I don’t remember exactly what Magnusson said, but it was my impression that he only hung on to the physical evidence when he considered it necessary. In most cases it wouldn’t be. He really only needed to keep Lord Smallwood’s letters long enough to persuade Lady Smallwood to cooperate with him. She’s unlikely to contact Magnusson later and ask to see the letters again, and Magnusson doesn’t actually want to make the letters public. It’s better for him to keep the secret and maintain his hold over the Smallwoods. Since Magnusson has the contents of the letters memorized and owns his own media empire, he’d be in a position to have the press start making insinuations if he ever wanted to put more pressure on the Smallwoods. He also presumably knows who the underage girl was, and could likely manage to bribe or blackmail her into going public with her story if he wanted to.
I don’t know what the police could legally do, but I think this is where we see the advantage of not hanging onto the evidence. Magnusson could quite honestly tell the police that he doesn’t have the letters, and they wouldn’t be able to prove otherwise. Yet since the letters would never be recovered, Lady Smallwood could never be certain what had happened to them. As long as she believes that Magnusson still has them, or even that it’s likely that he still has them, she’ll probably continue to cooperate.
You may be wondering what would happen if Lady Smallwood just said “I’m not going to do what you say any longer, go ahead and publish the letters, I don’t care.” But once she’s decided to stop cooperating then Magnusson has lost his hold on her, whether or not he still has the letters. It’s not like he could continue blackmailing her after going public with the story. This isn’t to say he wouldn’t go public – if nothing else, he could boost circulation of his newspapers by having them be the first to break the story – but he doesn’t really need the letters to do that.
Of course humans differ in their opinions on when it’s all right to murder a fellow-human.
There are those who feel it is never acceptable under any conditions. This group would include many who follow Buddhism (and some other religions) as well as many who have simply decided that this is what’s right.
Then there is a large proportion of humans holding this opinion: that you can think of yourself as A Good Person after killing another only in certain special circumstances. Those circumstances, for many, require that you can kill only when in immediate physical danger of death (or great bodily harm) yourself. Some add that if there is an immediate danger of death to another person present, killing the source of danger is acceptable; some add “following military orders” to the list of circumstances that excuse killing a fellow human.
At the most extreme end of human opinion we find the ideas expressed above–that a justified killing does NOT require immediate physical danger, but just a feeling that the victim may cause you problems in the future.
I’m going to say that this viewpoint is probably not one that’s conducive to what’s generally termed “civilization.” Once we start teaching our children that they should feel perfectly fine about themselves after killing people who are inconvenient or who cause them anxiety, then we have started on a slippery slope indeed.
(And if that really does describe Moffat’s views, then it’s astonishing that he’s still allowed to be in charge of so famous a children’s show as Doctor Who.)
FWIW, the third episode was a loose adaptation of “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton”, with the title character being the blackmailer. In the original story, Holmes and Watson witness Milverton being murdered by one of his victims. Holmes stops Watson from pursuing the killer, and when Scotland Yard asks for his help in investigating the murder he refuses to take on the case, saying basically that Milverton had it coming.
The episode makes Sherlock the killer rather than a third party, but the idea that he would consider murder justified in these circumstances is taken directly from the source material.
Sure, that’s been referenced throughout the series.
But it’s one thing to say that Holmes is “different” in this way, and another to say that being different in this way renders cold-blooded murder acceptable (or even admirable).
We have story franchises in which we accept as heroes protagonists who kill in cold blood (sometimes window-dressed as being “on orders,” as with the James Bond franchise). People enjoy the fantasy of being able to kill those who annoy or inconvenience them; we enjoy the fantasy of being All-Powerful. That’s human. But such franchises are successful only when they contain a cartoonish element. Bond is clearly a fantasy. Most “badass” characters who are admired for killing fellow-humans in cold blood are clearly labeled as fantasies.
Up until now, the Sherlock Holmes franchise has not been about the fantasy of being the Powerful Badass Who Kills In Cold Blood, Righteously. (It’s been about the fantasy of being the smartest guy in the room–and about being able to get away with Not Bothering To Be Nice.)
My opinion is that such a new direction–making Holmes the guy who vaporizes the heads of any he believes might possibly, at some future time, act against him or against his friends/family–is not going to enhance the Holmes franchise. Y.M.M.V.
But is there really no appreciable difference between holding up a gun and blowing out the brains of someone who’s no immediate physical threat, and declining to take a case?
In fairness, the moral here would be more accurately summed up as kill someone if you truly believe it’s justified, so long as you’re okay with immediately turning yourself in to the authorities for punishment; Take What You Want And Pay For It, Says God. I’d figure that viewpoint and civilization can co-exist.
And after turning himself in he agreed to go on a mission that Mycroft, the even-smarterest guy in the room, did not expect him to survive. Hanging was dropped in the UK decades ago, but here he volunteered for virtual capital punishment. That he assumed he’d survive, of course.
Sherlock, Mycroft, and Mary work at a very different level than Watson and Lestrade, one where they feel they are beyond the quaint, black and white morality of common police and military work. They are moral relativists, and I’m surprised some preachers have not called out the series for that.
…what a ridiculous thing to postulate. Writers write: they create stories and characters and show us different viewpoints…and sometimes those viewpoints aren’t pleasant. But just because he wrote it: doesn’t mean that it is the “writers view.” Its Sherlocks view. The rights and wrongs of that are clearly up for debate: which is often why stories are like this are often written. But the fact that a writer can write one story for one character and series and another story for another character and series isn’t astonishing at all.
In the original story, Holmes wasn’t just turning down a case he’d rather not deal with. He already knew who the killer was and did not report this to the police. He didn’t even give the police a hint that they were barking up the wrong tree – they assumed that Milverton had been killed by the two burglars (Holmes and Watson!) who were spotted fleeing the house, and not by a lone blackmail victim.
There’s some difference between being a murderer yourself and being an accessory to a murder, but I don’t think the law makes a big distinction between the two. Nor do I see a huge moral difference between “Magnusson deserves to die, so it’s okay for me to kill him” and “Milverton deserves to die, so it’s okay for someone else to kill him.” It’s in the Holmes canon that he’s okay with a nasty blackmailer being killed. Having Sherlock be the killer himself is a twist, but it’s not that much of a departure from the source material.
That is not Sherlock’s viewpoint. He deals on a regular basis with people who not only have caused problems, up to and including murder, in the past but are likely to do so in the future. Sherlock does not, however, mow these people down. He didn’t kill Magnussen because he might cause a future problem, he killed Magnussen because he saw no other way to curtail the threat. Sherlock is only too happy to turn Bad Guys over to the legal authorities, he does it all the time, but in the case of Magnussen that wouldn’t work.
Remember - Sherlock staged his own death to try to protect those he cares about rather than simply gun down Moriarity. If removing himself would have protected John and Mary he would have done so, but that wouldn’t have helped in this case.
Do not mistake the characters for the writer. Why do so many people assume that? It’s a parallel with people incapable of distinguishing actors from the characters they portray.
If Author X writes Sherlock Holmes pastiches in which Holmes expresses homophobic views loudly and often, and no one in the story comments, nor does any element of the story provide counterbalance or contradiction, then is this homophobia “Sherlock’s view”…?
No. It is Author X’s view.
As mentioned above, an author can have Holmes do or say anything at all–and the words and acts are those of the author–not of “Sherlock Holmes.” Always. That was true of Conan Doyle and it’s true of every writer of pastiches and fan fictions since.
Fiction reflects an author’s views. Whatever consequences accrue to the characters written by that author–for words and deeds that the author may admire or may deplore–reflect the values and beliefs held by that author.
If Holmes is written as an ardent Labour voter, and nothing in the story comments ironically or disapprovingly or posits a negative consequence to being an ardent Labour voter, then you may be certain that the writer of that Holmes story does not disapprove of voting Labour.
If Holmes is written as a hater of the works of Richard Wagner, and nothing in the story tells you that Holmes is bad and wrong for feeling that way, then you know that the writer sees hating Wagner as a perfectly acceptable stance.
If Holmes is written as an inveterate cheater at cards, and never is made to look small or shabby for doing so, then you’ve learned that the writer sees card games as trivial and cheating at them as a reasonable thing to do.
Any writer reveals his or her own values by means of showing the consequences that characters face as a result of what they do and say.
…it is most definately Sherlock’s view. It may or may not match up with the authors view, but you can only determine that by talking to the author.
The world would be a most boring place if your assertion were true. In the book Hannibal, Hannibal at a serial killer. At the end of the book,
he gets away with it, with a very charming companion, and lives happily ever after.
I am pretty sure that Thomas Harris doesn’t endorse the views of Hannibal, and I’m pretty sure that the virtues of eating liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti is a Hannibal thing, not a Harris thing. Literature is full of unsympathetic heroes and unreliable narrators.
Surely this is common knowledge. Have you ever read a book?
Thomas Harris said, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone.” Ted Tally, who wrote the screenplay, changed it to the more pedestrian Chianti for the American audience.
Surely this is common knowledge. Have you never read the book?
Odd choice - given that this Sherlock is a collaboration between Steve Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the latter being happily married to another man, I wouldn’t assume any character in the series that is homophobic would reflect the views of either of those two.
So you’re claiming every author’s every character is either a Mary Sue or a Marty Stu?
WHERE did you get this?
Do you actually read literature, or just Cliff’s Notes and post-modernist deconstructions?
Authors commonly insert character flaws in their main characters because it makes them more interesting. Really, your assertion that authors are somehow incapable of writing characters that differ from themselves are as nonsensical as a notion that men can’t write convincing female characters and women can’t write convincing male characters.
Personally, I have no problem with the idea that Watson and Holmes weren’t searched the second time. In Magnussen’s mind, they’re already defeated, and are anyway spineless English pussies (so pussified they let him piss in their fireplace - marking his territory, as it were. I had flashbacks to Buntaro urinating on Blackthorne’s back, for some reason)
