This meta is a result of 3 months of research & writing, and made possible through ongoing discussions on the canon, sheer stubbornness, and the love that I have had since early childhood of British History, and Greek Mythology. Turns out, my love is all that I needed.
Some times experiments don’t work out. Sometime big projects include mistakes and it takes a lot of compromises to satisfy the real goal. So was the case with The Six Thatchers.
To a room of ~100 people, Rachel Talalay explained something of the complicated backstory to the first episode of Series 4 and shared with us a little of the amazing footage that had to be left on the cutting room floor.
In Mark Gatiss’s initial script, the story was going to be told with a complicated chronology. The story was supposed to start somewhere in the middle, with flashbacks inserted into scenes. This show has played with chronology before, but this plan was more ambitions and experimental than previous episodes. In the spirit of Sherlock’s cinematographic ingenuity, Talalay decided to demarcate these flashbacks with fantastic transitions in and out of the scenes into which they were inlayed.
The filming proceeded with this non-chronological order of scenes, but when the material was assembled in a temp edit, it became apparent that the narrative didn’t really work. Talalay had her doubts about how it came together, and Moffat and Gatiss made the call to change the sequence to the straight forward chronology we saw broadcast. Talalay took pains to explain that the switch was necessary for the sake of the story and that no one was at fault for how the experiment failed. They took a risk together and these things don’t always pan out.
The choice to reorder was the right one, but it was also a very difficult compromise for two reasons. First it changed the purpose of many scenes, and with no time to reshoot they had to work out new criteria to determine the best takes to make a cohesive narrative from what they had. Second, it meant abandoning these amazing transitions that were in and of themselves creative and technical acheivements that each took days to prepare and shoot.
It was these transitions that Talalay shared with us at Sherlocked USA 2018. They will never be released, so here are my descriptions of the transitions she shared. Some of them involve scenes that weren’t part of the final edit at all. I’ve done the best I can to describe what I can remember from seeing these only twice.
1. In and Out of Cars This seems to be on the way to the first case with Greg, on the way to the WELSBOROUGH HOUSE. John, Sherlock, and Greg are in a taxi in the middle of the day. Greg says “So how long has it been then” and John replies “Three months.” Sherlock rises from his right-forward facing seat and steps out of the passenger door into day light. The camera approaches his back until we only see the coat. Camera recedes and it is night. Sherlock steps back into the right passenger seat while typing in his mobile and Mary is wheezing in labour. The camera pivots to also catch John at the steering wheel, as seen in the show. There is another transition back to the original taxi shot and John repeats “About three months.”
2. Walking through Doorways: As Greg, Sherlock, and John approach the door to the Welsborough House, Greg says “…We thought we’d never see you again.” Sherlock replies “You weren’t the only ones.” As Sherlock steps through the doorway, he pass into the room where he and Mycroft are interrogated by Sir Edwin and Lady Smallwood. He sits down and takes off his coat. The scene that followed was the one used to open The Six Thatchers.
At then end of this scene, Sherlock says “Because I love it.” and walks out the door and back into the WELSBOROUGH HOUSE.
3. To and From the Christening: John is looking at bus shelter and a bus goes by and reveals that he is wearing church clothes at the Christening for Rosie. John says to Sherlock something along the lines of “You could come visit Rosie” and Sherlock replies “The conversation would be a bit onesided.”
Another shot of Sherlock approaching the camera down the aisle, framed by the arches of the church. I’m not sure if this transitioned to another scene.
4. Through the Mirror: In the sceen where Mary finds Sherlock in the Moroccan hotel, the shot begins with her standing by the table looking accusing and Sherlock sitting on the floor crossed-legged. Sherlock gets up and walks towards a mirror by a curtain in the back of the room. In the curtain we see a reflection of Mycroft’s underground office. Sherlock walks past the mirror into the scene where Mycroft begins by reciting the wikipedia article for “Agra”
When that scene ends, Sherlock rises from his seat and walks back to the mirror to pass back into the Moroccan hotel room and sits down on the floor again to pick up the conversation with Mary.
5. Lastly, one of the magical transitions that were kept was Ajay remembering his torture and then falling back onto the carpet. Apparently the sequence was initially filmed as a single shot, with four sets lined up side by side. Like wow.
***
I can’t attest that these are perfect descriptions of what was in these shots, and I know I’m missing some details. If anyone else remembers other things, please add them in.
Talalay had every reason to be proud of these transitions. They were breath taking (my descriptions do not do them justice!) and the audience gasped and clapped through the three minutes of footage that she shared. I am so sorry they had to make the compromise of removing these. I understand that it was deemed necessary, and Talalay was very clear that she agreed with the decision to change the order of the scenes, but it is a tragedy that we lost these beautiful tricky transitions.
So now please someone explain how johnlock somehow became TFP.
And as I am typing this it occurs to me, johnlock literally IS -still- the final problem.
If you meta the show, whether you end up writing a meta or not, chances are you will be left with questions nagging at the back of your mind, waiting to be answered.
One of my favourite bits has got to be “BBC Sherlock functions as a metacommentary on all Sherlock Holmes stories.”
With Markmoff quotes like ‘everyone’s been getting it wrong’ or ‘we are more curators than creators’, this has been on my mind for ages. A lot of the efforts they go to in the show make absolutely no sense if they are just trying to tell a version of the Sherlock Holmes stories where Sherlock is gay. But they went to all the effort. Why? Well,
“In Sherlockian terms, you’re eliminating the impossible on your way to ultimately arrive at the truth.”
What better way to tell the whole world that all perceptions and understandings of Holmes has been wrong, than to prove it yourself? (Incidentally that’s what happened in the opening moments of ASiP)
So, to start with, I HATED her introduction in TEH. I HATED that she didn’t side with John and didn’t let him have his moment of anger. She doesn’t even know Sherlock, she knew how much John was hurting! Stand by his side and then wait to try and talk to him about it later.
I hate what a liar she is and how she manipulated John. I hate that she used to (probably still does) kill people for money.
Nonny, I absolutely hate that when S4 came around and we finally got a new season of Sherlock, instead of dealing with all the things that happened in S3 and maybe getting to learn a little about John’s past, we instead got TST. “I want a whole episode revolving around Mary and her past” said no one ever.
I hate that John was sidelined so we could get her boring story. And Nonny, I was bored to death during TST. I have never been that bored during a BBC Sherlock episode. It just went on and on and on. I hate that at the beginning of the episode we get Sherlock and Mary comparing John to a dog and that we have Sherlock telling John that he’d rather work with Mary because she’s better at it than him. What the fuck were Mofftiss smoking when they wrote that crap??
I hate that she was still a selfish piece of shit, right until the end. Not even thinking of her so-called loved husband and daughter before defying the laws of physics to take that bullet, which then apparently erased all the horrible crap she’d done up until then. Sure Jan.
I hate that she then continued to haunt the show as the worst ghost ever. I hate her stupid post-death DVDs. Like who in the writers room thought that was a good idea??
I absolutely loath that she got to give the last word of the series, and likely the last word of the show, and those words included “who you are doesn’t really matter.” Fuck you Mary. Fuck you Moffitss.
Most of all I hate the fact that her introduction was the beginning of the downfall of something that I loved. I hate that Mofftiss gave her character more importance than she deserved. I hate that, even though we were told otherwise, her introduction and use was to keep John and Sherlock apart and to make sure they no-homoed the queerbaiting mess they made. I hate that Mofftiss tried to sell a moralless, selfish, abusive murderer as “strong female character” and that some people actually bought it.
It makes me sad that Mofftiss dug their hole so deep that it is unfixable without some extreme stretch of reality, such as MP or coma.
In conclusion, to quote a good friend of mine: I hate Mary, did you know?
At this stage, I think no-one would deny that drugs is a recurring theme in BBC Sherlock. And it seems to me that the more the show progresses in time, the more focus we get on this drug theme. The last time I heard of it from fandom was right before Christmas, when @someovermind posted this videomade by nerdwriter1 about the very creative filming in TLD, where we’re seeing things from Sherlock’s perspective when he is high on drugs, and also displaying some symptoms of abstinence. It’s a great video, I can really recommend it.
@someovermind ended their comment of the video with these words: “So maybe we should be on the lookout for camera angles that are impossible because they obviously point to Sherlock’s drug induced state ??**;¿¿ And if they are anywhere else it obviously directs us to EMP??¿¿”
I think that’s a very good idea, and it fits nicely with the kind of exercise I’ve been planning to do in this meta.
As I’ve said before, I believe there is a ‘game’ proposed in BBC Sherlock which we, as an audience, are challenged to play, by trying to solve the enigma of what has actually happened to Sherlock and why has the show become weirder and weirder over time.
This is the third part of a meta series where I try to look at BBC Sherlock with a ‘scientific’ approach. I’m trying to use Sherlock Holmes’ methods of data collection, deductions, hypotheses and predictions, test them and thereby try to solve the puzzles presented to us, as explained in my introduction. As you can see in the introduction, Sherlock’s methods are very similar to the scientific method, which is used by researchers in general and scientists in particular. Which means that we’ll ask some questions that enable us to put up hypotheses. Based on the hypotheses we’ll make some predictions that can be tested with observations from the show. (If you want to read my first two metas of the series, just follow the links of the hypotheses #1 and #2).
These two hypotheses can definitely be wrong, no doubt about that. But at least I’ve tried to test them, finding out a certain amount of evidence that I think speaks for them being at least plausible.
In this meta, though, I’m going to assume that both these hypotheses are indeed true. In other words: In the show ‘Sherlock’ (as the name actually suggests) we’re inside Sherlock’s head all along. And based on this assumption, I’ll try to explore which role Sherlock’s drug use may havein the story we’ve been shown from ASiP to TSoT. As usual, the meta is lengthy (this time even longer than usual), so you’ll find most of it under the cut.
Let me come back to TSoT. I know, it is painful but there are some thoughts I would like to share. Much has been said about the symbolism of dancing in this episode and I would like to take a closer look.
What is the meaning of dancing in the individual scenes and how does it symbolise Sherlock’s emotional development?
Mrs Hudson discovers Sherlock dancing alone to the waltz he has composed for John and Mary.
MRS HUDSON: You were dancing. SHERLOCK: I was road-testing.
He deflects. He feels caught in the act which has been foreshadowed by Lestrade repeatedly using these very words in the Waters gang story. And the fact that he deflects proves that Sherlock allowed himself to dream of dancing with John even before we learn that he gave John lessons. And what is also important: he is dancing a waltz which is meant to be danced by two people, not alone.
Then there is the scene with Janine. He teaches her how to waltz (like he did with John) and confesses that he loves dancing. This is something he has not even told Mrs Hudson, else she would not have been so surprised. So we have Sherlock who wants to dance with Janine even though she is just a substitute for John – now as a dance partner, later on in HLV as his love interest. But there ist more.
SHERLOCK: I love dancing. I’ve always loved it.
And then he does a pirouette, an element of classical ballet usually executed alone. There has never been any mention of Sherlock and ballet dancing so I suppose it is something he did in the past ⇒ “I’ve always loved it”. He loved to dance alone in the past and now wants to dance with another person. Dancing alone is a thing of the past for him. He has realised that he would prefer to dance with a partner, in this case Janine as a stand-in for John.
(As a little extra, here is the ballet scene from TPLoSH: X in which male ballet dancers are presented as gay and bi. Would anyone put it past Moftiss to play with this association?)
Sorry in advance to put you through this again, but after deflection and confession there is of course sacrifice.
SHERLOCK: Both of you, now, go dance. We can’t just stand here. People will wonder what we’re talking about. JOHN: Right. MARY: And what about you?
I have no idea if this is another dig at Sherlock or true compassion, but it boils down to this: clever Mary feels that something is off. This is not how such things are supposed to go, weddings, pregnancy announcements, etc. Because of his sadness Sherlock has become the spectre at the feast (no need for Mycroft here). And Sherlock’s sacrifice (not dancing/being with John) is paired with John’s rejection:
JOHN: Well, we can’t all three dance. There are limits!
Followed by the horrible “closed curtains” remark. But there is also hope if we take John’s “We can’t all three dance” not just as a rejection but also as foreshadowing.
There will be no crime-solving trio, there will be no happy family plus uncle in series 4. Because in this show only two can dance and we know who these will ultimately be.
What a nice post this is, @gosherlocked! Thanks for sharing your insight!
Also, to add onto the clues we have about ‘Sherlock + dancing’ in the past, remember how Moriarty taunted him, using the kidnapped old lady’s voice: “I like… to watch you… dance.”
And Sherlock GETS it, because at the pool, when he brings the memory stick for Moriarty, he tells him: “All your little puzzles, making me dance… all
to distract me from this.”
So this, imo, tells me that Moriarty knows
about a young Sherlock who used to dance. And Sherlock is aware of that, therefore his little quip there. Maybe this was among the things from Sherlock’s ‘life story’ that Mycroft ‘blabbed about’, or maybe because young Moriarty had seen him with his own eyes (…and that’s when Moriarty developed a crush on/started stalking him?). I favour the latter, because in TGG they took pains to tell us how this dates back to the Carl Powers case, and how that was young Moriarty’s first murder, and young Sherlock’s first case (”Started young, didn’t you?”). And they even made John be jealous of that fact for good measure. So, there’s that.
Even Mycroft inside the flight of the dead, when he calls Sherlock on deducing that e-mail and telling him that this was ‘text book’, says: “Give him a puzzle… and watch him dance.” And he moves his umbrella dramatically pointing it at Sherlock for emphasis.
So my bet is Sherlock danced most likely ballet, and of course, flawlessly. 😉 That’s my headcanon. I mean, look at that pirouette! ❤
Another piece of evidence that Sherlock’s past trauma has actually something to do with his dad is the scene with the two fishermen in TFP.
You know from my ‘Follow the dog’ meta (x) that I think Sherlock’s father is in the closet and was probably in love with his best friend who might or might not turn out to be the mysterious Uncle Rudy. (Or maybe Uncle Rudy and Daddy’s lover are two separate characters, and Uncle Rudy was in charge of getting rid of Daddy’s lover; I don’t know.) In any case, I believe that Sherlock’s trauma will turn out to be all about his dad being in love with a man.
So, here’s one more piece of evidence (apart from the tonne I have already amassed in the original ‘Follow the dog’ post):
In TFP, we are shown two fishermen who are caught in a storm. We know that ‘water’ is a metaphor for emotions, and in that scene, we get a huge body of ‘water’: the sea! And there is a storm brewing over these ‘waters’.
To spell out what kind of emotional storm this is all about, the set designers put a tea pot right in the foreground of the opening shot of this scene (remember that ‘tea’ is a metaphor for homosexuality on this show):
So, in other words, we have two men (one old, one young) who are both caught in the same (!) emotional storm: Sherlock and his dad are both faced with the same emotional storm, ie, have the same kind of emotional problem
(=they both fall in love with men).
To make this mirroring easier to pick up on, the older fisherman even calls the younger one ‘son’ at one point, which, of course, in English, is just an affectionate way to address a man much younger than yourself, but word choice on this show is never a coincidence. The word ‘son’ here evokes the image of a father and his (actual) son being caught in the same storm.
Well, and then there’s the fact that the younger fisherman is called Ben. The name Benjamin literally means (young/youngest) ‘son’…Sherlock!
The older fisherman (the metaphorical dad character) has got used to the storm (=has been in the closet for ages and has resigned himself to his fate). He is navigating it without ever leaving the cabin (=closet).
Young Ben (=Sherlock) is still struggling, though. He is vomiting (=finds his situation disgusting). And he is literally oscillating between being inside the cabin (=closet) with his metaphorical dad, where they’re both safe from the storm but he himself gets nauseous, and outside the cabin (=the closet) where it’s dangerous but where there’s fresh air. As the conversation starts, he has just come in again, apparently undecided as to where he should be: inside the cabin (=closet) or out.
There’s also one tiny detail that could be significant: The costume designers couldn’t give us as many mirroring clues as they usually do because both men are wearing these yellow fishermen overalls over their clothes. And yet, there’s this teensy, tiny clue:
The dish towel! It’s checkered. Like John’s clothes. Checkered things on this show always refer back to John. That’s why I think this checkered dish towel is not a coincidence. It’s nicely situated in the foreground in the above shot, too. And it’s hanging right next to the mirror image of the tea (!) pot. In other words, the checkered towel (=John) and the ‘tea’ (=gay love) are shown in close proximity to each other via an actual, real-life mirroring (!) effect.
And then, we get shot after shot of the young fisherman (=Sherlock) standing next to this towel+tea pot combo, talking about how he is literally sick (…of the whole situation he’s in):
Then both men hear the radio clearly enunciate the word ‘Sherrinford’. But the older man (=Sherlock’s dad) tells the younger one (=Sherlock) in no uncertain terms to ignore that message completely. Since ‘Sherrinford’ is basically Sherlock’s unconscious, this means that Sherlock’s dad tells Sherlock to ignore the call of his own unconscious. Wow!
“Sometimes when we’re out in these waters, we hear that message,” the older fisherman says (=sometimes when you’re faced with an emotional storm somewhere very far out on the emotional sea, ie, sometimes when you experience same-sex desire because you’ve just seen a handsome man, for example, sometimes when you’re so far out in these ‘waters’, you hear the call of your own unconscious). But the older man tells the younger one that it’s best to just ignore that call.
It’s the younger guy who keeps asking and prodding what ‘Sherrinford’ (=the unconscious) is. He (=Sherlock) is the one who doesn’t seem to want to ignore it. He has his hand on the door handle (of an actual closet!) as if he’s about to pull the closet door open any minute now:
It’s the older guy who seems to be hiding so deep in the closet that he wants to ignore ‘Sherrinford’.
And yet…The older guy (=Sherlock’s dad) seems to know deep down that being in the closet isn’t good for you because, as the young man (=Sherlock) tells him that he’s feeling sick, the older one wistfully replies, “Better out than in.”
Yeah, the subtext here is quite clear: Better out than in!
It’s just that it’s apparently too late for the older man (=Sherlock’s dad) to heed his own advice.
But then the fact that Sherlock’s dad is probably not happy with his situation was already established in my ‘Follow the dog’ meta: Sherlock’s dad was said to be allergic to dogs (‘dog’=homosexuality metaphor). Note that it’s not that Sherlock’s dad hated dogs. For all we know, he loved dogs. But he had an allergy, aka an internal condition (=internalised homophobia) that made it impossible for him to have a dog (=be in an openly gay relationship).
So, this conflicted attitude the older fisherman is displaying by, on the one hand, saying, “Better out than in,” and, on the other, hiding in the cabin and ignoring the call of ‘Sherrinford’ seems consistent with a character who is torn between what he wants and what he thinks he has to do, deeply conflicted about his own same-sex desires.
And then there’s, of course, the fact that, in this TFP scene, they are both presented as fishermen. And we have already seen how an unemployed fisherman in THoB was a metaphor for homosexuality (here).
The TFP scene ends with both fishermen being forced out of their cabin (=closet) by pirate!Sherlock, ie, Sherlock in the incarnation of his childhood dreams.
Sherlock has reverted back to who he wanted to be as a child (ha!) and forced both his metaphorical dad and himself to literally ‘come out’. As he does this, he’s holding steadfastly on to the radio mast that is transmitting the weather news from ‘Sherrinford’ (=his own unconscious). He doesn’t want to ignore it any longer.
And let’s not forget that Sherlock forces himself to come out of the cabin (=closet) with the help of John wielding his gun (=penis).:) Sorry, not sorry.:P But that’s Mofftiss for you. With Mofftiss, a dick joke is never very far away. John’s penis is the thing that forces Sherlock to sail towards ‘Sherrinford’ (=confront his unconscious).
And how does the whole ordeal end for the two fishermen (=Sherlock and his dad)?
Whether they want it or not, they’re both dragged to ‘Sherrinford’ island (=to confront the unconscious). And once there, they’re tied to each other: One cannot solve his problem without the other. The two problems are literally entangled with each other, which again tells us that Sherlock being closeted (at least for now) and his father being in the closet (since…forever) are two things that are inextricably bound to each other. To resolve one situation, the other has to be resolved too.
Oh, by the way, the older fisherman is double coded and can be read as a mirror for Sherlock himself too, as is evident from the cheekbones, the eye colour, the hat that Sherlock will wear himself just minutes later and the black ‘popped’ collar visible underneath his yellow overall.
This was probably done to tell us loudly and clearly that Sherlock himself has, at least, the potential to end up like his dad: closeted and sad.
Unless Sherlock does something about it right now…like break into his own unconscious (‘Sherrinford’) and confront what’s in there.
After all, the old fisherman is called Vince. And the name Vincent means ‘Conqueror’, the ‘Victorious one’.
Sherlock has the potential to score a victory here. But he has to face up to the battle with his (inner) dragon. He has to confront his own unconscious.
The double coding makes this scene so, so brilliant. Because you can basically read the old fisherman as an AU!version of old, closeted Sherlock and young-fisherman-Ben as that other inner aspect of Sherlock that’s sick of it all and just wants to ‘come out’. A conversation, a conflict, between two voices inside Sherlock’s head.
(It’s at least possible that this scene is even triple coded: You could read the old fisherman as a closeted Sherlock and the young fisherman as John who’s struggling to come out. In this case, pirate!Sherlock and John-with-his-*cough*-‘gun’ would be forcing themselves (!) out of the cabin, aka the closet. They would be forcing themselves to confront the unconscious, aka go to ‘Sherrinford’, where the two of them, Sherlock and John would be shown bound together by fate. Because John and Sherlock have always been bound together. What happens to one of them is inextricably linked to what happens to the other one.)
That double coding (and possible triple coding) is what makes this whole fishermen scene so fascinating.
It was intentionally written so that we would understand that, whichever way we turn this puzzle, it’s all about the issue of coming out; it’s just that the characters change with our shifting point of view.
Edit: Also, look at the mirror image of the tea pot above. There are three mirror images of the tea pot. It’s mirrored three (!) times. Triple coding it is, then.
Evolution- Deductions vs Mind Palace: A Comprehensive Look
“Sometimes a deception is so audacious, so outrageous that you can’t see it even when it’s staring you in the face.”
Disclaimer #1: This is where you get off if you are not on the EMP train. Sorry, but the entire reason for all of these posts boils down to EMP theory and what it means for the show as we’ve seen it.
Disclaimer #2: I know. There are loads of amazing meta out there, pointing to different origins for Sherlock’s continued mind palace wanderings. The pool. The fall. There’s amazing proof that could back it up all the way to the gay pilot. There is difference of opinion on when it began even within the diehard group of us that have been crying EMP since TAB. And, I’m not trying to disprove any of those theories or ideas. Like I said, there’s loads of proof for all of them. This is my interpretation and what I believe is happening and why. If it turns out that the beginning point ends up somewhere else in the timeline, I will not be hurt at all. Because, for me, if EMP ends up being what is truly happening within the show, I will take any starting point they want to give us. It’s all about Sherlock in the end. His journey and what he reveals and understands of himself.
Disclaimer #3: EMP, as a theory, was never meant to ‘excuse’ what we didn’t like about the show, and especially S4. It was never meant to be a bandaid over plotholes or an eyepatch to hide what we didn’t like seeing. It’s not to excuse Mofftiss’ heinous comments or to prop them up as infallible and almighty. It was truly only ever an idea we saw clear evidence in support of. We didn’t go looking for a way to shape this theory, as some other theories in the past have done. We aren’t- and will never- claim that anyone that doesn’t believe or support this theory are wrong. Or that this is the only theory for what could possibly be happening within the show.
I have no illusions that I am in any way, trying to reveal something new about this episode. It’s been talked to death, examined, meta’d to within an inch of its life. None of these mind palace posts are meant to highlight new information. I am merely trying to illustrate the continued expansion and use of the mind palace device in a linear fashion. There is a method to my madness, I promise. 😉
So, all of that being said, this meta series (X)(X)(X)(X)(X) is based on EMP starting with Mary shooting Sherlock.
tl;dr- In case you don’t want to read K’s of words of no new info- HLV is mind palace heaven. The amount of mind palace in this ep is astronomical, and thus, this theory (that I’m trying to prove) remains in place: With each consecutive episode of the show, the mind palace moments we see, increase in length and intensity.
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