Don’t know about you guys, but sometimes I turn on the telly. And after sapping between 200 channels, smart tv, get on youtube, Netflix, Hulu, books and whatever I can to distract the mind, I still miss this show so much. The excitement of every new episode. How Tumblr explode every time something happened in the show. The new hypothesis about the characters about the story, I really miss that. I really miss this show
Most of the most successful BBC Sherlock fanfic uses a John that feels very pre-Reichenbach
and a Sherlock that feels distinctly post-Reichenbach. Or, to put it another way, it pairs Series 1-2 John with Series 3-4 Sherlock.
This actually makes a lot of sense, because Series 1-2 John is everything wonderful about John Watson. He’s loyal, funny, big-hearted, (relatively) friendly, devoted to Sherlock and the Work. He has friends, and a full, glorious life.
He is the right combination of domesticated and dangerous. He’s sweet, but still sexy. Someone Sherlock Holmes would absolutely fall in love with.
Series 3-4 John is… well, not. He has no close relationships, aside from Mary, after the Fall. He’s scarily violent with Sherlock, and deliberately oblivious with Mary. He forgives his wife’s immoral past AND her shooting of Sherlock, but doesn’t ever really forgive Sherlock for the Fall. He’s adulterous, an absent father, and he blames Sherlock unfairly for Mary’s death. His painful anger is a constant, unsettling presence that underscores every scene. Series 4, in particular, gave us a John we would actively dislike, were it not for our connection with him from series past.
In contrast, Series 1-2 Sherlock Holmes is the detective at his least human. Yes, he has swoon-worthy looks and intellect, but he’s also terribly cold and routinely cruel. He undervalues John repeatedly and lies to him in every single episode. He has no real friends, and respects no one but John (and only barely). He seems to mistreat his family. This is a man John Watson could fall in love with, but he isn’t one who could maintain a healthy romantic relationship with anyone. He wasn’t ready.
In Series 3-4, Sherlock returns to London a changed man. He’s kinder, more considerate, less likely to disregard the value of others. He actively maintains his friendships and his relationship with his family (until he relapses). He enjoys the company of babies and dogs. He plans a beautiful wedding. He gives and gives and gives, so much that it is painful to witness, and asks for nothing in return.
THIS IS WHY WE NEED SERIES 5. We need to bring together softer, smarter Sherlock with a John that feels more like himself, and less like an irredeemable ass. Please and thank you, BBC.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Mark Gatiss, whose gay identity was forged in the 80s-early 90s. I’m a lawyer now but my first career was in the men’s fashion industry. And for many years I have lived in a well-known LGBT resort community (the annual White Party is our biggest event). During the late 80s and early 90s I worked for a gay men’s fashion catalog and store. I was one of only three women working there. The other 100 plus employees were gay men, young to older. I have personally experienced the unfortunate fact that gay men can and very often do have misogynistic attitudes toward women that are in some ways different from het men’s attitudes– but not entirely. In fashion, for example, the majority of celebrated designers of women’s fashion are gay men. They are clearly designing from a viewpoint of the clothes being suitable only for a young man’s body, not a woman’s body.: tall, long, lean, no hips or breasts. This is seen over and over. To the extent that some gay men model their version of “feminine” behavior, it is a very distinctive version that bears little to no resemblance to actual women’s behavior (drag, camp, femme), and is arguably misogynistic. Working in the business with so many gay men, I heard them mock “fag hags” too many times to count, it was a staple of daily humor. “Fag hags” were seen as tiresome females who obsessively fetishized gay men. I do think that is part of the dynamic happening between Mofftiss and the primarily female fandom. Far be it from me to take away means of expression for gay men that break free of heteronormative toxic masculinity, but what we see in Sherlock is part of the divide in the LGBT community that has been brewing and debated for decades and really has never resolved: Gay men, especially those of of a certain generation really are only standing up for gay men. It’s just another kind of male privilege. There is a lot of denial, dismissal, and even contempt for bisexuality, especially bixsexual men, and for lesbians and transgender persons. In the LGBT community, gay men have the privilege that het men have in larger society. And while that may be changing in the younger generation, for the gay men that came up as young men in the 80s and early 90s, the ideas of embracing and allowing full representation for bisexuals, lesbians, and transgender persons was simply not a thing. To attempt to be fair, they saw themselves as having their own fight to fight, and during those years the big fights were coming out, and HIV/AIDS. Taking all of this into account, it is rather easy to see why there has not been any desire to fulfill the wishes of a primarily queer female fanbase for a romantic johnlock narrative (i.e. Using shorthand, The Princess Bride narrative). But I can see the appeal for Gatiss in making the story of Sherlock and Eurus about finding family, making one’s own family, and healing family. Gatiss has spoken about his own difficulties in coming out to his family and the lack of acceptance that he experienced for a long time (I believe that is substantially healed now according to Gatiss). Like many queer people he has undoubtedly had to make his own family outside his blood family and this is a very important narrative for many queer people. Sherlock completes that journey throughout the show. One could also see Eurus as standing in for a closeted queer family member, who can only be free from the closet (prison) by adopting specific disguises/false selves that appeal to each of their friends/family members. Seen in that light, Eurus’s ultimate acceptance by the Holmes family is touching. (Since in the world of Sherlock she is still the ultimate evil, though, she has to stay in the closet/prison forever). So I come from a place of frustrated understanding and sympathy for a man of Gatiss’ generation wanting to tell a sort of coming out story, both for Sherlock and for Eurus. But I so want the creators to stop holding female fandom and “female” narratives (i.e., fulfilled gay love stories) in contempt. But that’s not the story they wanted to tell. We have to tell our own.
Stepping back here like you do with such a judicious assessment of the generational context and such a perceptive reading of the narrative goes a long way to unknotting a very fraught, messy situation from the gatiss side of the equation.
And yes to this:
But I so want the creators to stop holding female fandom and “female” narratives (i.e., fulfilled gay love stories) in contempt. But that’s not the story they wanted to tell. We have to tell our own.
Well said, and something I hadn’t considered before.
Sorry in advance to be a bit of a downer, but I promise there’s a silver lining on my musings.
Regardless of what one thinks about S4, those of us still in the Sherlock fandom can agree that this is a wonderful fandom to be in. The main reason is the baffling amount of talented people in it, whether they’re creating art, writing fanfiction or conjecturing metas. One may ship this or that couple, arguments do arise but all in all? Pretty cool place to hang out.
But a not small reason at all is also the richness within the show itself. Begrudgingly, I will let Mofftiss take some of the credit for weaving the show; gladly, I will let Ben and Martin take most of the credit due to their marvelous on-screen chemistry and talent.
Every series has shaken the fandom in different ways. If S3 was a bit of an earthquake, S4 was damn near apocalyptic. What can we expect from S5?
I will not re-hash meta and theories for S5, but as a johnlocker and ex-tjlcer I can’t help but wonder how the cleaved relationship between Sherlock and John will mend. And although I don’t believe TPTB to make johnlock endgame, even if they do, my question will be…
So what?
If Mofftiss write a S5 where Sherlock and John become a romantic couple, this may very well complete a story arc, their long-term plan, and scratch more than one itch. But it will be so out of time. The time to have done this is so past. We are in 2018, when cinema and television is finally turning LGTBQIA+ stories mainstream and, more importantly, normalised. It’s not a finished process, but it’s well on its way, thankfully. Sherlock’s timing to do this will be off, because it will be one more in the current instead of the shockwave it could have created.
And if S5 sees johnlock happening… how can it topple the worlds already created by the fandom, the theories, the art, the love? How will any johnlock on S5 feel fresh and groundbreaking? How will it heal the fandom after S4?
Personally, I would be happy to see johnlock happening (even if I don’t think it will). Salty as I may be, I will not deny that it would make me happy. But the more time slips away from past series, the less relevant the outcome becomes, whatever that may be. It’s been eight years!!!
Thankfully, we’re still here, and you can pry my love for this show from my cold, dead hands.
PS: the silver lining is what we as a fandom create out of this mess. Do not ever forget that.
Anything they do now is going to be too little too late for a lot of people. Including myself.
S4 at face value to me is bad. S4 as some kind of coma/dream to me is bad. I don’t know what their plan is, but a smarter plan would have been to just make S4 good 🤷🏻♀️
Even more true when you consider Moriarty to represent homophobia. Hard to stay calm and trust that everything will work out, and maybe even be tricked for 2 years
Watching S4 of Sherlock felt like getting dumped by a significant other out of nowhere when you thought the relationship was really going somewhere, and life just hasn’t been as bright since. Sure, you watch other shows but they’re just rebounds. You miss the fun you had and you try to get over it, but you secretly wish they’d just come back, move forward, and forget the whole thing ever happened.
A year ago, part of the Sherlock fandom suffered a collective trauma.
Now, I’ve heard and read many renditions of “It’s a bloody TV show, get over it” in the past, especially in the last twelve months.
However, presentation matters.
Media shapes our reality.
How children’s movies portray gender roles influences a child’s view and understanding of the world, and their place in it. If you only ever see white guys playing the superheroes, then being exposed to Black Panther will be a Big Thing.
If that’s all too theoretical, take the (alleged) CSI effect, or the fact that more and more universities have been offering degrees in forensic science in the wake of the success of such crime shows.
What I’m trying to say is: Television and movies are part of the system we’re raised in and live in. They form part of the environment that socialises us.
Media has power.
I never realised how much until January 15, 2017.
That day showed me in a very visceral way how much power the creators of media have nowadays. If successful, their writing can reach millions, if not billions, and how they present the world becomes part of a communal base of knowledge and reference.
I’m not saying that a single work of fiction or a documentary can change the world on its own, but no fragment of media or storytelling exists in a vacuum.
Everything has a past, and shapes the future.
And Sherlock definitely has a past – the detective has been around since 1887 and become a cultural icon with many, many faces and interpretations. Sherlock Holmes has shaped genres and science and the BBC’s adaption with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman struck a chord with millions.
Yes, BBC’s Sherlock is powerful. As a TV show of international success, it had millions of fans across the globe, I amongst them. Some fans flocked to certain online spaces to communicate and share our love for the show.
Within fandom, everyone is united by a shared passion and while there are bullies everywhere, to me fandom has been a nurturing, welcoming environment. I have met many wonderful people within the realms of cyberspace, whom I still cherish and have met (and will meet) outside of the internet. Sherlock is shaping our lives in a very real way.
Since Sherlock is a detective show and the first two series, incredibly clever written and executed, culminate in a puzzle to solve, fandom answered the call. I’m not entirely certain the analyses or ‘meta’ as we call them started with “How did Sherlock survive?” at the end of The Reichenbach Fall (2×03), but it kicked off a subculture unlike any other.
You see, we became detectives ourselves. We dissected the show, we invested so much time and had a blast doing it, discussion this show with other fans from around the world. Series three and the special escalated this, and I still marvel at how big a part fandom played in all our lives then, how much LOVE there was for the source material.
As a writer, I participated, but at the same time I also dreamed of one day creating something that also stuck a deep chord with my audience. I dreamed of my stories inspiring such love and excitement, and took the creators of Sherlock as role models.
Then came series 4.
It was teased to be epic, it would make “television history” and have a “rug pull”.
You can imagine the excitement in fandom. After ten mostly brilliant episodes, we wanted more impeccable storytelling from the “show about a detective”.
What we got instead… was lacklustre.
The first episode of series 4 features inconsistencies with previous seasons, holes in the plot and set design, a disregard for physics as well as logical flaws. Also, a redemption arc for a female character who could have been a stellar villain.
I personally, as a filmmaker, loved the second episode for it’s technical aspects – it remains one of the best edited episodes of television I’ve ever seen and gave us sequences I could only describe as cinematography porn.
However, there were additional inconsistencies, set design decisions that confused a lot of us, and flaws in logic that made me and my niche in fandom wonder: Do the creators even CARE? Where is the attention to detail, or wait… is this on purpose? Are these inconsistencies and plot holes.. clues?
You see, we thought the creators respected their audience. For all their talk about not wanting to spoon-feed their viewers, we assumed they were giving us a puzzle to solve that extended beyond the beginning and end of the individual episodes.
We were wrong, unfortunately.
The Final Problem aired on January 15, 2017.
Prior to that, someone at Channel One in Russia had leaked the entire episode and several of us watched it to report back. They said it made no sense, that it was badly written.
Was it a fake episode? Was this the rug pull? Was this, and the second leak from Turkey on the same weekend, was this television history? Would we get a “real” episode at the official release?
No.
The same boys who had built up a fictional world whose characters inspired millions took these characters and abused them for… well, their own wish fulfilment fantasies that only seem clever on the surface.
As soon as you probe and ask, the plot of The Final Problem falls apart. The holes were so big that even people who didn’t make a habit of dissecting every second of a Sherlock episode (like our part of fandom is prone to) noticed and were disappointed. [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]
What grated me most was, for one, how out-of-character everyone was (John not reacting as Sherlock, for whom he has KILLED, puts a gun to his own head, or Sherlock ignoring their code word ‘Vatican Cameos’ to name but two instances).
The other was the treatment of Molly, whose entire character development was retroactively annihilated by this episode and who was robbed of any agency she ever possessed, in the service of throwing another obstacle at the male protagonist. But, well, she’ll get over it, won’t she, Mr. Moffat?
Also, Moriarty. The amazing villain of series 2. The Final Problem re-wrote his entire character, giving him information five years ago that he never, ever used back in series 2… which, if you accept that as canon, makes Moriarty seem a lot less clever than he was portrayed as by the show at the time.
This is merely catching the surface of why many long-term fans felt wronged by series 4 in terms of storytelling.
(Not to mention the queerbaiting. Yet while turning queer identity into a joke spanning three-seasons is horrifyingly hurtful to myself as a queer-identified person, this is a can of worms that requires an entire post of its own to do it justice – as does the representation of persons of colour on Sherlock, for that matter.)
You don’t need an introduction to Sherlock meta, or to see why many fans believed “television history” to be referring to the show featuring an explicitly queer happy ending to understand that series 4 had fundamental flaws on a storytelling level that have nothing to do with political ‘agendas’.
The inconsistencies, plot holes and out-of-character depictions, plus revisionist plot points that redefine characters retroactively… they felt like a slap in the face to those whose passion and love for the show had helped it become so popular and powerful in the first place.
As a writer… I simply don’t understand.
Did no one see the plot holes? Did no one read the script except the executive producers before shooting? Did no one dare to speak up?
Did they think this was television history? They best story they could tell?
“It’s their story,” I’ve heard people say. “You have no claim to it.”
No, I don’t. But I am entitled to respect.
Viewers have a claim to be respected by creators of the content they engage with, because without the audience… why create?
And for me, respecting the audience means making sure you’re telling the best story you possibly can within your means and fictional universe. It means being aware that your content doesn’t exist in a vacuum. For fuck’s sake, I don’t mean you need to cater to anyone, or allow fans to ‘dictate’ what you do, since they would never ever be able to agree.
I mean asking yourself questions along the way, such as:
Are all my villains persons of colour, but the ‘good guys’ white?
Are the antagonists coded as queer when the protagonists and their sidekicks are straight as arrows?
Do my female characters have agency, or a life of their own outside their engaging with a male character?
Does every character have motivations for their actions, and/or do my characters change in the course of the story?
Am I just reproducing what people have seen hundreds of times before, or am I adding something new, something creative, something fresh or unique to my chosen genres and tropes?
It’s 2018, folks.
Viewers like me, we’re tired of the same old stories being told over and over again, featuring the same stock characters. I love action movies, too, but I love them more if they surprise me. I also love clever stories, and I’m tired of being spoon-fed. What made me fall in love with Sherlock was how brilliant it was, that watching it is a challenge that requires me to think.
I expected the same cleverness from the show runners that they imbued their title character with.
So here comes the manifesto part of this long post.
Series 4 and The Final Problem in particular left a deep mark on me, not just as a viewer (I can’t trust a TV show anymore, I don’t dare get in too deep with anything new since I’ve been burned so hard a year ago) but on me as a writer.
“It’s not a game anymore”, the slogan used in promotional materials for series 4, used to make me choke on pained laughter.
A year later, it’s become a battle cry.
Because it’s truly not a game anymore.
Writers, content creators – we have power. Our stories affect the lives of others.
We owe it to them and to us to hold ourselves to a higher standard.
To ensure we’re telling a great story, in our own, innovative way. To ensure we don’t perpetuate racist tropes and stereotypes. To ensure we consider diversity and embed it within our work. To ask for feedback from points of view different to our own.
For me, Sherlock was a watershed moment. I’m never going to forget that my writing, if published in any form or translated into other media, affects people, and I will hold myself to a higher standard.
It’s not that difficult.
It’s not even much work.
Yet in times like this, we need it more than ever.
*
PS: A personal anecdote
In October 2017, I screened my second short film at a secondary school and held a Q&A with the students afterwards. The film is a thriller and the title character happens to be gay.
One of the students asked, “Why did you make the protagonist gay?”
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