Investigating Sherlock

by Nikki Stafford

  John discovers early on that at times he’s no more important than an inanimate object, and that Sherlock doesn’t even notice if he leaves a room. In “The Adventure of the Creeping Man,” Watson says this was his role in Holmes’s life in the later years: “He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me — many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead — but none the less, having formed the habit, it has become in some way helpful that I should register and interject.”

  Sherlock referring to the case as a “three-patch problem” is a reference to the “three-pipe problem” he faces in “The Red-Headed League.” The look of euphoria on Sherlock’s face as he slaps on the last patch matches Holmes’s expression when he injects cocaine in front of Watson in The Sign of Four.

  The idea that John is a man attracted to danger is certainly part of the stories. In one example, from “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs,” Holmes tells Watson that he knows Watson will want to accompany him on a particular case simply because it involves danger, and adds, “I should know my Watson by now.”

  Jeff tells Sherlock, “You are just a man. And there is so much more than that. An organization.” This echoes Professor Moriarty’s statement to Holmes in “The Final Problem”: “You stand in the way not merely of an individual but of a mighty organization, the full extent of which you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize.”

  At the end of the episode, Sherlock begins deducing who could have shot Jeff Hope when he suddenly realizes it was John, and he tells Lestrade to forget everything. In “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,” Holmes and Watson break into Milverton’s place to help cover up a crime that happens when they’re there. When Lestrade tells Holmes that two men were seen at Milverton’s place and describes one of them to him, Holmes laughs, “That’s rather vague. My, it might be a description of Watson!”

  At the end of the episode, Mycroft says he has a “minor position” in the British government, to which Sherlock replies, “He is the British government.” In the stories when Holmes describes his brother to Watson, he says, “You are right in thinking that he is under the British government. You would also be right in a sense if you said that occasionally he is the British government.”

  INTERESTING FACTS

  The scene of John and Sherlock chasing the cab driver through the streets of London begins in Soho and is filmed on many London streets, but when they finally catch up to the cab, they’re in Cardiff.

  Phil Davis, who plays Jeff, was unable to be on set the day the drugs bust scene was filmed in the Cardiff 221B set, so another actor played his character when he appears in the doorway. That’s why the camera simply zooms in on the pink phone in his pocket and his face is in the shadows.

  NITPICKS If Sherlock had already moved into the flat, why doesn’t Mrs. Hudson look surprised when he knocks on the front door and waits to be let in?

  OOPS Sherlock and John agree to meet at 221B Baker Street to check out the flat at 7 o’clock the following evening. However, when they meet there, it’s clearly mid-day.

  THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION?

  It’s something that has irked scientists and linguists for decades: Sherlock Holmes does not solve crimes through deductions, but inductions. However, in every adaptation since Doyle, the incorrect word has been used, including on Sherlock. So what is the difference between deduction and induction?

  According to science humorist Dave Zobel in his book The Science of TV’s The Big Bang Theory, “Deductive reasoning begins with a collection of statements known to be true.” These aren’t guesses, but known facts put together to reach a conclusion that is infallible; in other words, there’s no way this conclusion could be incorrect. Induction, on the other hand, is based on observations where the observer then uses “pattern matching, hunches, and intuition to try to guess at a rule that accounts for those observations.” These conclusions could be proven false if the guess is wrong. It’s like in a game of Clue: players propose a solution when they’ve seen enough evidence to make an educated guess, but until one knows every single card one’s opponents are holding, one cannot know for certain which three cards are hidden in that envelope.

  Let’s look at Sherlock’s “deductions” in “A Study in Pink.” When he’s investigating the corpse of the woman, he says her marriage is falling apart because the inside of her wedding ring is shiny but the outside is tarnished, as if she pulls it off regularly for a string of affairs but doesn’t bother polishing it. Her coat collar is slightly damp, the umbrella unused, which means she’s been in rain-soaked Cardiff and the wind prevented the umbrella from being opened. Are those indisputable conclusions? Of course not: perhaps she takes the wedding ring off each night because she doesn’t like sleeping with it on; perhaps she washed her coat and it wasn’t completely dry when she had to put it on; perhaps the button on her umbrella didn’t work and she was unable to open it. Sherlock’s observations lead him to certain plausible conclusions, but those conclusions are never infallible. In Doyle’s books, there are several instances where Holmes offers up his “deductions,” and they turn out to be wrong.

  Sherlock is better at observing and making educated guesses than anyone else, but deduction doesn’t even come into it. That said, for the purposes of matching what is said on the show, throughout this book I use the term deduction (with a wince) to describe what he does.

  1.2

  The Blind Banker

  WRITTEN BY Steve Thompson

  DIRECTED BY Euros Lyn

  ORIGINAL AIR DATE August 1, 2010

  As John gets back into the workforce and the dating scene, Sherlock takes a case for an old friend involving mysterious yellow ciphers.

  In our second outing with Sherlock and John, we see the new friendship as it develops … and we also see the tiny cracks beginning to appear. John has already discovered that the adventurous life promised as Sherlock’s companion comes at a price — a price that the ATM card reader won’t let him pay. Without a job, and relying on Sherlock, John decides to find a sort of independence within this codependent relationship.

  Sherlock, on the other hand, continues to have conversations with the air, not noticing that John has actually left the room.

  Where “A Study in Pink” used characters and storylines from the Sherlock Holmes stories to introduce the world of 221B Baker Street to viewers, “The Blind Banker” — the only episode this season not written by Moffat or Gatiss — moves away from canon (while occasionally dipping into it) and focuses more on the two central characters. Even Lestrade is absent, as another inspector, the remarkably young DI Dimmock, steps in to deal with Sherlock on a case. Where Lestrade explained in the previous episode that he uses Sherlock when he’s desperate, and because he truly believes that Sherlock is a good man, Dimmock very reluctantly deals with Sherlock, ignoring and dismissing his theories until Sherlock has to jump through several hoops to prove he might be on to something.

  One key aspect that sets the 21st-century Sherlock apart from the world of Holmes’s gaslights and hansom cabs is its commentary on modern-day anti-intellectualism. In Doyle’s novels, as in many of the adaptations, Holmes’s genius is something that is upheld by others, who are wonderstruck as he presents his solutions at the end of each case with a flourish. Watson admires him so much that he devotes his life to chronicling the extraordinary adventures of the man, while his clients often speculate that Holmes has something of the supernatural about him to be able to deduce so much from so little. Only the detectives are occasionally annoyed by him in the books, but that’s only because Holmes’s deductions usually unveil their own inferiorities as investigators. There are several instances where the detectives openly say that they couldn’t solve half the cases without Holmes’s help, and in one case — “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” — Holmes and Watson are caught doing something illegal, but
when the police are called in, they immediately let Holmes go out of respect.

  On Sherlock, however, the detective’s intelligence is something to be mocked. While John and even Lestrade are in awe of what Sherlock does, Sally Donovan refers to him as “the freak,” Dimmock dismisses him as being a lunatic, and Anderson acts like he’s a pox on the police force. In this episode, we see that this treatment actually bothers Sherlock. When he and John are called out to the bank to investigate a strange cipher that has been graffitied onto a painting, Sherlock is greeted by an old friend, Sebastian, and Sherlock asks him about flying around the world twice in a month. John has started to get used to Sherlock’s “thing,” as Sebastian then puts it, and snickers as Sebastian teases Sherlock about his “trick.” “We were at uni together,” he says to John, as if Sherlock isn’t even in the room. “This guy here had a trick he used to do … We hated him.” While Sebastian continues to mock him, asking if perhaps there’s some ketchup on his shirt or mud on his shoes that Sherlock noticed, Sherlock looks uncomfortable. He turns away, shuffles in his seat, stares at the floor, and begins muttering that it’s not a trick, that he just observed. Finally, he looks at Sebastian and says, “I was just chatting with your secretary outside.” We later discover that, in fact, he had looked at Sebastian’s watch when he shook his hand, but in this moment, to escape Sebastian’s contempt, to try to appear normal, he lies and acts like he’d gotten his information the way ordinary people would have done.

  It’s this utter disdain that everyone else has for him that sets the early 21st century apart from the late 19th: Arthur Conan Doyle’s character lived in a society that would have been awed by his intellectual prowess. But today, in a world where irony is the overriding tone and stupidity the overriding element — the highest-rated shows seem to celebrate the lowest IQs — Sherlock isn’t someone to be upheld but to be sneered at, which is a very interesting element Gatiss and Moffat have added that says a lot about our era and anyone who values knowledge above all else.

  One of co-creator Steven Moffat’s strengths (and occasionally a weakness) is his penchant for looking into the psychology of his characters, as he’s done on Doctor Who. So it was natural for him to take an iconic literary character and do the same thing: what must it be like for someone as intelligent as Sherlock Holmes to travel in the circles of the common folk? To be so uncommonly gifted with the powers of observation, to see things that other people miss, to have to explain what to him seems patently obvious? To always feel like the smartest person in the room? By introducing Mycroft as a more prominent character, one whose derision for his little brother has nothing to do with Sherlock’s intelligence (since he thinks his brother is a moron compared to himself) but more with everyday sibling rivalry, Moffat and Gatiss spotlight Sherlock as a person rather than a peculiar character.

  And so, that little moment of pain that passes over Sherlock’s face as he sits in Sebastian’s office is much more important than it might at first seem. It’s a tiny glimpse into the difficult world Sherlock inhabits. Perhaps the reason he comes off as cold and isolated is because that’s the way he likes it: better to push people away than to try to fit in and be the butt of everyone’s jokes. He’s made an attempt to escape society and friendships; it’s John who will pull him back in.

  John, on the other hand, has found comfort and adventure in living with Sherlock, and now seeks to spread his wings into the greater world. The adventure is fun, but once he does away with his loneliness, he wants to live life to its fullest. To Sherlock, the cases are what life is all about: who needs money and romance when there are ciphers to be decoded?! Because John’s time is limited, however, he conveniently combines both by dating a work colleague. Zoe Telford is wonderful as Sarah, the woman who falls for John even though he falls asleep on the job, but their first date is a bit of a travesty. Not only does Sherlock show up as a third wheel, but she ends up attacking someone with a stick, going hungry, getting kidnapped, and watching her life flash before her eyes. Surprisingly, she’s still around in the next episode (perhaps she, too, craves danger and adventure?) but not beyond that.

  Poor John. When the sad strains of “Watson’s Theme” begin playing as Sarah stares down an arrow aimed at her head, we know what he’s thinking: maybe he is destined to be alone in love. His craving for adventure might cost him any sort of life outside that adventure. It’s one thing to long for danger; it’s quite another to see a loved one facing danger because of you.

  As Sherlock and John try to find their places within their new friendship, the case itself takes center stage … and that’s where the main problems of this episode lie. For a series that tried to eschew Victorian trappings, it certainly holds fast to them here when it comes to racial stereotyping.

  It begins with the opening of the written script, where Soo Lin Yao is described as “Pale, young, beautiful — a fragile little doll,” immediately stripping her of any sort of strength or heroism on her own part; we know she’s destined to be a victim. Despite the musical motifs of the show (the theme song, “Watson’s Theme,” and the “Hero’s Theme” that plays when Sherlock is triumphant) all being derived from the same chord structure, in this scene we hear stereotypical “Oriental” music that is completely out of tune with the show’s soundtrack, immediately denoting the ancient tea ceremony — and Soo Lin herself — as foreign and Other. Similarly, Arabian music plays during the scene of Sherlock fighting the Sikh man who bizarrely wields a samurai sword rather than a kirpan or ancient Sikh sword, loses the battle to an unarmed Sherlock, and is a mere footnote to the episode. When Sherlock and Watson travel to the Lucky Cat shop (a Chinese shop that inexplicably features several Japanese tchotchkes on its shelves), Chinatown is filmed differently than the rest of London. Gone are the fast-moving cars and people quickly walking by: now the music turns creepy, the alleyways shot like we’re in the seamy underbelly of the city, where people lurk in doorways like criminals watching you with evil intent, or slink by eerily and slowly as if they have nothing better to do all day than be disconcerting and threatening. While Soo Lin is sympathetic, and her brother is portrayed as a puppet doing bad things against his will, the other Chinese characters are all criminals. Even the Chinese opera feels wrong — an ancient and beautiful Chinese tradition being used to mask something dark and sinister. There’s an episode of Doctor Who from 1977 called “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” that is often cited as a favorite among fans for its excellent storytelling, but it’s difficult to watch now because of its problematic depiction of Chinese people all belonging to the Tong gang (and the fact that the main character was played by a Caucasian actor in Fu Manchu makeup). That episode aired 33 years before this one, and it’s the racist stereotypes that have dated it. How is it possible that three decades later the BBC would be committing the same error in judgment, right down to making the Chinese characters belong to none other than a Tong gang?

  However, “The Blind Banker” still has some brilliant gems sprinkled throughout, from the excitement of Sherlock and John trying to decipher the codes, to the suspense of the escapology act, to the constant pile-up of evidence that John might actually be Sherlock Holmes, to that hilarious moment of Sherlock in “disguise” as a guy who’s just forgotten his key and buzzes another tenant to let him into the building. The performances of Freeman and Cumberbatch save this episode and keep fans coming back to rewatch it again and again.

  That said, when compared to “A Study in Pink” and “The Great Game,” this is easily the weakest outing of season one.

  HIGHLIGHT That epic pen toss.

  DID YOU NOTICE?

  After John has the argument with the chip-and-PIN machine at the supermarket, he mutters, “Keep it, keep it,” and walks away. One assumes he’s referring to the groceries, but since he doesn’t actually take the card back when he leaves, apparently he was telling the machine to keep that also.

  When John and Sherlock go to the bank, they go t
o Tower 42. The number 42 is significant in pop culture because of its importance in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, wherein a computer has been working out the key to “The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” for several million years. The answer? Forty-two. Martin Freeman starred in the 2005 film adaptation of the book.

  When Sherlock goes to Eddie Van Coon’s flat, you can see a stack of books sitting near the fireplace, many of which are a wink to the plot of this episode: P.J. Tracy’s Snow Blind; Simon Singh’s Fermat’s Last Theorem; Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol; George Savage’s Porcelain through the Ages; James Ellroy’s Blood’s a Rover; Veronica Chambers’s Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation; Mohamed El-Erian’s When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change; Judith Miller’s Miller’s Antiques; Edna Healey’s Coutts & Co 1692–1992: The Portrait of a Private Bank; Paul Lunde’s The Secrets of Codes: Understanding the World of Hidden Messages; and the London A–Z Street Atlas.

  We learn a lot of facts about John’s career from the brief flash of his CV: he went to King Edward Grammar School in Chelmsford from 1994 to 1999, attended King’s College in London to obtain his Intercalated BSc in Medical Sciences (Hons) from 1999 to 2001, then took his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at the same college from 2001 to 2004, and received further medical training from 2004 to 2006. In his profile, he says he is “a conscientious, reliable, and hardworking medical professional, pays attention to details, crusader of clinical governance, with excellent interpersonal and time management skills, seeking further training and experience in accident and emergency medicine while working towards a career in laparoscopic and bloodless surgery.”