Sherlock - The Hounds of Baskerville
Feb. 15th, 2012 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcYes, I've finally seen this. Excellent stuff.
We open with Sherlock arriving at the 221B with a harpoon (the case he's just solved was apparently "Black Peter"), tnen turning the flat upside down looking for cigarettes. It's clearly meant to evoke Holmes's addiction to something other than his pipe, especially when he says he wants something "seven per cent" stronger than tea.
The ghost-story-to-conspiracy-theory concept works quite well. I especially liked Grimpen Mire becoming Grimpen Minefield. Since Baskerville is now the name of the Sinister Military Research Centre, the family gets the surname Knight (I suppose "Henry Baronet" would have been overdoing it).
In the absence of a baronetage to inherit, the actual storyline has to be completely different, with only the names of some characters remaining. The ones who are closest are Henry himself and Dr Mortimer (Gender Flip aside).
The bit at the start, where Sherlock first announces he's going to send John because he's got another case, then seemingly contradicts himself by announcing he is going to Dartmoor manages to reference the first half of the book without giving us half an hour of John investigating a "mysterous stranger" camped on the moors.
Gordon Kennedy! Always nice to see he's still getting work since Robin Hood. And the bit where Sherlock gets information by pretending he's got a bet with John, having spotted the informant reads the Racing Post, is straight out of "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" (where it's the Sporting Times).
It was a nice touch to have John as the one who knew how to deal with the military; I'd forgotten he was a soldier (so at least his ID was genuine, even if it wouldn't have got him into Baskerville). And the utter confidence with which Sherlock not only wanders into a military base to ask about a rabbit, but is still unshaken when he gets caught out just before he leaves was brilliant. As was John calling him out on raising his collar to look cool and mysterious.
It's almost a shame Mr Frankland was reinvented as a Baskerville scientist, since it might have been more interesting to make him a Grimpen resident closer to the original, with his fondness for lawsuits translated into futily attempting to sue the Baskerville facility for its effects on the area. On the other hand, Clive Mantle is wonderful as the amniably eccentric scientist who ambles up to get Sherlock out of trouble. (And, of course, he turns out to be the villain, so removing him might have been a bit tricky. But call Mantle's character Barrymore, and the Colonel can be ... Selden or someone.)
And then Sherlock sees the Hound, freaks out, and tries to hide his freaking out by being even more manically analytical than notmal. Beautifully done. It was the following scene with Henry where I thought "Okay, the only rational explanation for that is hallucinogens", and what's great is that Sherlock's mania works either way; the drugs could be affecting him like that, or it could just be him being Sherlock.
And well done, Mark Gatiss, for making the convict signalling from the moors even more of a red herring than it was originally -- this time it isn't even the convict! (And the convict never gets mentioned again.) A lovely scene with John failing to get anywhere with Dr Mortimer, and then Sherlock saying he has "one friend". The line about John not being luminous but a conductor of light is straight from the book, although novel!Watson didn't seem to notice it was a bit of a backhanded compliment.
Another twist on the original; Sherlock didn't call Lestrade in, and (seemingly) resents him being there. Interesting that his name's Greg. I don't recall if we were told that before. It's consistant with the books, where he's G. Lestrade, but it's also a nod to Gregson, the other police inspector in the books.
Second red herring (apparently): the Hound itself, which, it seems, dead. Since I was already attached to the hallucinogen theory this didn't come as a huge shock. Sherlock then says the Hound he saw was glowing, which is another red herring leading to Dr Stapleton's bioluminescence experiments (and the luminous paint in the original), but by that point I was pretty sure I'd got the "how" even if I was totally at sea about the "why". And, of course, it didn't explain what happened to Henry's dad. (I had to remind myself that, unlike Sir Charles Baskerville, who died of fright, something attacked Mr Knight.)
I didn't totally buy John's exploration of Baskerville, where apparently his all-access card let him wander into deserted labs without worrying about sterile environments, or safety precautions, or anything. (Yes, later it got explained, but at the time wasn't convinced). But the scene where he gets psychotropically attacked was so effective I forgot I didn't buy this scenario, and indeed that I didn't think there was a Hound.
Fun to see Sherlock running through possibly connections between "Liberty" and "Hound" in his Mind Palace, and when he got the result I felt suitably smug that I'd guessed right. And so it's off to the moors to stop Henry, who's gone completely off the deep end.
And then the actual Hound shows up, which threw me into complete confusion. My first thought was "it's still the hallucinogen, surely?" but then Lestrade saw it. I'd forgotten about the actual, supposedly dead, Hound and I suspected the H.O.U.N.D. spray was probably happening in Henry's house; I hadn't noticed the fog.
(That is a very New Who idea, by the way. Hound adaptions always have atmospheric fog rolling across the moors? Let's make the fog the actual threat!)
(The areosol hallucinogen, it occurs to me, is a reference to "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot". If I'd remembered earlier about that, and that the villain of that peice happens to be called Mortimer, I'd have had a completely different and totally wrong theory. Red herring number four, or the danger of reading too much into things?)
Still to watch "Reichenbach Fall". Nobody spoil the end of this episode based on "The Final Problem" and named after the waterfall from that story, please!
We open with Sherlock arriving at the 221B with a harpoon (the case he's just solved was apparently "Black Peter"), tnen turning the flat upside down looking for cigarettes. It's clearly meant to evoke Holmes's addiction to something other than his pipe, especially when he says he wants something "seven per cent" stronger than tea.
The ghost-story-to-conspiracy-theory concept works quite well. I especially liked Grimpen Mire becoming Grimpen Minefield. Since Baskerville is now the name of the Sinister Military Research Centre, the family gets the surname Knight (I suppose "Henry Baronet" would have been overdoing it).
In the absence of a baronetage to inherit, the actual storyline has to be completely different, with only the names of some characters remaining. The ones who are closest are Henry himself and Dr Mortimer (Gender Flip aside).
The bit at the start, where Sherlock first announces he's going to send John because he's got another case, then seemingly contradicts himself by announcing he is going to Dartmoor manages to reference the first half of the book without giving us half an hour of John investigating a "mysterous stranger" camped on the moors.
Gordon Kennedy! Always nice to see he's still getting work since Robin Hood. And the bit where Sherlock gets information by pretending he's got a bet with John, having spotted the informant reads the Racing Post, is straight out of "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" (where it's the Sporting Times).
It was a nice touch to have John as the one who knew how to deal with the military; I'd forgotten he was a soldier (so at least his ID was genuine, even if it wouldn't have got him into Baskerville). And the utter confidence with which Sherlock not only wanders into a military base to ask about a rabbit, but is still unshaken when he gets caught out just before he leaves was brilliant. As was John calling him out on raising his collar to look cool and mysterious.
It's almost a shame Mr Frankland was reinvented as a Baskerville scientist, since it might have been more interesting to make him a Grimpen resident closer to the original, with his fondness for lawsuits translated into futily attempting to sue the Baskerville facility for its effects on the area. On the other hand, Clive Mantle is wonderful as the amniably eccentric scientist who ambles up to get Sherlock out of trouble. (And, of course, he turns out to be the villain, so removing him might have been a bit tricky. But call Mantle's character Barrymore, and the Colonel can be ... Selden or someone.)
And then Sherlock sees the Hound, freaks out, and tries to hide his freaking out by being even more manically analytical than notmal. Beautifully done. It was the following scene with Henry where I thought "Okay, the only rational explanation for that is hallucinogens", and what's great is that Sherlock's mania works either way; the drugs could be affecting him like that, or it could just be him being Sherlock.
And well done, Mark Gatiss, for making the convict signalling from the moors even more of a red herring than it was originally -- this time it isn't even the convict! (And the convict never gets mentioned again.) A lovely scene with John failing to get anywhere with Dr Mortimer, and then Sherlock saying he has "one friend". The line about John not being luminous but a conductor of light is straight from the book, although novel!Watson didn't seem to notice it was a bit of a backhanded compliment.
Another twist on the original; Sherlock didn't call Lestrade in, and (seemingly) resents him being there. Interesting that his name's Greg. I don't recall if we were told that before. It's consistant with the books, where he's G. Lestrade, but it's also a nod to Gregson, the other police inspector in the books.
Second red herring (apparently): the Hound itself, which, it seems, dead. Since I was already attached to the hallucinogen theory this didn't come as a huge shock. Sherlock then says the Hound he saw was glowing, which is another red herring leading to Dr Stapleton's bioluminescence experiments (and the luminous paint in the original), but by that point I was pretty sure I'd got the "how" even if I was totally at sea about the "why". And, of course, it didn't explain what happened to Henry's dad. (I had to remind myself that, unlike Sir Charles Baskerville, who died of fright, something attacked Mr Knight.)
I didn't totally buy John's exploration of Baskerville, where apparently his all-access card let him wander into deserted labs without worrying about sterile environments, or safety precautions, or anything. (Yes, later it got explained, but at the time wasn't convinced). But the scene where he gets psychotropically attacked was so effective I forgot I didn't buy this scenario, and indeed that I didn't think there was a Hound.
Fun to see Sherlock running through possibly connections between "Liberty" and "Hound" in his Mind Palace, and when he got the result I felt suitably smug that I'd guessed right. And so it's off to the moors to stop Henry, who's gone completely off the deep end.
And then the actual Hound shows up, which threw me into complete confusion. My first thought was "it's still the hallucinogen, surely?" but then Lestrade saw it. I'd forgotten about the actual, supposedly dead, Hound and I suspected the H.O.U.N.D. spray was probably happening in Henry's house; I hadn't noticed the fog.
(That is a very New Who idea, by the way. Hound adaptions always have atmospheric fog rolling across the moors? Let's make the fog the actual threat!)
(The areosol hallucinogen, it occurs to me, is a reference to "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot". If I'd remembered earlier about that, and that the villain of that peice happens to be called Mortimer, I'd have had a completely different and totally wrong theory. Red herring number four, or the danger of reading too much into things?)
Still to watch "Reichenbach Fall". Nobody spoil the end of this episode based on "The Final Problem" and named after the waterfall from that story, please!
