Why was that U. M. Q. R. A. scene even in that episode THOB? It literally didn't add anything to the plot or the characters lmao.
It just felt someone from writing team shitposting.
Hey Nonny!
Yeah, in hindsight, the UMQRA scene seems really pointless, to be honest, though back in the day there were plenty of interesting discussions about it. I actually forgot I did a meta about it, so check that link there, pretty fun! There's a couple more meta attached to that link. I think nowadays, though, yeah, it just feels like it was a plot point to get John to do something, heh. BUT THOB is one of my fave episodes, so I enjoy it for what it is.
Mycroft loves acronyms. All the best secret societies have them, he says. The creators of Sherlock BBC seem to love them as well, because several have found a way into their story. Reason enough to throw a brief glance at some of them. :)
TBC below the cut ...
UMQRA & HOUND
On the way to Dewer’s Hollow John notices flashes of light on the nightly moor. He interprets them as morse code signals for the letters U,M,Q,R,A and informs Sherlock about his discovery. When John follows those flashes of light, some hours later, he discovers a place where people engage in car-sex. What John expected to be morse code signals turns out to be just randomly blinking headlights of rocking cars. “Don’t be alarmed. It’s to do with sex” ...
Sherlock apparently doesn’t know about John’s second discovery and the rather trivial explanation for the mysterious flashlights on the moor. He experiments with the UMQRA letters, adds dots behind each one and suddenly has a revelation. He calls John ‘conductor of light’ and explains his idea. “What if it is individual letters?” Sherlock’s thoughts though are now focused on HOUND rather than UMQRA.
In a nutshell: UMQRA is linked to secret sexual activity in a car (body). By adding dots, Sherlock draws the connection from UMQRA to HOUND.
The monstrous HOUND, who allegedly haunts the Baskerville moore, changes into a simple dog.
H.O.U.N.D. turns out to be the name of a secret government project that got stopped a long time ago and had been now taken up again, illegally, by a doctor who is a virologist.
Affected by the HOUND-aerosol (love is in the air) ‘doctor’ and ‘virus’ - Frankland & Jim (’say hallo to the virus‘) - merge into one another in Sherlock’s mind. The ‘good’ doctor kills the dog. The ‘bad’ doctor dies in an explosion. Then Mycroft (the government/brain) releases Jim (’I’m Mr Sex’) from his prison. Big brother himself lets the HOUND off the leash ...
More on the same subject: UMQRA by @bug-catcher-in-viridian-forest - Are you attempting to make a point? by @221brainstorming (deleted) - Follow the Dog Part 2 by @sagestreet
AGRA & AM(M)O
Mary tells Sherlock and John that the letters on her memory stick - AGRA - are meant to be her initials. Later it turns out that AGRA is an acronym, connected to a team of four agents - Alex, Gabriel, Rosamund Mary (alias Mary) and Ajay. This group was once employed by the government and Mary is still secretly working for Mycroft (TAB).
A code word is linked to the AGRA acronym, uttered by an anonymous voice on a phone. First Sherlock interprets that word as AMMO, short for ‘ammunition’. Some time later Sherlock realizes that this secret code word doesn’t mean ‘ammo’ but ‘amo’ ... Latin for ‘I love’.
Regarding the dots that accompany the AGRA acronym, there are some noticable irregularities:
The memory stick Mary puts on the table in 221b (HLV) ... A.G.RA
John shows Mary her memory stick before he throws it into the fire at the Holmes cottage (HLV) ... A.G.RA
The memory stick in the fire (HLV) ... A.G.R.A
Ajay’s memory stick, revealed from inside the Thatcher bust (TST) ... A.G.RA
AGRA acronym at the beginning of the Tiblisi scene (TST) ... A.G.R.A.
And when Sherlock first mentions AGRA in Mycroft’s presence his brother instantly brings up the Indian city of Agra. No dots at all.
“Agra? A city on the banks of the river Yamuna in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India. It is three hundred and seventy-eight kilometres west of the state capital, ...”
THE CITY OF AGRA
This city plays a key role in AC Doyle’s novel The Sign of Four.
"The city of Agra is a great place, swarming with fanatics and fierce devil-worshippers of all sorts. Our handful of men were lost among the narrow, winding streets. Our leader moved across the river, therefore, and took up his position in the old fort at Agra. I don't know if any of you gentlemen have ever read or heard anything of that old fort. It is a very queer place,—the queerest that ever I was in, and I have been in some rum corners, too. First of all, it is enormous in size. I should think that the enclosure must be acres and acres. There is a modern part, which took all our garrison, women, children, stores, and everything else, with plenty of room over. But the modern part is nothing like the size of the old quarter, where nobody goes, and which is given over to the scorpions and the centipedes. It is all full of great deserted halls, and winding passages, and long corridors twisting in and out, so that it is easy enough for folk to get lost in it. For this reason it was seldom that any one went into it, though now and again a party with torches might go exploring.”
The old fort of Agra is the place where the theft of the great treasure takes place, around which Holmes’ case in The Sign of Four revolves. Somehow Doyle’s description of that fort ... fortress, palace and residence of rulers ... almost sounds like a description of a vast and convoluted mind palace.
The great Agra treasure
This treasure gets stolen by a group of four men. They are bound by an oath - a vow - written down on paper and signed.
In the left-hand corner is a curious hieroglyphic like four crosses in a line with their arms touching. Beside it is written, in very rough and coarse characters, “The sign of the four” ...
A heavy iron box, made of Benares metal-work, contained the great treasure that consisted of ‘the most precious stones and the choicest pearls’:
There were one hundred and forty-three diamonds of the first water, including one which has been called, I believe, 'the Great Mogul' and is said to be the second largest stone in existence. Then there were ninety-seven very fine emeralds, and one hundred and seventy rubies, some of which, however, were small. There were forty carbuncles, two hundred and ten sapphires, sixty-one agates, and a great quantity of beryls, onyxes, cats'-eyes, turquoises, and other stones, the very names of which I did not know at the time, though I have become more familiar with them since. Besides this, there were nearly three hundred very fine pearls, twelve of which were set in a gold coronet. By the way, these last had been taken out of the chest and were not there when I recovered it.
The ‘Sign of Four’ and also Captain Morstan (Mary’s father) were later betrayed by Major Sholto, who took the treasure and ran off with it to England. And here the great treasure from the banks of the river Yamuna gets lost forever, submerged in the waters of the river Thames.
Great treasure from the banks ... lost ... the waters ...
At this point inevitably the Waters Gang from The Sign of Three comes to mind. This episode starts with three bank robbers, masked as clowns, who commit five thefts at almost quite regular intervals before they ..... get caught?
18 MONTHS AGO - “Bank gang leave cops clueless”
12 MONTHS AGO - “Who stole our two mill?”
6 MONTHS AGO - “Police are no closer to Waters Gang conviction”
3 MONTHS AGO - “Waters Gang walk free, again!”
YESTERDAY - Apparently no good day for the Waters family ... but then Sherlock phones, calls for help and Greg leaves his post ...
Is the Waters Gang able to escape again or do they get finally caught? That’s still an open question. And Mary’s secret A.G.R.A. identity will only be revealed in the next episode ... His Last Vow.
Points or no points ... or both?
Sherlock solves the Baskerville case by adding dots behind each letter of the word: HOUND ... H.O.U.N.D. The supernatural monster-hound disappears and turnes into a man-made project instead. Strictly speaking, however, both versions - the acronym H.O.U.N.D. as well as the word ‘hound’ - are important and have meaning and both are linked to Jim ‘Mr Sex’ Moriarty. Maybe this method applies also to AGRA?
AGRA without the dots
As Mycroft explains in The Six Thatchers, Agra is ‘a city on the banks of the river Yamuna in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India’. In AC Doyle’s novel The Sign of Four it is the old fort of Agra that plays the key role. The construction of this fortress - palace and residnece of rulers - was commissioned by emperor Shah Jahan (meaning: king of the world). Years later, Shah Jahan was put under house arrest in the Red Fort by one of his sons until his death in 1666. He found his final resting place in the same mausoleum he’d commissioned for his favourite wife Mumtaz Mahal. For eight years Shah Jahan looked out from the Red Fort at the place where his most favourite empress, his inseparable comanion, the great love of his life, had been laid to rest.
Agra’s most prized and best-known monument isn’t the old fort ... it is the Taj Mahal ... the worldwide renowned symbol of undying love.
The corners have been placed so that when seen from the center of the plan, the sun can be seen rising and setting on the north and south corners on the summer and winter solstices respectively. This makes the Taj a symbolic horizon. The planning and structure of the Taj Mahal, from the building itself to the gardens and beyond, is symbolic of the garden of Paradise. The sky has not only been incorporated in the design through the reflecting pools but also through the surface of the building itself.
It is said that the white symbolizes the purity of real love. The planning of the entire compound has been split into two - representing earthly life and afterlife. The plan of the worldly side is a mirror image of the otherworldly side, and the grand gate in the middle represents the transition between the two lives.
AMO ... I love ...
A.G.R.A. or Agra - both versions finally lead to ‘love’ - just like H.O.U.N.D. and hound lead to ‘sex’. A virologist who is employed by the government but secretly works on his own project and a secretary, cleverer than most, who is also employed by the government and also does her own thing. Under the influence of the hound-aerosol the virologist merges visually with Jim and when the secretary’s secret amo-identity is unmasked, she uses - word for word - Jim’s line from TGG. Coincidence?
Lady Smallwoods codename is ‘love’ while Vivian Norbury calls herself ‘amo’ (I love). ‘Amo’ worked undercover, betrayed the government and used AGRA as her private assassination unit.
“Why did you betray us?” ..... “Why does anyone do anything?”
September, 2022
Thanks for reading and thanks @callie-ariane for the scripts.
Sources (incl. Agra pics): Agra Fort Taj Mahal Shah Jahan The sign of four by ACDoyle
UMQRA could have something to do with the Q code used initially in radiotelegrapgy and later radio communications. QRA is code for What is the name of your vessel (or station)?
Oh, that’s a nice idea! I don’t think I’ve heard that one before. What do you think “UM” stands for in this context?
Although I have to admit I kinda like the solution @bug-catcher-in-viridian-forest came up with: If you use SHERLOCK as the key for a mixed alphabet cypher, UMQRA translates to TORCH. – As far as I know, this has so far been the only approach using a cypher to decode UMQRA to produce an actual word. (x) (x)
In HOUND, John goes through a lot while sorting through his feelings. This episode is as much about him as it is Sherlock. Even as they seem to make timid steps towards one another, there is so much left to sort and unfortunately, they again misunderstand each other, and as John leaves his tense conversation with Sherlock, he walks out of Cross Keys and straight into Fair Youth Sonnet #7.
Lo, in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill, resembling strong youth in his middle age, yet mortal looks adore his beauty still, attending on his golden pilgrimage;
But when from high-most pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract and look another way:
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,
Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son.
Synopsis:
“Each day for the sun is like one lifetime for man. He is youthful, capable, and admired in the early stages of his lifetime, much like the sun is admired in the early day.
But as the sun sets and a man's aging gets the best of him, he is facing frailty and mortality, and those once concerned with man and sun are now inattentive.
At night the sun is forgotten. At death man is forgotten, unless he leaves a legacy.
This sonnet introduces new imagery, comparing the Youth to a morning sun, looked up to by lesser beings. But as he grows older he will be increasingly ignored unless he has a son to carry forward his identity into the next generation.
The poem draws on classical imagery, common in art of the period, in which Helios or Apollo cross the sky in his chariot - an emblem of passing time. The word "car" was also used classically of the sun's chariot.”
Further study of this Sonnet reveals that it touches not just on Metaphysics, and Philosophy, but also tinges of Imperialism.
Read also @mathildalocks Morana, the Slavic goddess of Death, Fertility and the Underworld for Metaphysical perspective
@asherlockstudy Why the THoB fight is much sadder than it seems at first for emotional perspective
Again, John's perspective. We see the umqra letters again, like in Sherlock's perspective. But I'm questioning if the letters stayed umqra in Morse code or there were other letters too (or non letters like numbers or apostrophes). If it was flashing bc a couple was screwing in their car, it wouldn't consistently be umqra
