Hitchhiker references? SW? Humanx?

We all know that Data's positronic brain was a wide open allusion to Asimov (acknowledged, even lampshaded), but are there any known cases in which Star Trek scripts or prose have given any kind of nod to Douglas Adams? Or ADF's Humanx Commonwealth? Or to Star Wars?

 

There've been plenty of easter eggs spread throughout various episodes in behind the scenes stuff, for example a computer graphic mentions a ship being on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan. But no, nothing specifically in the scripts, IIRC.

 

Re: Humanx - don't recall anything on-air, but IIRC the Star Trek Maps published in 1980 showed a star system named Hivehom (the home system of the Thranx species in ADF's books. Larry Niven's Ringworld was also referenced. And there may have other of which I don't recall at the moment.

 

Didn't the Milennium Falcon appear in ST:FC's Borg battle?

 

Indeed it did. Though that's something else I'd classify as an easter egg.

 

Uhh, yeah, because they're supposed to be from the real star Betelgeuse, aka Alpha Orionis. It's no more an Easter egg than Rigellians or Denebians or Capellans or any other species named after a real star.

 

Uh, yes. And the Betelgeusians of ST:TMP look even less like the descriptions of Ford Prefect than they do the main antagonist from the movie, Beetlejuice

 

For what it's worth, though, my own use of the Betelgeusians in my Trek tie-in fiction does contain a Hitchhiker's reference. Because Betelgeuse is a red supergiant only some 8 million years old -- far, far too young and short-lived to have inhabited planets of its own -- I've explained that the Betelgeusians are called that because they're from "a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse."

 

Spock implied that one of his ancestors was either Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Sherlock Holmes.

DS9 referenced the movie Buckaroo Banzai.

 

The novel Ishmael contains, among many other references, Han Solo.

 

There's also a USS Heart of Gold, NCC-42, listed in DS9 background graphics...

... and a "mostly harmless" species mentioned in VOY "Renaissance Man", by two rather Vogon-like characters. Although of course we also had actual Vo(r)gons in TNG "Captain's Holiday".

Timo Saloniemi

 

Speaking of Ringworld, there's the animated episode "The Slaver Weapon", which transplants a lot of Niven's Known Space lore into Trek.

 

I'm sure it was Sir Arthur, since Holmes is fictional even within the Trek universe.

OTOH, it could also have been one of his Vulcan ancestors, as the statement "If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains - however improbable - MUST be the truth" is definitely in line with Vulcan logic.

 

Or it could be both - Doyle (or perhaps Bell) being an alien would fit perfectly with the Trek style, and a stranded Vulcan would probably be our best match for the impulsive, reclusive, eccentric but rigorously logical crime-fighting consultant. Even if ENT sorta preempted that with "Carbon Creek". (And a couple of novels before that, of course.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

I think it's more like the other way around -- it transplants Spock, Sulu, and Uhura into Known Space. Instead of adjusting the novelette to fit the Trek universe and format (like Dennis Bailey & David Bischoff did when they adapted their novel Tin Woodman into TNG: "Tin Man"), it's more like they adjusted Trek to fit "The Soft Weapon"'s universe and format, by just using the three characters who most closely matched the trio from the story, putting them on a shuttlecraft far from the Enterprise, and dropping them into an almost verbatim (though streamlined) adaptation of the original story. It's almost as if Sulu and Uhura somehow convinced Spock to join them in acting out a Niven holonovel on the recreation deck.

 

Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek both exist in some versions of the Wold Newton Universe. Thus Spock could have been meant that Sherlock Holmes was his ancestor in those versions of the Wold Newton universe.

http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Spock.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win_Scott_Eckert

Star Trek fans who consider Star Trek to be part of the larger Wold Newton universe can therefore consider Spock to be descended from Sherlock Holmes, or from Dr. Watson's "literary agent" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or possibly from both of them through different ancestral lines.

Star Trek fans who don't consider Star Trek to be part of the larger Wold Newton universe will mostly want to reject the idea that Spock could be descended from Sherlock Holmes. They will say that Sherlock Holmes is fictional in our world and Star Trek should be set in a possible future of our world, therefore it is impossible for Sherlock Holmes to be a real historic person and an ancestor of Spock. It would be poorly written and low plausibility science fiction to make Sherlock Holmes an ancestor of Spock.

However, many historical references to Earth's past in Star Trek are inaccurate. This means that some different events have happen in Earth's past in the universe of Star Trek than happened in our universe. Therefore Star Trek doesn't happen in the future of our universe but in the future of an alternate universe that already diverged from ours before the first Star Trek productions were ever made.

So if Star Trek happens in an alternate universe that was already different from ours before the 1960s, Star Trek might happen in an alternate universe different enough from ours that Sherlock Holmes might have been a real historic person in it. So even Star Trek fans who reject the idea that Star Trek is part of the Wold Newton Universe might possibly wonder whether Spock is descended from Sherlock Holmes, or from Dr. Watson's "literary agent" Sir Arthur Conan, or possibly from both of them through different ancestral lines.

see also this thread: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/star-trek-is-part-of-mcu.293148/

 

"Elementary, Dear Data" made it pretty explicit that Sherlock Holmes was a character in stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Although I suppose technically it only confirmed that Moriarty was a fictional creation by Doyle in stories about Holmes, so you could split hairs enough to argue that it doesn't rule out Holmes being a real person that Doyle based his stories on, including a story about a fictional archvillain named Moriarty. But that seems really unlikely. The far simpler explanation is that the ancestor Spock referred to was Doyle.