Specul8or

Sorry to go all generalist in this comment, and happy if this post gets relegated if I stray too far but... I am so fond of the longer Dr Who story arcs and the gentlemen guiding the show have shown themselves rather good at stitching disparate points together over a period of time to create unexpected and satisfying denouements. This is particularly the case when it comes to the seemingly unreliable finality of death. The clues in plain sight, and the things that we are expected to accept and then slap our foreheads at in retrospect, are now the tradecraft when it comes to this kind of tv. The old rules of a whodunnit have been expanded to touch on central characters (as opposed to guest stars) and stretch across seasons (as opposed to within episodes) and to play with themes and boundaries that writers were not free to cross on TV in the previous century. What it means is that television now bears far greater scrutiny than ever before, and at the same time affords us the tools to do so. So now, as a staunch "Moriarty's Game" theorist (based on what this episode has shown us), I am now inclined to head back through the catalogue and see what a closer examination of his appearances and references might yield. I'm sure there is a thread for this. I shall seek it out and post more there.

I didn't notice, and why would Moriarty interfere on Mary's behalf? Although I thought that was a really awkward scene, so it would be nice if it turned out to be more than just a random policeman turning up at the "right" moment. I think it's been signalled in the writing in a couple of ways. 1. Have a look at my profile pic - it's a grab of the policeman. If you have the show on PVR go back and have another look. It's the eyebrows that do it for me - but then I suppose it is Morocco. 2. The policeman arrives on his own and just shoots taking one look at the scene. No showed warnings, not a single word, just taking a shot at a standoff. There are already two guns on Ajay. 3. Sherlock draws attention to the missing six years and asks exactly what did he hear during this time. Ajay responds with his tale of being tortured for six years and hearing them break the back of Alex of the AGRA team which is portrayed as a shadow. No real explanation is given for the six years of captivity other than torturning Ajay for fun, feeding him a line about the English woman and then forgetting about him which allows his escape. 4. "Moriarty" is not acting to save Mary. He is preventing Ajay from talking at length about his captivity. Perhaps there is more to it than meets the eye. 5. Is it possible that "Moriarty" is either Alex from AGRA or connected to his somehow? We never see his face. A memory of someone being tortured rendered as a shadow seems to me to be a way of suggesting that events might not have transpired as Ajay thinks he experienced them. I know some of these are a bit of a stretch, but I'm expecting to see Moriarty threaded through this season as is Sherlock. I think these might be fingerprints for this episode.

I hope this is the right place for this, but with some sort of Moriarty reprise being dangled I think it's worth mentioning that the Morrocan policeman who shoots Ajay just as they're figuring out Ammo looks an awful lot like you know who.