Spoilers WATSON: New Sherlock Holmes-based series on CBS

[The Wormhole]

Just saw over in the NCIS thread that CBS's schedule for the 2025-26 season has been announced. Watson S2 is being withheld until midseason* which I guess means S2 will also be a thirteen episode season like S1 is?

*They say "Spring" in the article, though typically in years past "Spring" usually means "anytime after the Super Bowl."

 

[Christopher]

Hmm, a fairly effective finale, but I'm not comfortable with how Watson dealt with Moriarty at the end. Aside from the disturbing ethical aspect, I'm tempted to say it's too cursory a way to wrap up Moriarty's story, but I suppose "The Final Problem" has it beat on that score.

Anyway, I predicted that Ingrid's role would play out the way it did, though I did have some moments of being almost convinced of the misdirect. On the other hand, I thought it would be clear by the end whether she'd be staying or leaving next season, presumably the former, but Stephens saying "I can't work with you" kind of suggests she won't be back. And here I was thinking one of the twins would die.

Incidentally, Sasha saying they were "practically the same person" because they're twins was a very insensitive thing to say about any twins, and hard to believe coming from someone who's worked closely with them and is aware of their massive differences. Maybe she was speaking on a genetic level, but it was a very inappropriate thing to say without that qualification.

Kind of weird to set Watson up with a new love interest out of the blue on top of everything else that was happening in the finale. But she's gorgeous, so I hope she sticks around. Though at the same time, it felt like there weren't any real signs of a relationship developing in their dialogue or interaction -- it felt like we were just supposed to take it for granted that she was a romantic interest because she was gorgeous.

Filming Ingrid and Moriarty's meeting in what was very likely a replica cable car on a greenscreen stage in Vancouver was a nice inexpensive way to create the illusion of a Pittsburgh location scene.

 

[Caretaker]

For anyone who is curious, I am posting the link to the obituary for the crew member mentioned on the card at the end of the season finale.

Elmer Ventura​

 

[Procutus]

I was surprised by the resolution of the Moriarty storyline as well. I fully expected that we'd have a major cliffhanger and that the contest of will between him and Watson would continue into next season.

I also thought for certain that one of the twins wouldn't make it, so that was a surprise as well.

 

[Christopher]

I was kind of wondering if there might be a cliffhanger ending where Sherlock Holmes turns up alive, but I figure they're saving that twist for later. (The traditional interval before Holmes reveals he faked his death is 3 years.)

 

[vandevere]

Chalk it down to my feeling paranoia, but I'm not exactly sure Holmes is Real in this series. My reasoning is that Watson isn't just a doctor, he's also a writer, and it's possible Watson was moonlighting as a Mystery writer.

Then, somehow, he runs afoul of Moriarty, and suffers a TBI during the ReichenBach Falls. Partial Amnesia is a real possibility.

Also, the abilities of deductive reasoning that Holmes was famous for are also qualities that Watson seems to possess.

Also, why was Moriarty so insistent on messing with Watson? I could see trying to steal his cache of genetic samples, but why force Shinwell to mess with Watson's medications? what was the point of that?

I know, I'm probably wrong, but still, until Holmes really turns up, I'm going to just wait and see...

 

[Procutus]

Even if they decide that Holmes really died going over the falls, I'd like to see them cast someone of note to portray him in a series of flashbacks.

Or it would be cool if he just showed up unexpectedly to announce that he really didn't die.

 

[Christopher]

Chalk it down to my feeling paranoia, but I'm not exactly sure Holmes is Real in this series. My reasoning is that Watson isn't just a doctor, he's also a writer, and it's possible Watson was moonlighting as a Mystery writer.

Then, somehow, he runs afoul of Moriarty, and suffers a TBI during the ReichenBach Falls. Partial Amnesia is a real possibility.

Also, the abilities of deductive reasoning that Holmes was famous for are also qualities that Watson seems to possess.

Cute, but we've met at least three other characters who knew Sherlock personally and have spoken of him as a real person -- Shinwell, Mycroft, and Irene Adler.

Also, why was Moriarty so insistent on messing with Watson? I could see trying to steal his cache of genetic samples, but why force Shinwell to mess with Watson's medications? what was the point of that?

I think Watson suggested it was to get him discredited or removed, which I guess would've made it easier for Moriarty to gain access to the rare DNA.

Even if they decide that Holmes really died going over the falls, I'd like to see them cast someone of note to portray him in a series of flashbacks.

Or it would be cool if he just showed up unexpectedly to announce that he really didn't die.

I'm not sure there's any version of Reichenbach Falls where Holmes actually, unambiguously did die there. Although there was that backdoor-pilot "Sherlock Holmes in the 23rd Century" 2-parter in Filmation's BraveStarr where he fell through a time warp at the Falls and ended up in the future, and Moriarty (voiced by Jonathan Harris) cryogenically froze himself so he'd be there when Holmes returned. (Not to be confused with the later animated series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, where Holmes's honey-preserved corpse was resurrected to battle a clone of Moriarty.)

 

[The Wormhole]

Chalk it down to my feeling paranoia, but I'm not exactly sure Holmes is Real in this series. My reasoning is that Watson isn't just a doctor, he's also a writer, and it's possible Watson was moonlighting as a Mystery writer.

Then, somehow, he runs afoul of Moriarty, and suffers a TBI during the ReichenBach Falls. Partial Amnesia is a real possibility.

Also, the abilities of deductive reasoning that Holmes was famous for are also qualities that Watson seems to possess.

Also, why was Moriarty so insistent on messing with Watson? I could see trying to steal his cache of genetic samples, but why force Shinwell to mess with Watson's medications? what was the point of that?

I know, I'm probably wrong, but still, until Holmes really turns up, I'm going to just wait and see...

As mentioned above, the presence of other characters who knew Sherlock Holmes definitely makes it clear he's real. Shinwell and Mycroft talk about Sherlock while Watson isn't even around, while Irene Adler's whole storyline when she was on the show was that she had a son who she was claiming was fathered by Sherlock.

Besides, has Watson being a writer even been mentioned on this show?

 

[Christopher]

Besides, has Watson being a writer even been mentioned on this show?

I think there was a scene where he handed someone a book he'd written detailing some of his cases with Holmes, but I might be misremembering.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Chalk it down to my feeling paranoia, but I'm not exactly sure Holmes is Real in this series. My reasoning is that Watson isn't just a doctor, he's also a writer, and it's possible Watson was moonlighting as a Mystery writer.

The Pajiba reviews of the series were questioning the reality -- and unreality -- of the series all season long. It wasn't just you.

I'm not sure there's any version of Reichenbach Falls where Holmes actually, unambiguously did die there.

I can think of two.

Michael Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story.

Robert J. Sawyer's "You See But You Do Not Observe," originally published in Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, later collected in The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

 

[Christopher]

I can think of two.

Michael Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story.

Robert J. Sawyer's "You See But You Do Not Observe," originally published in Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, later collected in The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Hmm. Now I'm imagining an alternate reality where Holmes really dies at Reichenbach and every story from "The Empty House" onward is just Watson fabricating fictional Holmes cases to keep the series going, because The Strand offered him too much money to turn down. Maybe he based them on real cases from Holmes's notes and wrote himself into them.

That's one thing that bugged me a bit when I recently rewatched the Jeremy Brett series, and that sometimes comes up in other Holmes adaptations, where Watson writing up the cases for publication in The Strand is mentioned or shown within the stories. Given that a lot of Holmes's cases involved highly confidential and sensitive matters that could have ruined the reputations of a lot of important people, you'd think that Watson would've fictionalized the names and personal details when he wrote up the stories. So seeing it dramatized as if we're seeing the real cases that Watson then adapted, but with the characters having the same names that they had in the published stories, seems incongruous.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Hmm. Now I'm imagining an alternate reality where Holmes really dies at Reichenbach and every story from "The Empty House" onward is just Watson fabricating fictional Holmes cases to keep the series going, because The Strand offered him too much money to turn down. Maybe he based them on real cases from Holmes's notes and wrote himself into them.

Watson explicitly states this in the ending of Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes story. (This is not a novel for the purists. It breaks all the toys.)

That's one thing that bugged me a bit when I recently rewatched the Jeremy Brett series, and that sometimes comes up in other Holmes adaptations, where Watson writing up the cases for publication in The Strand is mentioned or shown within the stories. Given that a lot of Holmes's cases involved highly confidential and sensitive matters that could have ruined the reputations of a lot of important people, you'd think that Watson would've fictionalized the names and personal details when he wrote up the stories. So seeing it dramatized as if we're seeing the real cases that Watson then adapted, but with the characters having the same names that they had in the published stories, seems incongruous.

I think back to our discussion last year in the TrekLit forum about "the King of Bohemia" in "A Scandal in Bohemia"--there's a long-standing belief in literary fandom that the name and character is a substitution to obscure the real person involved in the scandal. ("The King of Bohemia" is commonly believed to be the Prince of Wales.) So I view adaptations this way...

Actual Events -> Watson's version of events with details & names obscured -> Adaptation using Watson's version of events

In that sense, while I get where you're coming from, the adaptations are already two steps removed from the actual events Sherlock Holmes was involved in. Henry Baskerville may not have been named Henry Baskerville in the real events of Hound... or maybe he was and he told Watson it was fine to be named in Watson's account.

I'm not a great fan of pastiches that have Holmes and Watson interacting with real, historical people because I just don't think Watson would have written the stories that way. David Gerrold talked at the Farpoint convention in February about how much he enjoyed writing a story that brought together Holmes with, IIRC (I didn't take notes), Oscar Wilde, and while yes, it's an interesting intellectual puzzle to solve (Gerrold talked about how he had a very short window of time, like 18 hours, in which this story could fit into Wilde's life), it's also not Watsonian in the slightest.

I made a slight exception for Holmes versus the Ripper pastiches, because if you're going to put Holmes into those events, you have to use the historical people and the canonical murders. It's why I don't care for Ellery Queen's A Study in Terror; all of the Ripper details are fictional.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not a great fan of pastiches that have Holmes and Watson interacting with real, historical people because I just don't think Watson would have written the stories that way. David Gerrold talked at the Farpoint convention in February about how much he enjoyed writing a story that brought together Holmes with, IIRC (I didn't take notes), Oscar Wilde, and while yes, it's an interesting intellectual puzzle to solve (Gerrold talked about how he had a very short window of time, like 18 hours, in which this story could fit into Wilde's life), it's also not Watsonian in the slightest.

I made a slight exception for Holmes versus the Ripper pastiches, because if you're going to put Holmes into those events, you have to use the historical people and the canonical murders. It's why I don't care for Ellery Queen's A Study in Terror; all of the Ripper details are fictional.

Of course, sometimes the pastiches team Holmes up with other fictional characters. Back when I worked at my university library, I came across a Holmes-pastiche novel by a South Asian author that was set during the years when Holmes was traveling the East as Sigerson. The Watson surrogate, the character who teamed up with Holmes and related the adventure in the first person, was Hurree Chunder Mookherjee from Rudyard Kipling's Kim. I don't remember the title, though, and I never got around to actually reading it in full.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Of course, sometimes the pastiches team Holmes up with other fictional characters. Back when I worked at my university library, I came across a Holmes-pastiche novel by a South Asian author that was set during the years when Holmes was traveling the East as Sigerson. The Watson surrogate, the character who teamed up with Holmes and related the adventure in the first person, was Hurree Chunder Mookherjee from Rudyard Kipling's Kim. I don't remember the title, though, and I never got around to actually reading it in full.

The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, by Jamyang Norbuone.

 

[Christopher]

The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, by Jamyang Norbuone.

I should've known you'd be aware of it.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I should've known you'd be aware of it.

There's too much to keep up with now, with the character out of copyright completely. Amazon is always recommending me self-published pastiches from people I've never heard of... and occasionally people I have. And Sturgeon's Law applies so hard; there's one author I sampled that I quickly concluded had never, ever read a Sherlock Holmes story. I have a "read until I get annoyed" rule, and there are pastiches that have failed that within five pages.

As for Mandala, I also have not read it.

 

[The Wormhole]

Robert J. Sawyer's "You See But You Do Not Observe," originally published in Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, later collected in The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

I think that one is also available in one of the anthologies of Sawyer's short stories.