Canon References In BBC Sherlock

[Carol the Dabbler]

But neither do I see [John] as having "destructive tendencies" (though I wouldn't put it past Moftiss to see him that way), and I'm not even certain what you're basing that statement on.

 

Well, after all, he couldn't last a month in the suburbs without storming a crack den and beating up a junkie.  

 

You do realize how loaded Sherlock's language was there, don't you?  I assume that's what your smiley is for.

 

SHERLOCK:  You’re a man who couldn’t stay in the suburbs for more than a month without storming a crack den and beating up a junkie.

 

But just in case -- John doesn't go there on a whim, he's begged for help by a tearful neighbor.  What's the alternative -- have her phone the cops, who would then arrest her son?  John has the medical and military experience to handle it on his own, so he does.  He doesn't "storm" the drug den, he calmly walks in and very politely asks for Isaac.  When he is then attacked by the knife-wielding door-junkie, he doesn't "beat him up," he uses minimal force and merely sprains his arm.  Pretty tame, compared to the way Sherlock (who was there!) paints it.

 

Plus, there's the fact that he shot cabbie Jefferson Hope.  It was a wonderful piece of dramatic entertainment, and the guy was, in fact, a serial killer (and I guess a fairly bad cabbie), but the fact is that John wasn't necessarily showing high moral principles as evidenced by him waiting until the last minute to shoot, as Sherlock believes.  ... I can find no reasonable way that John would have known -- from another building -- the details of Hope's two pill scheme ....  Without those details, John wasn't shooting from a position of certainty; he was taking a lucky guess.  If I'm going to apply real world standards to John (which I generally don't, TBH), then that's destructive and capricious.

You're right, John doesn't know about the two pills, nor does he have any idea why Sherlock got into the cab, or what the cabbie is saying to him. So what DOES he know?

 

1. Four people have died from taking poison capsules.

2. Sherlock just rode away in a mysterious cab.

3. Sherlock is in the other building with a man who appears to be the cabbie.

4. Sherlock is about to put a capsule into his mouth.

Yes, John made a lucky (albeit educated) guess: the cabbie is the serial killer. But life has very few certainties, we mostly have to guess to one degree or another. In this case, John had called the police, but they could not arrive in time. The stakes were Sherlock's life, and the probability looked uncomfortably high. That's the sort of judgment call that soldiers (and doctors too, really) sometimes have to make. I wouldn't call it capricious.

 

I'm glad that our John keeps a better balance.  But for me, that also means that he gets to fight personal demons, and I think he was doing so throughout S3.

No argument that he's dealing with personal demons. And he doesn't even have to ferret them out -- they come looking for him!

[Inge l-w]

Lovely discussion, like everything else I have seen so far! The series is and should be different from the stories, if he is to be a 21st century Holmes, albeit born in the 20th. The whole drug den thing is again lifted and adapted from the beginning of The Man with the Twisted lip, which makes John's question " He's the husband, right?" such fun, because in the story it IS the husband Dr Watson goes looking for and inadvertently stumbles on Holmes in the opium den.

[Boton]

But neither do I see [John] as having "destructive tendencies" (though I wouldn't put it past Moftiss to see him that way), and I'm not even certain what you're basing that statement on.

 

Well, after all, he couldn't last a month in the suburbs without storming a crack den and beating up a junkie.  

 

You do realize how loaded Sherlock's language was there, don't you?  I assume that's what your smiley is for.

 

SHERLOCK:  You’re a man who couldn’t stay in the suburbs for more than a month without storming a crack den and beating up a junkie.

 

But just in case -- John doesn't go there on a whim, he's begged for help by a tearful neighbor.  What's the alternative -- have her phone the cops, who would then arrest her son?  John has the medical and military experience to handle it on his own, so he does.  He doesn't "storm" the drug den, he calmly walks in and very politely asks for Isaac.  When he is then attacked by the knife-wielding door-junkie, he doesn't "beat him up," he uses minimal force and merely sprains his arm.  Pretty tame, compared to the way Sherlock (who was there!) paints it.

 

Plus, there's the fact that he shot cabbie Jefferson Hope.  It was a wonderful piece of dramatic entertainment, and the guy was, in fact, a serial killer (and I guess a fairly bad cabbie), but the fact is that John wasn't necessarily showing high moral principles as evidenced by him waiting until the last minute to shoot, as Sherlock believes.  ... I can find no reasonable way that John would have known -- from another building -- the details of Hope's two pill scheme ....  Without those details, John wasn't shooting from a position of certainty; he was taking a lucky guess.  If I'm going to apply real world standards to John (which I generally don't, TBH), then that's destructive and capricious.

You're right, John doesn't know about the two pills, nor does he have any idea why Sherlock got into the cab, or what the cabbie is saying to him. So what DOES he know?

 

1. Four people have died from taking poison capsules.

2. Sherlock just rode away in a mysterious cab.

3. Sherlock is in the other building with a man who appears to be the cabbie.

4. Sherlock is about to put a capsule into his mouth.

Yes, John made a lucky (albeit educated) guess: the cabbie is the serial killer. But life has very few certainties, we mostly have to guess to one degree or another. In this case, John had called the police, but they could not arrive in time. The stakes were Sherlock's life, and the probability looked uncomfortably high. That's the sort of judgment call that soldiers (and doctors too, really) sometimes have to make. I wouldn't call it capricious.

 

I'm glad that our John keeps a better balance.  But for me, that also means that he gets to fight personal demons, and I think he was doing so throughout S3.

No argument that he's dealing with personal demons. And he doesn't even have to ferret them out -- they come looking for him!

 

 

No, I was being a smart aleck.  I actually think Sherlock’s entire “addicted to a certain lifestyle speech” was to get John to understand that no one is so bad as we think from just looking at the worst thing they do.  So, John isn’t really a violent guy storming a drug den, although I do think he was enjoying himself.  Sherlock doesn’t “solve crimes as an alternative to getting high” so much as he has/does occasionally use substances when he can’t get his proper work and stimulation.  And Mrs. Hudson didn’t “run a drug cartel” so much as she had a youth and fell in with a bad man.

 

The Jeff Hope situation continues to bother me, although I definitely agree with your points.  I guess, had John not gotten “very loyal, very quickly,” he wouldn’t be half of the relationship we love to watch.  But I’m just not sure if I think he could really tell what was going on in that neighboring building with enough specificity to warrant a shot.  Then again, he did apparently aim for the shoulder, so maybe it wasn’t really supposed to be a kill shot anyway.  

 

[Boton]

Lovely discussion, like everything else I have seen so far! The series is and should be different from the stories, if he is to be a 21st century Holmes, albeit born in the 20th. The whole drug den thing is again lifted and adapted from the beginning of The Man with the Twisted lip, which makes John's question " He's the husband, right?" such fun, because in the story it IS the husband Dr Watson goes looking for and inadvertently stumbles on Holmes in the opium den.

 

I love the opium den scene in "Twisted Lip," partly because that's one of the few ACD canon scenes that gets overlaid in my mind with the Sherlock scene.  I can just hear Holmes saying, "Did you come for me too?"  And every time I read that scene, I find myself muttering, "Sherlock Holmes needs to pee in a jar."

[Arcadia]

 

it.

 

You're right, John doesn't know about the two pills, nor does he have any idea why Sherlock got into the cab, or what the cabbie is saying to him. So what DOES he know?

1. Four people have died from taking poison capsules.

2. Sherlock just rode away in a mysterious cab.

3. Sherlock is in the other building with a man who appears to be the cabbie.

4. Sherlock is about to put a capsule into his mouth.

 

The Jeff Hope situation continues to bother me, although I definitely agree with your points.  I guess, had John not gotten “very loyal, very quickly,” he wouldn’t be half of the relationship we love to watch.  But I’m just not sure if I think he could really tell what was going on in that neighboring building with enough specificity to warrant a shot.  Then again, he did apparently aim for the shoulder, so maybe it wasn’t really supposed to be a kill shot anyway.

 

 

You'd think, with my visceral objection to Sherlock shooting CAM, that I'd be troubled about Jeff Hope too, but I never have been. I think it's because I believe, the moment he saw the signal reappear on his laptop, John understood the cabbie was the killer. Add to that reasons 1 and 4 above, and for me it adds up to shooting a "bad man" to save another man's life ... no loyalty required.

 

I find Sherlock's immediate instinct to cover up John's involvement more troubling, but not by much in the context of the story ... especially since Lestrade's big grin at the end indicates (to me) that he knows full well who shot the cabbie. Why I think it's okay for Lestrade to give John a pass, I have no idea. Maybe it's the badge. :D Actually, I think I just see Lestrade as the true moral compass in this series and go along with whatever he does. And I shouldn't have said that, because now The Moftisses will make him do something really heinous ..... *sigh*

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I've laughed at this for two days now.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I actually think Sherlock’s entire “addicted to a certain lifestyle speech” was to get John to understand that no one is so bad as we think from just looking at the worst thing they do.  So, John isn’t really a violent guy storming a drug den, although I do think he was enjoying himself.  Sherlock doesn’t “solve crimes as an alternative to getting high” so much as he has/does occasionally use substances when he can’t get his proper work and stimulation.  And Mrs. Hudson didn’t “run a drug cartel” so much as she had a youth and fell in with a bad man.

Please explain that to Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss!  :D

[Boton]

 

I actually think John’s entire “addicted to a certain lifestyle speech” was to get John to understand that no one is so bad as we think from just looking at the worst thing they do.  So, John isn’t really a violent guy storming a drug den, although I do think he was enjoying himself.  Sherlock doesn’t “solve crimes as an alternative to getting high” so much as he has/does occasionally use substances when he can’t get his proper work and stimulation.  And Mrs. Hudson didn’t “run a drug cartel” so much as she had a youth and fell in with a bad man.

Please explain that to Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss!  :D

 

 

Gladly.  I'll even fly to London or Cardiff if they need a consult.  :-)

 

*And my above quote should have said Sherlock's speech.  Typed too fast, obviously.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Obviously.  I have fixed that in your original post and my quote of it, leaving your quoted quote so people will understand what we're talking about!

 

And we could both explain -- meet at the Cincinnati airport and fly over together.  :lol:

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Safety in numbers I'll join you.

[Arcadia]

I'll bring the riding crop. (Insert Irene icon here.)

[joanneta1]

Might one ask, what for or even better against whom? I have several issues with the creators, another scriptwriter and some of the lighting guys, so instead of bringing it along for playful reasons, like she does, imagine someone wielding the thing with all their might, and never mind waiting to find out what bruises form over the next hour!

[Arcadia]

Might one ask, what for or even better against whom?....

Oh, you know, anyone who might need a little persuading .... :P

[Carol the Dabbler]

Arcadia, are you taking into account that they might enjoy it?  ;)

[Arcadia]

Arcadia, are you taking into account that they might enjoy it?  ;)

Maybe I'm counting on it....

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Yes! You distract them and we'll proof read the dailies and make the corrections as "we" see fit.

[joanneta1]

As Irene Adler would have said "good idea"! There are sooo many other things that every  one of us would like to see interpreted by the most famous pair in detective fiction except what is currently available. But for that to happen, the collective brains of the forum, with the moderators at the lead, would need to drug them to keep them out of the loop while the members fixed all the parts they dislike/hate/loathe!

Oh, and I just noticed I have now reached the grade of my favourite modern character, Endeavour Morse. Which brings to mind that Mum and Dad Holmes played parts in Lewis S2, in the episode called Expiation.

[Inge l-w]

It clicked the other day that Sherlock in the sheet in Scandal in Belgravia is the modern day equivalent of Sherlock in his dressing gown all day. Back in Victorian days, not being dressed up at the appropriate times of the day was entirely unthinkable. We've sort of moved away from that and staying at home in your pyjamas is sort of not-so-frowned-upon, so that wouldn't have worked so well. But the whole idea of Sherlock refusing to even put a dressing gown on and just wrapping himself in a sheet gives the same kind of feeling the ever-present dressing gown would have given to Victorian readers...

Not really!

If you go to the Jeremy Brett thread you will see that they "borrowed" the scene from the Master Blackmailer. What makes it particularly funny, is that Brett was left-handed, so it was natural for him to hold the sheet that way, but because they lifted it whole, like "brother mine" from The Greek Interpreter, Benedict had to hold onto it with his left hand also, which may not have helped and caused his fall during the palace scene.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

It also didn't help that the sheet was going between his legs when Mark stepped on it before the fall. In the used take, the sheet trail stays to the outside of the left leg where it can unravel easier.

[sittything]

So I recently started reading ACD on my trip a few weeks ago.  But I didn't make it too far in Volume 1 before I was losing my collective mind over all of the references, similarities, and differences.  So given that I didn't get far, I'm going to start again with paper and pen b/c I want to write down ALL THE THINGS.

 

ETA:  The first thing in Volume 1 was A Study in Scarlet.  

[J.P.]

Oh, not paper and pen. Just open a new thread

[Carol the Dabbler]

My apologies if this link has already been posted.  The article is over a year old, but it's still interesting (and I especially like point #5):

 

7 Canonical References in His Last Vow

 

[J.P.]

In the canon, Sherlock Holmes gets engaged one time, to Charles Augustus Milverton’s housemaid. When he tells Watson, his friend is first delighted and then horrified to learn that the relationship is completely for the benefit of the case. As in “His Last Vow,” however, Agatha the housemaid doesn’t end up caring any more than Janine does.

 

Oh, I like this one. :D

[Inge l-w]

Dear Carol, nothing interesting in that particular article, you knew it all beforehand, and so did I and those of us here who have actually bothered to read the original stories. The most extreme case where he commits negligent manslaughter is in the Speckled Band, and If Mr Moffat thinks Mr Holmes shot the original Milverton, what will he do with this one: make his Sherlock drive the snake to Dr Roylott's neck any other way? Truth to tell, Billy the page, was introduced in the Case-Book only because William Gillette had introduced the pageboy in the theatrical piece, and in the Special there were pictures of Archie dressed like a Victorian pageboy.

P.S. And the unreliable source of those 'canon' references entirely forgets to mention how the whole Norwood Builder deduction of writing while on a train and going over points was referenced by Mr Gatiss in TGG commentary!

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Dear Carol, nothing interesting in that particular article, you knew it all beforehand, and so did I and those of us here who have actually bothered to read the original stories. The most extreme case where he commits negligent manslaughter is in the Speckled Band, and If Mr Moffat thinks Mr Holmes shot the original Milverton, what will he do with this one: make his Sherlock drive the snake to Dr Roylott's neck any other way? Truth to tell, Billy the page, was introduced in the Case-Book only because William Gillette had introduced the pageboy in the theatrical piece, and in the Special there were pictures of Archie dressed like a Victorian pageboy.

P.S. And the unreliable source of those 'canon' references entirely forgets to mention how the whole Norwood Builder deduction of writing while on a train and going over points was referenced by Mr Gatiss in TGG commentary!

 

I love The Speckled Band, because its a pretty quiet and improbable little set-up, and then when you think about it, you realize how BAMF Holmes really is.  Holmes is so good, he can facilitate your death by turning your own poisonous snake against you.  That's pretty awesome.  

 

That said, I'm not sure that I would want to see them try this in Sherlock.  Or at least not any time soon.  The shooting of CAM is far too fresh to just allow Sherlock to run around meting out justice as he sees fit, even if he's right.