Investigating Sherlock

by Nikki Stafford

  On Richard Brook’s CV, it says he’s represented by the Mountford Agency. Lord Mountford is a character in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s non-Sherlockian short story “An Impression of the Regency.” Also, the press clipping inside states that Richard is soft-spoken, which is how Moriarty is described in “The Final Problem.”

  Mrs. Hudson talking graveside about all of the problems Sherlock caused for her is backed by Watson in “The Adventure of the Dying Detective,” where he describes Mrs. Hudson as a “long-suffering woman” and notes that Holmes’s “incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London.”

  Moriarty manages to convince people that Sherlock is indeed the arch-criminal based on the extraordinary knowledge he shows in various cases. In “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,” Holmes says to Watson, “I don’t mind confessing to you that I have always had an idea that I would have made a highly efficient criminal.”

  INTERESTING FACTS

  The word nemesis is often taken to mean one’s arch-enemy, someone who thwarts the hero’s every move. But the word has a stronger meaning than that, and actually extends back to Greek mythology. Nemesis was worshipped as the goddess of revenge and divine retribution, especially against those who showed hubris. Sherlock’s pride is one of his key flaws, and he demands a foe with equal arrogance to be his true nemesis.

  When Moriarty gets to the Tower of London, there are several shots of the ravens. The Tower of London ravens are in captivity, with their wings clipped, and they are protected by the British government (at the insistence of Charles II). Legend has it that if the ravens leave the Tower, the kingdom of England shall fall. There are seven ravens at the Tower (six requisite birds and one spare), and some have gotten away, or have been “fired” for being naughty birds, and in October 2013 a fox killed two of them, causing increased security at the Tower.

  During the newspaper montage, the author of the first two Daily Express articles is the fictional Aileen Hickey, who also had the byline of the Daily Express article announcing the death of James Phillimore in “A Study in Pink.” The author of the Guardian article is Janette Owen, the real-life media and technology editor at the paper.

  When Sherlock is looking into the Henry Fishguard case, he says that the Bow Street Runners missed everything. Not only is this a quiet case, but it’s a really old one that predated even the literary Holmes. The Bow Street Runners is the slang term for London’s first professional police force, formed in the mid-18th century. Since the force disbanded in 1839, it’s no wonder a cloud of dust flies into the air when Sherlock closes his casebook.

  The Diogenes club is named after Diogenes of Sinope, a Greek philosopher who was one of the founders of Cynicism. The Cynics believed one shouldn’t have material possessions and should instead live in virtue, an irony that was not lost on Doyle, who described the club as a place filled with wealthy and important patrons. Diogenes was the most extreme member of the group, who lived in a tub in the street and relied on the charity of others. Based on some of the more extreme stories about him — involving him plucking chickens to prove a point against Plato, or publicly mocking Alexander the Great — he was either mentally ill or utterly brilliant, or both.

  NITPICKS

  The opening montage of Sherlock being praised for the crimes he’s solved runs counter to the character of Sherlock Holmes, who always worked behind the scenes and handed off credit to others. In the books, Lestrade and the other police at Scotland Yard always took credit, and Watson was frustrated that Holmes didn’t. On the show, it’s often mentioned that he doesn’t take credit, so this montage seems contradictory.

  Richard Brook’s CV says he is best known for appearing on the long-running BBC drama Emergency. Unless Moriarty actually did do several appearances on the fictional show — and if he did, actually showing John pop the DVD in to see him would have been the perfect way to show just how in-depth his con had been — anyone with access to the series could have found the flaw in that story right away.

  A close-up of the story about Richard Brook that Kitty will be running in the paper has the same couple of paragraphs repeated over and over again, but that’s not so much a mistake as a typical way of doing props. However, in the digital age where fans can freeze-frame so easily, it might be time to start writing full articles.

  OOPS

  In the Guardian article, the deck states that Sherlock would be an expert witness in the “Moriarty trail” [sic].

  There’s an issue with the timing of this episode. We open with John crying in his therapist’s office, and after the title credits we are flashed back to “Three months earlier.” Then we see a few weeks of Sherlock being feted after solving various crimes, leading up to Moriarty’s heist. At the trial, the judge mentions that it’s been six weeks since the incident. Then, when John tries to use his card at a bank machine, it’s two months after that, which is impossible, because following this logic, it’s already a month past when John should have been crying over Sherlock’s death in the therapist’s office.

  SHERLOCKIANS WEIGH IN

  Charles Prepolec

  Charles V. Prepolec is the editor of five Sherlock Holmes anthologies, including the Gaslight Sherlock Holmes series for EDGE SF&F. An active Sherlockian for more than 25 years, he was designated a Master Bootmaker in 2006 by Canada’s national Sherlock Holmes society. Recent publications include Beyond Rue Morgue: Further Tales of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1st Detective (Titan Books, 2013) and Professor Challenger: New Worlds, Lost Places (EDGE SF&F, 2015).

  Do you think Sherlock is a faithful interpretation of the characters of Watson and Holmes? Why or why not?

  Moffat and Gatiss have done the unthinkable with their BBC Sherlock series; they’ve managed to shake off 100 years of accumulated dust, as well as the perceived stodginess associated with the Victorian era, and put the characters of Holmes and Watson back where they belong, which is to say in exciting, contemporary, cutting-edge character-driven stories as Arthur Conan Doyle originally intended. Conan Doyle didn’t write quaint little period-piece mysteries, he wrote vibrant adventures, and that appears largely to be what we have in Sherlock. The writers get the universal nature of the characters and have done a superb job in dragging them into the 21st century and making them relevant to modern audiences.

  What is your favorite aspect of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s reimagining of the stories? What is your least favorite?

  The best element of the series is in the casting of the leads. Cumberbatch and Freeman are, without putting too fine a point on it, damn near perfect in their respective roles. They’d have made a fine Holmes and Watson had they been cast in a more traditional period take on the stories, but that they are equally excellent in a series without the usual trappings shows just how lucky, or canny, Moffat and Gatiss were in their casting. Where the series has gone a bit astray is in executing their stories. There was a charming, almost tentative “dare we do this” nature to the first series that has since given way to a self-satisfied smugness and fan pandering which has been detrimental to the good works achieved early on. One can only hope that a fourth series is more concerned with good storytelling than lip service to the massive online cult fandom that has grown around the show.

  What has been your favorite film/TV adaptation of Doyle’s stories so far?

  Picking a favorite Sherlock Holmes film or television adaptation is always a thorny proposition. Different productions have different elements of appeal at different times. Sometimes it can be about the actor playing Holmes, in other cases it may be about the look and feel of a production or in how cleverly an adaptation translates a story to the screen. When pushed though, I have to fall back on the 1987 Granada television adaptation
of The Sign of Four with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke as Holmes and Watson. It happens to be my favorite Sherlock Holmes story, so I have a bias towards it, and the Granada adaptation manages to successfully bring all the elements of adventure, creepiness, romance, and general sense of fun that I love about the story to the screen. Of the BBC Sherlock series I’d say “A Study in Pink” remains my favorite to date, although both “The Great Game” and “A Scandal in Belgravia” are near seconds.

  Season Three (2014)

  The Evolution of the Mind Palace

  The third season is about how much Sherlock has grown and changed in the face of his humanization, and how people have learned who he is and begun to change around him.

  This season has come under some criticism for its Freudian undertones, which critics argue weren’t a part of the original books; but if a story is to be moved into the 21st century, human emotion and psychology are bound to take a larger role. The one thing the writers evolve throughout season three is Sherlock’s mind palace, a place that has been revealed bit by bit over the seasons. And when his world changes through one significant event in John’s life, Sherlock’s control over that mind palace unravels, and it’s only in building it back up again that he regains that control, with things becoming so clear to him that he commits a drastic act at the end of the season.

  Sherlock has always been a man of intellect, leaving all of the sappy emotions and feelings to lesser mortals. In previous episodes, he has talked about personal connections being a hindrance to the greater intellectual games he prefers to play, but by slowly allowing people into his life, he’s unwittingly become attached to other human beings. And yet, ironically, while these attachments are the very things causing a breakdown of the great mind of Sherlock Holmes, they are also what keep him afloat amid drastic changes in his life.

  In one of the last Holmes stories, “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane,” Holmes himself takes up Watson’s pen and tells the reader that he’s retired to a cottage and a life of beekeeping and, in his later years, that ordered “brain-attic” of his has become slightly disorganized. “My mind is like a crowded box-room with packets of all sorts stowed away therein,” he writes, “so many that I may well have but a vague perception of what was there.” On the show, this much younger Sherlock faces the same cluttered rooms, but if he’s going to save his friends, he needs to reorganize them — fast.

  MANY HAPPY RETURNS

  On December 24, 2013, BBC Online released a webisode to promote the return of Sherlock on January 1, 2014. Featuring the characters of Anderson, Lestrade, John, and Sherlock, the seven-minute video showed the fallout of Sherlock’s death on three of the people he left behind. Anderson is guilt-ridden and distraught and appears to have been let go from the force (as Lestrade leaves the pub he mentions that he’ll put a word in about his case). By tracking odd events from Tibet to New Delhi, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Brussels in the hope that Sherlock is out there somewhere, Anderson has become Sherlock and John in one, not only searching the clues and trying to map out Sherlock’s return through his deductions, but giving names to each case and recounting them as if they’re Victorian adventures rather than news events.

  After leaving Anderson, Lestrade goes to John with some of Sherlock’s personal effects that he found at the station. When he opens the box, we see a yellow mask, a pack of Nicorette patches, a toy replica of an L.M.S. Railway car, and a pink phone. The last is obviously from “A Study in Pink,” the railway car could be a reference to the rail lines that Sherlock was investigating behind John’s back in “The Great Game,” the Nicorette patches were probably grabbed by the police during the drugs bust in “A Study in Pink,” and the yellow mask could be a reference to “The Blind Banker,” where a yellow cipher was written across a face in a painting. But it’s more likely a reference to Doyle’s story “The Yellow Face,” a scene from which will appear in season three. It’s the story in which Watson most overtly expresses the intimate relationship between him and Holmes. John looks like he’s trying very hard to keep things together, and when Lestrade leaves, he puts on a DVD of outtakes of a video birthday card Lestrade made with Sherlock to wish John a happy birthday. It’s at times funny and sad, and even though John pours himself a generous glass of Scotch to steel himself ahead of time, he’s clearly moved, saddened, and angered by it. He mutters that Sherlock should stop being dead, and then we zoom in on Sherlock on the DVD making the final plug for series three: “I’m sorry I’m not there at the moment — I’m busy — but many happy returns, and don’t worry, I’m going to be with you again very soon.” Wink.

  You can watch the video on YouTube.

  3.1

  The Empty Hearse

  WRITTEN BY Mark Gatiss

  DIRECTED BY Jeremy Lovering

  ORIGINAL AIR DATE January 1, 2014

  Two years after his “death,” Sherlock returns to Baker Street after Mycroft tells him of an underground terrorist network that needs to be stopped. More importantly — and terrifyingly — Sherlock must face his friends who thought he was dead.

  After almost two years of speculation and fan theories about Sherlock’s faked death, the writers go with the intelligent option: don’t commit to any one answer. Instead we see Anderson’s loopy theory, parts of which are plausible, parts of which are fan service (crashing through the window and kissing Molly long and hard on the lips? Yes, please). We see Sherlock/Moriarty slash fiction (Sherliarty? Morlock?) come to life in the Empty Hearse meeting. And then we see Sherlock’s version, which might actually be correct, but even when he tells a great story of exactly how it was done, Gatiss has already anticipated the audience response. He knew that regardless of what story they went with, the viewers would be unsatisfied and pick holes in it, and so they brilliantly add the little bit of Anderson suddenly pausing and nitpicking what Sherlock had told him. When Sherlock smirks and leaves the room, the insinuation is that what we just saw was perhaps not what actually happened. For all we know, Derren Brown really was there.

  Regardless of how he did it, Sherlock lives, and with that revelation comes a whole realm of complications, mostly with regards to the people most affected by his death and how they probably should have been let in on his little secret. At the beginning of the episode, we see a sobered John, quiet, no longer the “confirmed bachelor” that the newspapers declared he was in “The Reichenbach Fall,” which clearly ruffled his feathers at the time. He’s not the man he was at the opening of “A Study in Pink” — he’s no longer alone, he doesn’t walk with a cane, “Watson’s Theme” isn’t constantly playing when we see him — but there’s definitely something missing. There’s an awkwardness about him, whether he’s speaking with Mrs. Hudson or Mary, as if he’s lost some of his confidence. Perhaps where Sherlock always believed he looked smarter by standing next to “ordinary” people, John always felt more self-assured when standing next to someone with no social skills whatsoever.

  This is an episode of regrets and apologies, where people discover they have inadvertently hurt someone else but were too caught up in their own miseries to notice. Anderson is almost mad with guilt over what he did, and we take a bitter pleasure in seeing him fall apart in front of Sherlock, begging for his forgiveness (apparently Sally Donovan is not similarly racked with guilt and, as we’ll see in the next episode, is still on the police force despite Anderson being let go). Lestrade is as matter-of-fact as he always is, telling Anderson point blank that this happened as a result of what he and Donovan did, but that what’s done is done and they all have to move on. We know he’s missed Sherlock by his reaction to Sherlock’s return, but Lestrade is either less attached to Sherlock than the rest of them, or he’s really good at hiding his emotions. Molly, of course, already knew Sherlock’s death was fake, so while she’s been sad the past couple of years that he’s no longer around, she hasn’t been mourning him.

  Mrs. Hudson and John, on the other hand, have been. We know
that John doesn’t like being alone, but the fact that Mrs. Hudson was constantly bustling in and out of 221B insisting she was not a housekeeper — while clearly being their housekeeper (who never dusted) — showed how much she loved being around the two of them. In the past two years, John hasn’t contacted her, leaving her to grieve in the flat by herself. She’s angry with him when he suddenly shows up, and even though the scene is laced with humor, seeing these two people bereft in the face of losing Sherlock is sad indeed. Their network had been dismantled (presumably neither of them has seen Molly); they’ve all become detached.

  John is the most broken of all of them, which is why Sherlock’s revelation in the restaurant is as cruel as it is hilarious for the viewers. In “The Adventure of the Empty House,” Holmes returns from the supposed dead posing as an elderly bookseller, with whom Watson strikes up a conversation. When Watson’s back is turned, so he can look at some of the books the old man is peddling, Holmes throws off his disguise, revealing himself. Watson takes one look at the detective and, not surprisingly, faints. Holmes is shocked and apologizes upon Watson’s revival, saying, “I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.” Our Sherlock is similarly blind to his best friend’s devotion.

  The scene of Sherlock’s return in “The Empty Hearse” is so beautifully done because John is about to take the final step to divorce himself from his previous life. He’s said his goodbye to Mrs. Hudson, taken one final look at the flat, and is ready to propose to Mary. Sherlock interrupts that last moment with a disguise that’s meant not so much to conceal his identity as it is to catch John off guard. But John barely looks at him, making Sherlock’s big reveal much more difficult than he thought it would be. When John finally does look up, he doesn’t faint but looks like he just might. Martin Freeman plays this moment stunningly well, having John stare in disbelief for a moment, then clumsily stand up and hold onto the table for support, then hyperventilate with surprise, then with rage, and his first words to Sherlock are a complete struggle. Mary looks confused, and when it dawns on her who this stranger actually is, she shares in John’s confusion, and her echoes of “You’re dead!” punctuate John’s heavy breathing and Sherlock’s realization that perhaps this wasn’t the way to handle the situation — “I’m suddenly realizing I probably owe you some sort of an apology.”