Swanpride wrote:

Agreed...the first time was done for effect (it really looked cool, didn't it?)...the second for fun. But none of them were as detailed as the third one, and refered to all the clues in the episode.

I was intrigued by this comment from a few days ago because it reminded me of Sherlock's comment in Many Happy Returns, "Only lies have detail"

Perhaps we are mistaken in assuming it is either a) Anderson's fantasy and therefore wrong or b) an actual scene of Sherlock telling Anderson the truth.  As others have already mentioned, the placement of the scene is very awkward in the middle of the bomb scene with Sherlock and John.  Whenever they came out of a theory previously in the episode, we were told who was having the fantasy.  Anderson for theory 1 and Laura on theory 2.  We can rule out John for theory 3 because there's far too much there that he couldn't have known about.  Maybe Anderson was fantasizing at the same time that Sherlock and John were trying to defuse the bomb but Sherlock tells Anderson near the end of the scene "of course you've wasted police time, perverted the course of justice, risked distracting me from a massive terrorist assault that could have both destroyed Parliament and caused the deaths of hundreds of people."  Anderson has no idea at that point that Sherlock is investigating a terrorist assault nor that the target was Parliament so this isn't Anderson's fantasy.  That leaves Sherlock.  The scene was playing out in Sherlock's head while he and John were in the train.

So was this Sherlock having a flashback?  No, we know the Anderson meeting couldn't have taken place before Sherlock went looking for the bomb with John because Sherlock only realized the target was Parliament after talking with John and they went straight into the Underground after that.  So this looks like Sherlock planning a meeting with Anderson after he turns the bomb off.  So if it's playing out in Sherlock's head, it's got to be true, right?  Not necessarily, the reason Sherlock goes to see Anderson is to call him out on the Skeleton Mystery/How I did it by Jack the Ripper but he knows Anderson is going to ask him how he faked his death so he's making up an explanation beforehand.

Why make up a story instead of telling the truth?  I've read interviews with Benedict where he said Sherlock would never tell John that he jumped to save his life.  And we see that played out in the cafe when John said "I don't care how you faked it.  I want to know why."  Sherlock lies about it being to stop Moriarty instead of telling him that it was to save his friends.  He has to continue that lie that John was not in danger so he concocts the bit about Mycroft having a sniper on John's sniper.  Theory 3 is as detailed as it is because Sherlock is trying to work out all the holes in his lie beforehand.

I think the "Only lies have details" doesn't count in this case because we NEED details for the true solution! 

I don't think it was just that...John just happened to be there...but he didn't need to know the plan.

Because he was going to have a sniper on him, wherever he was!
Anyway.  He stuck to Sherlock like glue, so they knew he probably would be around.

Last edited by besleybean (January 4, 2014 10:34 pm)

I think he just sees Sherlock's conviction that he will do anything

SherlockianDE wrote:

Commonwealth wrote:

I've read interviews with Benedict where he said Sherlock would never tell John that he jumped to save his life.  And we see that played out in the cafe when John said "I don't care how you faked it.  I want to know why."  Sherlock lies about it being to stop Moriarty instead of telling him that it was to save his friends.  He has to continue that lie that John was not in danger so he concocts the bit about Mycroft having a sniper on John's sniper.  Theory 3 is as detailed as it is because Sherlock is trying to work out all the holes in his lie beforehand.

But in his latest blog post, John specifically states "Turns out he'd faked his death because Moriarty had threatened those close to him. Including me."

So supposedly, Sherlock did indeed tell him about that at some point?

Some mistakes were found on that blog and we can assume that the blog writter was not clearly know about the screenplay. Hope they will be fixed soon.

It still feels weird. That transition. Looks him in the eye for a certain amount of time,"No,you're not ordinary. I see". Could the recall code be the binary code?  One thing is for sure,Sherlock needed Moriarty alive to stop the order. Was he going to kill Moriarty and throw his body from the terrace to show the snipers that he was dead? Well,if he wanted to do that,he could have done that with his dead body. Was he going to torture him? What good that would have done? 

Swanpride wrote:

Or he had a plan to distract Moriarty, too. He certainly kept him away for the edge.

Suppose he did that. But there is no way that Sherlock could've been sure that Moriarty wouldn't look down after he had jumped. Let's say Moriarty did not look. But the reason for which Sherlock faked his death,which is to go under cover and dismantle Moriarty's network,would have been extremely hard to do with Moriarty alive. 
The assessment could be done like this. Sherlock knew that he had only two options,either to play the game and postpone the judgement or fake his own suicide. He chose where to meet so as to keep the conditions in his control (if he had to fake the suicide). But he does not anticipate Moriarty's death. If we think about the options Sherlock had, to fake his suicide,there are not many. He cannot fake shooting himself or any other way. So he had to jump,but then how would he have had predicted that Moriarty wouldn't see him landing on an air bag,placing that corpse and again replacing it by himself? Unless,he knew that he'd have to kill Moriarty first. So he had to ensure Moriarty's death,which he does. The only question remains is how he does it.

besleybean wrote:

Or perhaps Mycroft's sniper would just bump him off, too?!

Well,in the first place,I am still wondering how Mycroft and Sherlock knew where the shooters would be located. And how many of them were there. If what you are saying is true and Mycroft was indeed going to kill Moriarty too,because it really would have been a necessity if he didn't kill himself,then doesn't it seem like a disappointing plan? To slaughter Moriarty's people along with Moriarty? Let's say that Mycroft did his camera trick (the one that he does in the first episode) and tracked Moriarty's people,the one that seemed suspicious of carrying guns,can it not be possible that Moriarty had other people who were just observers,who notified all the shooters along with Moriarty of Sherlock's status? 

I thought that was kind of implied at the end of Basekerville.,