Julia Mae

Thanks, Alex, that's a nice interview.

Remember in ASIP when Sherlock tells John re: Mycroft, "He is the British government when he's not too busy being the British Secret Service...." I thought he meant Mycroft and Anthea. And any other Mycroft-helpers, like drivers and such.

"Fan service" makes me suspect they will spend some time on it, though not answer every question we might have. But in TRF they used publicity to trap Moriarty and I think it makes sense to use publicity to rehabilitate Sherlock in the public eye. They have to do this so he can continue working with the police in future. I think Kitty is more interesting as a disgruntled enemy and could be fun in future episodes. Kind of like Rita Skeeter and Harry Potter. I'm all for them firing her. Also, it would be good for someone to get the credit for destroying the Moriarty mob, and Lestrade will also need to be rehabilitated with Scotland Yard, so he needs to publicly show Sherlock and he worked together to bring down all those evildoers. Mycroft will keep the government's name out of it.

Exactly! It struck me the moment he said it in that episode, probably because as a writer I am so acutely aware of language choices. So either they were planting a red-herring - though it's awfully subtle for one, or I'd bet money that the first faked death was Moriarty's. On your laptop along the side or back should be a little round hole. That's where you put the headphones. They are super-cheap, Walmart has some for like $8-12.

Wait! I got it: After he solves it, Sherlock puts the solution online along with Carl Powers birth-death years: 1978-1989. That makes Carl Powers 11. That makes Moriarty 11 if he is a classmate. I don't think he has to be, but I'm okay with him being the same age. Why do I think Sherlock was so young? I have a vague memory of listening to an interview with Benedict Cumberbatch where he said something about 27 and I thought, "Hay! That's the age I thought he was playing him!" I think I have that memory. My memory is not that good. Maybe someone else said it. But I do recall having the thought.

And we don't want him to be! John has that old-fashioned thing called "character." I was sitting down at the time, had gone to a mixer thing with a girlfriend, I was in my twenties, when some man came and struck up a conversation by telling me some woman who must have been 5'8" had the nerve to ask him to dance! Then he said, "Women shouldn't be taller than 5'6', right, I mean, what was she thinking?" He just dripped contempt. So I stood up. I had heels on. (BTW, as a young woman I was darned hot!) He left. Buh-bye! Same reason they'd be calling the phone booth? The ring is pretty deliberate. I'm really sorry you couldn't play the video, I tried to make it short and simple so you could. Anyway, it's deliberately subtle, but also quite distinctive. I mean, there's no sound leading up to it, so it's soft but nothing interferes with it. I cannot imagine this is accidental, or not part of the solution. So, if calling the booth is a signal, it only works if someone can hear it. And no one is near John but John. If Moffat rings John's phone then, it can't be a signal. I'm back to the phone booth. BTW - at my library, each computer has it's own CPU and you can plug headphones into it. Not at yours?

I just rewatched to be sure. They never mention an age. It's interesting because on tumblr I just asked someone how they knew the ages when they posted this: I have the idea, for some reason that Sherlock is 27 when Series One opens, I don't know why I think that. I think we logically have to make him at least 30, which would make him 10. I always thought of Carl Powers as being like 13-14 from the picture. But I don't think we have a bit of Canon for all of this.

I'm hoping the same thing. I want it to include the iPhone audition.

And I watched it at least ten times without noticing it until my daughter pointed it out, and she'd only seen it the one time two years ago! (Oh, to have a young brain again!) Carol said: I hadn't thought of John's cell phone. Huh. Why would anyone be calling John, though? I mean, it wouldn't be random, it would have to be part of the story, have some plot purpose.

Can I ask, and I'm not disagreeing at all, how you know he was 10 years old? I'd love to have a confirmation of that.

Oh, that's really interesting. And I doubt that British technology is that different from ours. It's also traditional in terms of Canon. There was one story, cannot recall the title, where Sherlock convinces Watson he is deathly ill, denigrates his ability as a doctor, to get him to bring another doctor, the bad guy in this case, to the flat. (iirc) Why would he lie to Watson? According to Sherlock, Watson is just a terrible liar. And, of course, in the Canon, Sherlock hides his continued existence from Watson. I disagree somewhat. While it's certainly possible that Moriarty is carrying a childhood grudge (after all, Sherlock did try really, really hard to ruin Jim's perfect murder of Carl Powers), I don't see that as a necessary assumption, or as necessarily the only factor, or even the main factor involved. I am 5-foot-8, a bit tall for a woman (90th percentile), and I've noticed a bizarre reaction from a few of the many men who are slightly shorter than me, around 5-foot-6. I'm guessing that they fear themselves to be "deficient," but find consolation in the fact that at least they're taller than most women. Then when I show up, their reaction seems to be, "How dare you!" If they can take offense at my very existence, then it seems to me that Jim could take offense at the very existence of the only person who's ever seriously challenged his intellectual superiority. True, that reaction could date from the Powers incident. But I suspect that it's Sherlock's existence that galls Jim, more so than the incident itself. 5'10" here, and I know exactly what you mean. I've also been told women "shouldn't" be taller than some height the man picks because it's shorter than he is. I don't think it was Carl Powers. I don't think it was anything we know about so far. I thought I'd posted this, but I can't find it, now. Anyway, you remember the suggestion in the DVD commentary that Sherlock's father had possibly had ... an affair or something? Gatiss says they might "have it later" yet, he told Benedict Cumberbatch it was okay to say and he refused, anyway. There's nothing in the Canon, afaik, about Sherlock Holmes' parents. But we have Mycroft in the very first episode talking about upsetting Mummy. I think it will have something to do with their parents. Is that necessarily true? No, of course, not, it's speculative in the extreme for me. But I think the evidence so far supports it as an hypothesis. I think that Carl Powers business just is the clue that leads us back to both their childhoods, rather than being the only motivation behind his obsession with paying a revenge debt to Sherlock.

So you think that Moriarty's suicide wasn't spontaneous? Makes a lot of sense, with the whole "staying alive" motif, and he probably didn't bring the gun for Sherlock (too easy). Poor bugger, if he'd received the help he so obviously needed he would have been better off (not to mention a whole lot of other people, as well). Go to the end of The Great Game and watch the pool scene. When Sherlock takes aim at the bomb, Moriarty is not visibly upset, frightened or willing to walk away even though he knows he will die, also. When the phone rings with the "Stayin' Alive" tune, whatever he hears causes him to become instantaneously very angry. Why is he angry? If it's indeed Irene Adler on the phone, what could she tell him to make him angry? He's angry, it seems to me, because he has to interrupt his plan: to kill Sherlock and die, himself. RATS! I have to live some more! Moriarty tells Sherlock over and over I.O.U. A fall. Why? What did Sherlock ever do to him, really, other than act as an agent for law and order? But there are all kinds of cops and detectives and guys who beat him up for Mycroft, I mean, he isn't obsessing about owing them a fall. This is all on my blog, but it's obvious that Moriarty actually knows Sherlock, or of him, from their childhoods. Something happened. If you rewatch The Great Game, Moriarty tells Sherlock that it's personal, "This is between you and me, Sherlock." Moriarty has to destroy Sherlock as pay back for something. Then he gets what he wants: oblivion.

I agree. We don't even know for sure anything was erased, really, we just see the stuff he gave Kitty. Sherlock said she wasn't smart, maybe she never really checked him out. It's a tabloid-ish paper anyway, isn't it? Earlier, during the trial, there are newspaper reports that refer to Moriarty as being born in Ireland, so someone has checked him out and that research can't be erased. And of course, the government had him locked up and beaten on for a while, that's hardly something Sherlock could pay Jim to volunteer for or get Mycroft to go along with. To what end? I believe all of this supports the idea that Sherlock and Mycroft ran a con on Moriarty, all the while letting him think he was calling the shots. (The Most Dangerous Game) All Moriarty needed was to believe Sherlock believed it (Sherlock coming all emotionally unglued in the reporter's apartment seems pretty convincing) so he could maneuver Sherlock into a position to die in disgrace. After that, Moriarty doesn't care, he's not planning on living any longer.

The pictures here should correspond very closely to the show, except the last two I just stuck in to get to the end of what I recorded. You'll not how silent it is after Sherlock hits the ground, until the sound effect of John being hit and falling. Then the phone rings. THAT'S when they bring back the music, the pitch of the violin set to match the pitch of the phone ring that starts again during the overhead shot. The top sound is the music, the next level is John groaning, the bottom is the ringing, which is almost totally obscured. I think they made sure the first ring was isolated, except for a faint groan from John, so we couldn't cry foul later, they can say "It was quite clear." BUT - arguing against my hypothesis is the fact that if you go back to ASIP, when the phones ring after John leaves the crime scene, whether in the phoneboxes or the restaurant, they make a distinctive double-ring. Anyway, check it out.

Oh, yeah. LordByronBatch! Oh dear. I think I have to go watch this again now.

If it turns out that What Really Happened is not what any of us expected, I don't expect it to be the least bit convoluted. I think it'll be a real face-palm moment! I agree completely, I don't think it will be convoluted at all. I also think we'll have to ignore a lot of "reality" in terms of what actually appeared on screen to be able to accept it. I think I'll post the ring so we can all listen together. Stand by!

Thanks, guys. It's Ellison from the album, as noted in the end credits.

I replaced them in the post I'd already made. Saving bandwidth!

I've been really swamped lately with this project I'm writing, but I had to take some time because of the recent Supreme Court action and do this video for everyone who ships Johnlock or just believes in the power of love. I'm not a Johnlock shipper, myself, but I hope people like this:

BTW, the convention in street designation with which I am familiar in the U.S., is that streets that have north portions are not designated "north" but left as is, you assume they are north as they have no designator. So you have 195 Broad Street. However, if there is a south portion of that same road, it does get a designator: 195 South Broad Street. The worst version of street designation I have come across is in northern Virginia where you can find a street called "North Smith Avenue" in one place. THEN - a completely separate street that has no dirrect relationship at all with the first called "South Smith Avenue." What one needs to understand it: these are east-west running streets. That is, one is in the northern part of town and one is in the southern part of town. oi

I thought before you change locations, I'd put a copy of the map here. I scrolled up a bit from the originals I posted:

I don't think she was dating Mr. Chattergee, I think she was having a flirtation with him. I presume this from her putting on a new dress in the morning to go down to the cafe and hang out scratching off lottery tickets. I assume he is responding, somehow, or else how does she get flour on her sleeve? Does she own the cafe? So, in the pilot, she is running the cafe. But I wouldn't want to presume anything based on that, since they changed it. Does she own the whole building? Or just the - I'd call it a townhouse - that's been converted and that she rents out part of? I wouldn't be surprised if she and her husband were grifters, working the old folks in Florida. Somehow, Mr. Hudson, (who I assume was abusive towards her because of her attitude toward him and affection for Sherlock) managed to escalate to a capital crime. Now, how would an Englishwoman in Florida know to consult a guy young enough to be her grandson living in London? Internet? I wonder if Mofftiss will take a page from reality and have Mrs. Hudson be an acquaintance of Sherlock's parents as Una is of Benedict's parents? I wonder this as they have also hinted we are going to be getting some backstory this season.

Those transcripts are made by watching/listening to the show, I believe. They are not copies of shooting scripts, if I recall what she says about the process correctly. As for the ball, a lot of people are dedicated to the ball theory, and I can see Moffat using it. But I tend to expect him to be hiding the means, to make the significant clues more subtle, so when the BIG REVEAL happens in Series 3, he can flashback and show what was there all along that the viewers didn't notice.

I can't imagine why anyone would think it's ringing in John's ears. It's a phone, we've heard it before, froma phone box before. (I forget, you don't have the DVD set? So you can't review?) And even if it isn't the phone, he'd need someone in that area who could see John and him, to give him some sort of signal about John getting up. Okay, so, in my theory, Stethescope Guy is going to inject Sherlock wth something to kill him so John will be convinced. If that happens, then he needs a signal to do that at the last possible moment so Sherlock is dead as briefly as possible to get Sherlock inside to revive him asap. In other theories, it probably works the same way. ------------- So, here's the thing about that next page number ... it does not appear unless there are posts there. As far as I know. No blank pages. There has to be another post to trigger the program to make a new page, so, if it's there, there are more posts!

Hadn't given this any thought whatsoever till now (and have not read your blog) -- but might this be about the same time that we hear what could be a telephone ringing? The phone booth is in that direction. Great minds! That was one of my ideas, also. Though, the phone starts ringing as soon as John hits the ground, so ... maybe it stopped? Meaning John was getting up?