Zhi Zhu’s fingerprint is on the glass of the photo frame in Soo Lin’s apartment, as if he removed his glove and touched the face of his baby sister out of regret for what he was about to do; similarly, just before he kills her, Soo Lin reaches out and cups his face in her hands.
When Sherlock is trying to come up with the book that everyone would own, he goes to his bookshelf and pulls off three. The first two — the Oxford English Dictionary and the Holy Bible — are probably optimistic, and the third one is downright hilarious and baffling: Syphilis and Local Contagious Disorders by Berkeley Hill.
FROM ACD TO BBC Most of the Doyle allusions in this episode are from his final Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear:
Just as Sherlock realizes the letters correspond to words in a book, Holmes finds a cipher in the agony column and tells Watson, “It is clearly a reference to the words in a page of some book. Until I am told which page and which book I am powerless.”
In trying to figure out which book everyone would own, Sherlock pulls three from his shelf, including the bible and a dictionary. In The Valley of Fear, Holmes asks Watson to solve the problem. Watson suggests three books, and Holmes discounts each guess: the bible (Holmes says there are too many editions for each person to have the same page numbers); Bradshaw (closest to the solution in “The Blind Banker,” it was a travel book about railway journeys; Holmes says the language is “nervous and terse, but limited”); and a dictionary (which Holmes says would have the same problems as the bible). The correct answer turns out to be the almanac.
Holmes uncovers a secret society called the Scowrers, which is like the Black Lotus in that it pulls people in against their wills and then threatens to kill them if they leave. The Scowrers tattoo their forearms rather than their feet and are referred to by one character as a “murder society.” Like the Black Lotus, their reign of terror is solely for profit, and, like the Mafia, they even collect protection money from local businesses.
The Valley of Fear takes place near the beginning of the Holmes/Watson relationship, when Professor Moriarty is still alive. Moriarty’s right-hand man and chief sniper is named Sebastian Moran, so calling Sherlock’s banker colleague “Sebastian” was a nice bit of trickery, making us assume he might be evil when, in fact, he’s just a jerk.
The ciphers in the episode are a reference to hieroglyphic drawings in “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” in which a code warns a woman that someone is coming to kill her husband.
Sherlock handily beats the Sikh fighter in his apartment. There are several references to Holmes being a good fighter in the stories. In The Sign of Four, he encounters McMurdo, a boxer who remembers Holmes as the guy who gave him a cross-hit under the jaw. In “The Adventure of the Empty House,” he explains that he and Moriarty had a fight to the death on the edge of the Reichenbach Falls and he won. In “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist,” Sherlock engages in a fistfight in the street with another man and wins. In “The Yellow Face,” Watson comments that Holmes was “undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen.” And in “The Naval Treaty,” he catches a thief red-handed, who then tries to get away, but Holmes takes him down, receiving a gash on his knuckles as a result.
Sebastian tells John that everyone hated Sherlock in university. In “The ‘Gloria Scott,’” Holmes mentions he only had one friend in college — Victor Trevor — and adds, “I was never a very sociable fellow.”
In “The Adventure of Black Peter,” Watson writes of Holmes, “I have seldom known him claim any large reward for his inestimable services.” In this episode, John does his best to change that.
By looking around Van Coon’s apartment, Sherlock deduces that he must have been left-handed. In “The Yellow Face,” Holmes and Watson try to make conclusions about a client simply by looking at his pipe, and Holmes suggests he’s left-handed based on how charred the left side of the pipe is.
In “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” Holmes interviews people not by asking them direct questions but by making them contradict him, knowing that in their anger they will become competitive and give him far more information, just as he does with Mumford’s wife in the junkyard.
INTERESTING FACTS
In order to execute the pen toss (where John throws the pen to Sherlock, who catches it despite looking in a different direction), Cumberbatch was looking into a mirror so he could see the pen coming. He nailed it on the first try, but there was a problem with the camera and they had to redo it. Three takes later, he caught it again.
John angrily tells Sherlock that the police are giving him an ASBO: an anti-social behavior order.
Van Coon’s secretary, Amanda, is played by Cumberbatch’s then-girlfriend, Olivia Poulet. At the time of filming this episode, she had been in a relationship with Benedict Cumberbatch for 11 years. They amicably split a year later.
Sherlock says he has decided not to take the “Jaria Diamond” case, and that he’s sent them a message instead. Presumably, he’s referring to the Sikh man he was fighting with at the beginning of the episode. Though the script spells it “Jaria,” the name could be referring to Jharia, India, a city known for its coal mining, where a fire has been burning in one of the mines since 1916 (when Arthur Conan Doyle was still writing Sherlock Holmes stories).
When John and Sherlock first arrive at the bank office, Sherlock notes a clock that says the New York time is 7:45. Minutes later, Sherlock looks at Sebastian’s watch, which reads 12:04. Some fans have pointed this out as an impossibility, since there should be a five-hour time difference between London and New York. However, if it had taken Sherlock and John a few minutes to be seen by Sebastian, then 12:04 would be reasonable. New York time and London time are usually five hours apart, but there is a two-week difference between Daylight Savings Time’s ending in the U.S. and in the U.K. In other words, during that two-week period, the clocks are only four hours apart. In 2010, when this episode takes place, that period was from March 14 to March 28; David died on March 22, which puts this moment squarely within that range. Sebastian’s watch is correct. The other clock, however, isn’t (see “Oops”).
When Sherlock is talking to Molly about the disgusting cafeteria food at St. Bart’s, he says, “This place is never going to trouble Egon Ronay, is it?” He’s referring to the food critic who published a series of guides to British and Irish restaurants in the ’50s and ’60s. Ronay died three weeks before the premiere of this episode.
NITPICKS
Sherlock deduces that Eddie Van Coon was left-handed based on how he used the implements in his apartment, and he concludes that a left-handed individual wouldn’t have been able to shoot himself on the right side of the head. However, many eagle-eyed fans have pointed out that Martin Freeman is similarly left-handed, yet John always holds his revolver in his right hand. Is he holding it in his right hand to be truer to the books (Doyle’s Watson is right-handed) or is it possible for someone to hold a gun in their non-dominant hand? I asked a friend who is a sport shooter, and she had this to say: “Yes, it is possible for lefties to shoot right-handed and vice versa… . Shooting ability has less to do with your dominant hand, and more to do with eye dominance.” In other words, the hand a person dominantly uses isn’t necessarily the one in which he or she would shoot a gun, and while Sherlock is correct in this instance, it is possible for Van Coon to have shot himself.
With all of the books in Brian Lukis’s flat, how did Sherlock find the one he happened to be carrying with him on the night of his murder? And do we really believe that Lukis saw the cipher on the back of the shelf and ran terrified from the library all the way home … but stopped at the front desk to properly check out the book from the library first? And how would the Black Lotus have known exactly which book he was going to take out?
Sherlock refers to Hangzhou as an ancient Chinese dialect, but a dialect is spoken, not written. Hangzhou
refers to the written system.
In the cipher meant for Soo Lin’s eyes, the 1 is at the top, the 15 underneath it, whereas the other ciphers had the 15 on the top. This would have given her a different message (i.e., instead of looking at the first word on page 15, she would have turned to the 15th word on page one).
When Sherlock realizes the cipher can be read through the A–Z guidebook, he immediately flips to what is supposed to be page 15 but looks like it’s about 50 pages into the book.
Sherlock grabs the guidebook and begins deciphering the code. When he does so, he turns his back to the German tourists, which means he’s facing the door to 221B Baker Street. So how is it that Zhi Zhu came to his apartment door, knocked John unconscious, and kidnapped both him and Sarah, presumably taking them out the front, while Sherlock stood there the whole time? It’s clear the detective gets very involved in his work, but geez, Sherlock, what happened to your powers of observation?
Two men pick up Sarah’s chair and move it into the line of fire. So since the chair isn’t bolted to the ground, why doesn’t she flip her chair over to save herself the same way John did? It would have been nice to see her take matters into her own hands rather than being a damsel in distress who needs to be saved by Sherlock.
Sherlock mentions that Chinese visas are scarce, and General Shan had to rely on someone with connections and wealth to obtain them for her circus troupe. However, a visa isn’t difficult to obtain if one has enough money to pay for one, and with the money the Black Lotus gang has been making from selling Chinese antiques, one would think they’d have the cash.
OOPS
Gemma Chan, who plays Soo Lin Yao, is a British actress who puts on a Chinese accent for the purpose of playing a Chinese refugee. However, it wavers, and many fans have been amused by the way she says “Is that security?” in the beginning of the episode without even a hint of the Chinese accent she uses elsewhere.
While the time difference between Sebastian’s watch and the clock is correct (see “Interesting Facts”), another clock is wrong. Upon arrival, Sherlock notices the New York time is 7:45. When he is in the offices probably half an hour later, the New York clock in that room reads 7:21.
When Sherlock is at the bank offices, skipping and twirling around the room to figure out who could see the cipher from where they were sitting, he moves around one column and then brushes by another. The second one moves quite noticeably and is clearly a flimsy set decoration.
Despite John’s CV declaring that he has great attention to detail, he writes that he trained at the “University Collgege [sic] Hospital in London.”
When Sherlock finds Eddie’s train ticket, the station is misspelled “Picadilly.”
General Shan tells Sherlock there aren’t any blanks in the gun the second time, but there weren’t any blanks in there the first time, either; blanks make a gunshot noise, and instead the gun just clicked, meaning the chamber was completely empty.
Some viewers have taken issue with the fact that Sherlock refers to Shan’s pistol as a semi-automatic, but it appears to be a Walther, which is indeed a semi. However, the bullets of a Walther travel at just over 1,000 feet per second, not meters, as Sherlock suggests.
SHERLOCKIANS WEIGH IN
Christopher Redmond
Christopher Redmond is investitured as Billy in the Baker Street Irregulars, the most exclusive Holmes society in the world, and is a member of the Bootmakers of Toronto and a number of other Sherlockian societies. He is the author of several books, including A Sherlock Holmes Handbook (Dundurn Press, 2009), and is the administrator of Sherlockian.net.
Do you think Sherlock is a faithful interpretation of the characters of Watson and Holmes?
I think it’s a sincere attempt, particularly in the case of Holmes. Benedict Cumberbatch has the manic quality of the original Holmes (not so much the depressive states that go with it), the brilliance and knowledge, the arrogance. He controls the arrogance less well than the original Holmes, who was somewhat constrained by Victorian standards of behavior, in spite of what we sometimes think. I don’t think he has the aesthetic sensibility of the canonical Holmes, however.
As for Watson, my guess is that the creators of the series could not make themselves take a middle-class Victorian military gentleman (the original Watson) seriously. Thus they’ve had to imagine what an army doctor must be like, and in particular what psychological difficulties he must have in order to take up with the likes of a Sherlock Holmes. Watson’s conventional wish for respectability and order gets overpowered by what the writers see as his pathological need for excitement. Maybe when he’s as old as previous Watsons (not necessarily Nigel Bruce but, say, David Burke) he will be a bit more stable, a solid surface for Holmes to carom off.
What is your favorite aspect of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s reimagining of the stories? What is your least favorite?
I am just delighted by the many reworkings of canonical details and plot points. My favorite, perhaps since it is the first one to surface in “A Study in Pink,” is Sherlock’s analysis of John’s new cellphone, drawn wonderfully from his analysis of Watson’s watch in The Sign of Four. The writers do this over and over. In the last episode (to date), “His Last Vow,” I exclaimed happily in a tweet to Sherlockian friends: “Oh! Janine is Agatha!” It’s a welcome way in which the scripts keep Sherlock and John’s melodramatic personal lives at least slightly rooted in the original stories.
At the other extreme, I find the BBC’s Moriarty just distasteful, some sort of lunatic whose interest lies entirely in his personality and his relationship with Holmes. The original Moriarty is a calm, businesslike schemer motivated by money — in fact very much like the Charles Augustus Magnussen of “His Last Vow” (though I realize that Magnussen is meant to be based on a different canonical figure altogether).
The BBC episodes rely far, far more than the original stories on investigating the personalities of Sherlock and John (and two or three figures around them) and seeing what happens when they are placed under stress in various combinations. I do not find this part of the story arc particularly interesting, and I disagree with those who think that it figures significantly in the Sherlock Holmes canon.
What has been your favorite adaptation of Doyle’s stories so far?
I am entirely sold on the Granada Television episodes produced in the 1980s starring Jeremy Brett. Most of them keep as close to the canonical stories as they could possibly have done, not only in plot but in dialogue and even in the framing of many scenes to imitate the original Sidney Paget illustrations. Both of Brett’s Watsons are brilliant, though I somewhat prefer the earlier, crisper David Burke to the later Edward Hardwicke.
Admittedly, they are middle-aged figures, perhaps better suited to the later Holmes stories than to the very early ones in which the detective and the doctor are necessarily young men. The BBC series took an interesting risk in making Holmes and Watson so young, and it seems to have been completely successful with young viewers, if perhaps not quite so successful with those of my generation.
A few of the later Granada episodes wander far from the original text and characters, and one or two of them include stream-of-consciousness scenes that are as uncongenial to me as the corresponding (and more frequent) scenes in BBC’s Sherlock. Still, I’ll watch most of Brett over and over again with continuing pleasure.
1.3
The Great Game
WRITTEN BY Mark Gatiss
DIRECTED BY Paul McGuigan
ORIGINAL AIR DATE August 8, 2010
In addition to trying to recover government plans for Mycroft, Sherlock and John are forced to solve several other mysteries within a certain time period to prevent further deaths. Sherlock finally meets his real arch-nemesis.
“The Great Game” is where Sherlock truly shines. The first episode was a brilliant introduction to the world of 221B Baker Street, and t
he second — while suffering from some racial issues — showed the development of the core relationship. But in this third installment, everything that has been built up over the previous three hours comes together: Sherlock’s desperate need for action; John’s questioning of who Sherlock really is; and the fine line separating those who solve crimes and those who commit them. All three storylines converge when we discover that Sherlock isn’t the only genius who bores easily.
Despite only appearing in two Sherlock Holmes stories, Moriarty has gone down in history as one of the all-time great villains in literature. He has appeared as Holmes’s foe in films, radio plays, stage productions, and television adaptations. He is, as Holmes says in the stories, “the Napoleon of evil.”
Why are audiences so fascinated with this character if he’s only in one story directly and another one indirectly? Because from the very moment he appears, Holmes regards him as his only intellectual equal. Like the ancient yin and yang symbols, Holmes and Moriarty aren’t opposites but two parts of a complementary whole. Holmes is the consulting detective who is able to get into the mind of the criminal; Moriarty is the consulting criminal who wends his way into Holmes’s mind.
Gatiss provides a masterful introduction to the evil genius through this fast-paced, intense episode that almost never stops being suspenseful. As Moriarty invites Sherlock to play his game — and Sherlock willingly accepts — we see the two brains pitted against one another, and yet working together. Moriarty continually praises Sherlock through his emissaries, and Sherlock eagerly dives into each case, becoming more impressed by his adversary. The fact that Moriarty has turned human beings into panic-stricken time bombs means nothing to the detective: for Sherlock, it’s all about the game.
John, on the other hand, sees this as toying with people’s lives and terrorizing them. He watches as his best friend gets pulled deeper and deeper into Moriarty’s web, and his discomfort grows with Sherlock’s delight. John tries to reason with Sherlock, but can’t get through to him. Sherlock acts like he doesn’t need John, and instead gives him some demeaning make-work tasks like sending him off to see Connie Prince’s brother. John becomes convinced he’s cracked the case … only to discover that Sherlock had solved it hours earlier, not only wasting John’s time to get him out of the way but being utterly thoughtless about the distress he’s causing the elderly blind woman who has C-4 explosives strapped to her.
Investigating Sherlock Page 7
