Star Trek: Holmes to Grayson to Spock

Sherlock Holmes fakes his death in 1891.  In the period that follows, he secretly has a relationship that leads to the birth of a son, Ryland, who becomes a soldier in the British army during WWI.

Ryland adopts the Holmes surname by the time his son Alwine is born in 1914.  Alwine is a Member of Parliament, in recognition of his grandfather's considerable reputation, and his own inherited faculties, and he is among those who support Winston Churchill during the years of WWII.

Laiken Holmes is born in 1938.  She works for MI6 during the Cold War, meeting the American spy Tom Grayson, whom she marries in 1956.

Newland Grayson is born in 1958.  He enters the world of computers, which are fast blossoming in his formative years.

Wolcott Grayson is born in 1980.  He follows the family business of his grandparents, navigating the aftermath of the Eugenics Wars as an agent of the CIA.

Marwood Grayson is born in 2007.  In his adult years, WWIII has begun, but he works the home soil as an ordinary detective, following a much older family tradition.

Ewald Grayson is born in 2032, and initiates a family tradition that continues for the next two generations (Byford, born in 2054; Edric, born in 2078) by serving as a United States senator.  He's the second of the Graysons whose life is defined by WWIII.

Sherwin Grayson is born in 2103.  His grandfather Byford was a boy when First Contact occurs, but for him life with Vulcans and the interstellar community is routine.  Like his great-great-grandfather Marwood, Sherwin is interested in the fantasy legacy, and opts for a return to the informal, private detective occupation shared with their distant ancestor Sherlock.

Bromley Grayson is born in 2135.  He works as an ambassador to Vulcan.

Amanda Grayson is born in 2168.  She becomes a school teacher, but can never escape the shadow of her father, whose activities frequently bring Sarek of Vulcan to their family home.  Amanda and Sarek fall in love.

Spock is born in 2230.  Amanda is keenly aware that her son is the child of two worlds, and that his Vulcan side will often dominate him, but she frequently reminds him of his human heritage as well.  The many generations of her family sometimes seem trivial to the young Spock, but he grows to appreciate the printed adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as written by his friend and colleague John Watson.  He finds Sherlock's analytical mind to be surprisingly logical (although at times, quite human), and this is one of the ways he is, in the privacy of his own thoughts, able to reconcile his heritage.

Although, many years into his Starfleet career, when he references his ancestor, obliquely, he is quite justified in believing few will make the connection, or appreciate it, as he does.

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In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Spock quotes the Holmes axiom, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."  The Holmes connection is likely inspired by director Nicholas Meyer, who earlier in his career had also directed The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, which is of course a Sherlock Holmes movie.  Meyer first directed a Star Trek film with The Wrath of Khan, in which Spock meets a premature end, mostly to accommodate Leonard Nimoy's wish to cease performing the role.  Then Nimoy, and Spock, return anyway.  Meyer has for years insisted the death should have been final, which is ironic, given that Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had arranged a similarly premature death, only to bring him back, too.  The irony concludes with Star Trek Into Darkness, which evokes Wrath of Khan, including a death scene, which fans have been discontent about for years, even though it pivots the scene around themes relevant to the story around it, just as the original had, with no particular need to suggest finality.  

Star Trek: The Metamorphoses

 In 2119, Zephram Cochrane opens the first warp five complex, his last public appearance before heading off for a retirement that would shortly end in the last time history hears from him until Kirk discovers Cochrane alive in 2267.  He's been presumed dead after transmissions cease from his solo J-class starship journeys launched from Alpha Centauri, where he'd been living in his later years.  

Here's where things become a little complicated.  It'd be easy to take Cochrane, and the Companion, at their word, that the man Kirk meets is in fact Zephram Cochrane.  But the truth is far stranger, as it tends to be.

In 2161, Charles "Trip" Tucker III dies saving Jonathan Archer from a band of space pirates.  Everyone knows this.  Everyone except the people who like to claim his death was faked and he in fact became an agent for Section 31, becoming integral to their efforts during the Romulan War.  Which is of course sheer nonsense.

He didn't fake his death.  He died.  But the Companion brought him back.

By that year, Cochrane had been living with the Companion for nearly forties years, and by Kirk's perspective still had nearly a hundred years yet together unquestioned.  This is a lot of time.  The Cochrane Kirk meets is youthful, younger, apparently, than even the Cochrane who conducts the first successful warp flight in human history in 2063, when he was in his thirties but looked like he was in his forties at least, due to the rigors of life post-WWIII, where he scrapped for a living in Bozeman, Montana.  The Cochrane Kirk meets, then, is in his early twenties, still arrogant enough, when he was that age, to believe anything is possible, not yet the cynical man who made history, who made Earth's first official contact with Vulcans.

The Cochrane in 2161 was, chronologically, already over a hundred, having accomplished great things and then been deposited in an out-of-the-way planet where he could dwell on the youthful ideals his life had brought him back to, but with all the experience that led him there, his every need met by the Companion.  He had ceased questioning the arrangement years earlier, and yet...

The Companion knew.  Even if Cochrane himself didn't, things needed to change.  Cochrane itched ceaselessly for some new challenge.  For all he knew, humanity could still very much benefit from his talents.  He was cut off from the outside world, had no clue Starfleet existed, much less the state of human/Vulcan affairs.  The Vulcans he knew had made humanity bitter, and Vulcans themselves constantly having to mask annoyance, a relationship that jarred with Cochrane's hopeful outlook.

So the Companion sought someone who might alleviate Cochrane's distress.  That someone had just died, but such distinctions were trivial to the Companion, who brought Tucker back to life, and introduced him to Zephram Cochrane.  The Cochrane Tucker met looked every bit his age, looked tired, looked old, but still vital, in the mind.  Cochrane bombarded him with his many questions.  He listened, astonished, at news of the Xindi conflict, the Temporal Cold War, the budding Federation, how far Cochrane's pupil Henry Archer had pushed warp theory, and his son Jonathan, humanity's relationships among the interstellar community.  

And he confessed that he had his doubts about life with the Companion.  Tucker listened.  Tucker had spent a colorful Starfleet career confronting all manner of outlandish situations.  To him, life with the Companion almost seemed...natural.  He understood that he had died, and was happy about the circumstances in which it had happened.  He had no interest in changing what his friends thought had become of him, of resuming an old life that had had plenty of unwelcome complications.

So he proposed something to Cochrane, and then to the Companion.  He would take Cochrane's place.

Cochrane found himself relieved.  He would get what he wanted, and so would the Companion, and so would Tucker.  Of course it meant his death, but he was ready.  He was more than ready.  And so that's exactly what happened.  And for the next hundred years, Tucker lived with the Companion, and he lost himself, happily, in the process.

When Kirk came upon this planet, he found Tucker and the Companion, and all the clues suggested Zephram Cochrane.  Tucker was, of course, listed as having died quite conclusively.  This was an age in which so much information was available, it was impossible, even with all of it easily at hand, for anyone to know enough to tell the difference in such circumstances.  Like any age, really.  So no one questioned if Zephram Cochrane didn't look like Cochrane, and actually looked a great deal like, well, Charles "Trip" Tucker III.  And Tucker was happy to play the role.  And he was happy, one last time, to play out a screwed-up situation, and then live on with the Companion, for the foreseeable future...

Kirk solved one mystery.  He left behind a much bigger one, but one that had already happily resolved itself.

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Do yourself a favor and rewatch the classic Star Trek episode "Metamorphosis" and tell me that the actor playing Cochrane, in hindsight, doesn't look and sound remarkably like Connor Trinneer, who played Tucker in Enterprise.  Watching it myself, recently, it instantly brought the idea of this story to mind.