The Star Trek: The Next Generation Sherlockian Phone Card

“… a most interesting character …”

– The Adventure of the Speckled Band (SPEC)

Brent Spiner would play the role of android Lt. Commander Data in all but one episode of the seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and in four feature films. His character is introduced to the Sherlock Holmes stories in the season 1 episode of The Big Goodbye. During the second season episode of Elementary, My Dear Data, the character of Professor Moriarty was created in the holodeck while Data and Lieutenant Geordi LaForge (played by LeVar Burton) were role-playing as Holmes and Watson. The Moriarty character, played by Daniel Davis, would return in the 6th season episode Ship in A Bottle.

Peter E. Blau reported in the May 1995 issue of his Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press that:

Telephone calling cards are a fairly new collectible (some people actually use them to make telephone calls, but the cards are energetically marketed to collectors), and the first sort-of-Sherlockian card has been spotted by Gordon Palmer: TEC Card (800-333-8735) offers a series of Star Trek cards, one of which shows Data in Sherlockian costume. The S’ian card is one of a set of four that costs $40.00, and each of the four cards gives you $5.00 of long-distance calling (at $1.00 a minute) and $5.00 of access to a “Star Trek” entertainment line.