In The Sign of Four and “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” Holmes says he can differentiate between 140 types of tobacco ash; on the show, the number is inflated to 243.
Mrs. Hudson opens the refrigerator and finds a bag of thumbs. In “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb,” a client rushes into 221B with his hand still bleeding from where his thumb had just been lopped off.
In “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client,” Holmes refuses to take on a case if they won’t reveal the identity of the client to him, no matter how urgent the case may be. In this episode, Sherlock is just as stubborn, and when he outright asks who the client is, the equerry simply replies, “Illustrious.”
The equerry at Buckingham Palace says to John that his employer is a big fan of John’s blog and “particularly enjoyed the one about the aluminium crutch.” In “The Musgrave Ritual,” Watson and Holmes discuss the cases that Watson has written about, and Holmes says they weren’t all winners, mentioning “the singular affair of the aluminum crutch.” Since this is a story never explained in the canon, fans can only imagine what the case could have been. It will be mentioned again in the next episode.
John mentions that the counter on his blog has been stuck at 1895 for some time. At the beginning of “The Adventure of Black Peter,” Watson writes, “I have never known my friend to be in better form, both mental and physical, than in the year ’95.” Many of the stories are set in this year.
Just before opening Adler’s safe, Sherlock yells “Vatican cameos!” and John ducks. Despite the nonsense on the internet that it’s a phrase originating in World War II that was a British code for “duck,” it’s actually a reference to the beginning of Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, where Holmes explains he had gotten very involved in a case he was working for the Pope wherein he was searching for Vatican cameos. John and Sherlock have clearly come up with a series of code words in certain dangerous situations, and this is one of them. (It will be used again in the third season.)
Irene Adler beats Sherlock with a riding crop; in “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,” Watson comments that Holmes brings along a “loaded hunting-crop, which was his favourite weapon.”
On the wall of Sherlock’s bedroom is a periodic table and the rules of bartitsu, a form of martial arts popular at the turn of the 19th century in England. In “The Adventure of the Empty House,” Sherlock reveals that he was able to beat Moriarty using “baritsu” [sic] and referred to it as a Japanese style of wrestling.
In “The Adventure of the Dying Detective,” Watson notes that Holmes “had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women. He disliked and distrusted the sex, but he was always a chivalrous opponent.”
INTERESTING FACTS
The title of this episode, like all Sherlock titles that are plays on Doyle story titles, alters “Bohemia” to “Belgravia.” Belgravia is a very upscale area in London, presumably where Irene’s flat is located (though that’s never stated outright). However, Belgravia was also the name of a 19th-century literary magazine within which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had some of his earliest stories published (though none featuring Sherlock Holmes).
Producer Sue Vertue has said that the idea for the “Stayin’ Alive” ringtone on Moriarty’s phone came from an actual incident where she was at a funeral and someone’s phone began ringing with that same ringtone at a very inappropriate moment. The irony was both horrifying and hilarious.
Sherlock grabs the deerstalker hat as a disguise, but is photographed in the hat and it immediately becomes his trademark, even though that’s not his intention. The moment is a clever nod to the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never actually mentioned Sherlock wearing a deerstalker, but illustrator Sidney Paget drew him wearing one. Just as John will later refer to the deerstalker as a “Sherlock hat,” it’s now immediately identifiable as belonging to Sherlock Holmes.
John’s girlfriend Jeanette is played by Oona Chaplin, daughter of Geraldine Chaplin, granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin, and great-granddaughter of Eugene O’Neill. She is perhaps best known to North American audiences as Talisa Maegyr on Game of Thrones.
John referring to his middle name as “Hamish” is an inside joke among longtime Sherlockians. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was notoriously inconsistent in the stories, and in one story — “The Man with the Twisted Lip” — Watson’s wife, Mary, refers to him as “James.” To try to compensate for Doyle’s inaccuracy and instead come up with a proper explanation, detective fiction author Dorothy L. Sayers wrote an article suggesting that perhaps his middle initial — “H,” which is never expanded — stands for Hamish, which is the Scottish form of James, and Mary was referring to him by that middle name as a pet name. Unlikely, but Moffat gives it a nod in this episode.
Adler says she has a safety deposit box in the Strand, which is a reference not only to the place but to Strand magazine, which published most of the Holmes stories.
Mycroft uses the word “Coventry” when talking about the Bond Air operation, and Sherlock connects it to an incident — which he says is “probably not true” — where Winston Churchill knew that Coventry was going to be bombed because his code breakers at Bletchley Park had decoded the German mission, but rather than give up the fact that he was decoding their messages, he let Coventry burn. It’s a story that has been passed down for decades, but Churchill insiders insist it’s not true. According to most sources on the inside, they knew the Germans were going to be bombing part of England in a mission that was code-named “Moonlight Sonata,” but they had no idea where the bombs were going to be dropped. On the evening of November 14, 1940, Churchill was on his way home, reading through that day’s notes, and he became convinced London was going to be the target. He turned the car around and headed back into London, determined to be present if his city was going to burn that night. He sat all night in an air-raid shelter, occasionally going to the rooftops to look for action, but nothing happened. They had no idea that miles away, Coventry was being bombed, and they had just never gotten the proper information. Conspiracy theorists, however, don’t believe this story and maintain that Churchill sacrificed the West Midland town for the greater good.
NITPICKS
Despite the fact that Irene enters the room naked, couldn’t Sherlock have deduced something about her — beyond her body measurements? A lot could be said about her hair, her makeup, her blood-red lipstick, her perfectly manicured nails, her stare, the room and its contents … even the fact that she’s chosen nudity to throw him off his game.
How is it that Sherlock can look at a string of numbers and decipher it in under five seconds, but it takes him an eternity to connect “double-oh seven” to James Bond? Perhaps he needs to declutter that mind palace?
OOPS The sign over the mortuary door says “Morgue,” but in St. Bart’s the room is actually the mortuary, like in all British hospitals.
2.2
The Hounds of Baskerville
WRITTEN BY Mark Gatiss
DIRECTED BY Paul McGuigan
ORIGINAL AIR DATE January 8, 2012
Sherlock and John travel to the moors to investigate a sighting of a gigantic hound.
Doyle’s third Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, is his most enduring, and the Doyle story that has had more adaptations than any other. A man, Dr. Mortimer, comes to Baker Street and reports that the current resident of the great Baskerville estate reportedly died of a heart attack, but Mortimer believes he was murdered. He explains the family curse — the Baskervilles have been haunted by a giant hellhound since the 18th century, and that when he investigated the area where Baskerville had died, he saw something — and utters the now-legendary line, “Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!” The heir to the Baskerville fortune, Sir Henry Baskerville, is coming over from Canada, and Mortimer is worried he will suffer the same fate. Holmes sends Watson to investigate, say
ing he is unable to come. At the estate, Watson discovers that someone has been stealing Sir Henry’s boots. Watson meets Mr. Stapleton, the local naturalist, who tells him about the great Grimpen Mire, a vast bog that regularly swallows up dogs, horses, and people, since no one but he knows where to step. Stapleton’s sister tries to warn Watson away. Watson discovers there is a murderer loose on the moors and that the Baskerville butler, Barrymore, is related to the murderer by marriage and has been signaling warnings to him using a candle in a window. Barrymore shows Watson a partially burned letter that he suspects was sent to Baskerville the night he died, sent by the daughter of local curmudgeon Mr. Frankland.
Watson sends regular reports back to London, which make up most of the narrative in the novel. One night, old man Frankland tells Watson that he believes the killer is on the moor, because he’s seen a young man carrying out food to someone. Watson investigates and finds none other than Holmes, who has been holed up in a cave all this time, receiving Watson’s reports and doing his own investigation, always a few steps ahead. In the climax of the novel, Holmes and Watson discover the motive in the case, and as a fog rolls in, they travel out onto the moor where they do, indeed, encounter the hound — covered in phosphorous by the perpetrator to make it glow in the dark. At the sound of the hound’s howl, Holmes is legitimately unnerved: “‘Where is it?’ Holmes whispered; and I knew from the thrill of his voice that he, the man of iron, was shaken to the soul.” Later, as they spot the hound and try to get away, Watson says of Holmes’s escape, “Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night.” As they pursue the culprit behind the entire escapade, the offender gets caught in the Grimpen Mire and is sucked down to his death.
As an adaption of an original story, Gatiss’s script is stunning. Knowing that audiences have seen it all before — the hound, the mire, Sir Henry’s boots, the suspects, Holmes and Watson being separated — and that everyone who has read the book or seen one of its many adaptations would know the ending, he upends it and, using all of Doyle’s elements, rearranges many of them, modernizes the story, and changes the eventual outcome. When it comes to adapting Doyle’s material, Gatiss is the master. The phosphorous hound becomes a glowing bunny named Bluebell. The Stapletons — the naturalist and his “sister” — become the scientist with questionable ethics and her daughter, who similarly is a “Miss Stapleton” who sounds the alarm for Sherlock. Sir Henry Baskerville becomes the cleverly named Henry Knight, who is not the heir to the Baskerville fortune, for “Baskerville” has gone from being a family name to the name of a large genetic testing facility. The Grimpen Mire becomes the Grimpen Minefield (with similar results); cranky old Frankland becomes the friendly (or is he?) Dr. Frankland; Barrymore the butler becomes Major Barrymore; and Dr. Mortimer, the man concerned for the welfare of the Baskerville family, becomes Louise Mortimer, Henry’s therapist.
Even if you know the original story, Gatiss keeps you guessing; he delights the knowledgeable Sherlockian while entertaining.
However, as a script that can stand on its own, it’s not as successful. For those who aren’t familiar with the original story, all of the red herrings don’t make a lot of sense. Why are we sent on a wild goose chase for the origins of Bluebell when it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the rest of the story? What are the chances that Sherlock, out of boredom, takes the only case that remotely interests him and it just happens to coincide with the more interesting case that walks through his door? Why would Sherlock take on a case that, on its surface, doesn’t actually interest him, merely because of the old-fashioned way the client refers to the dog? As the catalyst for Sherlock’s actions, it seems silly. Why does the UMQRA red herring go on for so long? It’s a hilarious payoff for the reader — the woman in the car sensually moans, “Oh, Mr. Selden!” which is the name of the murderer signaling to Baskerville Hall from the moor — but without knowing that, it just seems like a really long diversion that keeps John out of the way.
Where the episode succeeds for all audiences is when it becomes a study in fear. When Henry Knight first appears, he’s quiet, fidgety, tired-looking, and on the verge of tears. It’s brilliant casting; Russell Tovey, at the time, was starring on BBC’s Being Human as George, the flatmate who happens to turn into a werewolf every full moon. On that show, he plays a charming man who is deathly afraid of the agony of his monthly transformation. In this episode, the dynamic is flipped, and he plays the one afraid of the beast. Tovey is amazing as he fears being forced back out onto the moors; as he awakes from yet another nightmare; as he stands at his patio window and sees a hound’s face smash into it (in the scariest moment of the series); and as he realizes with horror that he almost killed another human being in a hallucinogenic haze.
Knight brings not only the case to Sherlock, but the dread that accompanies it. Until now, Sherlock has very rarely shown fear of any kind. Even as he was about to put the pill in his mouth in “A Study in Pink,” he looked mostly confident in his decision. As he mounted the stairs in “A Scandal in Belgravia,” knowing he would find the criminals who had hurt Mrs. Hudson, he walked with vengeful purpose. In “The Blind Banker,” when Sarah was staring at an arrow that was about to whiz toward her head and Sherlock had a gun pointed at his, he kept his hands in his pockets and coolly talked to General Shan. As a child in the line of fire counted down from 10 and Sherlock had to act quickly in “The Great Game,” he looked anxious but not scared. Even when John stepped out onto the pool deck and was covered in explosives, the look on Sherlock’s face had far more surprise in it than fear.
But in this episode, Sherlock is truly scared. Just as the love he feels for Irene Adler isn’t a traditional sort of romantic love, the terror he feels in this episode isn’t for his own safety; it’s the fear of not knowing what is real. If the hound does indeed exist, then everything he ever believed to be true and untrue is suddenly called into question. What he saw couldn’t be explained away by logic or science, and Sherlock is unable to function in such a world. At the Cross Keys pub, he is frantic, shaking, and angry, filled with uncertainty and acting in a way we haven’t seen before. Contrast his behavior in this scene to the beginning of the episode when he’s bored: he’s also frantic, rude, and angry as he searches for his cigarettes, but in a different way that we already associate with Sherlock. Bored Sherlock causes John to roll his eyes in frustration; doubtful Sherlock causes John to leave the pub in anger. Cumberbatch does an extraordinary job of creating a very subtle, yet meaningful, difference between the two emotions.
But of the three performances, the one given by Martin Freeman is the standout. When Sherlock doesn’t understand something, he experiments on it until he does. In A Study in Scarlet, when Mike Stamford first tells Watson about Holmes (with a note of warning in his voice), he says, “I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness.” In this episode, he does exactly that. Under the guise of the apologetic friend who wants to make it up to John for acting like a jerk in the pub the previous evening, Sherlock makes John a coffee, stirring in the very sugar he’d imbibed the day before, convinced it contains a hallucinogenic agent that caused him and Henry to see the hound when John didn’t. He then stages an elaborate psychological test that nearly scares the life out of John, enhancing his own experience with bright lights and screeching sounds. The sadistic experiment frightens John to such an extent that he ends up cowering inside a cage, so terrified he can barely speak into his mobile phone when he calls Sherlock in a panic. Freeman is astounding in this scene: at first confused, then increasingly scared, and finally so filled with terror you swear you can see the hairs on his head turning gray before your eyes. When he emerges from the cage, he’s gasping for air, barely able to stand up, screaming at Sherlock that the hound was ther
e, and he’s convinced of it. Of all the suspenseful moments in this episode, Freeman’s performance makes this scene the most memorable.
Ultimately, the entire thing comes down to psychology and science, and the planets in Sherlock’s world happily realign (even if, due to his lack of interest in the solar system, he’s unaware of it). The solution to the case works both as an adaptation and simply on its own, as Gatiss continues to jar our expectations yet remains faithful to the sensibility of the story. John discovers what Sherlock tried to do to him, but he remains satisfied that Sherlock was wrong, and that he can throw that in his face as often as he likes in retaliation. Their friendship is intact, and unlike the Holmes of the novel, who deceives Watson and upsets him without a proper apology, this Sherlock stands by John’s side … even if it’s just to experiment on him.
However, Gatiss isn’t going to let the warm feeling of a satisfactory ending sit with us for long. The episode ends jarringly, with Mycroft standing in a room with Moriarty, telling him he’s free to go. Covering the walls is Sherlock’s name written over and over again; in case we’ve forgotten who Sherlock saw flash before his eyes during his hallucination of the hound, we’re reminded in this eerie scene. We’ve seen Sherlock deal with love and fear. We know what comes next.
HIGHLIGHT John explaining to Sherlock that they will never play Cluedo (or Clue) again.
Sherlock: Why not?
John: Because it’s not actually possible for the victim to have done it, Sherlock, that’s why.
Sherlock: Well, it was the only possible solution.
Investigating Sherlock Page 11
