SHERLOCK’S WEBSITE
‘Reading the document is the same as seeing the author’
This says a Chinese proverb (X). What does it mean then, when John tells Sherlock in A Scandal in Belgravia: ‘nobody is reading your website’?
SHERLOCK: I have a website. JOHN: In which you enumerate two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash. Nobody’s reading your website.
Some more musings about Sherlock’s website ‘The Science of Deduction’ and its content below the cut ...
Just a little while later in the same episode - while he writes aboout the unsolved plane crash case in Düsseldorf ... ‘Sherlock Holmes baffled’ - John describes his own blog as Sherlock’s ‘living’.
JOHN: Look at that. One thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five. SHERLOCK: Sorry, what? JOHN: I re-set that counter last night. This blog has had nearly two thousand hits in the last eight hours. This is your living, Sherlock – not two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash. SHERLOCK: Two hundred and forty-three.
‘This is your living’ is basically the same as ‘this is your life’. This is YOU. The way John describes Sherlock on his own blog, shapes how the public eye views the great detective. The same way as Dr Watson did in canon in his stories for The Strand. This fact becomes even more clear during the greenhouse scene in TAB. Although Dr Watson is aware that he doesn’t tell the truth about Holmes, he doesn’t change his stories about him either.
HOLMES: .... as I have often explained before, all emotion is abhorrent to me. It is the grit in a sensitive instrument ... the crack in the lens. WATSON: Yes. HOLMES: Well, there you are, you see? I’ve said it all before. WATSON: No, I wrote all that. You’re quoting yourself from The Strand Magazine. HOLMES: Well, exactly. WATSON: No, those are my words, not yours! That is the version of you that I present to the public: the brain without a heart; the calculating machine. I write all of that, Holmes, and the readers lap it up, but I do not believe it.
If John’s statement ‘my blog is your living’ can be translated into ‘my blog is your life’ - my blog is YOU - what then can be said about John’s other comment, regarding Sherlock’s website ‘The Science of Deduction’, when he tells Sherlock: ‘nobody’s reading your website’? If the document, the blog, the website reflects the personality of the writer, the author and when nobody is reading Sherlock’s website because nobody is interested in its content ... doesn’t this translate into: 'nobody’s interested in who you really are’? I assume one can indeed read it that way, because the plot confirms such a translation as well.
Oh, don’t worry. I know who you really are. I’m never off your website. (THOB, Dr Frankland)
If Dr Frankland knows who Sherlock really is, just by looking at his website - at Sherlock, the author - maybe it would be a good idea to take a look as well. ... the same way Sherlock advices Kitty Riley in TRF: ‘Well, look at ME and tell me what you see ... you can just read what you need’.
First of all, I’m not going to use the external internet website created for Sherlock BBC in this post. @possiblyimbiassed did already a detailed and very interesting analysis of it in ‘The Science of Reduction’. In the comments of that post I tried to exlpain the reasons for my doubts as to whether those external informations - as fascinating and tempting as they are - could lead to a solution for the story told on TV. Anyway, in this post I’m going to look at Sherlock’s website just as it is presented on screen. But what can be deduced about The Sciene of Deduction by using solely informations from TV? There’s not much to go on, one might say ... and as I’m no Sherlock Holmes either, I will most likely ‘miss almost everything of importance’, like John did with Carl’s shoes. But looking at Sherlock, the author, is definitely worth a try ... :))))
The Science of Deduction
Sherlock’s website ‘The Science of Deduction’ can be seen already in the Unaired PILOT when he is about to answer requests from various people. The very first message he is just writing, is directed at his brother Mycroft who apparently contacted him in a somewhat ... ‘impossible situation’. Sherlock’s answer is a quote from canon, probably the most well known and often used statement of the great detective ... in canon as well as in many adaptations:
Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth. (The Sign of the Four)
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? (The Sign of the Four)
It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet)
We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans)
When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (Adventure of the Blanched Soldier)
Five more requests wait for Sherlock’s attention. His Inbox is indeed well filled ... at least six possible cases ...
Sherlock answers Gregson’s request about a ‘Church bell theft’. This done, he is clearly pleased about DI Lestrade’s not very informative message ‘Please call me’. When he is about to answer Jones request about ‘Samson and Del’, Mike Stamford and John Watson enter the room and Sherlock stops working through his Inbox.
The next day Sherlock and John meet for the first time at Baker Street 221b. John mentions that he’d found Sherlock’s website the night prior but contrary to Sherlock’s big expectations, John isn’t much impressed (unlike Jeff Hope who thinks Sherlock’s Science of Deduction is brilliant). This scene happens in both versions - PILOT and ASIP - almost identically.
JOHN: Oh, I, um, looked you up on the internet last night. SHERLOCK: Anything interesting? JOHN: Found your website, The Science of Deduction. SHERLOCK: What did you think? JOHN: Quite amusing, I suppose. SHERLOCK: “Amusing”? JOHN: You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and – what was it? – a retired plumber by his left hand. SHERLOCK: Yes; and I can read your military career by your face and your leg, and your brother’s drinking habits by your mobile phone. JOHN: How? SHERLOCK: You read the article. JOHN: The article was absurd. SHERLOCK: But I know about his drinking habits. I even know that he left his wife.
Sherlock BBC, PILOT
One of the small and also strange differences between the two versions is the ‘identification’ text line from Sherlock’s website, quoted by John. In PILOT Sherlock refers to a plumber and his left hand and in ASIP to an airline pilot and his left thumb. “It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles” tells Holmes in The Man with the Twisted Lip and “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important” in A Case of Identity. A lot of such little, seemingly unnecessary modifications and inconsistencies can be found throughout this adaptation. Maybe they are indeed there for a reason?
JOHN: I looked you up on the internet last night. SHERLOCK: Anything interesting? JOHN: Found your website, The Science of Deduction. SHERLOCK: What did you think? JOHN: You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and an airline pilot by his left thumb. SHERLOCK: Yes; and I can read your military career in your face and your leg, and your brother’s drinking habits in your mobile phone. JOHN: How?
Sherlock BBC, ASIP
Why had the profession to be changed from plumber to airline pilot and the body part from hand to thumb, one wonders? Unless it’s because plumbers have to do with water and work down to earth or even underground. They install pipes/tubes or mend broken ones. By the way, in german language the phrase ‘install a pipe’ (ein Rohr verlegen) has the same meaning as the english ‘put up shelves’. Airline pilots on the other hand often tend to be situated high up above the clouds. Well, this sort of topic runs like a red thread throuout the whole story. And that strange change of profession isn’t the only ‘small’ modification from PILOT to ASIP either.
(Strange little changes Plumber musings)
Also interesting ... there are no visuals of Sherlock’s website in the official episodes ASIP and TBB. Only in the following episode, TGG, the viewer is able to take a first ‘official’ look at The Science of Deductions, when Sherlock writes his messages to the bomber. The look of his website has changed completely.
The Great Game: the first entry in the Forum is about Carl Powers shoes and botulinum toxin ... that’s the reason for food poisoning. (Under the microscope)
Next time the website can be seen, is after Sherlock solved the second case and sends his congratulations regarding Ian Monford’s relocation to Columbia ...
And a third time when Sherlock has solved the murder of Conny Prince ...
There is no picture of Sherlock’s website connected to the fake Vermeer painting because this time Sherlock sends the solution not on his laptop but uses the pink phone dublicate instead (Yes, besides 2 Johns, 2 Faiths, 2 Charles, 2 serial killers, 2 empty houses, 2 flights of the dead, various pairs, doubles, twins ... etc, etc ... there are also 2 pink phones present in Sherlock BBC). Anyway, the Science of Deduction can be seen again when Sherlock suggests a meeting with the bomber at the same pool, where once little Carl died, to hand over the stolen missile defence plans ...
There’s no picture of Sherlock’s website in ASIB. The Science of Deduction turns up only in the two short but very interesting pieces of dialogue between John and Sherlock with which I started this post.
John utters the opinion that their clients come to Baker Street just because of his blog. Sherlock reminds him that he too has a website. John then mockingly mentions Sherlock’s analysis of 240 different types of tobacco ash on said website and adds ‘nobody is reading your website’. Sherlock is clearly offended and corrects the number of tobacco ashes from 240 to 243. Some time later John raises the tobacco-ash topic once more, proudly refers to his own blog - and the 1895 hits on it - and tells Sherlock ‘this is your living’.
The next visual presentation of the website can be seen in THOB, when Sherlock shows John the Inbox message of little Kirsty about her vanished, luminous rabbit Bluebell ...
In the same episode Sherlock tells Mrs Hudson that a ‘little blog on the identification of perfumes’ can be found on his website. It turns out that Sherlock hasn’t only extensive knowledge regarding ash, he also knows a lot about perfumes. (Perfumes in Sherlock BBC by @gosherlocked )
The HOUND-episode is also the one in which Dr Frankland tells Sherlock: ’I know who you really are. I’m never off your website’. The Baskerville scientist knows John’s blog as well and is a bit confused that Sherlock isn’t wearing the deerstalker hat, as shown there.
The Science of Deductions turns up next in TRF, in an newspaper article about the recovery of Turner’s masterpiece, the ‘Falls of the Reichenbach’, that Sherlock was able to recover (last line on the left column).
Sherlock’s website is mentioned a last time in TSOT. Not on Sherlock’s laptop but on John’s phone. Mary suggests that John should go on a case with Sherlock. John opens The Science of Deduction on his own phone and asks Sherlock to pick a case from his already ‘bursting Inbox’. Sherlock chooses The Bloody Guardsman. Sadly it’s impossible to get a clear shot of the small mobile-screen. (John’s blog stops at TSOT by @gosherlocked)
THE LOOK
Blue is the main colour Sherlock has chosen for his website ... shades of different blue ... a dark midnight blue and the skyline of a city by night can be dimly seen in the background and - a little bit clearer - on both sides.
As Sherlock Holmes is one of London’s most popular characters, it’s easy to assume that the skyline used for his website is that of GBs capital. With this in mind, the water in the bottom right corner, that can be seen rather good on the first pic above, should be the Thames and the shallow arch above it, most likely one of its many bridges. On the opposite site, in the upper left corner, next to the small, pale tower and right behind the ‘The’ of the website’s headline, the vast vault of Saint Paul’s Cathedral can be dimly seen (the view is better on a TV screen).
If one connects the images of river and bridge on the left with St Paul’s on the right, I guess the background of Sherlock’s website could be a panorama photo similar to the one below. That’s a view from the Southbank of the Thames with Blackfriars Bridge in the foreground. And this location does play a role in the story ....
Blackfriars Bridge is located between Southwark Bridge and Waterloo Bridge. The name derives from Black Freres ... the French 'frère' meaning 'brother'. This referes to the black habits of the Dominican monks. A monk is also called a brother, a nun is also called a sister and the opposite of a ‘black brother’ would be a (ghostly) ‘white sister’. Just saying. :)
(The Roads we walk Vatican Cameos A Christmas Tale)
As mentioned above, this particular cityscape plays a role in Sherlock BBC. It’s a crime scene from TGG.
SHERLOCK: View of the Thames. South Bank – somewhere between Southwark Bridge and Waterloo.
At this place, Alex Woodbridge was found, the security guard and hobby stargazer, killed by the Golem, in the Vermeer case ... the same case which doesn’t turn up in the messages on Sherlock’s website because he uses the pink phone and conveys the solution verbally. Viewed metaphorically ... he speaks through the heart.
Blue is the colour of the sky ... high up, where the aeroplanes fly. Blue is also the colour of the water, deep down below ... where powerful emotions run freely and London is Sherlock’s city. The country, the city, the houses, even cars are closely linked to the famous detective. They seem to represent his ‘body’.
Just put me back in London. I need to get to know the place again, breathe it in – feel every quiver of its beating heart. (Sherlock, TEH)
Brother Mycroft IS government and ‘queen’ at the same time. There are all kinds of networks above and below ground and steam trains run behind fake facades. Saint Paul’s Cathedral and the river Thames are often special eye-catcher. The coat of arms ... with dragon, lion and Saint George’s cross ... make their appearance as well as the great fire of London in 1666, the Isle of Dogs and the Greenwich pips. ‘Transport’ goes from standstill to movement ....
666-The number of the beast Every quiver of his beating heart Saint Paul’s Cathedral Still at the centre of the web From standstill to movement
WEBSITE ... A SITE FOR THE WEB
Sherlock has a website .... John has a blog. Why the difference? Both men, Sherlock and John, are given strongly internet-related nicknames ... Hat-man and Robin:The web detectives ... Sherlock & John: Blogger Detectives. Sherlock is also called ‘Net Tec’ and ‘net phenomenon’. What’s the difference between Blog and Website:
BLOG: The word ‘blog’ is short for ‘weblog’ (web=net + log=logbook), jokingly broken into the phrase ‘we blog’. A blog is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries. Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. 'Blog' and 'blogging' are now loosely used for content creation and sharing on social media, especially when the content is long-form and one creates and shares content on regular basis. (X)
WEBSITE: The word website consists of web=net + site=place. Literally web-site means ‘a place in the net’. A website can be used in various fashions: a personal website, a corporate website for a company, a government website, an organization website, etc. Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web. (X)
Of course, the word ‘web’ immediately reminds me of Jim Moriarty. The spider at the centre of a criminal web, woven with thousands of threads and Jim knows precisely how each and every single one of them dances. Sherlock is going to monitor the underworld in order to notice every quiver of that web, so he will notice when the spider makes his move.
As mentioned above, all kinds of networks - above and below ground - play a major role in Sherlock BBC. There are Mycroft’s people, his agents and spies. There are terrorists who threaten London with a massive attack. General Shan has a vast network with thousands of operatives and Sherlock calls it ‘a cult’. A surveillance web is closing in on Baker Street, their attention focussed on Sherlock. An Underground network as well as an underground network runs below the surface of the big city. A secret cult of revenging birdes meets in the crypt of a desanctified church. Sherlock is convinced that the ‘world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics’. So many threads - linked and interwoven - they create a web, a net .... a web-net. Basically, that’s exactly how brains work as well. Every brain is a very vast and highly functional biological network ... and Sherlock’s is faster than most ‘... still catching up with my brain. It’s terribly fast’.
Recent models in modern neuroscience treat the brain as a biological computer, very different in mechanism from an electronic computer, but similar in the sense that it acquires information from the surrounding world, stores it, and processes it in a variety of ways. Neurons typically communicate with one another by means of long fibers, which carry trains of signal pulses to distant parts of the brain or body. (X)
And then there's also Sherlock’s ‘own’ network ... the ‘homeless network’ it is called. According to Sherlock, it is ‘indispensible and faster than the police’. Those group of people is based on the Baker Street Irregulars from canon. There, in Victorian London, they are street boys, sometimes employed by Holmes to run errands for him. Holmes speaks of them as ‘division of the detecitve police force’. Dr Watson describes them as ‘little scoundrels’ and ‘half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on’.
While the idea of homeless people who sometimes assist Sherlock in his cases is taken from canon, the name - homeless network - is not. Names are always important in this story. So basically, what is a homless network? It is a network that has no home. At times it is usefull for Sherlock and he pays them for their help. In a way this reminds me of Eurus. She says abut herself: 'to remember everything one just needs a big enough hard drive’. Her intellectual abilities are also of occasional use for the government. In return she requires treats. Similar to Sherlock’s homeless network, Eurus has no home either. She lost it long ago in her childhood days. Sherlock has a website ... a site, a place in the web ... but only very few people are interested in it. Actually just Jeff Hope and Dr Frankland as it seems. Sherlock has a homless network ... a network without a home.
The women of the ‘cult’ from TAB first gave me the idea that all those dangerous groups ... agents, spies, terrorists and the various networks ... could actually be metaphors for something that happens inside Sherlock’s mind. That all those groups represent the awakening of emotional stirrings ... desires, fears, impulses ... that haunt the great detective. There seem to be aspects of Sherlock’s personality which he views as rightous criminal and puts them behind padded walls or elephant glass. Others are just annoying and distracting. Some he ignores most of the time because he considers them to be irrelevant for his system. Some have no home, although they turn out to be usefull now and then. Then something unexpected happens ... something new is coming ... and this marks the beginning of a change of perception in Sherlock Holmes, maybe a revolution.
The reptile in 221b Underground networks AGRA-Under the sign of four Eurus, the emotional memory & The cold war by @raggedyblue
FOUR MESSAGES and a GAP
Four messages can be read on Sherlock’s website. All of them are from TGG, related to four of the five cases, written by Sherlock and directed at ‘the bomber’. As it turns out at the end of the episode, this person is none other than Jim Moriarty, the spider in the centre of the web.
FOUND. Pair of trainers belonging to Carl Powers (1978-1989). Botulinum toxin still present. Apply 221b Baker St.
Congratulations to Ian Monkford on his relocation to Columbia.
Raoul de Santos, the house-boy, botox.
xxx
Found. The Bruce-Partington plans. Please collect. The Pool. Midnight.
Only one of the cold cases is not mentioned on Sherlock’s website, because Sherlock uses the pink phone duplicate, sent to him by the bomber in a strong box at the beginning of the ‘great game’, to submit his message. Sometimes it is useful to ‘mind the gap’ as Sherlock says. Sometimes that, what is left out, is just as important as that, what is there. The ‘gap-case’ is the one about the fake Vermeer painting, whose forgery was first noticed by security guard and hobby stargazer Alex Woodbridge, murdered because of it by the Golem. His body was found at the Southbank of the Thames near Blackfriars Bridge ... the same location Sherlock uses as background for his website. Sherlock discovers and proves the truth due to the display of an impossible supernova on the painting.
A picture pretends to show a scene from the past, but the massive explosion painted on it reveals, that the picture has actually been created much more recently. That massive explosion had never happened in the past.
The bomber’s hostage in the Vermeer case is a kid who is never shown on screen. The little boy transmittes a countdown from 10 to 1, that mirrors Sherlock’s own countdown in TFP (Countdown) while the boy’s plea for help mirrors that of the girl on the plane and also that of Victor Trevor, the boy in the well near Musgrave Hall. Victor Trevor and Musgrave Hall represent two canon stories - The Adventure of the Gloria Scott and The Musgrave Ritual - both set in Sherlock Holmes’ university time, long before he met Dr Watson. Both cases lead back to a time ‘where Sherlock began’.
(Why Victor Trevor was turned into a child by @sagestreet)
THE HOUND & THE GUARDSMEN
Little Kirsty Stapleton’s cry for help in THOB to ‘please, please, please’ find Bluebell, her vanished, luminous rabbit, marks the beginning of the HOUND case. Chemistry, triggered by the pressure of feet, fills the air and drives everyone exposed to it, crazy. Love is in the air .... At the end Jim Moriarty (Mr Sex) walks free, released from his cell by Mycroft Holmes himself ...
Private Stephen Bainbridge’s request in TSOT, regarding a mysterious stalker, marks the beginning of the GUARDSMEN case. Jonathan Small (literally: Jonny Little), a brilliant, ruthless monomaniac (who strongly reminds me of Jim Moriarty), stabbs guardians/facades with a ‘meat dagger’. At the end Mary Watson is pregnant ... ‘stabbed’ by ‘Johnny boy’ (Hamish=James) Watson ... the HOUND hidden behind the facade of the facade .... Matroshka ‘poppets’ indeed.
“Mary – lots of love ... poppet ... oodles of love and heaps of good wishes from CAM.” (Telegram from Magnussen, keeper of the deepest and darkest secrets and scandals,TSOT)
THE BLUEBELL COMPANIONS
Alongside little Kirsty’s message about Bluebell there appear two more requests on the Inbox page of Sherlock’s website (they can be easily read on TV screen). In films neiter images and certainly not texts appear on screen out of coincidence. Pictures are there for certain reasons, even if it’s just for the purpose of a fitting decoration. Texts on the other hand are much more specific. Someone must have had the idea to put it there and someone had to create the image. Especially the makers of Sherlock BBC have repeatedly mentioned that everything that appears on screen has its meaning. With this in mind, what can be deduced about those two earlier requests in Sherlock’s Inbox?
1- Please help victims of China earthquake. It costs just 5p.
China - right from the beginning a certain ‘easterly’ theme appears and runs from there throughout the whole story like a red ribbon until the moment the Eastwind finally approaches in the shape of Eurus. In a metaphorical reading I connect the East to emotions and memory.
An earthquake is a sudden outburst of held back and bottled-up energie. When the pressure gets too high it results in a violent release of that energy. Explosions .... rocks crack, the earth shakes. Earthquakes can trigger landslides, volcanic activity or cause a tsunami. Major changes are also often referred to as ‘earthquakes’.
Costs of 5p ... A penny (p) is a coin and a unit of the britisch pound (£), the official currency in the UK (a currency Sherlock doesn’t know how to spend?). 5p is money. The saying goes that time is money. A minute is a unit of time. Viewing it in reversed order ... money is time = 5 penny are 5 minutes. ‘It took her (Eurus) just five minutes to do all of this to us.’
Reading it that way, a possible translation of the first request in Sherlock’s Inbox could be: “Please help victims of emotional upheaval. It takes just 5 minutes.” :)
2- Re. Mudchute Query
Mudchute is a railway station situated in the Millwall area on the Isle of Dogs. The name Millwall has its source in the large number of windmills built on the river wall in the 19th century. They were needed to ground corn and wheat into flour that was brought along the Thames. The original station was located on an old Victorian railway line that had been disused for many years. An elevated station opened 1987. When the line was extended under the Thames, the station was rebuilt close to the tunnel entrance. It opened 1999 and was finally completed 2009. The station was originally intended to be named Millwall Park but then renamed in Mudchute, refering to the engineering overspill when Millwall Dock was being created in the 1840s. (X)
Basically ... the second request in Sherlock’s Inbox is about a query regarding a railway station, built in the Victorian area at a place linked to mills (♪ Remember the maid ... the maid of the mill ...♪, TAB), disused for years, rebuilt and elevated, named, renamed ... until it was completed in 2009, the same year the Unaired Pilot was created. Well .... that sounds a bit ... familiar?
PERFUME AND TOBACCO ASHES
Appart from Sherlock’s cold case messages addressed to Jim Moriarty and two requests from - Kirsty Stapleton and Stephen Bainbridge - there are only two other entries on The Science of Deduction ... Sherlock’s own analysis about perfumes and tobacco ashes. Basically that’s about ... scent/smell and fire residues.
SCENT: From Kasbah Nights to Claire de la Lune, perfumes play a significant role in this story and Sherlock is a true expert in smellig and recognizing the different brands. The first thing that comes to mind, related to the word ‘scent’ is a dog - more precisely a scent dog. One of the most prominent representatives of that breed is the Bloodhound. And it is well known that Sherlock Holmes is indeed compared to a blood hound in ACDs The Sign of Four. That same quote has been adopted in TEH (Sherlock the Bloodhound), it appears on John’s Blog and is read by Mary. But in Sherlock BBC the bloodhound isn’t only linked to Sherlock himself. The HOUND is also connected to John Watson, Jim Moriarty, Victor Trevor, Eurus and Redbeard the Irish Setter, also a scent dog.
(The dogs in Sherlock’s mind palace The bloodhound in his hands Transformation of Redbeard and the ‘Follow the dog’ series by @sagestreet)
FIRE RESIDUES: Sherlock has an extensive knowledge regarding tobacco ashes. This characteristic has also been taken from canon.
I have made a special study of cigar ashes—in fact, I have written a monograph upon the subject. I flatter myself that I can distinguish at a glance the ash of any known brand, either of cigar or of tobacco. (ACD, A Study in Scarlet)
In TSOT drunken Sherlock proclaims loudly ‘Ash! I know ash!’ Almost the same words (‘I know human ash’) uses the guy from ASIB, whose aunt had been among the plane crash victims in Düsseldorf (’Sherlock Holmes baffled’). In the same episode Sherlock steals an ashtray from Buckingham Palace. In TEH Sherlock’s return from hiatus is underlined with at least half a dozen scetches of phoenixes, rising from the ashes, at the walls of the Landmark Restaurant. Another bird that has great resemblance with a phoenix can be found on Brenda’s gravestone at Musgrave Hall (Among the funny gravestones).
Ash is the residue of a fire damage. Fire and burning is one of the main themes in Sherlock BBC. From Jim’s threat to burn Sherlock’s heart out to the gingerbread man burned to a crisp, from John’s Guy Fawkes bonfire to Sherlock’s admission ‘I’m burning up’, from the Baker Street living room in flames to the great fire at Musgrave Hall ... not to mention all the exploding or not quite expoding bombs throughout the show ... fire anf burning is never far away in this story.
(Love is a burning thing A case ablaze Set this house on fire by @gosherlocked)
TOBACCO ASHES ... CHEMISTRY BURNED
Tobacco s the common name for plants belonging to the Nicotiana family. It contains the highly addictive stimulant nicotine. The dried leaves of the plant are mainly used for smoking in cigars, cigarettes, pipes, etc ... Nicotine is a widely used legal drug. The burning of tobacco results in smoke and the residue left behind is ash. Sherlock knows ash. Interestingly and unlike to canon, in this modern adaptation Sherlock doesn’t simply know ‘any known brand of cigar or tobacco ash’, he has analysed exactly 243 different types of those ashes and he explicitly corrects the number 240, cited by John. Is this seemingly unimportant correction just there to emphasise Sherlock’s annoyance over John’s mockery or is maybe another meaning hidden behind that corrected number?
243 ... ‘This is your living, Sherlock – not two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash’ - ‘243!′
243 different types of tobacco ash are not Sherlock’s living. 243 different, tobacco products - burnt to ashes - are not Sherlock’s life.
As mentioned above, tobacco contains nicotine and nicotine is a drug. Viewing Sherlock BBC on a metaphorical level ... all drugs are chemistry and chemistry is love. The chemistry of love, burnt to ashes ... 243 times over. Hmmmm .... Then an idea hit me and I asked Google a question:
This answer is from January 2020. The first official series of Sherlock BBC aired 2010 and the Unaired Pilot has been produced in 2009. I seem to recall that the first and the second series have been accepted by the BBC at the same time and since 2009 several more Sherlock Holmes adaptations have seen the light of day (Guy Ritchie Holmes, Elementary, New Russian Holmes, Miss Sherlock, Mr Holmes, Sherlock Gnomes, Holmes&Watson, Enola Holmes ... to name just a few).
Could it be that the number of different tobacco ashes, analysed by Sherlock, mirrors the number of different adaptations about the famous detective? Sherlock Holmes ... reborn again and again with each adaptation, like a phoenix from the ashes, and yet he was never able to live a full life ... including emotions, love and sex?
‘All lives end. All hearts are broken’, that’s what Mycroft tells Sherlock in ASIB. Chemistry burned to ashes in an endless row. ‘So many days not lived, so many words unsaid’ ... says Eurus in TFP and referes to the coffin whose lid is adorned with a brass plate, I LOVE YOU, written on it (A coffin for love). You are absolutely right @loveismyrevolution with your idea of Sherlock standing between two ‘angels’ in that scene, although I would rather call them ‘choices’. Because this scene has great resemblance with the three solutions/choices Sherlock has to choose from after the event on Barth’s roof (Solutions or choices).
At that time Sherlock is confronted with two elemental forces ... love and sex. The one is represented by Molly (mirror for John) and the other one by Jim Moriarty, Mr Sex. Sherlock chooses neither one of the two. He backs away and walks a third path. He decides to live a celibate life - married to work - solely dedicated to reason and intellect, represented by Mycroft. That’s why he needs to create a strong facade to hide his true feelings for John. But then, unexpected and without noticing it at first (delayed action stabbing), even this facade gets ‘penetrated’ by John. Love (Rosie) is conceived and this changes everything. (Changing of the guard)
After the first shock (shot), Sherlock starts to go deeper into himself than ever before. He repeats the investigations about himself (the pink case) from a different perspective. Everything that happens in S4 reflects, in one way or another, occurances from S1-S3 ... arranged differently and some new actors are added. For example: the morgue-scene in TLD is a mirror of Sherlock’s fall in TRF ... it’s another Reichenbach. Eurus’ five tasks of Sherrinford seem to be a sort of ‘final distillate’ of Sherlock’s repeated analysis. In the coffin-scene Sherlock is once more confronted with a choice. This time though SEX is excluded. Sherlock has to choose between LOVE or BRAIN. And just as he did after the ‘first’ Reichenbach, Sherlock tries again to back away. At that stage though Eurus doesn’t let him. Sherlock’s emotions force him to go back to the very beginning, to find the truth. What that truth is and what consequences will come from it .... is still untold in this story, as I read it. There’s a final distillation but not a final solution at the end of S4.
“This is your living, Sherlock ... not 243 different types of tobacco ash”
... says John, refering to his own Blog. But is this really the truth? The counter on John’s Blog stops at 1895 in ASIB and the text entry, read by Mary in TEH, is a quote from canon. Already in the first series, in TBB, Sherlock asks John - his blogger/biographer - to pass him the pen and near the end of S4, in TLD, John’s Blog has ‘gone a bit downhill’ and people actually think it's Sherlock’s Blog. This leaves the question: is Sherlock taking over the narrative of his own story now? What kind of story will it be? How will it end? Will Sherlock have to make a third choice in the future? A choice between Dr Watson, the ‘fixed point in a changing age’ and John Watson, who could be so much more than just an ‘eternal’ friend? After all, there are two Faiths in the story, two serial killers and Hamish (Jim, Mr Sex) hides right in the middle of John (H) Watson ... at the very centre of the web, one might say.
Two times John Pairs-Twins-DoubleOHs Double OH seven Bond Air is go The big question and an excellent explanation of the idea about ‘Two-John’s’ in the comments on this post by @lukessense
Will Sherlock BBC turn out to be one more adaptation that ends as a ‘missed oportunity’ ... one more chemistry burned to ashes .... another sample of tobacco ash for Sherlock to analyse and add to his list? Or will it be different this time? Something new ... something big? Will it be the story about the emotional and sexual awakening of the literary character Sherlock Holmes?
Only the future will tell ....
Thanks for reading and thanks @callie-ariane for the scripts.
February, 2021
