mrshouse wrote:

Somehow in this last statement I see "Moriarty" not as a living breathing person anymore, but "Moriarty" is more like either his remaining organization, his left hand taking over, the evil in itself, something like that. "The king is dead, long live the king".
 

"What d’you mean, more than a man? An organisation?" (ASiP)

Liberty wrote:

Watching it again, I'm sure it goes back to 1884 (not 1895).   I actually wrote that, but had 1895 in my head - thought I'd mistyped, but no, it's 1884.  Very odd.  So possibly they've altered the timeline to make John meet Sherlock in 1884 (and the Christmas scenes are still 1894).  But as the counter is still spinning, I assume it means that we're on our way back to 1881.

ukaunz wrote:

That's what I assumed (that the counter was going further when it fades out). Maybe they're being deliberately vague to cover any mismatches with canon

Thanks, that makes the most sense.

Haha, yes I'm charitably blaming that on Sherlock's shaky knowledge of Chinese, as demonstrated already in TBB. It's in his mind after all. Can't go to a Chinese-language forum though, my Chinese is not good enough, and anyway I would need a Taiwanese forum as I only read traditional anyway, I wouldn't survive. Thank you for a confirmation that the name was stupid, I was afraid there was another level of humour there that I wouldn't be able to figure out.

But, TheOtherOne, are you sure about the 馬 and 马? My point was that traditional pre-1949 simplifications do exist after all, from grass or whatever. I've just never seen a list. Are you more or less sure that this isn't one of them? It looks good, there is loss of strokes but the general shape of the character is retained, as in 車 => 车, which I think a teacher told me was "traditional" in the sense of "cursive". That would still be fishy on a shop sign, but less worrying.

TheOtherOne wrote:

...
The first character is also historically inaccurate... because 马 is printed on the sign in simplified Chinese, but in 1894 this would have been written in traditional Chinese as 馬 instead. Simplified Chinese was not widely promoted and adopted for use until the 1950s.

 

James Norrington wrote:

And the special actually didn't change anything, because Sherlock always believed Moriarty to be dead after what he had seen and heard on that rooftop. So his sentence about 'of course he's dead' makes sense, but what if he just didn't blow his own brains out?
 

How about: TAB does change things? Before it, Sherlock thought Jim was dead, and only now thinks he is alive? I think that "of course he's dead" line is actually a lie for Mary's benefit.

But I really need to ask this: Why does Sherlock even investigate the question of whether Jim is alive? There is the crisis with Jim's face on all the screens in England, a massive hacking. Why not immediately assume that since he is dead (presumably), then someody else must be behind it? Say, some remnants of his organization?

Bruce, is that related to your saying that Jim was arrested at the end of TRF and now he has escaped? Would you say that it's only in that HLV / TABphone call about the hacking crisis Mycroft still doesn't tell Sherlock that?

 

tonnaree wrote:

Hi there! We already have a very healthy discussion about Moriarty's death, or not, in this thread: http://sherlock.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=3418 Feel free to post all your thoughts and theories there.

Oh Ok. Thanks. Nothing to add then.
 

Should I have posted this somewhere else on the forum? But it's so TAB-related. And, I realize that Jim possibly being alive is an irritating topic, but tell me where I'm wrong if you have the patience.

... because, for example, of this line: "Of course he’s dead. He blew his own brains out. No-one survives that. I just went to the trouble of an overdose to prove it." (in response to MARY'S "So he's dead".

Of course they can all hear him. But the whole line is a lie for Mary's benefit, because he DIDN'T just overdose IN ORDER TO prove it, he got high before he knew England was hacked (I believe Mycroft about it), either to end it all (scary), or to make it easier (slightly less scary but still terrifying).

(Sorry for the shouting, but bold is almost indistinguishable from normal here).

Also, the blood flowing from under Jim's head in TRF is scant when you compare it with the spectacular hole in the back of Moriarty's (and Emelia's) head in TAB, which are supposed to look realistic; also, the frantic dig at the cemetery (which was a mind palace scene after all) and the mind palace Holmes saying that Moriarty's "body was never recovered" AND Anderson's theory about the latex mask in TEH (whih means that Anderson at least knows nothing of a corpse on the roof, and probably Lestrade doesn't either) all seem to mean that Sherlock doesnt know EITHER where Jim's body might be; also a theory about a second shot fired simultaneously (in this case, by a sniper from another roof, perhaps through a blood bag attached to Jim's back) has been around for years as an explanation for TRF (on The Final Problem I think). Also, Moffat said that TAB should settle all doubts about Jim possibly being alive, and I don't trust the man.
 

Did anybody catch it? Chinese native speakers especially please? I just noticed that the third character seemed to be 内, and the first, something 馬-like (the 鴉 of 鴉片 looks like it would be logical, but it was too fast for me and again, I can't pause the film).

like a true mirror, actually. I mean that while there may be important similarities and parallels between present-day reality and Victorian imagination, some mind palace details are exactly the opposite from RL. There might be more, but the two salient ones seemed to me to be that:

while in RL, Sherlock jokes about being John's (and Mary's) child (in TSoT), here it's John that's ironically referred to as Sherlock's child (once in the Boswell line and once in the morgue); and

in RL it's John who correctly recognizes Mary by her perfume, and Sherlock who is wrong about it (HLV), but here it's the other way round.

Molly being hostile (not to mention male) could come under the same header maybe.

That reversal theme is sort of nice and important and confusing all at once and seems to mean that we should not jump to real life conclusions based on MP data. So it does not follow that in reality Mary works for Mycroft, or that Watsons' marriage resembles that of their Victorian counterparts, or that there will or won't be Moriarty twins. (I hope there won't).

I just read through 38 pages of the main TAB thread to see if you guys have mentioned this, but I could have missed it, sorry if I did.
 

OK, I have seen it again but I still have he transcript open, because the second time I got carried away again and just flew with the episode rather than memorizing useful bits of dialogue and apparently I can't do both at once.

Mycroft does say Sherlock was high before he got on the plane (and John doesn't think he seemed high, but Mycroft is convinced he was). Mycroft probably has more experience with Sherlock's complicated relationship with drugs, and he is more observant / better at deducing from details than John.

Assuming that the apparent hacking of England in Moriarty's name is not a ploy by Mycroft to have a good excuse to get Sherlock a pardon, Sherlock genuinely didn't know about the crisis when boarding the plane (or when he took the drugs). Now the drugs were apparently some infernal concoction if there is a list and it is implied that cocaine was on the list and perhaps the crucial item on it, but he didn't take them in order to solve this case. They helped him think about the case (and apparently some other things while he was at it) but the reason for taking them was different.

Sherlock implies he took them because he needed a distraction ("No need for that now. Got the real thing. I have work to do") which is like the line about cigarettes in THoB, but distraction needn't be from boredom; it could be from unhappiness.

Anyway, what he actually does -- tries to solve the current crisis by solving another case, long cold, while apparently analysing to bits his obsession with Jim, Jim's obsession with him, some things about Mary and some about John -- is suspiciously complex, multi-layered and narrative.

Mycroft does note that this is not how a mind palace works, that a mind palace is for data storage, not for immersable stories with drama etc. That will be beause Mycroft is oversimplifying for John, and because he is not a drug user.

Mind palace-like memory techniques wee not invented for Sherlock; they are real and really work alth

Molly's moustache made me think that a moustache was a general symbol for masculinity. Quite a while before TAB, Loudest Subtext in Television wrote meta about it standing for male straightness, actually, and the unfortunate stereotypes would have made that the same.

Holmes doesn't have one, of course, and neither does Watson-the-soldier, but the later Watson does and both are sort of necessary because that's the way thay have always been in canon. The episode lampshades that a few times I think with references to "the illustrator" and Watson saying he had to grow one so he would be recognized. (Is that even a real reason? Would he care to be recognized?)

But, what is Sherlock's subconscious doing concocting a version of John with a frankly exaggerated moustache when he prefers his doctors clean shaven? Just giving in to the era, or also fantasizing about how manly John is, or worrying about his orientation?