No one was gay in 1913 for obv. reasons.
Sir Roger Casement ( model for Lord John Roxton in The Lost World ) was probably gay, and had many defenders, including Doyle, even after he was shown Casement’s Black Diaries.
That was dirty pool.
I have no idea what point you are making.
Here’s mine: there were no gay people in popular fiction in 1913. It would not be printable.
In the show? I don’t think so. Did they establish that at some point?
Mark Gatiss, the actor who portrays Mycroft, is gay. But never has it been mentioned that Mycroft is.
My theory is that the sister is older than Sherlock and at a young age she tortured and killed Redbeard the dog. The parents recognized that she is crazy and shipped her off to a mental home. While inside, she met Moriarty and he engineered her release. He is dead though. Somehow, since she shows signs of being a serial killer, she met Smith. All of this should be neatly wrapped up next week since there are rumours of this being the last season.
I think whatever the incident was, it’s bigger than just one dead dog. Myroft seemed disturbed by the recollection of what happened, and I don’t think he cares that much about one dog. It seemed to be on par with a breach of national security. It might also be the causative agent for Sherlock to lose himself in heroin.
Another note on Lady Smallwood. She was first introduced to us as Elizabeth, but the business card she left Mycroft says Alicia. I assume it’s not an oversight, but I am not sure what it means.
There was one ambiguous reference, in Scandal in Belgravia -
(John and Sherlock are in Buckingham Palace)
It’s not clear to me that Sherrinford is a person … and not a place.
What the fuck just happened? What did I just watch?
Who the hell is Eurus? Is she Moriarty’s agent, or is she another Holmes? Both? Why in God’s name would the same person be running such an incredibly long and complicated confidence job?
Why would this person impersonate Faith Smith? Where did the note come from; why would this person or her employers know for a fact Mr. Smith was a serial killer and use that to create evidence to get Holmes on the case, or why would Culverton Smith give it up and then attempt to cover up his crimes? Why is the person intent on murdering John Watson? If the intent was to murder Watson, why the hell not just murder him?
And as I predicted, not even Mary Watson dying prevented her from constantly interrupting the fun. Go back and watch many of the scenes with Watson, Sherlock and ghost-Mary and see how much more powerful they’d be without Mary.
I suppose I’ll keep watching it - at least for awhile. But I’m not finding it entertaining. I guess I prefer my entertainment to feel less like homework.
“Awhile” need not be very long. There’s only one more episode this year, and there are rumors that it’s the last year for the show anyhow.
Indeed. I just finished watching the episode and I’m still processing the details of it, but I’m thinking that Sherrinford is the name of the place where the sister has been held all this time since … something? happened. Or maybe the name of a person who has been keeping tabs on her and who Mycroft contacts regularly for reports?
And what do we know about Redbeard? We’ve seen brief scenes of a red dog dashing about with a small boy with curly hair dressed as a pirate. Sherlock has been shown as a small boy with curly hair several times, and his interest in being a pirate when he was small has been mentioned more than once. Redbeard could be a pirate’s name. What if Redbeard (STOP CORRECTING THAT TO REDBIRD, AUTOCORRECT, GAH) was in fact a third Holmes brother, playing at being pirates with his older brother Sherlock? And what if their older sister Eurus did something horrible that resulted in his death and Sherlock’s difficulty in dealing with people?
OH. Or what if Sherrinford is indeed a third Holmes brother, but what Eurus did resulted not in his death but in his being left in a state such that he needed to be cared for in some sort of institution, but then why would the Holmes family never mention him at all when they’re speaking with one another?
I hope they answer everything cleanly next week!
It’s funny how many people don’t seem to actually be enjoying the show. I wonder if this is indicative of the general feeling in the population as a whole.
Personally, I still quite enjoy it (mainly for the acting, and the jump cuts which keep jolting me awake) and it’s only when I read this message board that I realise just how much of the plot I’ve missed, and how many of its intricacies I’ve failed to make sense of.
Mycroft has talked to colleagues in MI6 twice now about “Sherrinford” and “the other”. He said directly to Lady Smallwood that “Sherrinford is secure.” It’s hardly likely that Mycroft is keeping MI6 updated on his own personal family issues. Whatever and whoever the Sherrinford/Euros mystery is, it’s a matter of national concern.
BTW, when Mycroft picked Lady Smallwood’s card back up, it had been sitting on an open book of his notes and we get a quick glimpse of them. Can anyone else read them, besides the obvious “Sherrinford - 2 p.m.”?
I’m not really a big fan of Moffat, far less Gatiss, and not so much Sherlock nowadays but I have to say what an extraordinary piece of work this was, imo.
The point - and pretty much the whole point - will probably not be apparent to US audiences; it was, in the vernacular of the piece, hidden in plain sight.
What Moffat constructed was a work that referenced the original canon, included all the on going season long arcs he and Gatiss have constructed and, at the same time, delivered the most searing, chilling critique of the huge national scandal surrounding Jimmy Savile - indeed the most evil person.
How you construct all of that in one coherent work is literally beyond me, never mind make it as entertaining as it is.
The references to Savile were so numerous, the critique so sharp it made my hair stand on end - hen I get a chance I hope to list as much as I noted, it certainly includes:
raising millions in charity
having free access to hospitals and patients
having his ‘favourite room’ - the morgue
funding hospital wings
beng a national, untouchable character
flaunting his behaviour (the cereal killer)
threatening (how long have you worked here)
pliable staff (oh, the door has locked itself again)
It’s a magnificent critique of how Savile operated and why he got away with it.
The Saville angle seemed a bit clunky to me, but then I had just read Val McDermid’s The Wire in the Blood which similarly reimagined a version of Saville as a serial killer, but which had been published nearly fifteen years before he died.
From here, which includes a screenshot of the page:
Okay okay okay but check this out:
There’s a screencap - when the camera pans over to the mantle where Sherlock’s knife is stabbing the envelope with Mary’s DVD in it…one of the other items on it is a letter from Torchwood, with the Torchwood logo on it.
This places Sherlock in the Doctor Who Universe.
Doctor Who is in the Tommy Westphall Universe.
Also, there’s this from Season 3, episode 3:
(Again Ariane DeVere’s transcripts)
The “blunt instrument” bit is a quote from M. Which also means that they’re in the Bond-verse. And therefore, because if A=B and B=C then A=C, Doctor Who and James Bond exist in the same universe, which was created by Tommy Westphall. Q.E.D.
Good sleuthing, Maggie.
It’s a bit early for speculating on the next one, but here it is, spoilered in case my guessing is right:
Remember the reference to “vampire” in E’s text to John? I just re-read ACD’s The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, and it depicts a pathologically jealous older sibling who tries to kill a younger one with poison, after first trying out the poison on the family dog. Ominous, no?
I have to say I was, at first, a bit nonplussed at the reveal in the end—it feels just so, I don’t know, escalated: so Sherlock is good at predicting, but Moriarty is better, and so’s Mycroft, and Euros, and basically, everybody already planned for all this since kindergarten! I mean, really, Euros knew to put a handgun in her bag in order to get Sherlock to accept the case, because she knew he’d deduce, in his addled state, that she was going to kill herself otherwise? Not to mention the dirty hem, and so on…
But then I thought, well, we probably just saw the plan that worked—even Holmes admitted to having some contingency plans. I mean, he might’ve just taken the case on the spot, making the handgun unnecessary; or, he might have declined it despite the gun, prompting another plan to be enacted, and so on. Or at least, that’s enough scotch tape to keep my suspension of disbelief just barely hanging together…