While writing meta, I was to re-watch this scene from TST where Mary’s A.G.R.A.-stick introduces us to Ajay. Since I’m looking up every number/date in series 4 right now, I thought I’d go for this one, too.
“26473” – seemed like a date to me: 26/4/1973. So I researched it in combination with Sherlock Holmes – and was linked to “Heinrich Gies” (unfortunately, I only found sources in German, I’m sorry), a German actor and theatre intendant. (The 26th of April in 1973 is the date of his death.) Gies did a Sherlock Holmes adaptation called “Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes” (translated: Sherlock Holmes and the Necklace of Death), loosly based on “The Valley of Fear”. And guess what? The Valley of Fear has many parallels regarding series 4, even as far as names are concerned:
Porlock: code-name at the beginning of TST; Moiarty’s agent who is actually a mole of Holmes’s in TVoF
Wilson: the criminal occurring in The Canary Trainer which Dimmock is supposed to arrest in TST; a sergeant in TVoF
Then, we have Mr Douglas, the victim in TVoF that is hunted by an American criminal gangA.G.R.A. he joined in order to betray them (hello, Mary!) and outruns death by faking to be murdered, but is alluded to be killed in the end either way; Holmes is convinced that Moriarty is involved (hello, Mary’s posthumous DVD that mirrors Moriarty’s posthumous DVD!). This also heavily mirrors the events of TAB, btw: Mr Carmichael is haunted by the American demons of his past and Sherlock deduces that Lady Carmichael, the wife, must have done it, but he is lacking the ability to figure out one reason: her motif. (Yeah, Sherlock, it’s complicated, isn’t it.) TVoF-allusions confirmed.
And then, the final proof that Moftiss indeed adapted TVoF in series 4: the matchbox Eurus uses in TFP to set Musgrave on fire. Apologies, I can’t make a screenshot of it right now, but note: There are french words written on it that can be translated in (you guessed it):
“The Valley of Fear”
It’s stuff like this that confirms to me things like the camera being in the shot in TST, the missing blood on the floor in TLD, John’s feet in the well in TFP, Sherlock getting his boat back in TFP, that fucking Skull, etc etc ETC are all purposeful.
We could say they wrote something bad, ok, but they are meticulous with shots and props.
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