You do know, that the concept of 'canon' as applied to the areas relevant to this board was invented to describe the plethora of stories told about a certain Sherlock Holmes?
This is true, we don't actually know what will happen. It could be that he'll go to prison, but is let out with a GPS anklet from time under supervision to solve crimes. If this is what happens, and they manage to pull it off, I'll eat my own words. This seems pretty unlikely, though. All realistic scenarios in which he doesn't get away with it preclude continuing the show in a format that's in any way reminiscent to the format to date. Even if they somehow manage it, though ... ... so very much this. Considering I'm a huge Babylon 5 fan, this seems like an odd thing to say, but: can't anyone just do episodic television anymore? Archs and continuing story lines are fine and dandy, but not every show has to be built around them. It worked on B5 as this was the way the show was conceived and designed (and incidentally, that show sucked whenever it did standalone plots), but every show doesn't have to be like this. Both Castle and White Collar are nice examples of serial offenders: both shows have a great formula that makes for highly entertaining standalone episodes. Come a season (or mid-season) break, though, both shows feel obliged to give a cliff-hanger. For it to be dramatic, it has to be something that smashes up the formula. Come the next season, and you can't help but feel that what the show really wants to do, now, is to get back to the status quo, which actually was working for all invovled. At times it feels like the writers are actually admitting that that crazy development at the end of the last season was only there to grab your attention. But, dark as the places those shows have gone have been .. they never went somewhere as completely "hopeless" as Sherlock did. Sherlock shot an unarmed man in the head to keep a contract killer out of prison. There's no valid path back to the formula from there. Yep. As a "fan" of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, though (not a massive one, but I have read all the stories, most of them twice - and did so long before the show was on the horizon), I don't completely disagree with what he's saying. Proper enjoyment of canonical Sherlock Holmes does depend on your ability to occasionally just ignore things. Conan Doyle's heart stopped being in it pretty quickly - he didn't "kill" Holmes at Reichenbach Falls for drama, he killed him because he wanted him dead. Bringing him back wasn't his idea. Once Conan Doyle's wife died and he started getting into the occult, some odd things started creeping into his writings as well. WWI-era jingoism doesn't do any favours to the characterisations of the time either. If you can ignore the silliness, though, the stories remain enjoyable to the end. It remained good episodic story telling, interspersed with obnoxious crap.
There is, actually, a valid path back to the formula from there. And I'm trying to figure out if "His Last Vow" actually offers it. Spoiler: Let's talk House for a moment... House pulled the trick at least twice of having what appeared to be an ordinary episode turn out to be the fevered hallucination of House. I'm thinking in particular season 2's "No Reason" (the Moriarty episode) and season 5's "Both Sides" (House hallucinates that he slept with Cuddy on a Vicodin high). Could some (or all) of "His Last Vow" have been a hallucination on Sherlock's part? Is it noteworthy that Sherlock was shot? "No Reason" had House in a state of hallucination after he was shot, and given the derivation of House that might be significant. Could everything after Mary shoots him be imagined? Especially since Sherlock uses his mental powers to keep himself conscious? (Is that what he told himself so that his perception of the narrative would continue?) Did Sherlock have to destroy an imagined enemy in his dreams, just as House did? (Which makes sense of why Sherlock was the one to pull the trigger; it's his hallucination, and he needs to be the one to take action to escape it.) And are the final reveals actually Sherlock "waking up" from his hallucination? It's not perfect, but this would make sense of the situation. And it would be Moffat paying tribute to the modern day series that paved the way for Sherlock.
Hmm. That'd be .. annoying and stupid (it's such an overused trope), but preferable to anything else I can think of. (And in the spirit of "good episodic story telling, interspersed with obnoxious crap" )
Yes, but it's not like Sherlock has a track record of great cliffhanger resolutions. Look at "The Great Games"' resolution; Moriarty goes, "Oh, never mind," when his phone rings.
I know this is subjective, but I actually loved that resolution. The cliffhanger there was most definitely of the "how will they get out of this one alive?" sort, and you of course start thinking of instanely convoluted escape routes, and what you get is .. Staying Alive. As for an insuation earlier in the thread that I'm hating on Moffat because I'm butthurt about DW (not that anyone aside from me cares about that ) .. I was still truly enjoying Sherlock at this point - January 2012. The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, in June 2010, is where I finally lost my fate in Moff!Who, since then, I've been too disinterested in it to get upset about how bad it's been sucking. So phooey.
Empire did a podcast with Moffat and Gatiss (which I haven't listened to) and they have written an article about 20 bits of information they found particularly interesting.
Speaking of Leinster Gardens, I was in London 15 years ago and had seen a building exactly like that.. a row of buildings somewhere between King's Cross and University of London with one of the building obviously fake, with a painted brick door and painted brick windows. Now I know why.
Yeah, these eps have been GREAT character studies but thin on story. I've said before that Moff is stretching himself too thin between WHo and Sherlock, he needs to choose. CAM was in effect a threat to the wider society with his ability to use those pressure points. A foreign born newspaper magnate shaping the UK and US Govts? Surely this is made up. (Yes this is irony, if you consider my name). As for Holmes getting away with murder, consider one name: James Bond. State sanctioned killer. That is exactly what he is, especially in the novels, so the UK Govt is already there. If the death(?) of CAM happened, well, it's only in the best interests of the realm, or at least those in charge. I do think the game needs to be lifted considerably for Who and Sherlock in their next s3easons, though. Considerably. More story and consistency, less character development, e know who the characters are now. BTW, how fantastic was the villain's lair?! It's a real place Swinhay House. Google is your friend, especially images. If I had a lazy 30 mil, yeah, maybe. Interesting note: the fee that was paid by the BBC to use it was donated to charity.
I just watched the minisode and all three episodes in one sitting and I think that series 3 is my favorite so far. Some very well crafted work here, just as clever and twisted as Sherlock himself. Having limited episodes and a lot of time to work on them really paid off. Great character interplay and the non-linear storytelling worked pretty well. You really have to keep up when you're watching this show but it's easy because everything does hold your attention. Sherlock feels like Batman without the costume. That actually came to me when he was riding through the city on the motorbike. I love the concept of the mind palace and especially loved that they made some pretty good use of it this season. Nice to see Irene Adler again eventhough it was just a cameo. I hope we see more of her relationship with Sherlock come series 4 or beyond. The twist with Mary not being who she said she was came as a surprise. As I watched the first two episodes, I thought that she would break up the dynamic between Sherlock and Watson and kind of ruin the show, then the big revelation happened and it looked like her "out". Then they throw us some more developments that allow her to settle into place, allowing that Sherlock/Watson dynamic to continue. I thought it worked quite well personally. Having Mary shoot Holmes did make her irredeemable at first and I was rooting for Sherlock to take her down but the exchange about what kind of people everyone is and that she was only trying to escape her past only served to take her Mary Sue-ness down a few notches. For me anyway. I was sold. I like the new guy they found in the drug house. Hope we see more of him. Magnussen was a formidable and disturbing villain, moreso than Moriarty it seemed, but it looks like the latter will have a chance to prove himself and take that top spot once again. So, now we have "William Sherlock Scott Holmes" as a full name. It's an interesting development for those who thought that "Sherlock Holmes" is an odd modern-day name. I totally didn't pick up on what they were setting up. I actually liked that we got a bigger dose of personal stuff this time around. It was indeed. I didn't have it figured out that early but I knew it would happen when Mycroft arrived in the helicopter. Had to get rid of that brain with all the information. That's one thing I've liked about this show from the beginning. The original Sherlock was a pioneer of forensic science, something this version of the character can't do but he's a pioneer of mind science. This mind palace looks like some form of meditation combined with lucid dreaming. Series 4: Sherlock meets The Blacklist and The Mentalist. Hint: Immunity deal. Everyone's doing 'em nowadays.
Didn't the entire show start off with him working in a forensics lab, and doesn't he constantly experiment with such things at home? Or have I been watching another show?
The "mind palace" isn't a new concept. It's been around since the time of the Romans. They called it "the method of loci." Hannibal uses it Thomas Harris' novels. Jack Dann wrote a fantastic novel about Leonardo da Vinci's, The Memory Cathedral. Andy Mangels and Mike Martin explored Julian Bashir's in their Deep Space Nine novel, Cathedral. And it's always been a part of Sherlock Holmes, or at least implied -- his description of his "attic" in "A Study in Scarlet" has certain resemblences. (And Sherlock's American counterpart in Elementary also uses the technique.)
I'm talking about the character as conceived by Arthur Conan Doyle. My understanding is that the character was using forensic science when it wasn't common to do so, making the him an early pioneer. When this show started, there was a complaint that modern day Sherlock couldn't be the same kind of pioneer that the classic 19th century character was when it comes to detective work because forensic science is already a common practice. My argument to that is that this Sherlock could still be a pioneer of sorts because he uses his mind in a way that's not common today. I'm familiar with the concept, although I wasn't familiar with the term "Method of Loci" until yesterday. I've also never seen it used this extensively on TV before. It really is a fascinating concept. And it's not scifi either, it's a real thing. My comment on meditation and lucid dreaming was more of a rumination on what specifics are required for something like this to work. I never stuck with Elementary but I may decide to check back one of these days.
Not produced by the BBC, though. The Beeb's pretty liberal when it comes to what it'll allow on its airwaves, but I'd think there are limits to how rotten-to-the-core depictions of the present-day British legal system they'd be happy with. Despicable individuals working for the state and making despicable decisions? Sure. It being the kind of system that'd let Sherlock get away with this? Hm. So it wouldn't surprise me if the show runners are limited in what ways out they can use here. I guess it could be Mycroft covering it all up, but my god would that be lame and icky. Firstly, till now, Mycroft's attitude has been "the ends justify the means"/"for queen and country". Here, Sherlock's ends were to keep Mary out of prison. Who, for queen and country's sake, should be in bloody prison. And if Mycroft has the power to cover this all up, and the willingness to condone murder, why on earth didn't he take the bastard out himself?
Seriously did you never watch Spooks? (amongst just about every other modern day spy/crime thriller the BBC has produced in the last 20 years)
Spooks got boring when it went from every day threats to "OH TEH NOES! THE TERRORISTS HAVE THE BOMB!"