" but this first episode was full of it and it DID ridicule the fanbase."

Why would Moffat and Gatiss intentionally ridicule their bread and butter?  The people who made the show such a success and put them where they are?

And the "plot" of the first episode was how will John and Sherlock come back together.  Everything else was window dressing.

Last edited by tonnaree (January 13, 2014 1:39 pm)

Kazza, I always thought that this forum was for people who love this show. Of course one may voice criticism and many have done that with which I am absolutely fine.
What I do not appreciate, however, is your condescending way towards groups of fans here on the board or out there in the Net. Last night I went to such a fangirly meeting with nine very people and had a lot of fun. And this is exactly what this here is about for me. Having fun and a good discussions with people from all over the world. 
And we should not forget that the Holmes fandom has been writing pastiches for ages which is a sort of fanfic and a creative and sometimes brilliant way of dealing with your love for ACD canon. 
I would appreciate it very much if you could to stop behaving in this manner. Thank you. 
 

Last edited by SusiGo (January 13, 2014 1:41 pm)

SusiGo wrote:

Kazza, I always thought that this forum was for people who love this show. Of course one may voice criticism and many have done that with which I am absolutely fine.
What I do not appreciate, however, is your condescending way towards groups of fans here on the board or out there in the Net. Last night I went to such a fangirly meeting with nine very people and had a lot of fun. And this is exactly what this here is about for me. Having fun and a good discussions with people from all over the world. 
And we should not forget that the Holmes fandom has been writing pastiches for ages which is a sort of fanfic and a creative and sometimes brilliant way of dealing with your love for ACD canon. 
I would appreciate it very much if you could to stop behaving in this manner. Thank you. 
 

 
I'm sorry for you that you do not nor never have liked the way I type. Your translation of my words as condescending however is a mistake.
Yes, I am critical of the third series, is that against the rules now?
I do note that many of my posts have been followed by yourself & the other mod, what a welcome back that is!
However I would appreciate if you have any problems with my posts that, as a mod, you either direct them to Admin if you don't feel up to handling it yourself, or at least take advantage of the Inbox feature we all have. It really does interupt the flow of the forum and I have so much to catch up on after my hiatus.

I am sure if there is a problem, Admin will contact me about it. She knows where I am.

kazza474 wrote:

tonnaree wrote:

" but this first episode was full of it and it DID ridicule the fanbase."

Why would Moffat and Gatiss intentionally ridicule their bread and butter?  The people who made the show such a success and put them where they are?

I am referring to the online fanbase and if you believe that small percentage of viewers 'made the show a success and put them where they are' then again I refer you back to the boat quote.
All the online fanbase did was lap it up, the creators, actors & production team are the only ones who can claim any rights to success for S1 & 2. Industry awards were won, those awards are in no way influenced by the fan base online or otherwise or any viewership stats. There were several awards last year where the industry voted ones Vs the public voted ones showed some variation. I predict that this series will show a massive variation between the 2 types of awards. Let's wait & see shall we?

And the "plot" of the first episode was how will John and Sherlock come back together.  Everything else was window dressing.

Maybe that is how some wanted it to be, but I do recall Moran and a bomb at some stage?????
 

I am proud and happy of the awards and artistic recognition that Sherlock has won and yes, all that goes to the creative team.  However, a piece of television entertainment can win all the awards in the world but it won't last past one season if it does not have an audiance.  This is sadly proven by the amount of crap that stays on for years because for some strange reason people love it.

It seems to me that Moffat and Gatiss have a great deal of appreciation for the "obssessed" segment of their Sherlock fandom.  They attend Comic Con, they tweet at us.  They obviously enjoy trolling us but it feels affectionate.   Regardless of what boat I am in.

 

Harriet wrote:

I'm very happy with the mods we are having now.

They do it not exactly the way you did it, kazza, before you left, true.
But that's no reason to act so aggressively towards them now, imho.

 
Please, I really don't need input from other sources.
A little research always goes a long way before you start accusing people of acting aggressively.
I don't have that many posts since coming back. But my 'style' of posting , if that's what we need to call it has never varied so I fail to see anyone feels the need to jump on my every word.
I'm quite happy that Davina has other mods to help her, my life changed dramatically & I could no longer even come here for a long time. But mods cannot start dictating what people think.
Once again, it is in the hands of Admin, leave it at that as it really doesn't concern anyone else.
And do not fret, I won't be around that much anyway.
Thank you.

kazza474 wrote:

Harriet wrote:

I'm very happy with the mods we are having now.

They do it not exactly the way you did it, kazza, before you left, true.
But that's no reason to act so aggressively towards them now, imho.

 
Please, I really don't need input from other sources.
A little research always goes a long way before you start accusing people of acting aggressively.
I don't have that many posts since coming back. But my 'style' of posting , if that's what we need to call it has never varied so I fail to see anyone feels the need to jump on my every word.
I'm quite happy that Davina has other mods to help her, my life changed dramatically & I could no longer even come here for a long time. But mods cannot start dictating what people think.
Once again, it is in the hands of Admin, leave it at that as it really doesn't concern anyone else.
And do not fret, I won't be around that much anyway.
Thank you.

Hi Kazza. It's nice to have you back, but in the short time since your return, I have already had four separate complaints about your tone, behaviour and manner clogging up my inbox. If you were just an ordinary member with a handful of posts I probably would have banned you based on the number of complaints (considering it's the highest I've ever had about anyone - normally it's just one person complaining about one other person and I can mediate between the two).

It's fine to have differences of opinion and of course it's not compulsory to like the show. I have made several remarks in various threads where I've criticised moments of this Series, particularly Episode 1 which I wasn't that much of a fan of. There is, however, a difference between constructive criticism whilst having respect for others' opinions and trampling all over other peoples opinions and assuming that yours are correct, which is sometimes how your posts come across. If you no longer like the series, then why have you come back to post about it? Just to wind us all up?

Your criticism seems to be so extreme that you literally are struggling to find anything good to say and it's clearly upsetting some of the people on this forum. If four people came forward to complain it's likely there are others who didn't feel confident enough to come forward and this concerns me. The forum has been a very relaxed and happy place in recent months and I don't want the mood soured by any bad feelings between members.

I view the Sherlockian fandom as one big happy family where we all support each other and get along regardless of which episode is our favourite or whether we prefer that theory or the other theory and so on. If you look down on some members of the fandom with disdain then there really is no place for that here. It doesn't matter if you're a 14 year old fan fic Johnlock obsessive who's never read a word of the canon and has been desperate for them to bring Moriarty back....or a 65 year old life long Sherlockian scholar who knows the canon inside out and still thinks Jeremy Brett was the slightly better Holmes. We are sharing our love and appreciation for this series - BBC Sherlock - and everyone is welcome here without any pressures or rules.

The reason I'm posting this big long essay in the post and completely taking us off topic for a moment is because I wanted the people who issued a complaint to see that I'm actively trying to sort this out and mediate without directly going ahead and taking sides one way or another. I've always appreciated some of your insightful posts and I share your love of the canon in a big way. Personally, I've never found your posts offensive but that's because I have a thick skin and it's really incredibly hard to offend me over anything. However, I can totally understand why some others might, and in a community environment like this, peoples' views need to be listened to.

That is all I have to say on the matter and I would invite you to PM me if you wish to discuss it further.

Thanks

Boss is a class act.

Well, at the risk of going against the current party line, I actually don't disagree with much that Kazza has raised in this thread. The style of delivery is, as ever, a problem and as Tantalus has suggested, perhaps Kazza you need to give some thought to that, particularly given a large proportion of our members are not native English speakers. Tone in a text-based communication medium is very important and whilst your views are often insightful and invite debate, they also often, as the Boss has said, come across very "My opinion is right and the rest of you are idiots".

Having said that, and getting us slightly back on topic, I must admit that whilst I was amused by all the fandom nods in the first episode on first watch, I was then concerned, as others have said, that it might alienate the casual viewer.

However, when I watched it a second time I realised that most of those things will either go over their heads or do fit in with the general feel of the episode. Maybe the fake theories will seem strange to casual viewers but I think the rest of it will be fine.

TEH was my least favourite episode in Season 3, and there is always one (S1 was TBB and S2 was Hounds, for me). As others have said, the first episode was primarily about the relationship between John and Sherlock. Gatiss has always said he found Watson's reaction entirely unrealistic (he faints and then it's business as usual, really?) and that he wanted to explore that more.

I've also seen it somewhere that Sherlock is not a detective show, it's a show about a detective (I think that's also a Gatiss comment but don't quote me on that). I think that's what makes it so different from other adaptations and other crime drama on tv right now. It focusses on the characters and relationships and their development and that's really what I love about it.

Now, on to concerns about the viewers - if you look at the ratings statistics, the BBC is currently so ecstatic about the popularity of the show (13 million viewers for the first episode, and similar numbers for the subsequent two) that they are putting pressure on Hartswood to have Season 4 out by Christmas. I don't think we've anything to worry about in terms of loss of viewers or stagnation of the fanbase.

I know those of us in the fandom think that a lot of what was in this first episode was aimed at us, but in fact that's not necessarily the case. If you go back to canon (which is really where this all comes from) Sherlock Holmes was killed off by ACD and he intended for him to stay dead. He hated that the Holmes stories were his most popular work and believed his other works to be more worthy. He only brought him back thanks to the fans of the Strand who clamoured for more Holmes stories for three years.

I know the Empty Hearse group headed by Anderson was a very modern look at fandom, but it's not a new thing with regards Sherlock Holmes. There was a fandom even in ACD's day and therefore I don't think it's out-of-universe to address that in the show.

So...were there too many obvious fandom references? Perhaps, but I don't think those not-of-fandom will necessarily recognise them as such, and I don't think those references were non-canon-compliant. Was this the return episode we were hoping for? Not for many, no. The fact that they opted out of giving a definitive answer to his faked death was both clever and a cop-out to me. Does this spell the end of the BBC Sherlock adaptation as being one of the more intelligent, witty, thorough and dense dramas on television? No, most definitely not.

We are thoroughly spoiled by Sherlock. I went and watched old episodes of Buffy last night to get a bit away from the Sherlock stuff rolling around in my head. You watch a show like that and you automatically suspend disbelief. You recognise that not everything you see is going to seem plausible or realistic. The plot holes are enormous. When you watch a show like Sherlock, though, we've been lead to a much higher expectation of it and whilst that says a lot for how incredibly well done the show is, it's also a shame as it leads to unnecessary and unfair criticism. At the end of the day, it's fiction and it's drama and it's a television show. Not everything is going to be 100% realistic or plausible. The people who create the show are human so there are going to be errors, or things done in poor judgement. However, the plot holes, implausibilities and "there for the sake of plot" are few and can, if we choose, be overlooked for the sake of enjoying the show.

I would encourage those who struggled to enjoy season 3 to watch the episodes again with your critical glasses off, with your expectations outside, and just watch it for the enjoyable drama it is. It might give you a new perspective on it. There really is little to complain about.

(Sorry that turned into a bit of an essay)

back on topic:

Did someone watch the episode in the company of "non-fans" friends? I think we all can barely judge if there are too many references or not. I would be very interested in the opinion of other viewers.
(Hubby refuses to watch it with me until the dubbed version is out, so I can only ask him in June.)

I was watching THE with my friend who saw all the episodes only once, liked them and that's all. She found the fake theories really funny and not weird at all even before I explained her what they mean.