TOS Era Characters

[tonyg]

It is a joke, doubly so considering that the director, Nicholas Meyer, was behind the "Seven Percent Solution".

But...Spock's mother was human, so it might be "true" in the Trek Universe.

It's possible that Spock might not have been referring to Holmes either. He could have been referring to Conan-Doyle ( or Dr. Bell, or someone else entirely). If Spocks mother was a descendant of Conan-Doyle the statement would still be true.

Considering the Vulcan devotion to logic, it is entirely possible that Holmes' famous "When you eliminate the impossible" line might be attributed to some Vulcan scholar or prophet who was an ancestor to Spock.

Or he could have just been pulling everybody's leg. This was late film era Spock, the one who was very much at home with the crew of the Enterprise and more likely to show little bits of emotion or humor.

[Dan Gurden]

It's a joke.

TBH, it could also be taken to mean that rather than the fictional Sherlock Holmes (which has been clearly established as a fiction in the ST Universe...), it could equally mean that Amanda was a descendant from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?

Although TBH, I always understood that particular line to mean;
'One of my ancestors enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes books and took on that partuiclar code as a personal guiding code...'

It could be either really.

It is a joke, doubly so considering that the director, Nicholas Meyer, was behind the "Seven Percent Solution".

Considering the Vulcan devotion to logic, it is entirely possible that Holmes' famous "When you eliminate the impossible" line might be attributed to some Vulcan scholar or prophet who was an ancestor to Spock.

Initially I had thought that this ancestor may well have been a Vulcan upon discovering human literature or from a broadly similar philisophical ideal. But.

Vulcans long life spans may well make this a living ancestor aka. A relative.
And in Enterprise we are resolutely presented with a Vulcan society who refuses to believe that ideal, over and over T'Pol repeats the mantra that time-travel is impossible even when presented with unexplainable phenomena? Hardly a broad sample of Vulcan Philosophy to be sure, but thats the problenm with picking evidence from a TV show?

[Rotwang]

What about that old Vulcan proverb "Only Nixon could go to China"? Perhaps in Vulcan usage, all truth is Vulcan even if it doesn't originate from Vulcan, and perhaps in Vulcan usage, anyone who practices a philosophy originated by another classifies himself as a child of that philosopher even if the originator is fictional. Perhaps in Vulcan language, teacher and ancestor are synonymous.

[tonyg]

.
Vulcans long life spans may well make this a living ancestor aka. A relative.
And in Enterprise we are resolutely presented with a Vulcan society who refuses to believe that ideal, over and over T'Pol repeats the mantra that time-travel is impossible even when presented with unexplainable phenomena? Hardly a broad sample of Vulcan Philosophy to be sure, but thats the problenm with picking evidence from a TV show?

Yeah, you never know when somebody down the line might retcon everything.

Spock's statement was made before the Enterprise TV series retconned the Vulcans into manipulative liars. The Vulcan prior to Enterprise probably would have embraced such a concept as logical.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Maybe Spock was just more open-minded than most.

[Owen E Oulton]

The Holmes afficionados, the originators of canon, regard Holmes as a real person about whom John Watson wrote adventures as if they were fiction, so we can believe whichever version makes us happy. I choose to believe that Amanda was descended form Holmes, who would have had to marry rather late in life.

Your mileage may vary...

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Your mileage may vary...

Holmes probably ended up on Vulcan after falling through a misfired Hyperspace Gate during one of the Lovecraft crossovers...

[Owen E Oulton]

That would cause a variation in mileage...