Ship in a Bottle
Guess who's back! It's not just Lieutenant Broccoli
Data and LaForge are merrily playing at Holmes and Watson in the Holodeck when suddenly they notice a small fault. They call in Reginald Barclay to investigate - and he activates the Moriarty program… Thus begins a strange and fanciful adventure that involves Holodeck programs within Holodeck programs, feints, counter-feints, and more than a few surprises! Good heavens, Holmes, the Enterprise held hostage by a Victorian supervillain? Whatever next...
Words
After “Elementary, Dear Data”, Paramount became involved in a legal dispute with the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was not TNG that caused the problem, however, but the 1985 film Young Sherlock Holmes - something that the production team only discovered when Jeri Taylor decided to check in with the Sherlock Holmes estate and see what their beef was.
It turned out that they were quite willing to license Holmes and co. to TNG for what Taylor later called a “very reasonable license fee”. Suddenly, Data-Holmes was back on the menu, which especially delighted Brent Spiner, who’d been itching to play Holmes again.
But the story of this episode goes back much further. It began as the first pitch René Echevarria made to Michael Piller after successfully selling his first screenplay to them:
I pitched a story after I sold “The Offspring” about Riker and Picard going on a mission, and Riker beams him into the holodeck from starbase and it appears as though Riker is taking over the ship and leading it into enemy territory. In fact, what he's doing is setting up a scenario where Picard will be protected. It was a plan to discredit some bad guy and Michael remembered it and said he loved the holodeck gag. When we were all at Jeri's house one Sunday having a story session, somebody mentioned we could do Moriarty again. I told everybody there was a story Michael liked that we could use. In the first draft, we figured out a way to help him escape the holodeck by walking in a transporter beam and it breaks up and he dies – but during the break we came up with the notion of giving him what he wants and never letting him know he's been fooled. It was very sweet, having this 18th century genius thinking he'd outsmarted us and just smugly going on.
Okay, that should be 19th century, but who hasn’t mistaken the 1800s for the 18th century at some point?
To make the story work, the writers felt they needed a character who hadn’t been present for the first encounter with Moriarty - and it didn’t take long for Reginald Barclay to be suggested, much to the delight of Echevarria, who was gleefully breathing life back into his old concept.
If you’ve ever been confused with the universes-within-universes of this story, you’ll be pleased to know that even the production staff was bamboozled by the details of this plot - and ended up during diagrams to try and keep track of what’s what. (I have not been able to find a picture of these, alas!)
There’s a clever and very subtle sign of the unusual circumstances of the episode if you’re paying attention. After Moriarty appears to leave the holodeck, there are no cuts to an exterior shot of the Enterprise. A typical TNG episode provides an establishing shot at each act boundary, or whenever the action shifts in a way that requires clarifying. Not here - and this is by design, because of course we never left the Holodeck!
This is a fan favourite episode, and it’s also one of Brannon Braga’s:
My favourite kind of show, a twisty turny complex mystery. In this case I thought it worked pretty well and certainly the pairing of Moriarty and Barclay was inspired. This was such a good show, you had to do it.
Can’t argue with that!
Acting Roles
The episode rests on Daniel Davis’ outstanding performance as Moriarty, of course, with Dwight Schultz’s Reginald Barclay reduced to a supporting role here for the first time since the character was created.
Precisely because Davis is so strong as Moriarty the most difficult aspect of the show for director Alexander Singer was casting someone to play the Countess Regina Barthalomew - a role destined to be played by the marvellous Stephanie Beacham:
Her casting was the most difficult because we needed someone who could pull off an English accent and had a regal appearance, but who was also very sexy in Victorian clothes. When I saw Stephanie I said that's it, end of story.
What a great piece of casting!
Beacham is famous for playing Sable Colby in 80s power soap Dynasty and its spin off The Colbys, but you may also have seen her as Dr Kristin Westphalen on Seaquest DSV or, in a career highlight performance, as Rose Millar in the BBC drama Tenko. Movie-wise, it’s hard to top her appearance as Jessica Van Helsing in the Hammer horror classic Dracula A.D. 1972. I note she also played a small recurring role in the Gerry Anderson live-action show UFO in 1970.
There’s one other guest star of note, and it’s the implausibly named Clement von Franckenstein as the brother in the Holmesian teaser.
At first, I thought that had to be a pseudonym - but no! von Franckenstein has appeared in nearly 130 roles, almost all of it bit parts. In a strange coincidence, his role immediately prior to this one was in a Sherlock Holmes videogame (The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes). You’ll be unsurprised with such a long run of small roles that he pops up in L.A. Law (before this role). I note he also had a bit part in Project U.F.O. (not to be confused with UFO!) - under the name Clement St. George, which he seems to have used until 1989. His apparently comedic surname is the legacy of his father, who was Austrian ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Models, Make-up, and Mattes
I’ll bet you barely noticed this was a bottle show given the content of the plot! But for set decorator Jim Mees, this episode was a little nightmare. It was his job to recreate the 221-B Baker Street study set, which had to remain faithful to both the original stories and to the scenes in “Elementary, Dear Data”. He did a great job! Take a look.
The most obvious difference is the wallpaper, which had become discontinued in the intervening years and thus could not be duplicated, and even that you have to get really close in to spot it’s not the same!
There is still one SFX sequence of note, which is the impending collision between the Detria II and VI gas giants. This CGI effect was replaced in the high definition editions with a far more detailed CGI version, which as you should know by now I don’t approve of - but it does look cool, at least.
This is another marvellous season six classic, topped off in style by Schultz’s Barclay checking he’s not still in a Holodeck simulator by tentatively asking “Computer... end program”. As Echevarria was later to note - only Barclay could get away with this line!
