Episode 4.1 "The Six Thatchers"

[Arcadia]

It's funny, because one of my first criticisms of T6T was that it didn't look like an episode of Sherlock "should" look. The series has always been very visually creative, and T6T … wasn't. Does make you wonder what might have been.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

They need to re-release the episode with the special edits at some point down the road. Just because. I’d find it interesting.

[Carol the Dabbler]

They could at least include them in the DVD as deleted scenes.

[Pseudonym]

Damn it all, wasn't going to read the link but you're all saying so many interesting hints now I'm going to have to. *sigh*

[Pseudonym]

Hm, now read. Just makes it more annoying that it looked so crappy when it was intended to look so good. I can't remember the Ajay transition they said was kept in, but I haven't watched the S4 episodes more than necessary. 

[SherlockedCAMPer]

It’s when he’s sitting on the floor in his room (possibly looking at a computer) and he remembers what happened to himself after the botched rescue attempt at the embassy.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Am I the only one who doesn't see the omission of those transitions as any big loss?  I mean, they might have been a nice touch, couldn't really say without seeing them, but on the other hand they might have been just some extra busy-ness or even a distraction from the actual story line.

[Pseudonym]

I think what it makes me think is that those awful shark overlay shots were put in just to distract where the story jumped. And they were the bits I was least keen on. I think it's more that the article highlights the mish-mashed bits of the episode than it being about the actual transitions. 

[Carol the Dabbler]

8 minutes ago, Pseudonym said:

... those awful shark overlay shots were put in just to distract where the story jumped.

Did you intend to hint at *what* the story jumped? 

So you're saying that the abrupt and/or non-existent transitions may have been even more distracting than what they replaced?  Could be, heaven knows there were some rough spots

However the article gave me the impression that the reason they didn't use the fancy transitions was that they decided to tell the story in mostly chronological order instead of using a lot of flashbacks.  I found the episode easy enough to follow, so that may have been a good decision.  Since there's apparently no completed alternative version to compare, I guess we'll never really know.

[Pseudonym]

No, I just mean they looked at the mess they had been able to cobble together out of existing shots and thought 'uh oh, we need a distraction between that sudden jump and this one. Uhhh, put in a shark.' It sounds like they had no choice but to take the transitions out, I'm just saying the gap filler was inelegant. 

[J.P.]

I also would love to seen the alternative cut. For research. Well, I think it's time to pester some folks on Twitter again. I hope they haven't muted me already!

[SherlockedCAMPer]

I also would love to seen the alternative cut. For research. Well, I think it's time to pester some folks on Twitter again. I hope they haven't muted me already!

Politely pester and maybe you will find you’re not blocked. And if you tag the person somewhere not at the beginning of the tweet, more will be able to see it.

[J.P.]

You see if you are blocked on Twitter but not when you are muted. But it never stopped me, so…

[Hikari]

For some reason I posted this comment over in The Final Problem discussion.  It made sense at the time, but now, not so much.  It belongs here, so I'm reposting it.

*********

So here is a very basic conundrum that bothers me about this episode.

One of the (mild) laughs to be had in an otherwise grim episode is Sherlock's complete cluelessness about who Margaret Thatcher is.  It brings a smile until one recalls that in "The Hounds of Baskerville", also written by Mr. Gatiss, Sherlock not only is perfectly conversant with Mrs. Thatcher's identity, but actually his knowledge of her nickname among her intimates and supporters was the lynchpin of solving the entire mystery.  (The password is MAGGIE.)

Yet, 5 years on, Sherlock exhibits no recognition of Mrs. Thatcher at all when seeing her photograph, set up as the centerpiece of a shrine in Tory home.  Did he cleanse the hard drive so thoroughly?  Is he pretending, for a joke (not really Sherl's style, one wouldn't have thought.)  Or--most likely to this viewer--did MG go for the cheap laugh with no regard for what he'd written previously in his own prior script?

TGT is near the bottom of my rankings, with good reason, I think.

P.S.  On a related theme, do you think, in TSo3, when Sherlock seems to be unaware that the United Kingdom has had a female monarch for the last six decades, was he:

a) Really that ignorant

b. Pulling John's leg

c.  Too drunk to pull John's leg or dissemble

d.  Suffering temporary drink-induced amnesia?

************

ACD's Sherl was a more or less apolitical figure but he *did* admire his Queen enough to shoot her initials into his wall.  Is the monarch of one's country a more or less basic fact than the Solar System? 

With ER, perhaps the two entities are one and the same . . ?

[Boton]

Really good point, Hikari.  I think the Thatcher thing was played for a cheap laugh, and I didn't much care for it. Nor do I care for Sherlock "forgetting" ERII.  It seems to me that Sherlock can't have the highly compartmentalized knowledge that the original Holmes did - he can't really "forget" the solar system or who the Queen is, because so much of this knowledge is central to solving his cases.

Even the whole solar system joke, which I know is a direct homage to ACD, doesn't work for me because in TBB, Sherlock shows a perfectly good understanding of celestial rotation such that he knows that the date on Seb's watch is off because of crossing time zones.  So, somehow, he's retained the bit involved in keeping time, but he has forgotten heliocentrism.  Right.

[Hikari]

46 minutes ago, Boton said:

Really good point, Hikari.  I think the Thatcher thing was played for a cheap laugh, and I didn't much care for it. Nor do I care for Sherlock "forgetting" ERII.  It seems to me that Sherlock can't have the highly compartmentalized knowledge that the original Holmes did - he can't really "forget" the solar system or who the Queen is, because so much of this knowledge is central to solving his cases.

Even the whole solar system joke, which I know is a direct homage to ACD, doesn't work for me because in TBB, Sherlock shows a perfectly good understanding of celestial rotation such that he knows that the date on Seb's watch is off because of crossing time zones.  So, somehow, he's retained the bit involved in keeping time, but he has forgotten heliocentrism.  Right.

Not to mention, in TGG, Sherlock solves Moriarty's puzzle and saves a life based on his knowledge of the Van Buren Supernova and its rendering being wrong in a painting. 

In the stories, it becomes evident fairly quickly that Sherlock has an extremely dry sense of humor, and many times he pretends something or other outrageous thing for the express purpose of winding Watson up.  Because his Boswell is somewhat gullible and awed by the mystery of his enigmatic friend, it's quite easy to wind Watson up.  Our dear Doctor, being a 'Sensing-Judging' on the MBTI tends to be literal-minded and irony sails right over his head.  Sherlock is neither a raging misogynist nor is he completely ignorant of basic earth science (as if) or current events, like who the sitting Prime Minister is.  In fact, living in the pre-Internet era, his knowledge could not be compartmentalized, but had to be universal, as he had to hold all possibly relevant facts to any conceivable topic in his brain attic, or, his scrapbooks to store the spill-over.  ACD's SH was truly a Renaissance man.  Our 21st century Sherl, being only just slightly too old to be classed as a Millennial is the one with the compartmentalized knowledge.  There is no need to be personally conversant with arcane (or even very commonplace) topics that do not immediately capture his interest because he can always look anything up on the Internet which he does not know.  Victorian Sherlock needed a much more rigorous mind because he did not have recourse to computers, other than his own brain and the even more powerful machine known as Mycroft's brain.

[Boton]

18 minutes ago, Hikari said:

Not to mention, in TGG, Sherlock solves Moriarty's puzzle and saves a life based on his knowledge of the Van Buren Supernova and its rendering being wrong in a painting. 

In the stories, it becomes evident fairly quickly that Sherlock has an extremely dry sense of humor, and many times he pretends something or other outrageous thing for the express purpose of winding Watson up.  Because his Boswell is somewhat gullible and awed by the mystery of his enigmatic friend, it's quite easy to wind Watson up.  

I suspect that Moftiss wanted to recreate the canon idea that Holmes is good in some areas and completely lacking in others, but it fell apart structurally very quickly.

Besides, the guy who was researching the ubiquity of the ecliptic in TAB is not ignorant of whether the Earth goes around the sun.

[Hikari]

3 hours ago, Boton said:

I suspect that Moftiss wanted to recreate the canon idea that Holmes is good in some areas and completely lacking in others, but it fell apart structurally very quickly.

Besides, the guy who was researching the ubiquity of the ecliptic in TAB is not ignorant of whether the Earth goes around the sun.

Dr. Watson does catalogue his new flatmate's 'Limits' very early on in their co-habitation but in those first couple of months, Watson didn't know his fellow lodger well at all, being kept completely separate from his roommate's professional activities.  Some of Watson's catalogue is correct but in other respects, he's quite wide of the mark.  Canon Sherl doesn't have any particular interest in astronomy, true.  That is Moriarty's area.  But I dispute that his knowledge in this subject was 'Nil'.  Watson is a bit harsh here, isn't he?  Because how proficient is the Doctor in subjects like geology and "practical gardening"?  Surely those are not relevant to the medical profession.

Here is the Doc's list of SH's deficiencies/merits:

Sherlock Holmes–his limits
1.	Knowledge of Literature.–Nil.
2.	” ” Philosophy.–Nil.
3.	” ” Astronomy.–Nil.
4.	” ” Politics.–Feeble.
5.	” ” Botany.–Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6.	Knowledge of Geology.–Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has [22] shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7.	Knowledge of Chemistry.–Profound.
8.	” ” Anatomy.–Accurate, but unsystematic.
9.	” ” Sensational Literature.–Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10.	Plays the violin well.
11.	Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12.	Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

********

Let us evaluate the Doctor's talent for observation of his friend's faults, traits and deficiencies so early on in their association, based on what he writes here of his first weeks with Sherlock Holmes.  It's laughably . . .wrong . . in so many ways.  In light of this, we shall have to take Watson's discovery of huge gaps in his friend's knowledge bank with a grain of salt.  ACD's Holmes is eccentric and doesn't care what people think vis. his non-adherence to social norms when he chooses not to adhere, but one does not get the impression of an Asperger's case such as BC was encouraged to play by how his Sherlock is written.

Get ready to laugh with me now:

Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning. Sometimes he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the city. Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion.

Apart from Watson's observation of his flatmate's bipolar tendencies, roams around London and suspected narcotic use, so much of this paragraph is complete bollocks, isn't it?  Sherlock Holmes--an easy man to live with?!  Always quiet, regular  . . Not a night owl?  How much more wrong could Watson be?  After accumulating more accurate data, he revised himself in later adventures.  The Watson who had only just moved into Baker Street was a naïf with so much to learn . . .

 

 

[Arcadia]

On ‎5‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 6:13 AM, Pseudonym said:

Hm, now read. Just makes it more annoying that it looked so crappy when it was intended to look so good. I can't remember the Ajay transition they said was kept in, but I haven't watched the S4 episodes more than necessary. 

Okay, that brings up the questions … how many viewings is considered necessary?  

On ‎5‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 10:51 AM, Carol the Dabbler said:

Am I the only one who doesn't see the omission of those transitions as any big loss?

Yes, apparently.

On ‎5‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 2:36 PM, J.P. said:

I also would love to seen the alternative cut. For research. Well, I think it's time to pester some folks on Twitter again. I hope they haven't muted me already!

JP, the Official Pesterer of the Sherlock Forum. You go, girl!

On ‎5‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 4:51 PM, Hikari said:

For some reason I posted this comment over in The Final Problem discussion.  It made sense at the time, but now, not so much.  It belongs here, so I'm reposting it.

*********

So here is a very basic conundrum that bothers me about this episode.

One of the (mild) laughs to be had in an otherwise grim episode is Sherlock's complete cluelessness about who Margaret Thatcher is.  It brings a smile until one recalls that in "The Hounds of Baskerville", also written by Mr. Gatiss, Sherlock not only is perfectly conversant with Mrs. Thatcher's identity, but actually his knowledge of her nickname among her intimates and supporters was the lynchpin of solving the entire mystery.  (The password is MAGGIE.)

Yet, 5 years on, Sherlock exhibits no recognition of Mrs. Thatcher at all when seeing her photograph, set up as the centerpiece of a shrine in Tory home.  Did he cleanse the hard drive so thoroughly?  Is he pretending, for a joke (not really Sherl's style, one wouldn't have thought.)  Or--most likely to this viewer--did MG go for the cheap laugh with no regard for what he'd written previously in his own prior script?

TGT is near the bottom of my rankings, with good reason, I think.

And I'll give the same answer here that I did over there: "I've always thought that Sherlock was pretending to not know who Thatcher was as a delaying tactic; he wanted more time to study the table the bust was missing from. The reason I think that is because of John's line: "For God's sake. You know perfectly well who she is. Why are you playing for time?""

Quote

 

P.S.  On a related theme, do you think, in TSo3, when Sherlock seems to be unaware that the United Kingdom has had a female monarch for the last six decades, was he:

a) Really that ignorant

b. Pulling John's leg

c.  Too drunk to pull John's leg or dissemble

d.  Suffering temporary drink-induced amnesia?

 

Yes.  

Seriously … what I really think is that he simply doesn't give a damn, anymore than he cares "who is sleeping with who." Or to be more accurate … he wants to appear as if he doesn't give a damn. I'm fairly certain he's far more attuned to trivialities than he lets on, but he must, of course, maintain the appearance that he's above all that. After all, where would the Holmes mystique be if he didn't?  

On ‎5‎/‎31‎/‎2018 at 10:54 AM, Hikari said:

In the stories, it becomes evident fairly quickly that Sherlock has an extremely dry sense of humor, and many times he pretends something or other outrageous thing for the express purpose of winding Watson up.

Exactly, and Moftiss has alluded to that more than once … although at the moment I can only remember one instance, and it happens to be from T6T ….

John: "Are you just making this up?" Sherlock: "Possibly."

I've thought from the first episode I saw (TSiB) that Sherlock is, above all else, a very accomplished bullshi**er. Even John finally figures that out, in TLD, when he acknowledges that Molly has realized that long before he himself did. What I like is when Sherlock lets on that he just might be pulling everyone's chain. Other times he's obviously just out and out lying, at which point I want to grab him by the nape and make him sit in a corner.....  

[Carol the Dabbler]

5 hours ago, Arcadia said:

I've always thought that Sherlock was pretending to not know who Thatcher was as a delaying tactic; he wanted more time to study the table the bust was missing from. The reason I think that is because of John's line: "For God's sake. You know perfectly well who she is. Why are you playing for time?"

You've convinced me!

[besleybean]

Note from the Dabbler:  this post is in reply to my post below (which I had deleted because the formatting wasn't working):

Never bought the theory and still don't...

Sherlock and John felt Mary did not need to run and have to hanlde this alone...they could help.

Which they did...sort of.

Edited September 28, 2018 by Carol the Dabbler

[Carol the Dabbler]

I've been thinking over something John said in T6T:

 

You could have stayed. You could have talked to me.  That’s what couples are

supposed

to do: work things through.

Oddly enough, that follows shortly after this exchange:

SHERLOCK: [....] I just ... stuck a tracer on the inside of the memory stick.  [....]

JOHN: Yeah, that was

my

idea.

So -- a wife isn't supposed to protect her husband and their daughter by drawing attention elsewhere; the honorable thing is for a husband to microchip his wife?

Either that's the most self-serving thing I've ever heard John say -- or it's further support for the Evil Twin theory (previously discussed here, among other places).
 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Well, looks like quote isn't the only function that isn't quite working!

*******

13 minutes ago, besleybean said:

Never bought the theory and still don't...

Sherlock and John felt Mary did not need to run and have to hanlde this alone...they could help.

Which they did...sort of.

Which theory are you referring to, Bev?

[besleybean]

The Evil Twin.

[Arcadia]

Oh thank god, I thought I was losing it. One minute your post was there, the next it was gone … before I had a chance to read it!  

I agree that's a bit of mixed messaging there. But here's what I thought at the time … John thought Mary should have stayed and let them work things out as a couple …. but he knew she wouldn't, and believing she'd be better off with them than without them, he suggested they track her.

We'll never really know whether he was right or wrong about that, I think. Personally, I think Ajay would have found her eventually, even without J&S clumping along behind her. But once he was gone, she apparently deemed it was safe to return, and nobody could have predicted Norbury's actions, imo. If Sherlock had kept his big trap shut at the aquarium, Mary might have gone on to live a long and happy life. (Although secretly I suspect Mycroft had it right all along; most assassins (or whatever she actually was) don't last long.)

Was John being overly-interfering by tracking her? I have to admit, I think Mary would have done the exact same thing if their situations had been reversed, and then everyone would have been congratulating Moftiss for writing a strong female character who would do anything to protect her man.  

Oh, and I think John said that line ("yeah, that was my idea") because he wanted Mary to know that he knew her better than she thought he did. And better, I think, than she knew him … or she should have realized that he knew what she'd do. I took it as a bit of hurt feelings on John's part … "see, Mary, I'm more invested in this relationship than you are, so there." Or alternatively, it could have been a bit of "hey, missy, you're not as smart as you think you are." Or even, "I'm not as dumb as you think I am."  

BTW, I've been encountering more pro-Mary comments lately (mostly courtesy of The Left Pill) and I have to admit I'm fonder of her character as a result. Although in truth, the only thing that ever really bothered me was the assassin thing, and I still think that's overly melodramatic. But I liked her nature from the start, and it's gratifying to read positive remarks about her.

Annnd … see how long it takes me to write these things? I should be more careful what I wish for.