Episode 1.3, "The Great Game"

[Carol the Dabbler]

Regarding the fight with "The Golem," my main complaint is the cheesiness that has already been mentioned -- specifically, the blatant use of scale doubles for Sherlock and John, in order to make their opponent look even larger.  The actor really is something like a foot taller than Cumberbatch, for Pete's sake -- there's no need to make him look bigger!  And we're sufficiently familiar with how Cumberbatch and Freeman actually move that it was roughly impossible for the small stunt doubles to fool us for long.

 

Can't say for certain how I would have reacted to the scene if not for that, but I suspect it would not have been one of my favorites.

[Arcadia]

I have to admit I didn't notice the use of scale doubles. :blush: But I agree it's my least favorite scene in that episode; The Golem's too cartoony.

[T.o.b.y]

I think he's very Doyle-ish. Doesn't mean I like the scene, it scares me. But I get why they put stuff like that in.

[Pseudonym]

You find him scary?

 

That's the main thing I miss about this version of Sherlock, I liked the spooky supernatural element in the stories until Holmes reveals what's really happening. I would like to have been a bit scared or creeped out. I hoped TAB would be scary, but I found the bride a bit silly too. All that screeching of 'YOU!' Don't get me wrong, I liked TAB, just would have liked it creepier. 

[Arcadia]

I think he's very Doyle-ish. Doesn't mean I like the scene, it scares me. But I get why they put stuff like that in.

 

Oh, I get it too, it's just not something I care for. In general I'm not fond of horror movie elements; it jerks me out of the story. It wasn't just The Golem, the whole staging of that scene, with the screeching sound effects and flashing lights, was too cliché for my taste. Plus it was rather random; the Golem runs off and is never heard from again. I like the way John and Sherlock work together in that scene, though. Ah, the good old days....

[T.o.b.y]

You find him scary?

 

That's the main thing I miss about this version of Sherlock, I liked the spooky supernatural element in the stories until Holmes reveals what's really happening. I would like to have been a bit scared or creeped out. I hoped TAB would be scary, but I found the bride a bit silly too. All that screeching of 'YOU!' Don't get me wrong, I liked TAB, just would have liked it creepier.

:-D I get scared really easily. Don't like watching either The Hounds of Baskerville or The Abominable Bride when I am home alone, especially at night. And when Eurus revealed herself at the end of The Lying Detective, that gave me nightmares.

[Hikari]

I didn't care for the Golem.  I thought that struck a clinker note in an otherwise outstanding episode.

 

My favorite bit is the scene at the dead lady's house when SH is trying to figure out what killed her.  Sherl is posing as a photographer, and when the lads exit the room, MF and BC do an impeccable two-man double act where they reach the door and both hit their marks simultaneously, and the score is perfectly timed to underscore this action.  It looks so effortless, but as with the 'Pen Toss' in S1:2, it must have required a great deal of rehearsal.

 

I was even more impressed after I learned that, owing to S. Moffat not having his pilot script ready in time, the production had to proceed with TGG because Gatiss's script was done.  This accounts for the significantly longer hair on both leads, because both were restyled after TGG was in the can.  Sequentially it worked, if we accept that by the time of the third case, SH and JW have been roommates for the better part of a year and their hair would have grown in the meantime--but the greater acting challenge would have been to suggest a working partnership and shared domestic routine of a year or more's standing when actually the two actors were filming their first episode together.  And then having to go backwards in emotional time and pretend that they are just meeting some months later when it came time to film ASiP, and they had already established a working relationship and its subsequent shorthand.

 

It's just a testament to how talented our actors are that they were able to do this seamlessly, with only the Case of the Curiously Changing Hairstyles to tip off the fact that these were not shot in sequential order.

 

There's a shot of BC in St. Barts lab in TGG, when he says 'Goodnight, Vienna!" that brings to mind something a friend said to Peter O'Toole in response to "Lawence of Arabia":  "If you were any prettier, they would have had to call it "Florence of Arabia".  The contrast between the hair styles from the first two episodes we saw to this is rather startling.

[Carol the Dabbler]

John had just come out of the army in ASiP, so his hair needed to be short then.  They figured that he'd let it grow a bit, so they planned for it to be a bit longer in TBB, and a bit longer still in TGG.  Because of the scheduling business that you mentioned, they had to do a bit of fancy footwork to achieve all of that.  This info is in the audio commentary for, I believe, TGG.

[Arcadia]

I'm now reading the TGG script (it doesn't say what version it is, but there's a few words in red here and there) ... and ran across this tidbit (when Mycroft is visiting Sherlock after the explosion across the street):

Quote

 

MYCROFT
Sherlock’s business seems to be booming since you became...pals. What’s he like to live with? Hellish, I imagine?

JOHN
I’m never bored.

MYCROFT
Good! That’s good, isn’t it? He’s a real live wire, is Sherlock. When we were children, he worked out from the angle of the car seats and a smear of lipstick in the back of the Audi that Dad was having it off with the au pair. I’m afraid Mum wasn’t too pleased and that was that. Bang went our happy home. Such a clever boy, but he really should have got his priorities right.

 

I know they alluded to this as a possible plot point before, but I didn't know it was actually in the script at one time. I'm sort of glad they dropped it; now that we've met him, I don't like the idea of Sherl's lovely dad being a philanderer.

[Pseudonym]

Hm, I'm still convinced he had a wandering eye in his young handsome days. Mummy was off being a maths genius, and Papa Holmes' attention got easily distracted by someone young and pretty who was on hand... like an au pair.

I can't see Mycroft saying 'having it off' I'd have thought he'd have been more clinical. 

[Arcadia]

Yeah, I had the same reaction to that line. Or in fact, discussing something like that with John at all. I get the impression in the early episodes that Mycroft merely tolerates John; can't see him dishing the family secrets with him.

[T.o.b.y]

Oh, I can totally see that. I think it's kind of a pity they took it out. This idea that the Holmes parents are super lovely seems weird to me, considering how messed up all their kids are. 

Not that nice parents can't ever have children with problems. Some things are beyond a parent's control. But still. What we have seen and heard of Sherlock's childhood just screams dysfunctional family to me. 

[Arcadia]

True. I keep getting the impression that the parents weren't very engaged with the kids. The Holmes' boys don't seem to know how to form ties with other people, presumably because that's something they never learned as children. That doesn't say "ordinary parenting" to me.

[Pseudonym]

That's the impression I get too. I think Mummy was off teaching, and wasn't really involved much with the kids. We don't know enough about the father, possibly he was also fairly high powered and busy elsewhere, or otherwise a bit scatterbrained and emotionally absent. I don't think either were ideal parents, even if we take Eurus into account for how Sherlock and Mycroft ended up, the fact they didn't step in sooner (i.e. before Eurus killed someone, and before she spent all night making her brother scream), makes me think they weren't paying the attention they should have been. 

[T.o.b.y]

Doesn't Mr Holmes say that his wife gave up her career for the children? Although who knows when that happened. Maybe after the Eurus incident, by that time a lots had already happened. 

[Arcadia]

He does say that, but you're right, it could mean almost anything. Any time, I should say. 

My dad was a teacher, and he always was very engaged with us kids, so I don't think Mummy's teaching career (if that's what it was) need have been an issue. I'm more inclined to think that she simply is, as Father Holmes says, a complete flake.  I mean, really, anyone who would think that Sherlock acts more like an adult than Mycroft does....  

[Pseudonym]

I don't know about everyone else, but I imagine her teaching to be in one of the top unis, and I can see her spending most her time in her on-campus office absorbed in her latest project or in writing her latest book. I see her finding her formulas much more interesting than the kids back home. I think she's the type of mother who only really finds them interesting once they are old enough to hold an interesting, intelligent conversation.  

Then again, that old footage of the Holmes family on the beach that crops up in Mycroft's film seems happy enough, though it's oddly missing murderous little Eurus. Is it meant to be after she's gone?

[Arcadia]

Given Sherlock's age there, I'd say no .... she just conveniently didn't appear in any of the shots.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Maybe she was holding the camera?

[Pseudonym]

But weren't those old cine-cameras heavy? I've never seen one, I'm just assuming they were...?

[SherlockedCAMPer]

If it was an old super 8 camera, then no. This would have been the early 80s where there were some lighter video camera options out there. They probably weren’t cheap though.

[Carol the Dabbler]

None of the home-movie cameras I've ever seen were very heavy -- maybe a pound (half kilo), and about the size/shape of a small hardback book.  They used 8 mm film (rather than 35 mm), and had far fewer features than the professional movie cameras.

[Hikari]

On ‎3‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 5:28 PM, Arcadia said:

I'm now reading the TGG script (it doesn't say what version it is, but there's a few words in red here and there) ... and ran across this tidbit (when Mycroft is visiting Sherlock after the explosion across the street):

I know they alluded to this as a possible plot point before, but I didn't know it was actually in the script at one time. I'm sort of glad they dropped it; now that we've met him, I don't like the idea of Sherl's lovely dad being a philanderer.

Particularly since Sherl's lovely dad is Benedict's real lovely dad, Timothy Carlton.

Ben has Dad's frame and Mummy's eyes.

I have selected TGG as my favorite episode of S1.  Props to Mr. Gatiss, who was the writer.  Also, astoundingly, given how comfortable and established the Baker Street partnership is at this point, it was Ben and Martin's very first shooting script.  It's no mistake that my favorite episodes all have significant scenes for our Mycroft.  MG based his script loosely upon my favorite story, The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, and the second (and last) to feature Sherlock's big brother.  If Daddy Holmes did conduct an affair with the au pair right under the laser gaze of his two genius sons who between them miss absolutely nothing, then their brains probably did not originate with him.

Mycroft's proclivities for rooting out secrets began early.  His dossier on both parental units must have been extensive.  In the Holmes household, it was not the children who needed to worry about being nice, not naughty because Someone was watching their every move, asleep or awake. 

[besticocoin]

I love this episode a lot! 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Hello, besticocoin -- welcome to Sherlock Forum!