Musings on Johnlock and Moftisson's Use of Dialogue from ACD Canon
I recently finished rereading the original ACD Sherlock Holmes stories, and I had a lot of fun spotting places where the BBC Sherlock writers lifted dialogue directly from the original canon and incorporated it into the show. For example, this exchange between Sherlock and Moriarty during the pool scene in TGG…
Moriarty: I would try to convince you, but everything I have to say has already crossed your mind. Sherlock: Probably my answer has crossed yours.
…comes from Holmes and Moriarty’s first meeting in “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” with only very slight modifications.
Moriarty: All that I have to say has already crossed your mind. Holmes: Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.
Another one of my favorites might be when Sherlock says “Sorry, I never could resist a touch of drama” to Mary in the Leinster Gardens scene in HLV. This line comes from “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” where Holmes shocks his client by revealing the missing treaty from under a serving dish and then says “…Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.” (The Sherlock writers liked this one so much that they gave it a callback in TAB. In the church scene, Sherlock strikes a gong to catch the women’s attention and then says “Sorry, I could never resist a gong, or a touch of the dramatic.”)
There are lots of other examples!
What really caught my eye during my reread, though, were places where it seemed like the show writers lifted lines from the ACD stories, but then changed them in some way or incorporated them into the show in ways that changed their meanings or significance. I think there are a few places where they did this and perhaps made the dialogue more…Johnlocky.
There are four passages in particular that I’m thinking about. I would love to hear your thoughts on these!
“Oscillation on the pavement always means there’s a love affair.” In TSOT, Sherlock says this to John as John looks out the window of the 221B sitting room and watches a potential client trying to make up her mind about whether to come in.
Sherlock: She’s a client. She’s boring. I’ve seen those symptoms before. Oscillation on the pavement always means there’s a love affair.
This comes from the ACD story “A Case of Identity”:
Holmes: I have seen those symptoms before. Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de cœur.
The literal situation in the original story is very similar; Holmes is looking out the window of the sitting room and watching a potential client try to make up her mind about whether to come in. In the show, however, this line is much more significant than just an observation about a client. As many of us have recognized, in the show there’s some very important subtext going on because this is a reference to John’s oscillation on the pavement in TEH, when John came to visit Sherlock after their disastrous reunion but hesitated outside the door.
(gifs from @afishlearningpoetry, here)
So in the show, because the writers also included John’s oscillation on the pavement in the previous episode, this line becomes much more important. The text of the line itself is pretty much the same as in the original story and appears in a very similar immediate context, but the show writers changed the broader context to modify its meaning and significance. Now it’s about Sherlock and John and full of Johnlock subtext.
I also think the fact that we’re talking about a love affair is significant. This tells us that John feels torn between Mary and Sherlock after Sherlock’s return in TEH and he’s not really sure what to do about it. I wonder if this might be a clue that John was already thinking about cheating on Mary with Sherlock in TEH—we saw that he was prepared to do this a few months later during the stag night in TSOT. Read another way, perhaps the reference to an “affair” here indicates that John is already cheating on Sherlock by being with Mary, because the real love story in this show is always the one between Sherlock and John. Just a thought.
When they lifted this line from “A Case of Identity,” the show writers also changed the French phrase “affaire de cœur” to the English phrase “love affair.” I’m not a French speaker, but I think “affaire de cœur” might have the same meaning in French that “love affair” has in English—it’s not just referring to an “affair of the heart,” as in something to do with love, but to an actual affair. But please, if there are any French speakers reading this, I would love to hear what you think! If this phrase does have a different connotation in French, that could be really interesting.
“…he has many fine qualities of his own that he has overlooked in his obsession with me.” There are at least two lines from Sherlock’s best man speech that seem to have been inspired by the original stories, but changed slightly. Here’s the first one.
Sherlock: If I burden myself with a little help-mate during my adventures, it is not out of sentiment or caprice—it is that he has many fine qualities of his own that he has overlooked in his obsession with me.
This comes from “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier,” one of only two stories in the original canon narrated by Holmes instead of Watson. In the original story, Holmes writes this:
Holmes: Speaking of my old friend and biographer, I would take this opportunity to remark that if I burden myself with a companion in my various little inquiries it is not done out of sentiment or caprice, but it is that Watson has some remarkable characteristics of his own, to which in his modesty he has given small attention amid his exaggerated estimates of my own performances.
Sherlock’s line in TSOT is a bit harsher towards John than what Holmes writes in the original story, but it comes in the section of the speech where Sherlock is purposely trying to make himself look like a jerk. Sherlock is deliberately self-deprecating right after this, explaining that “…if I didn’t understand I was being asked to be best man, it is because I never expected to be anybody’s best friend. Certainly not the best friend of the bravest and kindest and wisest human being I have ever had the good fortune of knowing.” So perhaps we shouldn’t take Sherlock too seriously when reading this line in particular.
Even so, it seems notable to me that the show writers changed the end of the quote and specifically chose to have Sherlock use the word “obsession” to describe John’s attitude towards him. That word isn’t in the passage from the ACD story, so I feel like the writers must have put it there for a reason. To me, “obsession” feels like much stronger language that what Holmes wrote and is more suggestive of love or infatuation than of a platonic relationship.
Moreover, I wonder if Sherlock’s use of the word “obsession” here is also meant to give us a clue as to how Sherlock sees John’s feelings towards him at this point in the narrative. Personally, I think Sherlock has known or suspected that John is in love with him ever since he overheard John and Irene’s conversation at Battersea in ASIB. But I also think that by the time we get to S3 (and especially to HLV) Sherlock and John have both come to believe that their love for each other is destructive and dangerous. (I could write a much longer meta about this, and might do so at some point.) So to me, perhaps Moftisson using the word “obsession” here is meant to indicate that Sherlock believes John’s love for him is unhealthy, or that John doesn’t see him clearly. It’s a very sad thought. But then again, I might be reading too much into this, because after all, this is the part of the speech that Sherlock later tells us to dismiss by revealing that he purposely meant to make himself look bad here.
Although actually that’s still pretty sad, because Sherlock is basically saying that he doesn’t deserve John. So I guess either way, Moftisson took what was actually a pretty sweet and complementary thing that Holmes said about Watson in the original canon and made it part of the evidence that Sherlock is feeling quite down on himself by this point in the narrative of the show.
“…but then, you know, he’s a romantic.” In the best man speech, we also get this line from Sherlock when he’s talking about John’s blog and how John writes up their cases.
Sherlock: Of course, he does tend to romanticize things a bit, but then, you know, he’s a romantic.
In the original ACD stories, Holmes often critiques Watson’s writing style and how he presents their cases in his stories for the Strand and other magazines. One of the first instances of this takes place in The Sign of Four, where Holmes critiques Watson’s write-up of A Study in Scarlet.
Holmes: I glanced over it. Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid. Watson: But the romance was there. I could not tamper with the facts. Holmes: Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it. Watson [narrating to the reader]: I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by the egotism which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should be devoted to his own special doings.
We could probably have a whole separate conversation about the queer subtext in this passage, but I’ll try to stick to the aspects of this that I think are particularly relevant here. First, Holmes specifically uses the word “romanticism,” basically saying what Sherlock said in the show when he said that John tends to “romanticize” their cases. So this is pretty similar! But what I think is different is that in the passage from The Sign of Four, Holmes is criticizing Watson’s writing in a negative fashion, is actively pointing out areas for improvement, and seems a bit peeved, or at least not wholly impressed. Watson certainly takes it that way, since he writes that he was “annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially designed to please him.”
In contrast, Moftisson softened Sherlock’s comments significantly for the best man speech. He’s not actually picking a bone with John like Holmes is in the original canon. Sherlock is still saying that John is “a romantic” who “romanticizes” their cases together, but he doesn’t mean it in a bad way!
(gif from thejohnlocked, here)
And now here’s the sad part, because this is BBC Sherlock, after all. When Sherlock says this, his voice drops in pitch a bit and sounds sadder, more subdued. He also looks down, avoiding eye contact with John. So the way this line appears in the show, it’s about Sherlock acknowledging that John is a romantic in the context of John marrying someone else. Sherlock knows that side of John isn’t directed solely or mostly at him anymore.
“Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.” In TLD, Sherlock says this to Faith after he realizes that she’s seriously thinking about committing suicide.
Sherlock: “Taking your own life.” Interesting expression. Taking it from who? Oh, once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else. Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.
This comes from “The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger,” where Holmes also encounters a woman who has a plan to commit suicide and talks her out of it. Moffat wrote TLD, and he took these two sentences in particular straight from the original story with no wording changes:
Holmes: Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.
There’s not much that I like about S4, but I do think this is one place where the writers actually improved on a line from the original canon and used it very effectively in the show. In this scene from TLD, it’s so clear that Sherlock is talking about his own fake suicide. His small speech to Faith demonstrates that he feels deep, genuine regret over his actions on the rooftop that day because of what his fake death did to John.
In the original canon, “The Veiled Lodger” is set in 1896 (see here), so it takes place after Holmes’s fake death at the Reichenbach Falls in 1891 and his return to London in 1894. The dialogue that surrounds the two sentences that Moffat pulled is more about the minor character than about Holmes, though, so although it’s possible that Holmes was thinking of his own fake death when he said them, it’s not as obvious as it is in the show.
In TLD, Sherlock first says “Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it,” to Faith as she’s leaving 221B, similarly to how Holmes says this to the minor character at the end of their interview in “The Veiled Lodger.” But Moffat decided to have Sherlock say these lines again later on when they’re by the water, and in that scene he added this part to Sherlock’s dialogue, which isn’t in the original story and makes it clear what Sherlock is really talking about:
Sherlock: “Taking your own life.” Interesting expression. Taking it from who? Oh, once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else.
If we accept S4 as the official ending of the show, then Sherlock’s fake suicide in TRF is the crucial turning point in Sherlock and John’s love story. It is the terrible event that they are never able to recover from, and it sets in motion all of the pain that follows after. (This is also something I could write a much longer meta about.) So having Sherlock express such deep regret over it in TLD was actually a very powerful move on Moffat’s part. So yeah, that’s at least one good writing choice in S4. (*Screams*)
Anyway, this is what’s been on my mind recently, and I would love to hear what you think in the reblogs and replies! Thank you for reading 😊
