The first trailer for the Special has been released. You can see it here.

Still no clues as to when it will be aired, though we assume it will either be at Christmas or in the early New Year 2016.

The second trailer is out: here.

Moffat has apparently said that Christmas Day is unlikely as a broadcast date, so we're assuming New Year's Day is more probable.

I can't get excited about it. The whole different thing about Sherlock is that it's a modern-day take. With this Victorian Special apparently being a complete stand-alone with no connection to the modern day characters or to what's been happening to them, it seems to be nothing more than Mofftiss writing fanfic of their own fanfic.

Unless modern-day Sherlock opens his eyes at the end of the episode and we realise that he has 'mind-palaced' the whole thing, I can't see the point of it.

Maybe he meets the Doctor and takes a little trip back in time with the TARDIS? They could meet Jago and Litefoot too, for good measure.

Given that some of the dialogue has a post-modern feel to it, I'm wondering if it will turn out to be Watson having written a recent adventure, but setting it in the past for... reasons.

Or Sherlock could be sick, or injured, and dreaming the whole thing in some sort of coma.

KAM, you might be assuming that Moffat is capable of writing non-POMO dialogue. I'm not so sure...

Yeah, after posting I remembered the Paternoster Gang & realized the Moff knows nothing of Victorian times.

And half the problem with me not being excited about the Spesh is that - as demonstrated above - both the fandom and casual viewers are consistently coming up with much better ideas about how it will be connected to the modern series. Unfortunately I fear that Mofftiss' insistence that it's a stand-alone will end up being the truth and therefore render the entire hour and a half pointless.

The Special airs on 1 January both in the UK and in the US. Some other countries may also air it at the same time. Its title is 'The Abominable Bride,' abbreviated by the fandom to 'TAB' or, by adding in 'Special' to the beginning, 'STAB.'

Additionally, it will also be shown in cinemas worldwide. In the UK and in some countries in western Europe it will be shown at the same time as it airs on the BBC, 8.30 p.m. In other countries it will be shown on 2 January. The cinema broadcasts will include a couple of behind-the-scenes shorts (a guided tour of 221B, and a Making Of) which won't be aired on the TV. Presumably these extras will also appear on the DVD.

I've bought a ticket to my nearest cinema. Hopefully watching it on a huge screen with excited fans around me might make me feel better about it than watching at home on my own.

But I'm still not looking forward to it.

Trailer #3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nJbr3XpppA

Good gods. At this rate we'll have seen the entire episode before it airs!

Save all the bits and pieces and assemble the show yourself! It's the latest in interactive TV! :-D

To my amazement, this actually got a theatrical showing here in Korea.

I really liked the bit where Sherlock mansplains feminism to a room full of suffragettes.

Of course, most guys see words like "mansplain" and "MRAs" as attacks on them. It's just a dreadful shame that feminism will need male support to succeed.

Must be irritating as hell to have one's own specialty explained to them by someone who thinks they know better just by virtue of being a man.

So, how DID the special tie in with the modern series? Or was it strictly stand alone as Moffat said it would be?

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It wasn't a standalone. The Victorian story is all happening in Sherlock's head while he's off his head on drugs on the plane in the present day.

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I haven't had time to prepare my comments on the episode yet - although I can sum it up in one sentence:

I LOVED IT!!

The transcript (currently the first two thirds, with the final part hopefully going up tomorrow) is here.

Nice.

A bit tough to nitpick since most of it is All In Sherlock's Head. Heck I was thinking the whole Sherlock digging up the grave was a nit since I believe they do have machines and/or people to do that, but since it didn't really happen...

NANJAO. Been recently watching Blackadder on DVD so I recognized Tim McInnery almost straight off the bat.

As Keith said above, an “it was all in his head” episode is more difficult to nitpick ... not that that will stop me! Also, I’ve got many positive things to say about this Special, which I thought was very special indeed.

This was so much better than I had anticipated, thankfully. Even before we switched to modern times I was enjoying it; and when it did come into the present ... well, it’s a good job that I didn’t go to see it at the cinema (the weather was awful and I had a sudden fear that the cab driver might still be hungover from the New Year celebrations the night before!) because the shriek of delight that I let out would have been embarrassing even in a room full of Sherlock fans!

If this is what Moffat and Gatiss can do when they write an episode together, I’m really looking forward to the one that they’re doing for Season 4. I actually wish that they would always write the episodes together rather than Steven writing one, Mark writing one, and them only collaborating on the remaining episode. I hope they’re saving the joint episode until last!

Writing the transcript was also a joy because the sound quality was phenomenal this time. Season 3 was a nightmare in comparison: I had to rewind lines so often, sometimes many times for a single line, to try and make out what people were saying, but for this episode I hardly ever had to rewind for comprehension reasons, and hence got the transcript done in the fastest time ever.

Also the film quality was stunning. If the Director of Photography doesn’t get at least a BAFTA nomination, there is no justice. The whole episode – in both eras – was beautiful to watch.


In the same way that I did in the transcript, I’ll refer to our heroes by their surnames when they’re Victorian and by their first names when they’re in the present.

A couple of the ‘Story so far’ clips were shown under the wrong year, and I’m not sure it was a good idea to include the Mind Palace clip of the Houses of Parliament exploding because that would have confused anyone coming to the series for the first time.

Then again, the whole episode confused the heck out of some new viewers, and indeed many of the casual viewers. This was definitely aimed more at the regular repeat viewers! I’ve had at least three people in my office come to me and say, “I liked it ... but I didn’t quite get it.” Interestingly, considering how frequently there have been comments during the last year or two that Moffat has been writing Sherlockian lines into episodes of Doctor Who, one of those colleagues said she felt like she’d been watching an episode of Doctor Who instead of Sherlock.

The years given onscreen were the years that the seasons were shown, not necessarily when some of the episodes actually took place.

The year-counter which flicks back in time fades out around 1884, though according to the canon Watson met Holmes in 1881. After they’ve met in this episode, the rest of the story takes place in late 1894 and in 1895.

The DVD subtitles are once again shockingly bad. I really wish they would use the same subtitles as the BBC, which still have some errors but nowhere near as many and are often more forgivable. When Stamford meets Watson in the street, according to the DVD subtitles he tells him, “We were at Bath together,” instead of “We were at Bart’s together.” [I must admit I did wonder whether St Bartholomew’s Hospital would have been referred to as ‘Bart’s’ back in Victorian times, but this line may be a direct quote from the Doyle canon.]

In one of the DVD Extras the documentary-makers filmed David Nellist doing a different take during the Stamford/Watson meeting, saying, “Where have you been? You’re as brown as a nut!” instead of “You’re as thin as a rake.” The ‘brown as a nut’ line appeared in the original Conan Doyle story A Study in Scarlet. Presumably there was a reason why they recorded both lines and then decided to go with the non-canonical one.

[ETA: I checked the beginning of A Study in Scarlet and Watson himself refers to “Bart’s,” so that’s not an error. Additionally, Stamford’s words to Watson are, “You’re thin as a lath and as brown as a nut,” so again the line in the Special is almost canonical, just replacing ‘lath,’ which nobody these days would know the meaning of, with ‘rake.’]

It was difficult to see but I was delighted to have it pointed out to me later that Stamford and Watson do indeed have their drink in the Criterion as per the canon. The bar’s name is painted on the windows behind them but is mostly blocked by other patrons. The actual Criterion has now closed down, so this was presumably filmed in Bristol where the external scene was shot.

When Stamford and Watson are outside the room in which Holmes is flogging the corpse, in some shots there’s another room behind them in which a man is standing with his back to them. He has thick dark hair and looks remarkably like modern-Sherlock wearing one of his blue dressing gowns. Nobody yet knows whether this was done deliberately by the film crew or was just an extra who had accidentally been dressed a bit inappropriately.

Aaaaand this fangirl faints as Holmes delivers the following lines – “I did. I mentioned to Stamford this morning I was in need of a fellow lodger. Now he appears after lunch in the company of a man of military aspect with a tan and recent injury, both suggestive of the campaign in Afghanistan and an enforced departure from it” – all on one breath.

I really liked the new Victorian-style opening credits, both the visuals and the music.

I loved the way they changed Speedy’s café into Speedwell’s Restaurant and Tea Rooms!

The whole opening scene in the hallway of 221B was fabulous, and set up the episode beautifully. It’s a real shame that it was released as one of the main trailers for the Special, however, because by the time the episode actually aired I was bored of having seen it so many times.

The boy who played Archie in The Sign of Three is renamed Billy here because there was a canonical Billy in three of the original stories. He was Holmes’ page in those stories. The character isn’t named onscreen here but is credited as such at the end.

I like how the stag’s head on the wall of 221B’s sitting room has an ear trumpet hanging from its antlers instead of the headphones which sit on the modern-day bison’s head!

Great lines:
HOLMES (yelling down the stairs): Mrs Hudson, there is a woman in my sitting room! Is it intentional?

HOLMES (to Watson): Give [Mrs Hudson] some lines. She’s perfectly capable of starving us.

LESTRADE: I just came up. Mrs Hudson didn’t seem to be talking.
HOLMES: I fear she’s branched into literary criticism by means of satire.

LESTRADE: Merry Christmas?
HOLMES: Merry Christmas.
WATSON: Merry Christmas.
MRS WATSON: Merry Christmas.
HOLMES: Thank God that’s over.

There are a couple of bad cuts between shots of the Bride firing into the street where she seems to change direction without moving. Also, when she lifts the pistol towards her mouth she’s facing to the right but when she pulls the trigger she’s facing forward.

Great lines:
WATSON: Holmes, just one thing? (He looks down at his own clothes.) Tweeds, in a morgue?
HOLMES: Needs must when the devil drives, Watson.

It’s not easy to see (or wasn’t until the online fandom spotted it) but when Lestrade is telling the story of the Bride – and also later in the episode when Lady Carmichael is telling her story – Watson takes notes holding his pen in his right hand. Martin Freeman (and, by extension, modern-day John) is left-handed, so this was clearly done deliberately. In Victorian times, naturally-left-handed children were frequently forced to use their right hand, and so a million Brownie points go to whoever knew that and pointed it out to Martin.

After the men have left the flat, Mary petulantly sits down in John’s armchair. There’s a lovely little musical sting at that moment which is a revamp of what I call the ‘John alone’ music: a very specific and instantly-recognisable four-chord run which has played throughout the previous three seasons when John’s at his most lonely or distressed.

There are some lovely moments throughout the episode where it takes a second viewing to realise their significance, for instance Holmes’ repeated statements that he’ll need to go deep into himself to solve the case; and also the moment when Holmes asks who’s on mortuary duty, Lestrade says, “You know who,” and Holmes says in exasperation, “Always him.” We assume he means Anderson, especially when that’s the next person we see, and it’s not really until going back for a rewatch that you realise that Holmes and Lestrade were talking about Hooper.

Loo Brealey made a fairly passable man, though her eyes gave her away more than anything.

Holmes’ disparaging rejection of Watson’s “Could it be twins?” theory has encouraged much online speculation that it will indeed turn out to be Moriarty’s twin (with Janine still the favourite!) who is masterminding Jim’s return in the modern day.

When Holmes looked at the ‘YOU’ painted in blood on the morgue wall and asked, “How could he survive?” I gasped excitedly and bounced on the sofa because to me it was the first real hint that the episode might return to the present time.

They missed a trick with the ‘YOU’ on the wall. While I was writing the transcript I paused the recording over every sight of the wall, looking to see whether they had made the blood trails under the letters look like ‘IOU’ and was rather disappointed that they hadn’t, because it would have made Holmes’ “How could he survive?” query all the more relevant.

I’m sure that the production team will argue that spelling in newspaper articles wasn’t as good in Victorian times and that that was why one of their headlines read “BODY OF SEA CAPTIN FOUND IN CHAPEL.” If it hadn’t been for their appalling spelling in modern-day newspapers in earlier seasons, I might even have believed them!

Some online theories have said that Watson’s maid Jane, with her dark curly hair, her snarky attitude and particularly her statement, “Just observing, sir,” is actually Sherlock inserting himself into that scene. It’s a bit of a stretch, because although it does seem odd that we should see scenes where Holmes(/Sherlock) isn’t present, we also later see Mycroft and Mary at the Diogenes Club, and Watson downstairs in the Carmichael house while Holmes is upstairs.

The British Sign Language which Holmes and Watson use in the reception of the Diogenes Club is mostly accurate because Ben and Martin were taught it by an expert. I particularly love how Holmes, signing Wilder’s name, bares his teeth and makes clawing motions with his hands! And I imagine that there are already T-shirts out there reading “I am glad you liked my potato”!

Wilder is named after Billy Wilder who was the director of Mofftiss’ favourite Holmesian film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

Was the thumb-up signal in existence in Victorian times?

Well done to the set dressers who remembered – for a very brief overhead shot amongst all the food in the Stranger’s Room – that Sherlock(/Holmes) takes his coffee black.

Some sections of the fandom are going ballistic with their theories that the bet between Holmes and his brother about how soon Mycroft will die – coupled with modern Mycroft’s “I’ll always be there for you” line but also his request to John to look after Sherlock – is foreshadowing that modern Mycroft will die in Season 4. Before the Special aired, the more popular theory was that he’ll die in Season 5 but now the date has been moved forward!

Great lines (after Mycroft has told of the threat from an invisible enemy):
WATSON: Socialists?
MYCROFT HOLMES: Not socialists, Doctor, no.
WATSON: Anarchists?
MYCROFT HOLMES: No.
WATSON: The French? The suffragists?
MYCROFT HOLMES: Is there any large body of people you’re not concerned about?
WATSON (still putting forward suggestions): The Scots.
HOLMES: Scots?!
MYCROFT HOLMES: Are you aware of recent theories concerning what is known as ‘paranoia’?
WATSON: Ooh, sounds Serbian.

How did ‘the Bride’ attract Sir Eustace’s attention, waking him up the first time and getting him to the window, and then actually getting him to leave the house and follow her into the maze on the second occasion?

I thought that Tim McInnery sounded a bit too Captain Darling after he’d seen the Bride the first time and broke down in front of his wife.

Can Victorian Janine fake a very good English accent, or was someone else hiding nearby in the maze to speak her “This night, Eustace Carmichael, you will die” line? Also, how did she drift forward towards him and Lady C without moving her feet; and how did she manage to vanish from what looked like a dead end? The women can’t have been using the Pepper’s Ghost trick so close to the Carmichaels because surely they would have seen the pane of glass. I also initially wondered what would have happened if Eustace hadn’t fainted before the Bride finished lifting her veil, but then realised that he probably hadn’t seen Emelia during the ten years since she’d married Ricoletti and would be so terrified that it wouldn’t dawn on him that she looked different.

The film crew intended to film the maze scenes at night but were forced to do it during a very bright sunny day (eventually ... It poured with rain for ages in the morning before drying up). The lighting does look a bit odd (as in, bright) at times but mostly they did a pretty good job of making it look like night time.

Great lines:
HOLMES: Since when have you had any kind of imagination?
WATSON: Perhaps since I convinced the reading public that an unprincipled drug addict is some kind of gentleman hero.
HOLMES: Yes, now you come to mention it, that was quite impressive.

I love how, when Sir Eustace gets angry with Holmes and looks like he might attack him, Watson steps closer to his friend, ready to protect him if necessary.

At the beginning of the scene in the greenhouse in the grounds of the Carmichael house, Watson grunts and stands up from some lower position. At this point, in her notes to me, one of my beta team made some positively filthy suggestions about what Watson had been doing in that lower position. I’m so proud of her. ;-)

The cutaway photograph of Irene Adler looked far too much like the modern-day version in terms of what she was wearing. I wish they’d dressed it up a bit to make it look more Victorian.

Great lines:
WATSON: Well, you must have had ...
HOLMES: Had what?
WATSON: You know.
HOLMES: No.
WATSON: Experiences.
HOLMES (angrily): Pass me your revolver. I have a sudden need to use it.
WATSON: D*mn it, Holmes, you are flesh and blood. You have feelings. You have ... you must have ... impulses.
HOLMES (through his teeth): Dear Lord. I have never been so impatient to be attacked by a murderous ghost.

Again the DVD subtitles let down the audience which needs them, and at a particularly critical moment. When Holmes hears scrabbling claws and the sound of a dog whimpering in pain, instead of the subs showing him say, “Redbeard?” they say, “Made me?”

The women needed an awful lot to go right for their plan to work, like Holmes and Watson not running closer to the Pepper’s Ghost projection of the Bride and seeing the glass, and Watson not being more brave and tackling the Bride behind him in the hallway, or indeed Watson doing as he was told and staying near the window so that Hooper-Bride couldn’t escape.

The reveal of the MISS ME? note on Eustace’s chest was awesome – though I again expected that it would say “IOU” – but then the scene was completely ruined for me by the shot of Holmes appearing to drift downstairs with the camera very close to him. At that point I cracked up laughing and wondered how no-one on the film crew had ever seen Mitchell and Webb’s The Surprising Adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar sketches, and I was sorely tempted to start loudly singing The Devil’s Galop. But maybe that was just me ...

The scene in the Diogenes Club with the Holmes brothers was beautiful. The lighting was just amazing; and Mycroft’s “Have you made a list?” query was all the more shocking on second and subsequent viewings.

Great lines:
LESTRADE: He said there’s only one suspect and then he just walks away, and now he won’t explain.
MRS HUDSON: Which is strange, because he likes that bit.
LESTRADE: Said it was so simple, I could solve it.
MRS HUDSON: I’m sure he was exaggerating.
LESTRADE: What’s he doing, do you think?
MRS HUDSON: He says he’s waiting.
LESTRADE: For what?
MRS HUDSON: The devil. I wouldn’t be surprised. We get all sorts here.

The Holmes/Moriarty confrontation in 221B was phenomenal. The scripting was amazing and the scene was stunningly filmed. And Andrew Scott was so awesome that I said ruefully to myself, “Poor Martin Freeman – he’ll never win a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA for this show while Andrew’s around.”

Benedict wore a wig for all the modern-day scenes because his hair wasn’t long enough to coax into the SherCurls. Most of the time it looked convincing, apart from the very first clear sight of it from behind his seat when Sherlock was sitting in the plane as the flight attendant approached him. In fact, to me it looked so phoney that I thought for a moment that the camera was going to move around to the front and show that it was a life-sized dummy of Sherlock with a wig plonked on top and that Sherlock had somehow escaped and parachuted out of the plane before it landed!

The moment when the female airline captain came to talk to Sherlock was rather crowbarred in, just to show that she was the image of Lady Carmichael (and therefore that Sherlock had used her image when creating Lady C in his Mind Palace). Surely no captain would ask their passenger if they’d had a “pleasant flight” when they were only in the air for ten minutes! Additionally, the similarity between the two characters wasn’t even noticed by most people until it was pointed out online afterwards!

For reasons which don’t currently seem to make sense, Mycroft’s tie is different to the one he was wearing on the tarmac at the end of His Last Vow, and yet this is meant to be only a few minutes later. Also he is wearing a similar but not identical scarf to last time. A large section of the fandom, including me, believes that both of the first two modern-day scenes were in Sherlock’s head and didn’t actually happen. Obviously the second scene wasn’t real, when Sherlock was digging up Emelia’s grave, but we feel that the first scene didn’t really happen either. There are two reasons for this: firstly it seems unlikely that Sherlock would fall back into his Mind Palace in mid-conversation on the plane; and secondly he refers only to “Ricoletti and his abominable wife,” yet shortly afterwards Mary says she’s looking up “Emelia Ricoletti.” That could have been a scripting error, or Mary could – in effect – have googled ‘+Ricoletti +wife’ and got a hit, but it does seem to hint that this isn’t really happening. But the final modern-day scene does seem to be real and yet Mycroft is still wearing the ‘wrong’ tie and scarf. We wait to see whether this was an error by the wardrobe department (or they’d lost the original tie and scarf) or will turn out to be significant in the next season.

[ETA: At a Sherlock Convention in London in September 2016, Mark Gatiss admitted that the incorrect tie and scarf were a total FUBAR by the costume department. He said that when he was dressing for the first of the airfield scenes he thought that the tie was wrong but the continuity supervisor insisted it was correct. By the time he had filmed the scene and someone finally said, “Oops ...” it was too late to do anything about it.]

Another reason why the first scene seems unlikely to have really happened is Mary’s amazing ability to hack into MI5’s archive using just her mobile phone. It seems more likely to be Sherlock’s indication of how much he acknowledges her skills, with him over-emphasising them in his fantasy. (And if he knows just how good she is, does this mean that he sneaked a read of her AGRA pen-drive at some time?) On top of that, no matter how upset John was on the tarmac earlier, would Doctor Watson really have not noticed that Sherlock was stoned? (Then again, this is the doctor who didn’t notice that Sherlock’s heart was failing while he sat opposite him during the Watsons’ ‘little domestic’ in 221B in His Last Vow!) However, it seems more likely that Sherlock only took the drugs after getting Mycroft’s phonecall, and that Mycroft rifled through Sherlock’s pockets for the list when he was found unconscious after the plane landed.

Great lines:
WATSON: Then you would be reminded ... quite forcibly ... which of us is a soldier and which of us a drug addict.
HOLMES: You’re not a soldier. You are a doctor.
WATSON: No, an Army doctor, which means I could break every bone in your body, while naming them.

I’m assuming that all the dressing in robes and hoods and chanting in Latin was just Sherlock’s fanciful invention, not based on any truth except the fact that many women had used the Bride story to cover their own murder of their husband. When Moriarty later said, “We don’t really have ... special outfits,” I originally thought he only meant the wedding dress but realised later that he was talking about the whole scene.

Great lines:
MRS WATSON: I’ve been making enquiries. Mr Holmes asked me.
WATSON: Holmes, how could you?!
MRS WATSON: No, not him. The clever one.

And I love how it takes Holmes a moment to realise what she just said!

Great lines:
WATSON: I thought I was losing you. I thought perhaps we were neglecting each other.
HOLMES: Well, you’re the one who moved out.
WATSON: I was talking to Mary.

If Emelia didn’t have long to live, it’s lucky for her that she and her friends found a lookalike body while Emelia was still healthy enough to carry out her plan - and just in time for her wedding anniversary too.

I didn’t see a problem with Holmes explaining in front of the women what they had done and why they’d done it, nor his general explanation of how women were being treated. I saw it as him telling Watson in particular, especially when Watson has shown himself to be a ‘typical’ Victorian man in the way he treats his own wife and his servant. In fact, Watson’s quite lucky that Mary hadn’t joined the group as well!

In the cast list at the end, Janine is named as ‘Janine Donlevy.’ People with sharp eyes noticed that in His Last Vow her newspaper interviews about her relationship with Sherlock named her as ‘Janine Hawkins.’ It probably suggests that this Victorian version is – or was – married.

I wonder whether Sherlock will be kinder to Molly (and to Janine if he meets her again) in the future now that he has acknowledged to himself how badly he has treated them?

When typing the transcript I hesitated for a long time at Holmes’ line, “This room is full of brides,” and was unsure whether or not to put a capital letter on ‘brides.’ If he meant to say, ‘Brides,’ with a capital ‘b,’ Holmes was perhaps implying that every woman in the room had killed her own husband because of his treatment of her, but that’s an awful lot of murders and it might be that some/all of them had ‘just’ assisted the women who did use the ghost Bride to dispatch their husband.

There’s been some online criticism of the writers for their implication that murdering a bullying husband was a perfect okay thing to do. I don’t see it that way – it’s not the writers’ approval we’re seeing; it’s Sherlock’s. Being the sociopath that he is, I can absolutely see that he wouldn’t disapprove. This is, after all, the man who – only a week ago – murdered Magnussen primarily because he was bullying his best friend. (Though what that says about how Sherlock sees John as incapable of dealing with his own problems while women are perfectly capable of taking their own action is open to further discussion ...!)

Moriarty says, “Speaking as a criminal mastermind, we don’t really have gongs, or special outfits.” The DVD subtitles had this as “... we don’t really have guns ...” Oh, really?! Then what did he just blow his own head off with?!

Great lines:
JOHN: When you’re ready to go to work, give me a call. I’m taking Mary home.
MARY (instantly): You’re what?
JOHN: Mary’s taking me home.
MARY: Better.

I love Holmes’(/Sherlock’s) exasperation when he transitions from the grave to the Reichenbach Falls instead of waking up.

I’m kind of surprised that the writers included Moriarty’s lines, “Too deep, Sherlock. Way too deep,” and “Congratulations. You’ll be the first man in history to be buried in his own Mind Palace,” because it would have alerted the few people who hadn’t already made the connection (*coughs*me*coughs*) that the basic concept of this entire episode was a rip-off of Inception!

Holmes tells Moriarty, “When it comes to the matter of unarmed combat on the edge of a precipice, you’re going in the water, short-arse,” but then fights like a girl and shows none of his baritsu skills whatsoever. Presumably this is Sherlock’s mind acknowledging that he’s only truly strong when he has John by his side.

Great lines:
WATSON: I’m a storyteller. I know when I’m in one.
HOLMES: Of course. Of course you do, John.
WATSON: So what’s he like? The other me, in the other place?
HOLMES: Smarter than he looks.
WATSON: Pretty damned smart, then.
HOLMES: Pretty damned smart.
MORIARTY: Urgh. Why don’t you two just elope, for God’s sake?

The entire ending of that scene is marvellous: John taking over from Moriarty as the most crucial person in Sherlock’s life, and by being the person who kills Moriarty instead of letting Sherlock do it; and the implication that Holmes doesn’t throw his deerstalker away – he tosses it over the side and then follows it, finally accepting that he will always be the detective with the funny hat, and that it doesn’t matter if that’s how the rest of the world perceives him.

I suspect that Sherlock’s demand that Mycroft sort out a pardon for him is the last we’ll hear of it, but if he could have done that, he’d have done it already rather than sending his brother to his probable death. And you simply can’t arrange a pardon for a murderer even if you are the British government.

The writing in Mycroft’s notebook has come under massive scrutiny by the fandom, of course. The numbers underneath Redbeard’s name – 611174 – have been googled to death and two possible meanings are that they’re the number given to a particular disease which kills dogs, and to a (different) particular human disease which some fans suspect Mycroft will turn out to be suffering from. Other people have suggested that it may actually read 6/1/74. Canonically, Sherlock’s birthday is 6 January and in this version he could well have been born in 1974. However, I can’t see any reason why Mycroft would need to write down his brother’s date of birth.

Under the number is “Vernet?” which probably is a hark-back to Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter where Holmes says, “my grandmother... was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.” There’s also a diagonal matrix; and some mathematical notation, which is apparently Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism.

Also, double underlined, are the words “Scarlet Roll M” where the rest of the final word is lost over the edge of the frame. It didn’t take long for fandom to decide that the final word must be ‘Mop’ and that ‘roll mop’ is made from herring. So Scarlet Roll Mop = Red Herring. *shakes fist at Mofftiss*!

I adore Sherlock’s quick guilty glance at John after he says, “I just went to the trouble of an overdose to prove it.”

In the final Victorian scene, Watson refers sceptically to Holmes’ vision of “Flying machines; these, er, telephone contraptions ...” I’m too lazy to look it up but weren’t telephones just coming into more common use in the 1890s? I’m fairly sure that in the audio commentary to A Study in Pink one of the writers said that Doyle’s Holmes was always a man of his time and used all the most modern technology, and therefore would have had a telephone as soon as it was commonly available.

Oh, that last scene – of Victorian Holmes looking out of the window at modern-day London – made me weep.

Going through the end credits, I found a character named Giles who I simply can’t find in the actual episode. He’s played by Damian Samuels, who also played Mr Lloyd in the Doctor Who episodes “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances” but despite much peering at the screen by me and my beta team, we can’t track him down. He’s not the newsvendor, who gets his own credit; he’s not the flight attendant (after searching for photos of that actor, we discovered that the attendant is called ‘Diamond’); and none of the other incidental characters look like Damian’s photos. It’s possible that a scene was cut at the last minute and they didn’t take out the credit at the end. Either that, or they hired him simply to call out “Help! Murder! Murder!” offscreen in the flashback to Emelia shooting her husband!

ETA: Four months later, I finally found him! On the fourth or fifth full re-watch, I realised that Giles might be the first man who Emelia fires at from the balcony. He turns and begs her, “No! Please!” before she turns her attention to others in the street. With a lot of hair, a beard and a hat, it’s difficult to be 100% certain that that’s Damian Samuels, but he seems to be about the right size and looks close enough to resembling the Doctor Who character that I do think it’s him.
I’m impressed that Mofftiss gave him a name, though, for just two words. Calling him ‘Man’ would probably have done!


The whole episode was bloody marvellous. And only a year to wait until the next one! After the amount of time we usually have to wait between seasons, this gap’ll be a doddle in comparison. (*crosses fingers and hopes she hasn’t just jinxed it.* The filming doesn’t start until April!)

Was the thumb-up signal in existence in Victorian times?

From Wikipedia

The thumbs up signal, and it's thumbs down opposite, have existed since at least ancient Rome times. In medieval times it was customarily used to seal business transactions and eventually came to signify agreement and good disposition. The actual term "thumbs up" entered the english language during World War II, being first used on a postcard series produced during that time.

I’m too lazy to look it up but weren’t telephones just coming into more common use in the 1890s?

Yes they were, not yet very widespread, but they were fast getting there, especially after 1894 when Bell's patents expired.

Ah, thanks for both of these.

When Watson is revealed to be standing not far from Holmes and Moriarty at the Falls, there's another four-chord 'John alone' musical sting, but this time it's more uptempo and possibly in a more major key, signifying that neither John nor Sherlock are ever alone while they've got each other.

When Moriarty, in the Bride's wedding dress, talks to Holmes in the crypt, it appears that Janine is very prominently in the foreground over his right shoulder (when I say 'prominently,' she's actually quite a lot out of focus but I'm fairly sure it's her). If it is her, I'm pretty convinced that that's some kind of foreshadowing and that the director didn't just randomly choose Yasmin rather than Loo or one of the extras to stand there.

I kind of hope, however, that Janine doesn't turn out to be Jim's twin. For one thing, it's too obvious; and unless the Holmes boys are still playing the long game like they were in Reichenbach, I can't imagine how neither of them knew/worked out who she was long ago.

There has been plenty of meta and fanfic around the idea that Janine wriggled her way into Mary's affections in order to get closer to Sherlock but again, Mary's been a spy for years and is unlikely to have been fooled in that way. Additionally, unless Mary is the mastermind behind all this, Janine must have befriended Mary once she started dating John because she (Janine) suspected that Sherlock was still alive and wanted to be 'in position' when he returned. It isn't made clear how long John and Mary were together before Sherlock came back (John says only "we haven’t known each other for a long time") but to get from new friend to Maid of Honour at the wedding in probably less than two years is a bit of a stretch.

And finally, if Janine's out to 'get' Sherlock for bringing about the death of her brother, why hasn't she dealt with him long ago? Why fake her friendship with Mary and her girlfriend-ship with Sherlock - and oh-so-coincidentally be the PA and innocent victim at CAM's office - when she could have dealt with Sherlock (and/or Mycroft) at any time?

However, I'm now starting to wonder whether the "it's never twins" line might mean the return of The Other One, as mentioned by Mycroft at the end of His Last Vow ("I am not given to outbursts of brotherly compassion. You know what happened to the other one.") I know that Mark Gatiss threw in that line at the last minute, but I can't imagine he would have done so unless he'd had an idea for a future episode, so maybe the 'other one' will turn out to be Mycroft's or Sherlock's twin who was estranged from the family years ago and has been running the Moriarty organisation all along?! (Jeez - I kind of hope not. It sounds really corny!)