Sherlock Holmes and the Doctor

Doctor Who. If you get around in the pop-culture part of the Internet at all, you're bound to cross paths with the Doctor sooner or later. I knew a fair bit about Doctor Who before I actually started watching it this summer - and I only started watching it because of insistent family members.

I'm glad they insisted.

So I've been watching the "revival" series, the seasons from 2005 through to the present, and I'm currently getting close to the end of David Tennant's last season. I've been loving it - therefore, I've been throwing myself into it (yes, unfortunately, Doctor Who probably is tied in with the lack of a Mortality chapter for a full month). In fact, when we got to the last episode for the Ninth Doctor, I wrote first a fanfic (also on Whofic now) then a deviantART journal entry to try to cope with my overwhelming sense of loss.

Much as I adore David Tennant's Doctor, Christopher Eccleston's resonated with me in a powerful way. Yes, the Ninth Doctor is indeed my Doctor. I felt for him in a way that I previously only felt for Sherlock Holmes - yes, that's how big it is. And being the hopeless Sherlockian that I am, my mind caught similarities between the two. Not Holmes in general, but Holmes in a specific period of his life - Holmes during the Great Hiatus. If you get strictly canonical with the Great Detective on his Great Hiatus, you get a Holmes who bears an uncanny resemblance to Nine. There are still differences, of course, but the resemblance is there. In fact, watch any of Nine's interactions with the Daleks (especially the Emperor), and then go watch Holmes's interaction with Colonel Moran in Granada's EMPT (Jeremy Brett's performance of an outright angry Holmes is brilliant, but is seldom mentioned, let alone praised). Or recall the scenes in your mind.

...are you a bit chilled yet?

But the similarities between Holmes and the Doctor don't end when Christopher Eccleston regenerates into David Tennant. Whenever you see David Tennant's Doctor being thrilled about a monster, or saying brilliant things that nobody else understands... That's Holmes, right there. It gets particularly blatant in the Mark Gatiss-written episode "The Idiot's Lantern". You have a Detective Inspector (whose name the Doctor got from his shirt collar) from Scotland Yard, for starters. A DI who says he's been on the force for... oh, twenty years and he's never seen anything like this before?

Yes, Mr. Gatiss, I see what you did there.

For the benefit of anyone who's not up on their A Study in Scarlet, Inspector Lestrade greets Holmes and Watson at Lauriston Gardens with: "This case will make a stir, sir. It beats anything I have seen, and I am no chicken." A few chapters later, he also says, "[W]hen I saw something that made me feel sickish, in spite of my twenty years' experience."

Oh yes, the DI's line is very much for the benefit of Gatiss's fellow Sherlockians.

The DI goes on to accept the help of a civilian in this baffling case. Sound familiar? It gets worse. When one of the victims is brought into the DI's office, he tells the Doctor to "deduce" what he can from the victim.

That's where the Sherlock Holmes references finally stop. The boy helping the Doctor might be inspired by the Baker Street Irregulars, but that's a bit of a stretch and purely conjectural.

But there's more that's similar between Doctor Who and an insanely popular adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. David Tennant can rattle off a string of deductions or technobabble for at least half a minute without having to stop for breath. ...so can Benedict Cumberbatch.

The June 10, 2012 edition of the South Bend Tribune had an article entitled "Elementary Acting," and it was about a production of William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes. The actor reading Holmes's lines for that production, Matthew Bell, contrasted Gillette's portrayal of the character with the BBC's modern reboot:

"I think it's always interesting that [Sherlock is] written by people who worked on Doctor Who and they've taken Holmes in the direction of a non-human being to a Time Lord. They have emphasized his sociopathic tendencies, whereas Gillette emphasizes his human tendencies."

Truth be told, that sociopathic emphasis is one of the elements of Sherlock that's always bothered me. Mr. Bell was also right when he said, a bit earlier in that article, that "the fascination in the stories is when a warm, sympathetic human bursts out." The Doctor himself can be more human, sometimes, than the Sherlock Holmes of 21st century London. Benedict Cumberbatch plays a magnificent Sherlock Holmes - he also plays quite a cold one. I was relieved to find Sherlock thawing bit by bit throughout Season 2, particularly The Reichenbach Fall... in that episode, he finally felt to me like the canonical and truly emotive Sherlock Holmes.

And then, of course, there's the Master. The Master who was actually called the "Professor Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes" in one edition of the Doctor Who Magazine. The Master who, in his initial appearance in the '70s, was quite the gentleman villain and treated the Doctor as his (almost) intellectual equal... yes, that does sound familiar. Of course, it gets worse. It gets worse, not because of John Simm's Master, but because of Andrew Scott's Moriarty. The Moriarty of Sherlock is practically Simm's Master in human form, with the name and the occupation thrown in. I can't tell you how disturbed I was to realize that as I watched "The Sound of the Drums" for the first time.

Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are good writers, don't get me wrong. I'm not disputing that. I'm not disputing the excellence of Sherlock, because I still love it and I always will. I just wish that they'd been a little less Whovian in their approach to a 21st century reboot.

So, all this rambling, and I haven't even talked about Wholock yet. Well, what is there to say, except that it's an incredibly rampant crossover fandom. Lots of Ten and Eleven meeting either canonical!Sherlock Holmes or Cumberbatch!Sherlock. I'll be really happy when I can finally find a good Nine-meets-either-version (preferably the former, though). Until then, I'll have to satisfy myself with my own fledgling crossovers that still need a lot of thought and plotting applied to them.

There is, however, this gem of a Thirteenth Doctor fic... which actually has Martin Freeman's John Watson as the protagonist. I even made a TV Trope article for the story - that's how excellent it is! Be warned: it does heavily involve the Weeping Angels. You might not want to read it late at night...

Now you must excuse me while I return to my poor, neglected Mortality. (Yes, I'm very much aware of how amusing that sentence sounds.) I promise to be back here next Wednesday, with a belated review of a fantastic Sherlock Holmes play! Stay tuned!

Bringing Sherlock Holmes to Life in 2012

There’s no denying it: in the past few years, Sherlock Holmes has gathered up so much momentum that he’s blasted out into orbit. Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes and Steve Moffat & Mark Gatiss’s Sherlock became cultural phenomena overnight. The Arthur Conan Doyle Estate authorized Anthony Horowitz to write a new addition to the Canon. And now, with the advent of e-book publishing, there are more Sherlockian pastiches than ever.

Plus, his adventures just won’t stop being fantastic. He fights alleged witchcraft, faces off the Queen of Fairies, remains in combat with Dracula, fires off texts on his mobile… When you get right down to it, Sherlock Holmes is a very big action hero.

But.

There’s also a pervasive idea that one must reimagine the stories to get a Sherlock Holmes fit for the modern audience. After all, we’re a culture that’s been inundated with a Hollywood mindset. Two generations have grown up with Star Wars… and Star Wars’ fast pacing. Modern novels reflect that fast-paced mindset. Allow a film or a novel to ramble… and you run a definite risk of losing your audience.

What does that mean for the Great Detective? Guy Ritchie & Co. believed it means that you have to amp up the action, lose the “stuffiness” of the insidious iconic image—in their own words, “Reinvent Sherlock Holmes.” Steve Moffat and Mark Gatiss dreamt up a Sherlock Holmes set in modern London that would be as heavily influenced by the present day as the Canon was by its own era.

I’m not saying that either idea is actually wrong. I’m not here to say that.

But.

The fact remains that neither adaptation of Sherlock Holmes sticks very closely to the source material. In fact, very few adaptations have. Furthermore, out of the many dozens of actors that have portrayed the Great Detective since the 1890s, only Peter Cushing, Jeremy Brett, and Clive Merrison have actually portrayed Sherlock Holmes in the original stories (barring the numerous versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles).

So why don’t we ever get a fresh retelling of the Canon on screen? Did Granada raise the bar too high, or do people just want to do their own thing with Holmes? And why don’t we ever get a fresh retelling of the Canon in print?

A harder question to ask, I know. But with so many details that Sir ACD, ironically, messed up—including entire plot points and devices—one would think that some brave soul would try to tackle the Canon without going so far as to alienate the stories from the original material.

Now, to be entirely fair, I do know of two people who have done so. Michael Hardwick’s The Revenge of the Hound takes place in 1902, uses the story “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax,” and serves to settle such points as Watson’s Edwardian marriage, Holmes’s refusal of knighthood, and his retirement. Marcia Wilson, known better to those of us on FF.N as aragonite, has her own cycle of books (only the “prequel,” You Buy Bones, published thus far) centered on Lestrade, his fellow Yarders, and Watson that fills in quite a lot of blanks in the Moriarty/Great Hiatus story arc in the Canon. Best of all, these two authors are magnificently faithful to the original stories.

And that’s where yours truly is working hard to be. You’ve seen me bandy around the terms “epic” and “saga” in conjunction with my series-in-progress, Deliver Us from Evil. I’ve also billed it as historical suspense/thriller, because these books are in no way actual mysteries. It’s the influence of Hollywood rearing its head, but it’s Hollywood with a distinct twist—I’m not veering away from the source material. In fact, I’m in bed with it.

Deliver Us from Evil, Book I: Mortality starts out with the beginning of the Culverton Smith Case. We meet Victor Savage, we watch him die, we watch Holmes himself fall prey to Smith’s cunning. We get that awful conversation between Holmes and Smith from Holmes’s point-of-view. And then we find out that Smith was being backed by Moriarty.

Behold—Mortality’s tie-in to the events of “The Final Problem.” At the outset of the novel, Holmes and Watson are less than seven months away from Reichenbach. Book II will cover Reichenbach and hopefully clear up some problems with the original story. Books III and IV will go into the trials and tribulations of Holmes, Watson, and Scotland Yard during the Great Hiatus. Book V will deliver a modified “Empty House” as well as a clearing-up of the mysterious figure known as Colonel Moriarty.

In regards to what I’m doing with Deliver Us from Evil, I like to think of Sherlock Holmes himself as an antique watch. The watch needs some dusting, some polish, has some parts that don’t work and need replacing… Sherlock Holmes is like that. He just needs a little TLC to shine brighter than ever—in his original glory. No steampunk tales or 21^st century retellings need apply to make Sherlock Holmes an action hero… or antihero, as the case may be.

There’s a reason why Sherlock Holmes has endured, why millions have loved him for one hundred and twenty years. There’s nothing wrong with falling in love with Rathbone’s WWII-era Holmes, RDJ’s steampunk Holmes, Cumberbatch’s modern Holmes… but understand that you’re not falling in love with the original. Because the original awaits adventure in a sitting room that’s gaslit and protected from Victorian smog…

Because the original lives in a world that is, for the most part, always 1895. And that, dear reader, is where Sherlock Holmes’s greatest adventures will always be.

Merged: Comparing Time-Travel Traits

This is not a post glorying about how Merged will be better than any other girl-travels-back-in-time story out there.  It’s simply making some points about how it’s different from other such stories (and why, therefore, you should read it).

1. The Heroine Is a Detective.

Now that’s a pretty big deal.  I’ve only ever seen one other story in which that was the case, and… the plot wasn’t really that similar to mine, which is good.  =)  More specifically, Kathleen Stewart is an independent investigative consultant, a.k.a. private consulting detective.  She is not an official part of law-enforcement, but neither does she choose to identify herself as a P.I.

2. The Novel Uses a Canonical Story.

You don’t see too much of that, though nomdeplume30’s awesome A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Set did actually send Jeremy Brett and David Burke to the events of “The Dancing Men.”  Anyway, Merged uses “The Final Problem” in a very important way—in fact, the modern-day characters go back about a year before the events of FINA.

3. The Method of Time-Travel Is a Machine, And the Government Is Involved.

A crucial plot-point.  Some time-travel stories basically use supernatural means to cross time, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  But the reason we have an adventure in the first place is because the CIA’s secret superweapon, a time-machine, is stolen by the (fictional) mastermind criminal of our day.

4. The Modern Big Bad Seeks Out Moriarty.

Yesss.  Indeed.

5. Both the Modern Heroine And the Modern Villain Are Sherlockians.

Sometimes the girl is a Sherlockian; sometimes she isn’t (though that doesn’t seem to be often).  But what you’ve never seen before is a modern bad-guy who’s actually a fan of Sherlock Holmes (no, Sherlock!Moriarty doesn’t count—different circumstances).

6. Sherlock Holmes Is the Heroine’s Hero.

Hero, role-model, and longtime fangirl crush—considering that Kathleen grew up with Jeremy Brett as her Holmes, you can’t blame her for that last bit.  The reason she’s a detective in the first place is because of Sherlock.  And despite her determination to make her hero see that she’s fully as capable as he is, she’s also not afraid to let him and Watson know that she’s a hardcore fangirl.

7. The Heroine Has Unique Characteristics.

+A: Heroines in these stories tend to be short, 5’4” or shorter.  Holmes is at least 6’ (commonly written as being taller).  Now, there’s always Han Solo and Princess Leia (6’1” & 5’3”) and Anakin and Padmé Skywalker (6’1” & 5’4”), and shorter females tend to be feistier than their taller counterparts.  But Kathleen Stewart is very Scotch-Irish and tall at 5’10”, which comes to her advantage in her line of work.  There’s less than half a foot in height between her and Sherlock.

+B: Heroines are either beautiful or just plain-looking.  Kathleen is neither—simply nicely attractive (although she can look gorgeous if she really dolls herself up).

+C: Heroines are often blue or green or hazel-eyed—anything but the very common brown.  Kathleen has brown eyes courtesy of her Spanish-Jewish mom, and the color works well.

+D: Time-travel heroines typically don’t have the same IQ as the Great Detective.  Kathleen does.  She’s as good as he is at what they do.  And yet, their personalities remain different…

+E: Heroines don’t usually have very much family and/or friends holding them back from staying in late Victorian London.  Kathleen, on the other hand, has parents she adores, eight brothers and sisters (the youngest of which is a full twenty years her junior), a team in the New York Police Department (NYC) with whom she loves to work, and an overall well-developed life that would be difficult to give up.  The two things she does not have are a husband and children of her own.

+F: Heroines tend to be in their early or mid-20s.  Kathleen is 32, the same age as Sherlock when they meet.

8. The Story Takes Place When Watson Is Married to Mary.

As far as I know, this has never been done before.  The heroine either arrives before Watson’s marriage or after the Great Hiatus.  (And there’s always a third bedroom created at 221B that was never mentioned in the Canon, since it’s now three people sharing rooms.  But in this story, since Watson is married and moved out, Kathleen takes his old bedroom.)

9. The Girl Could Hold Her Own Against Holmes in a One-on-One.

This is not Mary Sue-ism.  This is just being realistic.  Kathleen is a private detective who often gets herself deep in trouble.  Thus, she’s made sure she’s gotten the best combat training a civilian can have.  You’d better believe a person with that kind of training could take on the Great Detective.

10. The Girl’s Got a Gun.

Though she’s determined not to use it often in order to conserve on expensive ammo that can’t be replaced in 1890, Kathleen is a dead shot with her customary Glock 10mm (which is a very powerful handgun).  And she is.  Not.  Afraid.  To Use.  It.  Her view on killing and murder differs from the views of a lot of people today, and she has no moral compunction about killing a person to defend herself or others.

11. More Than Just Holmes & Watson Know.

Mary Watson, Inspector Lestrade (and possibly Gregson and maybe Hopkins), Wiggins, and maybe Mrs. Hudson all know the origin of the individualistic American woman living in 221B.  And, of course, Moriarty finds out.

12. “Just Like a Married Couple.”

Oh snap, I just lost half of you, right?  Well, if you’re willing to keep reading, yes, it’s Sherlock/OC—which, I’m well aware, isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.  But I hope to bring something fresh and new to the concept, partially based on the characters’ ages.  Sherlock is 32, old and mature enough to have learned some lessons about a few of the ideas he formed as a young man, and—contrary to popular belief—he is not a misogynist.  He simply doesn’t understand what makes women tick, and he doesn’t like it.  Kathleen, however, has an intelligence equaling his own, character traits not unlike Watson’s, and an overall mature but fun personality that enjoys sharp, witty banter.  He can be at ease around Kathleen, because she lets him be at ease.

Those are the twelve major points I can think of at the moment.  Now that I’m starting to actually post up experimental vignettes for Merged, you’ll probably be seeing more about it in the future.  (Although the very next post may well be about Deliver Us from Evil.)

And just to remind my readers… At the Mercy of the Mind is now available for purchase, and it's begging to be bought!  At least go check out the page!

Granada & GREE: Deeper Waters in the Climax

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Granada episode.

Months afterwards a curious newspaper cutting reached us from Buda-Pesth. It told how two Englishmen who had been traveling with a woman had met with a tragic end. They had each been stabbed, it seems, and the Hungarian police were of opinion that they had quarreled and had inflicted mortal injuries upon each other. Holmes, however, is, I fancy, of a different way of thinking, and holds to this day that, if one could find the Grecian girl, one might learn how the wrongs of herself and her brother came to be avenged.

—“The Greek Interpreter,” The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Granada takes this ending to GREE and turns it completely on its head.  It was one of the biggest liberties of the Adventures run (seasons 1 & 2)—the only other story changes comparable are the masterminding of Moriarty in REDH and the absence of Mary Watson.  In fact, the ending is really so dark on top of being non-canonical that it’s more in the style of the Memoirs run.

Personally, I always hated it that they turned Sophy Kratides into this coldhearted character who really doesn’t care that her brother has just been murdered by her fiancée.  I like the canon version much better.  Go sisterly justice!

But I was watching the last ten-ish minutes of the episode the other day (because I do love the Brothers Holmes in the climax), and I later realized something.

The climax is all about siblings.  Paul and Sophy Kratides, Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes.

Granada took a Sherlock Holmes adventure and turned it into a story about siblings.

There’s a sharp contrast drawn between the Kratides and the Holmes siblings.  On one hand, you have the brave, steadfast Paul who dies trying to protect his sister; and the sister herself, who says that she’d (in essence) be Harold Latimer’s slave, even though he murdered Paul.  On the other hand, you have the deliciously devious Mycroft, who acts as backup for Little Brother and Little Brother’s BFF, saving them from a potentially sticky situation; and Sherlock, who lets Big Brother (supposedly) sleep, safely away from the impending crossfire.  (In fact, it’s even entirely possible that the ever-perceptive Sherlock actually knows Mycroft is faking sleep and might go do a little legwork—not too much, of course—of his own.)

One set has a loving brother and an ungrateful sister; the other set is a team that banters/bickers a little but works quite well together.

It always pays to watch Holmes’s face.  Though Watson/Doyle often describes Holmes as cold and inscrutable, Jeremy Brett gives us a lovely glimpse into the mind of the Master via his facial expressions.  (This makes him gold for the avatar-makers, yours truly included.)  And Jeremy’s/Holmes’s face as Sophy claims she would have gone with Latimer despite his murdering her brother says it all.  Up until that point, he’s all cautious reserve, watching her, feeling her out.  But once he hears that damning statement, he literally draws himself up, his eyes flutter closed for a moment, and he settles once more into the man who will stop at nothing to see that justice is done.

Watson’s expression is clear shock at Sophy’s confessions, but it’s Holmes’s in the background that you really need to watch.

As she speaks, Sherlock is probably even thinking about his own brother, and contrasting his own family with this messed-up Grecian one.  No doubt he’s grateful that his own brother would never betray him as Sophy has done Paul, and thinking of how he in turn would never betray Mycroft.

Of course, the squee moment for Mycroft fans (myself included) comes when Mycroft shows up behind Kemp, holding him captive with the villain’s own gun that he nicked in a clever moment of purposely-lost balance.  (Though in a horrible blooper moment, Mycroft calls the little two-shot a revolver rather than a derringer.)  The Brothers Holmes and Watson share smiles with each other—you creeps ain’t got nothin’ on this trio.

Back at a train station, Sherlock makes a jesting remark about his lazy big brother going down a path of crime with him—probably just baiting him for a reaction.  Mycroft huffs that the only path he’s taking is the door to the Diogenes Club, and he’s shutting it behind him.  With that, he moves off—typical Holmes.

Sherlock and Watson are left behind, Watson wondering what will happen to Sophy.  Sherlock’s answer is very bitter: she will be released, since she has committed no crime.  He adds bitingly that there’s not a drop of compassion in her cold heart—ironically, Watson says things to roughly the same degree about Holmes himself throughout the Canon, though the “great heart” line in 3GAR might be seen as a ret-con to that.  But Sherlock’s answer might be seen as very revealing, that he detests cold-heartedness and family betrayal.  Here, he is valuing compassion and familial love as being virtues, indeed.

A few more thoughts before I wrap this up.  First of all, the rescue of Paul and Mr. Melas: in the canon, Paul dies shortly after the cavalry shows up; in the episode, he has been dead for four hours (and via sulfur poisoning rather than the canonical smoke inhalation).  Perhaps this change is a bit more sympathetic to Sherlock, who takes the failure hard—but even if he hadn’t been delayed by Gregson, he would still have gotten there too late.  Small comfort, but this time, there really wasn’t anything Sherlock could do.

Secondly, the action that precipitates the climax: Sherlock, Mycroft, and Watson getting aboard that train at all!  In the Canon, all we know is that the bad guys cleared off before the police could arrive—but in Granada’s take, Sherlock, characteristically, doesn’t settle for being beaten and gives chase.  Ironically, Granada’s version in that sense is probably a bit more faithful to Sherlock Holmes than his own author was!

Third, Sherlock has some really great moments in the train sequence, beginning with his urging Mycroft to hurry up (at which Mycroft retorts, “I’m not built for running, Sherlock!”  Lol, we could deduce that, Big Brother.).  Then there’s Sherlock smoking in the compartment when there’s a no-smoking sign on the window.  Ha-ha, I'm even anti-smoking, and I find that bit funny!  It’s just Sherlock ignoring the rules again as per usual—you have to pity his mom.  (Or envy her—I might actually envy her: life must have been pretty neat, raising Mycroft and Sherlock.)

Next, he throws open the B21 compartment door, and speaks to Sophy in her own language!  Obviously, he’s asking her if he take a seat, but…  Sherlock Holmes actually speaks Greek.  How awesome is that?  He shoots VR into the wall, tells you your life-story from infancy, wears an awesome (if, admittedly, monochromatic) wardrobe, beats up perverts, rides horses, plays a Strad, assumes whatever identity he wants to and does it flawlessly, bounds effortlessly over couches, unbends iron pokers, has perfect diction, possesses a delightfully sardonic wit, is absolutely gorgeous… and he speaks Greek.  (And it took me several minutes to finish that list—Sherlock Holmes: HIS AWESOMENESS—lol.)  Remind me WHY this guy is still single?

…Oh, right.  No woman will put up with him.  Can I volunteer?  I grant you I’m a little young, but I’m certainly legally old enough…

Ahem, anyway, last item, and this is (for me) his Crowning Moment of Awesome.  He draws his revolver and cocks the hammer.  He’s deadly serious, and if push comes to shove, he won’t hesitate to shoot Latimer.  Of course, he doesn’t really have to, turns out, as Latimer, in a stupid move, tries to jump off the train and ends up getting literally ripped off by another passing train.  Pretty dark.  What is perhaps darker still is that Sherlock holds back first Sophy, then Watson, from helping Latimer—though you can see something akin to regret in Sherlock’s eyes after the grisly deed is done.  Could it be that Sherlock didn’t want to risk Latimer getting past them and away after being pulled back into the train?  Or worse, actually wounding or killing one of them in a struggle?  It’s possible.

And at any rate, despite the definite gruesomeness of Latimer’s death, he did deserve it for what he had done to Paul.

So, there you have it, folks: Granada’s “Greek Interpreter.”  A tale of intrigue, cruelty, betrayal, and ultimately, family.  All in all, it’s a good adaptation.  Next time I do a Granada review, I promise it’ll be SCAN—maybe Monday.