plays a role that merges their character's role with the needs of the new life-form. Although the simulation is much further removed from historical fact than others that the crew encounters, the odd assortment of characters and their enigmatic behavior fit perfectly with the
Orient Express
's reputation and even offers the crew a chance to solve their own mystery on the train.

In
The Next Generation
's “Hollow Pursuits,” one of the ship's engineers, Reginald Barclay, misuses the holodeck to create representations of the ship's crew that he can use to fulfill his unattractive fantasies. The male crewmembers are presented as annoying, weak, and easily intimidated, allowing Barclay to gain a sense of superiority over them. Troi and Dr. Crusher are portrayed as adoring women who fawn over him. Some of Barclay's interactions with them take place in a simulated present, in settings on the
Enterprise.
Others take place in a seventeenth-century forest, which is presented in the pastels of eighteenth-century French Rococo art. In this historical simulation, Barclay plays the role of an expert sword fighter. He is so skilled that he has little trouble taking on Data, La Forge, and Picard at the same time.

La Forge, who enters the holodeck to find Barclay engaged in a sword fight against holographic representations of himself, Data, and Picard, is the first to see Barclay's inappropriate fantasies. In a later scene, Riker, La Forge, and Troi visit Barclay's simulation and talk to their fictional selves. They are disturbed to find that they have been inaccurately characterized in unflattering ways, and they reprimand Barclay for misusing the holodeck. This episode can be seen as a warning about entertainment devices like the holodeck. Barclay's visits to the past seem to be solely for entertainment. He shows little desire to learn anything about the seventeenth century, as he does not include any contemporary characters or events in the simulation. He also breaks with the theme of using the holodeck to take part in structured stories. Rather than solving puzzles, it seems as though he simply visits the past to start fights with the male crewmembers and to flirt with Crusher and Troi. Although there is nothing wrong with playing a simulation for entertainment alone, Barclay's entertainment seems offensive because it involves insultingly inaccurate characterizations and because it shows how insecure he is when interacting with real people.

It is interesting that the other
Enterprise
crewmembers are outraged by Barclay's simulations, since they regularly use the holodeck to visit real historical figures or to interact with fictional characters. Their own representations of historical figures would likely seem offensive if any of those figures lived to see them. The fictional representations of characters like Sherlock Holmes and Dixon Hill might also be upsetting to the authors who created them if these characters were used in ways that the authors had not intended. This is one of the dangers inherent in historical entertainment. The realism of simulations can make fictional events seem very real. When the simulations appropriate real people or popular fictional characters, it may be easy for them to present misinformation that could be a violation of copyright (from the copyright holder's point of view—although these characters are all in the public domain by the time of the
Enterprise
) or that could detract from historical understanding. The crewmembers seem to follow an unstated ethics of holodeck use. They usually reproduce historical figures and famous fictional characters as accurately as possible and avoid using them in offensive scenarios. This ethic contributes to the educational possibilities of the simulations.

The holodeck is the epitome of edutainment. It is a device that can provide invaluable firsthand experience of a historical setting while at the same time engaging users in entertaining puzzles. Each of the episodes discussed in this chapter develops the theme of using entertainment media to explore the past and to preserve a sense of the context of that past, despite some factual inaccuracies and a tendency toward romanticism.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
shows the various ways historical simulations can be used, the kinds of lessons they are best suited for teaching, their power to engage users and to encourage learning through practice, and even some of the dangers associated with simulation. The crewmembers seem to think that the holodeck is worth the serious risks—even injury and death—associated with using it, as they continually return to it even after its long history of malfunctions. It gives them insight into the past, which deepens their understanding of other times and places while also improving their understanding of the present. The holodeck combines education and entertainment to add another dimension to the crew's exploration of the universe.

Notes

1.
Richard A. Bartle,
Designing Virtual Worlds
(New York: New Riders Publishing, 2004), 70.

2.
Edward Castronova,
Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

3.
Estelline Bennett,
Old Deadwood Days
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982).

4.
Leon Claire Metz,
The Shooters
(New York: Berkley Trade, 1996); Joseph G. Rosa,
Age of the Gunfighter: Men and Weapons on the Frontier, 1840–1900
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995).

5.
Charles M. Robinson III,
American Frontier Lawmen 1850–1930
(London: Osprey, 2005).

6.
James Reasoner,
Draw: The Greatest Gunfights of the American West
(New York: Berkley Trade, 2003).

7.
Janet Horowitz Murray,
Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future Narrative in Cyberspace
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 16.

8.
Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg,
The Computers of Star Trek
(New York: Basic Books, 1999), 144.

9.
Christopher Redmond,
A Sherlock Holmes Handbook
(Toronto: Simon & Pierre, 1993), 101.

10.
E. J. Wagner,
The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics behind the Great Detective's Greatest Cases
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006), 3–4.

11.
Robert Hume,
Dr Joseph Bell: The Original Sherlock Holmes
(Kent, CT: Stone Publishing House, 2005); Ely Liebow,
Dr. Joe Bell: Model for Sherlock Holmes
(Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2007).

12.
Jörgen Nordenström,
Evidence-Based Medicine in Sherlock Holmes' Footsteps
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), xi.

13.
Dick Riley and Pam McAllister,
The Bedside, Bathtub, and Armchair Companion to Sherlock Holmes
(New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1999), 7.

14.
Thomas William Heyck,
The Transformation of Intellectual Life in Victorian England
(Kent, UK: Croom Helm, 1982).

15.
Paul Joseph and Sharon Carton, “The Law of the Federation: Images of Law, Lawyers and the Legal System in
Star Trek: The Next Generation
,” in Star Trek
Visions of Law and Justice
, eds. R. H. Chaires and Bradley Stewart Chilton (Dallas: University of North Texas Press, 2003), 50.