Sherlock - The Great Game

[daibhidc]

Wow. That was brilliant.

First, a minor nitpick; obviously the guy in the teaser isn't going to be hanged. Sorry, Mark, but if you've got a Sherlock Holmes gag that only work prior to 1969, you can't use it in your 21st century reimagining. You and the Moff set the rules, you have to stick by them.
[Edit: It's been pointed out that this scene isn't actually in the UK. Stupid Sky+ recorder...]

I recognised elements of "The Final Problem" and "The Bruce-Parlington Plans". Moriarty's "minigame" cases felt familar without actually being recognisable[1], although the Golem seemed to be based on the Creeper from the Basil Rathbone film Pearl of Death (which, in turn, was based on "The Six Napoleons"). Also "pips" as a secret message ("The Five Orange Pips"), and Bohemia keeps cropping up (as in "A Scandal In...")

And that's not including such minor references as Sherlock shooting a smiley face on the wall out of boredom ("The Musgrave Ritual", where it's "V.R.") or the bit about comparing his mind to a hard-drive that hasn't room for trivia about whether the Earth goes round the Sun (A Study In Scarlet, where the metaphor is an attic storeroom).

Incidentally, that bit always bugged me, so I was pleased to see the episode gave a situation where knowledge of astronomy did assist Sherlock in his work. Another thing that bugs me is that whenever someone in a Sherlock Holmes story steals secret documents, they never seem to have any trouble in contacting enemy agents, so I liked the idea Joe didn't really know what to do with the memory stick once he had it.

Since I already half suspected Mycroft of being Moriarty (see, what if that comedy misdirection in the first episode was a double bluff?), I went "Guahhh?" when John came out of the changing room, even though it had already occured to me he was going to get captured. I can't believe it didn't occur to me that "Jim" was short for "James".

And the final scene, obviously, was awesome. Now, what they should do for the next season is open where we left off, Sherlock persuades Jim to let John escape, and he watches the swimming pool blow up. Caption: "Six Months Later", and John is sitting around 221B being depressed when a book salesman comes to the door...

[1]Although for most of them I was far too engrossed in the story to play "spot the reference".

Comments

[rhiannon-s.livejournal.com]

that wasn't a cliffhanger, well maybe in a literal sense for Moriarty, but when it was written it was an end with a splat for Holmes. I can't blame that, I can blame the fans (proving fan idiocy is no new thing) for harassing ACD into retconning it, but the actual book no. And even then the current need for inserting cliffhangers is a modern one, the Victorian serialisation meme died out in the thirties and forties with end of the cinema and radio serials. It was a long lasting meme granted, but it had died out. Even it's use in Empire Strikes Back was a homage to it and not a resurrection of it.

Star Trek and X_Files were the ones that recreated it for the modern televisual era.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Sure, "The Final Problem" wasn't a cliffhanger, it was Holmes being very dead. But Sherlock is only a cliffhanger because we know Holmes isn't very dead.

(Not seeing the explosion doesn't make it a cliffhanger, just a Bolivian Army Ending (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BolivianArmyEnding). The fact we all know there's another series and Holmes wasn't really dead in "The Final Problem" after all is what makes it a cliffhanger. It doesn't even say "To Be Continued".)

The point I was trying to make (badly) was that you can't do a version of "The Final Problem" in which Holmes's death isn't a cliffhanger, unless you either a) skip the "Holmes sacrifices himself to stop Moriarty" scene entirely b) run it but then immediately admit that Holmes didn't die or c) actually end the series forever and say Holmes is really dead. The first two (IMO) badly damage the story, and no-one's seriously going to believe the third one, so ... it's a cliffhanger.

[rhiannon-s.livejournal.com]

Maybe one of the things that should have been modernised was the need to have it as the cliffhanger then. I mean none of the BBC adventures have been overly faithful to the texts (the spirit of the text, yes, but not the letter) so showing that Holmes was prepared to be a sacrifice would have been just as good.

The irony in all this being if it wasn't an update/re-imagining/reboot then the original ending works, because we still know how it really ends. The ITV Jeremy Brett series proved that, but it being the fnarg of Holmes means this non-ending doesn't work. The original ACD ending only worked because it wasn't (meant to be) a cliffhanger after all so the whole beginning, middle, end remained intact.