The extended chess metaphor which is so central to S4 is pretty interesting because we already know from TEH that chess actually represents a game of Operation between Mycroft and Sherlock, where Mycroft “can’t handle a broken heart” after Sherlock returns from Serbia to find John engaged to Mary.
It makes all the chess promo pics, which really have nothing to do with the actual textual content of Season Four, really intriguing because they feature Mycroft and Sherlock having this calculated battle of wits with John just sitting between them like he’s the one whose heart is central to the game — like if Sherlock’s heart ‘breaks’ so does John’s by proxy. He also looks a bit like a gamesmaster, or someone who’s mediating/watching it all unfold.
And then we have that final promo pic where Sherlock breaks the fourth wall and throws the chess pieces away like, ‘Screw this — I’m not playing anymore’ like he’s abandoning the idea Mycroft gave him that intelligence/planning/oneupmanship and repressing your emotions is the only way to protect people, and instead realising that to ‘win’ he has to take the risk that comes with embracing emotions.
This links into how chess is typically depicted in films as a metaphor for intelligence and strategy, but it also links in with ideas of preoccupation and being incredibly focused on ‘making the right move’ to the point of exclusion of all else.
There’s this really specific narrative trope that I’m only familiar with because I watch too much TV, which sticks out to me here. As I couldn’t find any single page for it on TV Tropes here’s the best summary I could manage:
“A character is stuck in a dreamscape/alternate reality of their own making, existing within their subconscious. Within this illusion their preoccupation with a strategy game such as chess/checkers, created by a character that acts as a facet of the protag’s mind, works as a metaphor for an inability to let go of not letting people in and depending on your intellect in combination with a fear of ‘losing’ and taking risks.
The climax of these bottle episodes occurs when the protagonist overcomes their inner struggle by realising that the only way to ‘win’ is not to play.
They then proceed to ‘break the rules’ in some way, whether it’s walking away from the game board, flipping it, dying/jumping off a building Inception-style, etc., and they then wake up in the real world having developed as a character.”
This trope has origins in the 1983 film WarGames where “the only winning move is not to play”.
The most obvious examples I can think of of this are from cheesy shows like Teen Wolf (3×22 – “De-Void”) or The Magicians (1×04 – “The World In the Walls”) where the writers really spell out the metaphor and the protagonists literally smash game boards to wake up.
Other examples of include Supernatural (2×20 – ”What Is and What Should Never Be” and 8×20 – “Pac-Man Fever”), Inception, and Doctor Who (5×07 – “Amy’s Choice” — which is a bit like 9×0 – “Last Christmas”).
^This book in the centre with the gold lettering on the spine is:
The Eight, published December 27, 1988, is American author Katherine Neville’s debut novel. Compared to the works of Umberto Eco when it first appeared[citation needed], it is a postmodernthriller in which the heroine, accountant Catherine Velis, must enter into a cryptic world of danger and conspiracy in order to recover the pieces of the Montglane Service, a legendary chessset once owned by Charlemagne. (x)
The story follows two lives- one in 1972 and one in 1790 but both characters’ fates are connected. The most interesting part of the plot summary for me was:
In 1972, Cat Velis faces a similar atmosphere of conspiracy, assassination and betrayal. When she is requested by an antique dealer to recover the chess pieces, she unwittingly enters into a mysterious game that will endanger her life. As she learns the story of the Montglane Service, she begins to realize that players of the Game may plan their moves, but their very existence makes them pawns as well.
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