Moffat's "we've missed it" statement...

[Van Buren Supernova]

If you haven't read Conan Doyle's Study in Scarlet, you might give it a try (especially the first few pages, where Watson meets Holmes). He seems even younger than in the pilot, and was apparently supposed to be in his twenties. So perhaps that's what Moftiss were aiming at.

 

Interesting. I have read that one, but in multiple sitting and over a stretch of time, so most probably I miss stuffs. To me, he doesn't strike as in his twenties, but late thirties.

[Arcadia]

I'm puzzled by this myself, because in Scarlet, Holmes is referred to as a "student", which implies he's in his early twenties. But he's also working as a detective already, and it's not clear to me that he actually is a student; Stamford says he doesn't know what Holmes' field is, or something like that. Could he mean that Holmes is studying something, not that he's actually enrolled in a learning institution?

 

At any rate, Moftiss says somewhere they originally wanted Sherlock to be younger than he ended up being; they finally just decided to let him be the same age as Benedict. Who would have been, what, 33 or thereabouts when they filmed ASIP? So I think it's a good guess that Sherlock was supposed to be mid-to-late 20's in the pilot.

[Inge l-w]

Well, if you had read A Study in Scarlet carefully and then combined it with The Musgrave Ritual, you would have seen that Sherlock Holmes never got a university degree in anything, and as for his agility and youthfulness, both Study and Sign attest to it!

[Boton]

Well, if you had read A Study in Scarlet carefully and then combined it with The Musgrave Ritual, you would have seen that Sherlock Holmes never got a university degree in anything...

 

I will bow to your greater knowledge of the canon.

 

I do think, however, that there is a factor of needing to update educational realities to match the modern era, and that has at least tangential ramifications for Sherlock's age.

 

In the Victorian era, a gentleman definitely could engage in study of a discipline without attaining a degree (although many did) and still be considered an expert.  Our current climate of needing credentials means that Sherlock would not be taken seriously without a degree, and making him a graduate chemist sort of proves his expertise. So, that puts something of a lower age limit on Sherlock even for the pilot; assuming he didn't skip grades or work ahead, he would have been what? At least 23-24 when he got a graduate degree?  Whereas the original Holmes really could have been any age without the marker of a certain degree attainment.

 

Linguistic question, then. In ACD's time, is there a difference between "studying" and "reading?"

Looking at U.S. sources from that time, someone engaged in formal study at around the turn of the 20th century might say he was "reading" a subject, so a law student was "reading the law at Harvard." "Studying," to the best of my understanding, had a much broader connotation at the time.  Was the same true in Britain during that era? If so, Holmes could have been "studying" something at almost any age.

[Arcadia]

In my head, Sherlock had to have skipped a grade or two. Just because he could.

[Pseudonym]

Yep, I think it would be a bit strange to keep him in his year group when he would be so clearly superior to them. That might also have contributed to the hard shell he's developed and the pointed act/belief that other peoples opinions don't matter; I can imagine the reactions if he was forced to be in with older kids who would definitely look at him as a weird, spiky oddity (not that his own year group wouldn't).

 

Even if he had gone to uni at 18 and not skipped years, a chemistry degree usually takes 4 years, so he could conceivably be 22 on graduation, depending when his birthday is. Yes, I could google that but I'm in work and sapped of energy so it shall have to go by the wayside ;)

[Boton]

Yep, I think it would be a bit strange to keep him in his year group when he would be so clearly superior to them. That might also have contributed to the hard shell he's developed and the pointed act/belief that other peoples opinions don't matter; I can imagine the reactions if he was forced to be in with older kids who would definitely look at him as a weird, spiky oddity (not that his own year group wouldn't).

 

Even if he had gone to uni at 18 and not skipped years, a chemistry degree usually takes 4 years, so he could conceivably be 22 on graduation, depending when his birthday is. Yes, I could google that but I'm in work and sapped of energy so it shall have to go by the wayside ;)

 

How common is grade skipping in the U.K.?  It is reasonably common here in the U.S. (I did it), but I didn't know about other countries.

 

Does Sherlock have a bachelor's in chemistry or a master's?  I believe the terminology differs somewhat in the U.K., but again, not my division.  And ditto the "could Google but at work" thing.

 

His birthday is January 6, 1976.   ;)

[Pseudonym]

I don't know how different schooling is - do you have sets in each class? So different abilities in each year are taught in different classes being rated from set 1 to set 4. I think mainly you're just moved up or down a set within your own year, I don't know of anyone who skipped a year and I went to a really big school so I don't think it's common. Sherlock's intelligence is also not common though so I think he'd have to be bumped up to try to stop him creating havoc out of boredom!

 

I always took graduate degree to mean a batchelor's but I might be wrong, to be honest it's not a term I've heard here except for on Sherlock... but maybe that's a Welsh thing rather than a British thing. I normally just hear anything above a batchelor's as the actual qualification - ie, he's got a PHD, master's, etc. 

[Arcadia]

What you describe as "sets" sounds a lot like my high school; they had remedial, regular and college prep classes for English and, if I remember correctly, math. I believe it varies from school system to school system, though. The one I was in at the time was fairly small; only one high school, so maybe they could afford more teachers. (?)

 

My university, on the other hand, didn't have anything like that. And it was comparatively small too, so I don't know if size is a factor after all.

[Pseudonym]

They didn't do it my uni, just in school. I think in uni you may need help with something minor but generally you're expected to be of a high enough level to keep up. We don't have any prep or pre degree years though, I've come across a few fics that have John in pre-med which we don't have.

[Boton]

We did not have formal "sets" like you describe, although, in younger years, certain subjects might break down into ability levels on an ad hoc basis as needed.  (So, primary/elementary school reading classes might break down according to what reader you were able to handle, which necessarily was a reflection of ability.)  By high school, we did have vocational and college prep "tracks," but those were more about which classes you took (calculus vs. business math) than they were about ability.  (Although they were complicated by the fact that the higher ability students usually planned college, so they wound up in calculus, etc., etc.)

 

When I skipped a grade (7th), it was the only way my school system had to accelerate me into material that might be new for me. (It wasn't, but oh, well.)  If you take Sherlock's experience with Seb and transport it into a middle school environment, you have my experience with skipping.  (Note: It was still the best decision for me, but I feel for Sherlock.)

 

For me, I would understand "graduate chemist" to mean possessing a master's degree or higher.  It isn't, to the best of my experience, a U.S. term, although when we say "graduate degree," we mean master's or PhD.

[Pseudonym]

I think my understanding of it might be tainted by the fact I can't imagine him sticking uni for long enough to do a degree and a masters. I think he would have been bored out of his skull, but again I guess that goes back into the question of whether he was accelerated though this time in uni rather than school. 

I also wonder at what point he formed his drug dependency, was that whilst he was in uni or afterwards? 

[Boton]

I think intelligent people can get very engaged in college and graduate school, especially if they have professors/programs that encourage independent research.  For whatever reason, I can see Sherlock sticking it out through whatever he found boring because he wanted to get access to the research labs and the thesis project in grad school, or whatever.  We know he gets bored easily, but we also have seen him be able to work through the necessary steps to solve a case.

 

My own head canon about the drugs is that he tried them and liked them in uni and then quickly discovered their value at either increasing his mental stimulation or blunting his boredom, and that he has been an occasional user ever since.  YMMV on this one though, since everyone seems to have a different read on the evidence.

[jadpdr]

Oh, in original parlance, Sherlock Holmes never finished either of the two universities, University of London in its infancy at the time, and although Sir Arthur was Scottish himself, he didn't choose either Edinburgh or York. The original was very much a dropout, skilled at many crafts but Master of none. Speaking of which, the two institutions give you a Bachelor's in anything, and in two years it becomes a Master's: quite unjust, when I think how hard it is to get your DEUG II in France, not to mention Ecole Normale and Ecole Polytechnique!