Episode 1.3, "The Great Game"

[Gerrielle]

I loved the intensity of this episode! i swear i heard my brain sizzle as this episode ended. Though i felt a little unsatisfied at the fact that the case of Andrew West was ruled as a suicide in which they think he jumped in front of the train and got his "head smashed" but in the pictures his head was clearly in tact. Wasn't it fairly obvious that he wasn't run over by the train? Besides, they could've checked what time the train passed by that switch and see if the number of hours he's been dead actually matched.

[Van Buren Supernova]

I loved the intensity of this episode! i swear i heard my brain sizzle as this episode ended. Though i felt a little unsatisfied at the fact that the case of Andrew West was ruled as a suicide in which they think he jumped in front of the train and got his "head smashed" but in the pictures his head was clearly in tact. Wasn't it fairly obvious that he wasn't run over by the train? Besides, they could've checked what time the train passed by that switch and see if the number of hours he's been dead actually matched.

 

Hi Gerrielle, good observation. From his condition, he wasn't run by train. Because it would be..messy.

If it's a hit, the position and condition of the body also should be, how to describe, more disarranged and away from the rail. 

The impact of the hit also should send him flying.

So I think you have a valid point here.

 

About the timing, I think if the killer (can't recall his name) get him on the train just around the time it left his house, then maybe it wouldn't be detected/aroused suspicion. 

 

And welcome, nice to see you posting right away.

Not sure if you have watched the rest of episodes, including the new one.

The newest one is safely guarded, just don't visit the threads. But the rest up to Season 3 have been discussed everywhere.

Fyi just in case.

 

See you around!

[Shadow Dweller]

Gerrielle, I think I just fall in love with your profile picture.

[Arcadia]

Hi Gerrielle, good observation! Although the explanation might simply be that they aren't allowed to show anything as graphic as a crushed skull on TV, at least, not at the hour at which it is shown.

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

I suspect that the police originally ruled Westie's death an accident for the same two reasons that they were calling Van Coon's death a suicide in "Blind Banker."  The in-universe reason is that there was no obvious indication of foul play, so accident or suicide was the easy call.  And the real-world reason was that this is a television show, and fictional police are rarely allowed to actually solve a crime, because if they did there'd be nothing for the titular private consulting detective to do.

 

This is one case where we can't point to canon as the root explanation, because in "The Bruce-Partington Plans," West's head was indeed "badly crushed."  But Arcadia's quite correct about the BBC not allowing them to show a crushed skull, at least not at that hour.

 

[Boton]

I guess I've been unobservant, or else I just knit too much while I'm watching Sherlock, but last night I noticed something in TGG:  When Sherlock and John are in the diner getting the Connie Prince clues, the TV has a scroll that says "Connie Prince dead at 48."  The next scene, in the morgue, has Lestrade saying, "Connie Prince, 54."  So, ole Connie has been lying about her age!  

[Arcadia]

I missed it too. But I know I'm unobservant!

[J.P.]

I have read someone's observation about that.

[Van Buren Supernova]

While we are on that, actually I don't understand why someone lies about age.

Why would you want to pass for someone younger?

If you can't pull that off, it's embarrassing, no?

Telling actual age, it's fine. It works even better if you look younger than your actual age.

 

Like Connie, for example, it would be more flattering if she said she was 54 (but probably could pass for 48) rather than saying 48, and some people might think she looked older than her age.

 

 

[Arcadia]

I think it's because society -- the media in particular -- still values younger women higher than older women.

[Van Buren Supernova]

Yah, I guess. You are right.

Lame industry.

The very one that unites us here.

 

[sfmpco]

Hmmm.... has this come up before?  Apparently the young scared kid who did the countdown was voiced by Louis Moffat.  It was his debut.

[J.P.]

I don't know if it came up, but I was intending to post it. :D

You can delete "apparently". I had it confirmed by LM himself.

[Arcadia]

It's in the DVD commentary.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I recently got a smart phone, and am currently in the market for a Sherlock-themed text alert (but NOT the obvious one!). I'm thinking that the five Greenwich pips from this episode would be a good choice. Now, the Greenwich pips seem to be readily available online as audio files ... but that's the standard pips, five shorts and a long, not Moriarty's custom four shorts and a long.

 

Can anyone tell me how to get an mp3 file of what I want, either from the soundtrack of the show or a shortened version of the official time signal?

[Shadow Dweller]

Get VLC then copy the scene that you want from the DVD, extract the audio and voila, a new mp3 ringtone.

[sfmpco]

Get VLC then copy the scene that you want from the DVD, extract the audio and voila, a new mp3 ringtone.

 

Wow.  You already lost me... and I'm fairly geeky with techno stuff.  What is VLC?

[Caya]

VLC is a free (and fine) media player; you might've come across it already, it has a very distinctive orange-and-white traffic cone as its icon. I'd have linked you to a download but all the Google hits I got were German, sorry!

[sfmpco]

VLC is a free (and fine) media player; you might've come across it already, it has a very distinctive orange-and-white traffic cone as its icon. I'd have linked you to a download but all the Google hits I got were German, sorry!

 

I will check it out!  Thank you!  Is that one of those programs that people are also using to make animated gifs from the show?

[Caya]

Well you can capture frames easily with VLC, but (to the best of my knowledge, I've never done this) you'd need something like Gimp (another free program, this time of the picture editing variety) to put them together again as a gif. I would think that you'd have an easier time with Giphy and similar tools dedicated to gif-making; but, again, take this with a grain of salt please.

[Shadow Dweller]

This is VLC:

 

www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

[Carol the Dabbler]

Thanks, guys! I'll pass that info along to the I.T. Department (alias Alex).

[J.P.]

Was re-watching S1 and I realized that in TGG we actually have a hint hidden in the storyline which is connected to the outcome - in the planetary the voice on the record says some info bits about supernovas and a supernova was the solution. I'm still looking for more such details, so far the only other one I can think of was the squash ball.

 

Then I noticed that the music theme for the Cabby is also Moriarty's theme in TGG.

 

It's possible that the promise about burning the heart out of Sherlock wasn't killed with Jim in TRF. In the light of the S4 teasers the whole scene becomes even darker.

 

There is a bigger question too: Jim uses a phrase: "if you won't stop prying…" But we know that the Cabbie was hired to get Sherlock's attention. So why is Jim showing himself to Sherlock and then wanting him to stop? Any ideas? If there was a case BEFORE ASIP, we should have known it… Was there anything in the S1 about a case from the past?

[Arcadia]

This is how I always thought of it ... as Sherlock solved more cases, he was starting to be a thorn in Moriarty's side, so M decided to warn him off/get rid of him.

 

The cabbie wasn't supposed to reveal Moriarty's name, it was tortured out of him. I don't remember anything about him being hired to get Sherlock's attention; he wanted to kill people, and "consulted" with Moriarty, who helped him do it, was what I got. The cabbie mentioned M was a "fan" of Sherlock, but not that M was trying to get Sherlock's attention ... ? So it was a slip up on the cabbie's part to mention M at all, I think.

[Arcadia]

Oh, and another hint that was connected to the outcome ... there was a poster on a wall about the "lost Vermeer" somewhere in the episode. There was Mycroft's phone conversation about "Bond Air." CAM's glasses turning out to be just glasses turned out to be a clue. Mary knowing what a skip code was (and there were supposed to be some other clues that she was other than she seemed, although I still find them all rather flimsy.) Um.... something in Hounds was supposed to tip us off to the hallucinogen in the lab where John was later trapped, but I forget what it was. The nurse knowing John's middle name in TSo3, maybe? The reference to trains in TEH was pretty pervasive, and while not a clue, eventually related to the plot. Redbeard?