BBC's "Sherlock" Series

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Post by Shennifer »

Magnussen is supposed to unnerve you. I get that it was rather weird at times, but I think it served its purpose to show just how creepy he is.

Great twist with the mind palace being where Magnussen had his info; that was unexpected.
I'm even glad that at the very end, it was a happier ending.
I'm a little disappointed that Mary turned out to be "bad" (I think she's trying to reform and that she loves John, but she's still morally grey because she shot Sherlock just so he wouldn't tell John who she was
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No, I wasn’t referring to Magnussen (although he was certainly weird as well) it was the episode in its entirety that was weird. The story, the development, the whole thing.
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Post by Knight Fisher »

The thing is she really had no character until she became morally grey. She was simply a new sidekick.
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bookworm wrote:No, I wasn’t referring to Magnussen (although he was certainly weird as well) it was the episode in its entirety that was weird. The story, the development, the whole thing.
Ah. I agree it was different, but I don't think it was weird. at least, not in a negative way.

Knight Fisher: I do think she had character before we found out about her past; it was just less shocking. She had merit as a "sidekick" as you put it because she was awesome (and still is, but in a different way)
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Post by bookworm »

Addressing Moriarty then.

The bit after the credits wasn’t real, in episode context. He’s talking directly to the viewer, it’s just something for them to squee at. All that’s in the world of the show was that gif image on all the screens. It’s not a video of him, because he wasn’t talking. It was just dubbed. So Moriarty will be involved in the next series, but he won’t be back. He is dead. People suggesting this means he survived the rooftop is just wishful thinking. Moffat put down those speculations definitively, saying "They did not fake suicide at each other. Imagine how stupid you’d feel if you bumped into each other! 'What, you too?!' He’s dead." It would take down the credibility of the show to bring Moriarty back. Just think about it, that whole episode would have been pointless. Both characters were brought back from the dead? Not a chance. So this is some kind of beyond the grave gimmick and nothing more, that is certain. The question is who set it up, Moriarty himself before his death, or someone else wanting to mess with Sherlock?
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Post by Shennifer »

I got season 3 on DVD. Just watched The Empty Hearse with my parents; they enjoyed it and I enjoyed seeing it again :)
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bookworm wrote:
Addressing Moriarty then.

The bit after the credits wasn’t real, in episode context. He’s talking directly to the viewer, it’s just something for them to squee at. All that’s in the world of the show was that gif image on all the screens. It’s not a video of him, because he wasn’t talking. It was just dubbed. So Moriarty will be involved in the next series, but he won’t be back. He is dead. People suggesting this means he survived the rooftop is just wishful thinking. Moffat put down those speculations definitively, saying "They did not fake suicide at each other. Imagine how stupid you’d feel if you bumped into each other! 'What, you too?!' He’s dead." It would take down the credibility of the show to bring Moriarty back. Just think about it, that whole episode would have been pointless. Both characters were brought back from the dead? Not a chance. So this is some kind of beyond the grave gimmick and nothing more, that is certain. The question is who set it up, Moriarty himself before his death, or someone else wanting to mess with Sherlock?
I completely agree with you, bookworm, about Moriarty not coming back. I still think Mary might be the big villain in the next series, especially if she is the embodiment of Sebastian Moran; if so, maybe she's behind all of this. (In a way, I really hope she is the villain, although I can't explain why lol. I just find that prospect attractive for some reason.)
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Post by bookworm »

So did everyone understand what ‘rat, wedding, bow’ mean then?

I understand that similar cryptic words were also given before the last series which clearly identify each of the three stories to be adapted: ‘woman, hound, fall’ (or apparently more specific, ‘Adler, Hound, Reichenbach’) and so it was the same here.
Now ‘wedding’ is obvious and ‘bow’ refers to the third episode’s title, though the story isn’t actually from that one as I mentioned, but ‘rat’ seems to be the odd one out. It’s different than the other five words, all the rest are straightforward pointers to the Doyle stories, or at least titles, that the episode will draw from, but this one is more obscure.

It would seem ‘rat’ references The Giant Rat of Sumatra, a case that is mentioned in passing by Holmes during The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire but not expounded on because it is “a story for which the world is not yet prepared.” This thought appears to be confirmed by the location of the Underground station being Sumatra Road. In other words this story, the train bomb terrorist plot, is the untold story of The Giant Rat of Sumatra.
If that is so, it was an interesting choice of clue word. While with the others you could look to a story and expect an adaptation, this one identified the story but gave no information of what was to come because this story has no information.

I also found something else very interesting. All three of these words apparently appear on the same page in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton. So not only do they separately point to the individual episodes, but together they hint at the series as a whole, indicating that that Milverton (or Magnussen, as it turned out) is the running thread of this one. I wonder if that was intentional.
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Post by Shennifer »

Aeva wrote:
bookworm wrote:
Addressing Moriarty then.

The bit after the credits wasn’t real, in episode context. He’s talking directly to the viewer, it’s just something for them to squee at. All that’s in the world of the show was that gif image on all the screens. It’s not a video of him, because he wasn’t talking. It was just dubbed. So Moriarty will be involved in the next series, but he won’t be back. He is dead. People suggesting this means he survived the rooftop is just wishful thinking. Moffat put down those speculations definitively, saying "They did not fake suicide at each other. Imagine how stupid you’d feel if you bumped into each other! 'What, you too?!' He’s dead." It would take down the credibility of the show to bring Moriarty back. Just think about it, that whole episode would have been pointless. Both characters were brought back from the dead? Not a chance. So this is some kind of beyond the grave gimmick and nothing more, that is certain. The question is who set it up, Moriarty himself before his death, or someone else wanting to mess with Sherlock?
I completely agree with you, bookworm, about Moriarty not coming back. I still think Mary might be the big villain in the next series, especially if she is the embodiment of Sebastian Moran; if so, maybe she's behind all of this. (In a way, I really hope she is the villain, although I can't explain why lol. I just find that prospect attractive for some reason.)
that's an interesting idea, but I think her time as the villain has passed. plus if she was in fact the main villain next season, that would only give more fuel to fire for johnlock shippers
Spoiler tags fixed. -Marvinsaur
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Post by Aeva »

Shennifer wrote:
Aeva wrote:
bookworm wrote:
Addressing Moriarty then.

The bit after the credits wasn’t real, in episode context. He’s talking directly to the viewer, it’s just something for them to squee at. All that’s in the world of the show was that gif image on all the screens. It’s not a video of him, because he wasn’t talking. It was just dubbed. So Moriarty will be involved in the next series, but he won’t be back. He is dead. People suggesting this means he survived the rooftop is just wishful thinking. Moffat put down those speculations definitively, saying "They did not fake suicide at each other. Imagine how stupid you’d feel if you bumped into each other! 'What, you too?!' He’s dead." It would take down the credibility of the show to bring Moriarty back. Just think about it, that whole episode would have been pointless. Both characters were brought back from the dead? Not a chance. So this is some kind of beyond the grave gimmick and nothing more, that is certain. The question is who set it up, Moriarty himself before his death, or someone else wanting to mess with Sherlock?
I completely agree with you, bookworm, about Moriarty not coming back. I still think Mary might be the big villain in the next series, especially if she is the embodiment of Sebastian Moran; if so, maybe she's behind all of this. (In a way, I really hope she is the villain, although I can't explain why lol. I just find that prospect attractive for some reason.)
that's an interesting idea, but I think her time as the villain has passed. plus if she was in fact the main villain next season, that would only give more fuel to fire for johnlock shippers
Spoiler tags fixed. -Marvinsaur
You may very well be right, especially since "Lord Moran" actually has the canon name lol. I know he went to jail, but that probably wouldn't stop an assassin like him for long. :- This is an interesting point.
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Post by bookworm »

I’m surprised, confused, and frankly angered that Sherlock’s fall was never explained. We were all but assured that series three would finally answer the questions, and it didn’t. I was fine when it wasn’t immediately explained in the premiere episode, but that was because I was sure it would be addressed in one of the other two episodes, but no, after the first it was never thought of again. In the premiere we were given three possible scenarios, of which two were definitely false, but the one that remained isn’t true either. At least not completely. In the episode Anderson himself discounts it, saying "If you pulled that off I’m the last person you’d tell the truth" and in the real world Moffat responded to questions on the credibility of the third scenario with "That’s presuming, of course, that Sherlock Holmes would bother to tell Anderson the truth. We might still not know."

I’ve seen a few people on the internet say that not explaining it was genius because leaving it for us to wonder about somehow makes it better, which is absolutely ludicrous. Not explaining it is the complete opposite of genius, it is a choice so completely bad it’s beyond reason. You can’t spend two years insisting you have it all planned out, bragging that you’ve outdone Doyle, averring that it all makes sense, and then not let the audience in on what IT is. It zaps all credibility instantly. The only reason for withholding the reveal that makes any sense is that you were lying and actually didn’t work it out at all.

And what was this ‘clue everyone missed’ then? Putting that out further insisted the answer was there, and like everything else was never paid off. I am very upset, and more than that I’m just thoroughly confused. It’s such an uncharacteristically bad decision for such a good show.
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Post by Shennifer »

I understand, bookworm. I'm a little frustrated too. But at least we have an idea of what happened.
And I think the point the episode was trying to make is not necessarily the exact way he did it, but rather it's the challenge of getting reconnected to the world, to his work, to John that's most important.
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No no, I totally get that. The series had other focuses and addressed them fine. What I’m saying is if they knew that was going to be their focus, and weren’t going to pay off the fall, then they shouldn’t have spent the entire break bragging about how well they planned it out, because without explaining it they have no proof of that.
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bookworm wrote:No no, I totally get that. The series had other focuses and addressed them fine. What I’m saying is if they knew that was going to be their focus, and weren’t going to pay off the fall, then they shouldn’t have spent the entire break bragging about how well they planned it out, because without explaining it they have no proof of that.
Ah. I get what you're saying a little better now. It's either brilliant or stupid to spend two years saying we'll all find out exactly what happened, and then in turn show us a few different scenarios (I'll bet they read the theories and decided to include pieces of a few of them)

I say brilliant or stupid because they could've said exactly how he did it, once and for all, but I almost like the idea of us never finding out exactly because we have an idea of what happened. And I don't entirely mind that
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Shennifer wrote:I say brilliant or stupid because they could've said exactly how he did it, once and for all, but I almost like the idea of us never finding out exactly because we have an idea of what happened. And I don't entirely mind that
I wouldn’t mind either - if they hadn’t been bragging, as I said. If they hadn’t said anything about how they planned it, and instead just dropped the fall on us and then gave us this ‘explanation’ I would also be fine with it, because it didn’t lay everything out for certain but it at least gave a few ideas and the rest is up to us. I would have no problem with that approach. But again, because they did go on and on about how they worked it out, that is why it’s absurd to not explain it now.

What they essentially said was ‘This is so awesome, we planned every detail out, I promise it makes sense, it’s going to totally blow your mind when we explain it to you! You’re going to love it!’ and then ‘Sike! We’re not going to tell you! We know what happened, because like we said we planned every part out and it all makes sense, really, but you don’t get to know what it is!’

So it’s not that we don’t know; it’s that we weren’t told, if you get my distinction. We were pretty much promised the explanation. If that wasn’t what they were implying, then there would have been no reason to assure everyone that it was all worked out. Because if they weren’t going to tell us, it didn’t have to be all worked out.
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Post by Shennifer »

bookworm wrote:
Shennifer wrote:I say brilliant or stupid because they could've said exactly how he did it, once and for all, but I almost like the idea of us never finding out exactly because we have an idea of what happened. And I don't entirely mind that
I wouldn’t mind either - if they hadn’t been bragging, as I said. If they hadn’t said anything about how they planned it, and instead just dropped the fall on us and then gave us this ‘explanation’ I would also be fine with it, because it didn’t lay everything out for certain but it at least gave a few ideas and the rest is up to us. I would have no problem with that approach. But again, because they did go on and on about how they worked it out, that is why it’s absurd to not explain it now.

What they essentially said was ‘This is so awesome, we planned every detail out, I promise it makes sense, it’s going to totally blow your mind when we explain it to you! You’re going to love it!’ and then ‘Sike! We’re not going to tell you! We know what happened, because like we said we planned every part out and it all makes sense, really, but you don’t get to know what it is!’

So it’s not that we don’t know; it’s that we weren’t told, if you get my distinction. We were pretty much promised the explanation. If that wasn’t what they were implying, then there would have been no reason to assure everyone that it was all worked out. Because if they weren’t going to tell us, it didn’t have to be all worked out.
Maybe they realized a little too late that they shouldn't have bragged about how we'd find out every detail if they weren't going to show us. I would like to know exactly Sherlock did it, even if the fandom could probably find flaws in it, given that we had two years to analyze everything to death.

see, what they didn't show is the Doctor coming in the TARDIS to help save Sherlock \:D/
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Post by bookworm »

Did you know Sherlock and Mycroft’s parents are actually Benedict Cumberbatch’s real parents?
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bookworm wrote:Did you know Sherlock and Mycroft’s parents are actually Benedict Cumberbatch’s real parents?
yep. I think that's awesome \:D/

do you?
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Yeah, I thought it was really neat when I found out.
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