Sherlock – The Game Is Now is an escape room designed by Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat and Time Run (responsible for a series of renowned Escape Rooms in London).
“The Official Sherlock Live Experience is a 100 minute immersive escape game for teams of 4-6 people.”
But then, if you scroll a bit further down, you get:
“Located in a secret venue in the heart of London, this 90-minute cinematic adventure combines the unique world of Sherlock with the very best of escape games.”
If you look at the article published online by the Evening Standard on 28/11/2018, you will read:
“Each team of four to six people goes to three “rooms” during the 60-minute game, solving mysteries to progress to the next stage. The nature of the “plot” is a secret, but one representative hinted that players will be more concerned with “saving themselves”, rather than other people. Teams get a 10-minute debrief at the end before moving on to an Arthur Conan Doyle bar for refreshments.” (…)“Tickets start at £54 a person, with the total experience taking 110 minutes.”
So, however long the Escape Room actually is, we can count on a “cinematic experience”, that will include original video and audio sequences from the cast of the show. There will also be live actors which I assume will give us our briefing and debriefing.
The actual plot is still a mystery, but the official site gives us a tease in form of a small introduction:
“London needs Sherlock. Instead it has you. Sherlock is absent. As a rash of break-ins ripple across the capital, one thing is clear: his brilliance is required. Mycroft Holmes has put out the call. The Network seeks recruits: volunteers with sharp eyes, keen wits and a hunger for adventure. Can you step into the shoes of the legendary detective? Good luck: The Game Is Now.”
And two actual videos, one where Mycroft himself makes “an appeal” for us to join The Network and another where Sherlock calls out The Network members to “put everything aside” and help him on “the greatest crisis” of his career. (but wasn’t he supposed to be missing?)
Something is fishy. We’ll discuss the videos on a later post.
C. The why
Here is another important question we still can’t answer for sure.
To set a trap and incarcerate all Johnlockers and TJCLers in the basement to keep Arwel company? as @thejohnlockoutletwarned us
Some people have posted several theories. Even Mark Gatiss had something to say in the interview aired by BBC London News on 28/11/2018, posted on Tumblr by @afishlearningpoetry and transcribed by @garkgatiss:
MG: Wait, wait, that is Series Five! [more laughter] It’s very meta. The entire cast and crew are trapped inside their own escape room, for three 90-minute episodes—
I have my own theory, which I will share when we look at the videos.
D. The when
This is a topic that has sparked some confusion. The Escape Room was originally set to open on the 23rd of October, but then was pushed to early December, as we can see in the trailers that came out so far. I haven’t found any information about the actual day, though.
The same Evening Standard article I mentioned says that December will be the “soft-lauch” and that tickets are already sold-out for that month. For those who don’t know (and I didn’t, either), a “soft-lauch” is a release of a product to a limited public before being available to the general public. During that time, the production team will gather feedback and make adjustments before doing the “hard-launch” (i.e. release it to the general public). I imagine they have made the tickets available for a smaller amount of people so they can practice and make sure everything is running smoothly before opening to the bigger public in January.
Tickets are still available from January until May. We still don’t know if there is going to be new dates after that.
I’ve been poking around the official site and the not-very-user-friendly ticket calendar. It shows that indeed December is fully booked. The the calendar will show you all the possible (free and booked) slots for every day, even those in November when we knew the Escape Room was still closed. What caught my eye is that there are a few closed days, like the 25th and 31st of December (for obvious reasons) but also the 3rd of December. Could that be the opening day? I would imagine they would want to throw a party or do a press release or something.
D. The where
The location of the room was secret for a long time, but it has been made public since 28/11/2018 when the official tweeter feed twitted:
The official site now also has the more detailed information:
In sum, the Escape Room entrance will be found in West 12 Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush in the guise of Doyle’s Opticians.
So, this is what I gathered from my “research”. Please feel free to comment and add any info you think is relevant.
This episode was once again written by Steven Moffat and directed by Rachel Talalay, who also directed Sherlock’s The Six Thatchers.
Missy and The Master circling The Doctor, asking how many times and ways he has died: “Have you burned?”= Moriarty saying “I will burn the heart out of you” in The Great Game. “I know you’ve fallen,” obviously ties into the title The Doctor Falls– and Sherlock of course has literally ‘fallen’ in The Reichenbach Fall. And The Master’s last quip:“Have you ever drowned?” makes me think of the original ACD canon, and Holmes and Moriarty plunging into The Reichenbach Falls. (And “drowned Redbeard” in The Final Problem…)
An even more explicit callback to The Reichenbach Fall and Sherlock falling off the roof of St Barts with Missy saying to The Doctor: “We might just chuck you off the roof.”
Missy says of The Doctor: “Love it when he’s Mr Volcano” when he is ‘internalising’ his emotions. See this quote by Steven Moffat:
“Sherlock Holmes, again, must have sexual impulses. (…) The fact is, he decides to put all that in an iron box to make his brain work better. He wants to rise above us like a snowcapped mountain, but he’s actually a volcano, and that’s where the story is. That’s where the story is.”
The Master asking the Doctor “What have we missed?”= Moriarty asking Sherlock “What have I missed?” in The Reichenbach Fall.
The Doctor saying that Bill’s mind is acting like a “perception filter”, and it’s so strong that it’s ‘built itself a castle.’= makes me think of the theories in The Final Problem of Sherrinford symbolising John’s mind in turmoil/lockdown as he lies there, shot.
“Where there’s tears, there’s hope….” [insert John crying in Sherlock’s arms in The Lying Detective]
Missy once more uses an umbrella as a weapon like Mycroft does in The Final Problem.
The Doctor saying “You can always fool a monkey brain with a little bit of theatre.”= there is a lot of misdirection in Sherlock, like sleight of hand in magic tricks, to distract the audience- and for a more literal take on ‘theatre’, see: Sherlock Series 4 as “Epic Theatre.” & this Moriarty ‘Applause’ addition.
A weapon used against the cybermen is an apple= Moriarty carving ‘IOU’ into an apple in The Reichenbach Fall.
Missy shaking hands with The Doctor even though she’s telling him she will not stand with him, but she’s disguising her true intentions… hello, Misleading Handshake Hell, WE HAVE A SHERLOCK COUNTERPART FOR YOU 😉 See this (pre-series 4) post by @waitedforgarridebs on a “deleted” handshake scene between Moriarty and Mycroft.
Missy and The Master killing each other in front of each other… ahem, to quote Steven Moffat on Sherlock and Moriarty: “Do you think they went up on that roof and faked suicide at each other?!” 😉
I’ve so enjoyed writing up all my posts for this series, and thank you all for reading, hope you’ve enjoyed them! I’ll still be doing the same for Christmas… once more unto the breach, dear friends. 😉 ❤
Can someone direct me toward a post or two that talk about what Moftiss and them said at the con this weekend? Everyone on my dash seems to be talking about it, but I haven’t actually seen what was said anywhere.
I made a spreadsheet of every Canon story with every Granada adaptation episode for quick reference. The Canon stories are organized via publication date according to Wikipedia, not in-universe chronology. (both are color coded by collection/season)
The first Sherlock Holmes story ever written. Half of the book is about a completely different person, and Holmes’s characterization here is slightly different, but it’s a good start for anyone unfamiliar with the canon.
Sherlock Holmes at his edgiest. Best known as “the one where Watson gets married and Holmes does cocaine”. Contains moderate amounts of racism towards the end of the book.
The easiest novel to get into without any prior knowledge imo. It seems to be one of the few stories in the canon that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put actual effort into. Sherlock Holmes himself doesn’t have a lot of screentime, though.
A redux of A Study in Scarlet for the most part, albeit a good one. Has a few Moriarty cameos in it, but if you read it exclusively for him you’re probably going to be disappointed.
Short Stories
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes*
Probably the most iconic set of stories in the canon. This is a great place to start if you’ve never read a Sherlock Holmes story before.
Another great place to start; these stories tend to focus more on Sherlock Holmes’s backstory (or what little we get of it) than the others. It’s also home to the story where Sherlock Holmes “dies”.
He’s back, and this time we get a number of really good Sherlock Holmes stories. I’d probably read some of the stories from previous books first, but I’d certainly recommend most of these.
These ones tend to be a bit off-genre at points, containing three short stories not even narrated by Watson, as well as a few parts that are Just Plain Weird, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like them anyways.
A short story written
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that features an unnamed “amateur reasoner of some celebrity”. It is published in French anthologies of Sherlock Holmes stories.
A joint effort between ACD and William Gillette, it stands as one of the most influential pieces of Sherlock Holmes media outside of the canon itself. It is the origin of the phrase “Elementary, my dear Watson”, as well as many other curiosities.
The play that would inevitably become canon through “The Mazarin Stone”. It is also where the “Moriarty steals the crown jewels” plotline originated.
Note: there were two other Sherlock Holmes-related plays penned by ACD (Angels of Darkness and The Stonor Case), but I was unable to find a pdf of them. 😦 Please let me know if you find a copy.
The fruit of hundreds of hours of research, tramping London, photographing, screencapping and cursing PowerPoint, it is here!
The guide contains maps showing how to find every known BBC Sherlock location in London, with screencaps and text identifying where it featured, and contemporary photos to show what it looks like now. There are also some special sections such as how to follow the ASIP taxi chase in order, and area maps to help you devise local mini-tours if you like.
I (@pennypaperbrain) have lived in London for 20 years, and this guide grew out of showing fandom friends around, first the obvious places and then some not so obvious. Photography is by the indispensable @sincerely-chaos.
This is version 1 so I’m sure there are many improvements and refinements that can be made. Please email londonsherlocktour at gmail dot com if you have feedback, or squee. (You can also use tumblr of course, but tumblr eats asks). If you end up using the guide in London, it would also be particularly cool to have stories/photos to feature on this tumblr.
I’ve been working on this for a while, but it’s finally done! A masterpost with links to my screenshots of every wallpaper on BBC Sherlock so far. I’ve organized the recurring ones (mostly 221 Baker St) in their own section to make them easier to find. The rest are organized by episode. There are also a couple of shots of not-wallpaper mixed in there, because I am a rule flouter.
Finally updated my masterpost of all the Sherlock wallpapers! Now featuring series 4.
(Also I realized that I’d screwed up my screen caps for all the wallpaper in TLD, and they were teeny tiny. I’ve fixed that now – if you click on those images, you get full screen shots.)
I appreciate the collection of perspectives, which I myself love perusing. My own view is probably closest to Ivy’s, in that I can’t think they’re ‘making love too difficult to work’ because even in this, John and Sherlock parallel each other. In their difficulty, their brokenness, their painfully sharp edges. I mean, we definitely love their idealized selves in fandom, and create new legends around them as much as we psychoanalyze and decide when something is ‘too much’. But it’s the characters who could really tell you when it’s too much, and I think that finally, in TLD we see that Sherlock and John see and accept all of one another. You could say that *theoretically* this should break them, but in fact it makes them stronger. If nothing else, by the end of TFP, it seems they’re happy. It’s not a tragedy, after all. It’s just a brutal thing to watch, they’re definitely both traumatized, by this and many other things. Their brokenness is supposed to be something they can use, though. As Ivy said, John’s flaws are part of what Sherlock needs and can use. The violence is part and parcel of how it works, because Sherlock knows how to help John channel it, how to make London into John’s warzone. And sometimes it’s all too much, but that’s been true for Sherlock, too. Sometimes Sherlock himself is way, way too much. But somehow they’re exactly what the other needs and can handle. That’s the secret of their dynamic.
Of course, I agree, it didn’t have to explore this possibility, even if it always existed in the realm of the possible for this or any Holmes and Watson. But at the same time, this started in Series 3, ‘cause they kept not dealing with the old traumas enough, ever since Reichenbach, and then piling on complications. John was set on a collision course with himself as soon as he married Mary and she turned out to be the worst possible option. It was a bad decision compounded by her pregnancy and further exacerbated by the ensuing series of events– that unfortunate vow, the shooting, Sherlock back on drugs and saying he killed Magnussen ’cause he’s a sociopath, Sherlock pushing them back together and John choosing to do it without dealing with any of their problems. Everything kept being swept under the rug, with the only explanation being that John ‘chose her’ and he should just deal with it. So he let it go, and let it go, and controlled himself and held back. And then (as Martin Freeman said), he just needed an excuse when he failed again (this time to protect Mary). In John’s mind, someone has to be in control: usually that’s Sherlock ’cause as Ivy said earlier, Sherlock can do anything. Sherlock is his superhero; his ‘commander’. Alternatively, of course, John *himself* expects to be in control, or it’s a personal failure. Remember how he took it in HLV, with Sherlock telling him (ruthlessly, from John’s perspective) that he chose Mary: it’s his ‘fault’. John automatically jumps to the question of whose *fault* it was that Mary was the way she was, and he wasn’t ready to take responsibility and accept this, but Sherlock pushed and so he did. Then, when another traumatic event happens, John doesn’t have any reserve left, I guess.
What I’m saying is, I think many of us knew that some kind of reckoning had to be coming for John in S4. But all the talk about John’s arc was mostly supposed to be about John getting better, not worse. And if he got worse, we expected to see him recover, step by step. And that didn’t happen. We got a hint, a first step, and I understand why that’s not enough for many people. At the very least, though, I don’t think it’s the same as the ‘tragic gays’ trope would have it. In TLD, even if they didn’t show us everything, they showed enough that it’s clear they do always save each other, even if it’s not in the ways that Mary or anyone else would expect. Even if John can’t see it anymore, or thinks he’s not that person, he’s still the person who makes Sherlock better. And when John stumbles, Sherlock would believe it enough for the both of them. And I do think, in the end, that it is enough.
This is the third update of the original TFP Survival Pack posted on 20/1. It contains all of the information in the original along with the most recent meta.
New highlights include:
A section addressing concerns and counterarguments
Meta on specific subtheories, such as John going blind on one eye
Clues about January 29th
Search Ctrl + F + “[NEW]” to look at only the new information.
(Note: if the section is labelled [NEW], all meta in that section is new.)
—
Still screaming over that crazy episode? Some hope remains! This masterpost and theory table collect the fandom’s last hopes—and they’re less crazy than you’d think.
The main takeaway is that the episode contradicts the rest of the show and real-world events far too much for it to be just a mistake. In fact, the evidence suggests that there will be a fourth episode.
“What? That’s ridiculous!”
That’s what I thought at first, too. But things in real life don’t add up, and they can’t be explained by bad writing. At this point, a rug pull is simply the most logical explanation. And if we’re wrong, well…it can’t really get any worse, can it?
This pack has 6 parts:
Issues: Everything within the episode that makes TFP not only a dumpster fire, but a (literally) unbelievable dumpster fire.
Clues: Real-life weirdness such as cast quotes that don’t fit, scenes missing from filming, and strange new promos that hint at a fourth episode.
Descriptions of the two main theories
Theory table: Compares which theories explain which issues
Resources: Links to meta that explain specific issues or the episode’s weirdness as a whole
Conclusions: What it all means, and why we should hold out a little longer.
Enjoy!
-soe
Disclaimer: Everything in this post is speculation. If you don’t want to get your hopes up, by all means skip it. However, I’d suggest at least waiting until January 29th before going full-out against Mofftiss (reasons below).
=============== Issues ================
Everything weird about that episode. With over 70 nontrivial plot holes, it’s hard to view the episode’s quality as an accident.
(The bolded phrases are descriptions, not the actual titles.)
Scenes that were filmed but that we’ve never seen? Quotes that make no sense with TFP as the finale? Something is up.
==============Theories================
It’s in Sherlock’s Mind
Everything in Season 4, since either the end of TAB or Mary shooting Sherlock, is in Sherlock’s mind as he is comatose. This theory requires all three episodes to be at least partly imaginary. A main variation is that John is talking to him as he is comatose, and that what John describes influences what Sherlock imagines.
For meta on variations of this theory, including EMP and John’s alibi, please see the TST Survival Pack.
It’s in John’s Mind
Everything in TFP is in John’s mind after John is shot. Variations include:
TST and TLD also took place in John’s mind.
Mary shot John, not Eurus.
This one is starting to gain more ground, particularly because it would make the whole season an adaptation of “The Three Garridebs”, leading to canon Johnlock, etc.
==============Theory Table=============
Green = Completely addresses this issue
Yellow = Addresses this issue somewhat plausibly, but not the best solution
They broke every rule of writing unless it’s a rug pull. The filming, cast and crew quotes, promotional material, and subtext within the episode make no sense unless a fourth episode reveals that it took place in John’s or Sherlock’s mind. The reputation of the whole show relies on them successfully revealing the real season finale.
So when would they reveal this fourth episode? When would it air?
They’ll air it on 29/1 or announce it on 29/1 and air it soon afterwards, via:
“The Final Problem” is either sheer stupidity or utter genius. Either way, let’s enjoy one last conspiracy.
The game is on.
I will be updating the table and theory list regularly.
If you have theories, issues, or meta to add, please comment.
If you think a theory does address an issue that the table says it does not address (or vice versa), please comment.
If I described your theory inaccurately or you just want to add something, please comment.
If I tagged any of your meta above: I would love to add any other work you’ve done that I haven’t seen. If you’d like to add something, please comment it and I would love to include it in the next update.
Sherlock Fandom Archive 