So I guess you missed the part where, when he is leaving Baker Street, he leans forward and shows he has some papers in his front suit jacket pocket? You missed where he said he occasionally sends out for things?
Yes, he has his “files” all in his head, but just as he know who to call to get Mary into trouble, he also knows where to locate actual proof. He doesn’t need to keep physical proof on him, he just needs to know where/how to locate it. If his bluff is called he can produce the evidence.
When people make statements like that about Sherlock it makes me think that they never actually read the original stories. It was typical that the reader was NOT given all necessary clues to solve the mystery until Holmes did the big reveal at the end, there were improbable events and contrived alibis (see “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League”). The cannon stories were written over a course of 40 years and certainly at first the author had no idea they’d become classics so continuity is spotty over the course of the whole collection (including, at one point, getting Watson’s first name wrong!)
So, if that sort of thing bothers you don’t read the original source material.
Like with Dr Who or Star Trek or whatever, it’s okay to want the fantastical to make superficial, story-telling sense but, really, I can’t help but feel some here are pushing it too far.
Snakes are deaf to whistles, untrainable, and probably don’t drink milk. “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.”
Was Watson shot in the leg or the shoulder? ACD couldn’'t seem to keep it straight.
If you shoot yourself up with monkey blood, you’re not going to start acting like a monkey. Although you might get HIV. “The Adventure of the Creeping Man.”
So although the Sherlock series is full of improbable plots, unbelievable mental abilities and ridiculous villains, I don’t really give a rat’s ass. It hangs together well and is acres of fun and drama and tears and brilliant performances.
I can’t believe Series 3 is over and we have to wait at least a year and probably two to see more.
I agree about suspension-of-disbelief regarding mind palaces. I have no problem with Magnusson and Sherlock being able to make mind palaces and remember vast amounts of information, even if the show exaggerates how well mind palaces would actually work. I was just curious about the concept.
The shooting by Mary I’m not as sure about. I could see someone not thinking straight when it comes to their loved one. I don’t know if John would be a suspect, but Mary’s scared about losing him, and didn’t have much time to think through what to do when Sherlock walked in.
That definitely makes sense. If you have a visually oriented mind, it would be easier to build a mind palace. And I could see you’d have ways of sorting and organizing the information so it’s mostly accessible.
I do wonder about how accurate your memory would be, but I don’t want to hijack the overall Sherlock thread too much with mind palace things.
I remember him having the papers. I guess I missed him saying he occasionally sends out for things. I guess I misunderstood at the end, I thought he was saying the proof was all saved in his head.
So are you saying he does have a vault of information that he can access, it’s just not at his home? The government agents with Mycroft at the end of the episode wouldn’t be able to go through his vault immediately, but would they be able to compel him to let them see his vault, wherever it is? Whether it’s somewhere else in Britain, or somewhere far away like in the Caribbean? It’s definitely possible I missed something regarding his blackmail plans, and if so I would love to have it cleared up.
I don’t think I’ve ever read the source material. I might have read one or two short stories a long time ago, I don’t clearly remember them. But I don’t think familiarity with the source material should be absolutely necessary for enjoying the TV show. In general, I think adaptations should be able to live or die on their own. Maybe the source material should be able to give you a deeper, richer understanding of the characters or the context, or other things like that. But when there are contrived things in the show, and people say that it was like that in the original stories, it seems like a bit of a cop-out to me.
It is true that the Sherlock episodes should stand on their own merits to people who have never read the stories … but the fact remains that a good part of the “fun”, for me at least, lies in seeing (and spotting) how they have adopted and adapted this-or-that element from the original Sherlock Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle.
It’s a sort of puzzle-within-a-puzzle - there is the puzzle of the mystery to be solved, and the additional puzzles of seeing how they are going to use some element though up in the 19th-early 20th century in a 21st century setting, and spotting when they are adapting and when they are inventing.
I can see that someone with no familiarity with the original stories may not enjoy this series quite so much. Even so, they would I think still enjoy it.
I completely agree with you there. I know that there will be characters and references and other things that readers will spot and enjoy and non-readers will miss. Things like references to the Giant Rat of Sumatra that someone pointed out. That’s great, I have no issue with that.
But as I understand it, **yellowjacketcoder **was saying the episodes have some plot holes but that the mysteries should have a bit of “can the viewer figure it out”. And in response **Broomstick **was saying the original stories have “improbable events and contrived alibis.” That’s what seems like a copout to me, that the show has plot holes because the original material has plot holes.
I’m not saying that plot holes are the worst thing in the world. I don’t expect every single thing to be completely spelled out. That would probably be pretty boring. Most movies and TV shows have plot holes, some more than others. Cracked has lists almost every week of some from various TV shows and movies, some legitimate, some that seem overly nitpicky. I just think that writers should try to avoid having too many plot holes, or ones that are so big or obvious that it distracts the viewer while they are watching the show. Breaking Bad is one of my favorite shows ever, most people agree that it’s one of the greats. There are definitely some plot holes in there, but most of them I don’t notice or think about until after watching the show and I’m thinking about an episode, or reading discussions about the episode online. Some of the plot holes in Sherlock actively distract me while I’m watching the show.
Now maybe I’m just coming at the show with the wrong perspective. Arrow is another show I watch, and there are some plot holes or contrivances in that show. Why does no one recognize that Oliver Queen is the Vigilante? Why are there so many abandoned warehouses available for fighting in? How can Thea Queen, a 18-year-old, run a nightclub? But I accept that Arrow is in a comic book universe, so I can breeze past most of these things. But Sherlock is in a more realistic universe, so I get more caught up on the things that don’t make sense.
I don’t know if I’m getting my point across well. I do mostly enjoy the show. I do enjoy the performances. It’d be nice if some of the characters other than Sherlock and Watson were more fleshed-out, but I understand there’s limited time with the short series. I just think that sometimes the writing could have one more draft and things would make more sense.
No, the point is he doesn’t need a physical vault. He has the numbers of people to call to get Mary in trouble in his mind palace. He has the location of Lord Smallwood’s incriminating letters in the mind palace. He has the location of evidence A, B, and C for Mr. X in his mind vault. The hard copy stuff doesn’t have to be all in one location, it just has to be accessible.
Think of it as shopping. You don’t need everything in one location - you go to the gas station, then the bakery, the shoe store, the book store… The most important thing is knowing where everything is so you can get to it when you need it.
It’s completely not necessary to have read the originals to follow the current Sherlock series. There are some references that serve as extra goodies to those that have that background, but those same fans will be the first to tell you there are some very strong divergences from that original material as well. The series is based on ACD’s stories, it doesn’t slavishly follow them.
I think one of my points here is that this modern obsession with “continuity” is just that - modern, and quite recent at that. It just wasn’t considered as recently as the 1960’s or 70’s (The original Star Trek series names the famous captain both James A Kirk and James T Kirk, for example). Doctor Who is an even worse “offender”. Likewise for “realism” (people weren’t stupid back in the 1960’s, anyone with any scientific bent knew a human was more likely to produce a hybrid child with a petunia than a lifeform from another star system but yet we had half-human/half-Vulcan Mr. Spock) or scientific accuracy (they were no closer to FTL travel than we are).
Back in the late 19th Century people who read Sherlock Holmes stories were looking for a good diversion and an interesting tale, they weren’t obsessively analyzing it like some people do today. The current Sherlock series isn’t “copping out” by concentrating more on the dramatic tale than the absolute consistency of detail, it’s following in the footsteps of the original (and a lot of other original fiction as well).
So he does have physical copies of the blackmail, just not all in one central location? So Lord Smallwood’s incriminating letters might be in a safety deposit box in Manchester, and incriminating photos regarding an adulterous politician are hidden in a library in Australia, and records of a different politician taking bribes are in a file cabinet in Sweden and so on? I guess that would make a certain amount of sense. Someone could still threaten him and get their incriminating evidence from him, it would just take some time for it to get retrieved. And if something happened to the bank with the incriminating letters, all the other proof of his other blackmail would still be safe and untouched in various other places in the world.
I still wonder about the legal ramifications. This isn’t to nitpick the show, it’s more curiosity, that if anyone could fill in that would be great. Lady Smallwood could tell the police that Magnusson is blackmailing her. Would the police be able to arrest Magnusson and get him to say where the information is kept hidden? Or if not Lady Smallwood, then one of the other people he’s blackmailing. I guess Magnusson works like other blackmailers we’ve seen in other shows, just he’s smarter and has a better memory, and it’s more trouble for him to access the physical proof.
But a lack of continuity isn’t inherent to the stories or character is it? For there to be a Sherlock Holmes story, it’s necessary that there be Holmes and Watson characters, that Holmes is a brilliant but abrasive detective, and that they solve mysteries together. It’s not necessary for there to be plot holes for the updated stories to be true to the originals.
And I don’t think anyone is calling for a slavish devotion to continuity or realism, enough so that the entertainment value would suffer for it. I’m definitely not asking for that. It’s just that there are some plot holes in some of the episodes that make me subtract half a star from my rating for the show. Some other people aren’t as bothered by that and wouldn’t downgrade their ratings for it, and that’s fine.
Meh, I don’t believe for a minute that this sort of obsessive analysis by fans is really a new thing. It’s true that obsessive-nitpicker fans were more isolated and less visible back before the internet era, but they certainly existed, and I bet Conan Doyle had them too.
Heck, the very point you made earlier about the inconsistency in Watson’s given name was obsessively nitpicked back in 1943 by no less than fellow mystery novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, in an essay called “Dr. Watson’s Christian Name”! And in the essay, she refers to competing hypotheses proposed by several contemporary and earlier “Sherlockian” nitpickers. Clearly, this game has been afoot for quite a long time.
Exactly this. Having a memory palace is of no use if you can’t see the original information to stock it with. So at some point, all those books and files and pictures and film clips had to have been experienced by M. in order for him to remember them later. Those may well have been the letters he showed Holmes (or just another bit of bait in his trap, though by that point Holmes was fully hooked) - but either M. has all the information he claims to have, held physically elsewhere, or he has at least had time to access and memorize it when provided by someone(s) else.
I suspect, if they want to, the show’s writers could use this “plot hole” to lead into Series 4.
In the meantime, where is the petition to get more than 3 shows per season? I know many people who’d sign it at least a million times.
Also, another thing I just noticed while watching it again - M. may have a memory palace full of information on people that he has seen/read somewhere else, but he doesn’t have instant recall of it (which is how such mental abilities function). He has to go through the mental/physical actions of visiting his file room, finding what he’s looking for, then “loading” it into his conscious memory. All the times we see his “smart glasses” scroll of information, it’s when he meets people he’s EXPECTING to meet, and has researched and prepared for.
When Mary comes to kill him, he doesn’t consciously remember he knows reams of data about her - he doesn’t even seem to know who she is until Sherlock interrupts the assassination attempt. Sherlock says “Mary” then she asks if John is there. M. puts 2 and 2 together, and only after that do we see him go into his “vaults” and retrieve his files on Mary Watson (or whatever her name was prior to assuming the cover identity). We see the actual actions he must go through every time to retrieve the information later during the “no physical vaults” reveal when he sits in the chair, closes his eyes, and mimes the act of opening and leafing through a file.
Which brings up another interesting question - was Mary trying to kill him to stop him from revealing her prior life to John, or was she sent to do the job by someone else? Why did she have him on his knees, hands behind his head, instead of just killing him instantly?
As said before, he survived, but while I was watching the episode and everyone was wondering how he could be stabbed and no weapon be found, my first thought was “icicle”. Makes perfect sense in a hot shower, all you’d need to do was make sure it was shaped well and solidly frozen, wrap it in a bit of thermal cloth or something to keep it from thawing out too much… then bam.
Very true (and thank you for assembling all those examples).
This is something humans enjoy doing for any entertainment medium that exists in ownable form (such as books).
That people in the 1960s didn’t do as much nitpicking of contemporary television, and that makers of 1960s shows didn’t pay as much attention to continuity, is solely attributable to the fact that no one expected the shows to become available for home ownership by the masses.
I’m sure I remember hearing that the original Star Trek had a “writer’s Bible” that was supposedly available to writers, for the purpose of ensuring continuity. Probably that was true for a lot of shows. But such mimeographed productions would have been assembled tediously, with someone typing up little handwritten notes when they remembered…and a lot of things would have been left out. Also, neither writers nor producers would have been all that obsessive about checking it once it was assembled…again, because no one foresaw home video.
…On the third Sherlock episode of season 3: I have to finish reading this thread. But surely I can’t be the only one who thought it implausible that the villain would announce to his antagonists that ‘All The Dangerous Information Is In My Head’…??? How is that not inviting a bullet to the brain?
The only protection any blackmailer has against being bumped off is some variant of ‘the material will automatically go public if any harm comes to me.’ Did Magnussen ever say anything like that? (If so, I missed it.)
Saying “it’s all in my head”–as he DID do–is surely suicidal.
And on that topic: sure, Magnussen was loathsome. But are we really “okay” with Holmes gunning him down? Neither Holmes nor Watson was in physical danger at that moment, were they? Is murdering unpleasant people an admirable thing to do, these days?
At every turn this episode disappointed me. Possibly someone will point out that I’ve misunderstood these points–that Holmes did NOT murder a man in cold blood*, and that Magnussen DID protect his own life by making the ‘it will go public if I’m harmed’ claim.
?
*Perhaps we find out in episode 1 of Season 4 that the shooting was faked in some way, and Holmes didn’t really commit murder…? If Moriarty’s gun-in-mouth death was faked, then I suppose Holmes’ shattering Magnussen’s skull could have been, too.
I’m not sure “OK” is the word I’d use, but I *might *argue it was the lesser of two evils. Maybe.
Remember, during the prior episode Sherlock vowed to protect John and Mary. Always take Sherlock at this word. He wasn’t kidding. Here’s the proof.
No, I believe we did just see Sherlock kill a man in cold blood.
I don’t think Sherlock is some sort of rabid killer, he clearly makes some effort to avoid physical violence though equally clearly he is quite good at it. Why is it such a surprise? Recall what he did to the man who hurt Mrs. Hudson. His Sherlock scan instantly flips from information gathering to means of committing violence upon the man. A very brief time later he repeatedly defenestrated the man. Sherlock is clearly capable of violence or murder if he feels it is justified. Thank goodness most of the time he doesn’t feel it is.
Sherlock’s relationship with his family is troubled and he has very, very few friends. He clearly values them highly. Even if physical harm was not imminent he clearly saw Magnussen as a threat. Magnussen essentially had threatened to trigger Mary’s death. He was threatening to have Sherlock and John arrested for high treason. Killing Magnussen was a logical means to disarming the threat.
I suspect Mycroft even engineered the circumstances, knowing Sherlock would be willing to pull the trigger. Then he extracted his brother from being tried for murder. Remember, Mycroft is smarter than Sherlock.
