BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 » Was Mary trying to kill Sherlock, or was it really "surgery"?

Tinks · February 27, 2014 11:22 am

Swanpride wrote:
To me it seems that they were asking for the place to shot the upper body with the highest survival rate and the least long-term damage. There have been multiple essays about how shooting the liver might cause someone to bleed out (which it the concern they keep repeating during the episode), but is actually not a bad place to get shot at.

They also made it very clear during the episode that if Mary had shot to kill, Sherlock would be dead. She is a crack shot. She could have picked the head or the heart.

I actually don't get why so many people seem to be set on proving that she wanted to kill him - that is the one thing the episode was really, really clear about. She wasn't. And I don't see any reason for Sherlock to pretend that she wasn't.

I think a way better question would be why Magnusson even was in the office that night, even though he wasn't supposed to be there....and why Mary apparently forced him to leave his desk (Sherlock deduced that he was still there based on the temperature of the seat) and go to this other room.

Swanpride, re: your last question: you raise a good point and this is what I mean when I say there were discrepancies in the episode that were buried behind the three breathtaking scenes; the Mary/ CAM scene didn't really make a lot of sense, but we forget that because we are diverted by the shooting and by the Mind Palace scene.
Personally I think the writers want us to accept that she shot Sherlock to wound him, even if it was quite some risk she took.
I'd rather they took another path, is all - the brutality of the act and the fact that it was done to a friend makes it so hard for me to get past and go back to liking and accepting Mary as part of Sherlock's circle.

Willow · February 27, 2014 12:08 pm

Swanpride wrote:
Yeah, and I can understand that it is hard to get past that for some people. But this acceptance is a different issue from the question what was portrayed on screen. And there it was clearly "surgery". If one can accept that or not...well, that's a different discussion. I just don't see the point to trying to rewrite the episode to justify the lack of acceptance. Because I don't think that it has to be justified. What Mary actually did was questionable enough.

No, it wasn't.

Sherlock speaks that line when he was bleeding out; his oxygen levels were rapidly reaching the point of no return and his ability to think was severely compromised. The brain requires a great deal of oxygen, which it wasn't getting. The beautiful makeup job demonstrating the fact that he was cyanosed was there for a reason; it reinforces the fact that Sherlock was very, very ill and in no condition to make any kind of rational statements.

Sherlock has no medical knowledge; the lengthy essay by cookieswillcrumble, cited above, demonstrates that there was a very high probability that Sherlock would die from that gunshot. Trying to set Sherlock up as having sufficient medical knowledge to make that kind of call is self-evidently nonsensical; having him make it when his brain was oxygen deprived demonstrates that it isn't to be taken seriously.

Clearly it was in Mary's interests not to kill him outright with the headshot since it gave her time to make a getaway, knowing that John would stay with a severely wounded Sherlock but go after the killer straightaway if he found Sherlock dead. And, of course, Mycroft, the Ice Man, would track her down to the ends of the earth if Sherlock was dead; she had to buy herself some time to activate another identity to be used if she felt endangered.

So she shot him, but it certainly wasn't surgery...

Willow · February 27, 2014 12:43 pm

Swanpride wrote:
Sherlock has quite a lot medical (or rather, anatomic) knowledge - especially knowledge related to the question how to kill someone. It comes with the job. As Molly pointed out, he is a competent Chemist, and he spends his free time studying body parts. That doesn't make him a doctor, but he should have enough knowledge to judge if someone shots him in a "safe kill spot" or not.

No, it doesn't. There is a vast difference between knowing some anatomy and understanding how it all fits together in a living, breathing person. That's why medical students no longer dissect corpses; it doesn't give them useful knowledge. They will do a very limited amount of dissection, and see specimens prepared by someone skilled in dissection, but what they need to know is how that organ works in the dynamic ever changing human body, in combination with everything else in the dynamic ever changing human body.

Sherlock doesn't have the skill set to do that.

lil · February 27, 2014 1:46 pm

If Mary wanted to kill Sherlock right in front of Magnusson she had to make it look accidental.
Mary didn't need a almost certain to die shot...she needed a knock him out for a bit shot..or even a warning arm/leg flesh wound hit him on the head action, as she chose for Magnusson.
She chose a 2 fingers..or one deep breath from the heart shot.

Plotwise there is no need for the near death thing..the writers chose to put it in and have Mary take a death shot and for Sherlock to die.
Did they do this just to show off / film the mindpalace scene?
Or did they want to show us Mary is /can be a cold blooded killer?

Why wasn't Magnusson at dinner? I guess Mary delayed him by holding the gun to his head, and kneel away from the desk..and throw down his mobile to stop him calling security.
Maybe Mary arranged to meet him, we know they were in contact.maybe she was his dinner date.
If you mean....she dressed as a ninja and took a gun thinking she could search the place and maybe find the safe....I think she would of gone later..when she didn't have to deal with Janine and the security people.

Last edited by lil (February 27, 2014 1:57 pm)

February 27, 2014 1:55 pm

lil wrote:
If Mary wanted to kill Sherlock right in front of Magnusson she had to make it look accidental.
Mary didn't need a almost certain to die shot...she needed a knock him out for a bit shot..or even a warning arm/leg flesh wound hit him on the head action, as she chose for Magnusson.
She chose a 2 fingers..or one deep breath from the heart shot.

Plotwise there is no need for the near death thing..the writers chose to put it in and have Mary take a death shot and for Sherlock to die.
Did they do this just to show off / film the mindpalace scene?
Or did they want to show us Mary is /can be a cold blooded killer?

I think they did the shooting scene for several reasons:
To create suspence, to show us Mary's dark side, to show us what Sherlock can do in three seconds in his mind, to show us that Sherlock comes back from the dead for John. And to draw a parallel to TRF. Probably more...

lil · February 27, 2014 2:00 pm

Be wrote:
lil wrote:
If Mary wanted to kill Sherlock right in front of Magnusson she had to make it look accidental.
Mary didn't need a almost certain to die shot...she needed a knock him out for a bit shot..or even a warning arm/leg flesh wound hit him on the head action, as she chose for Magnusson.
She chose a 2 fingers..or one deep breath from the heart shot.

Plotwise there is no need for the near death thing..the writers chose to put it in and have Mary take a death shot and for Sherlock to die.
Did they do this just to show off / film the mindpalace scene?
Or did they want to show us Mary is /can be a cold blooded killer?
I think they did the shooting scene for several reasons:
To create suspence, to show us Mary's dark side, to show us what Sherlock can do in three seconds in his mind, to show us that Sherlock comes back from the dead for John. And to draw a parallel to TRF. Probably more...

Yes I agree..but all this can only come after they decide Mary will shoot Sherlock and he will die decision.

February 27, 2014 2:10 pm

The writers play with our expectations. We knew what happened in canon: CAM was supposed to be shot on his territory with John there and another character (a women) who did it. So we expected that CAM got shot there already. That would be boring; or at least that's what the writers think possibly.
So they turn events around. Just because they can.
Hopefully with a good motivation for their characters. Sometimes I think they just play with tropes and do what is not expected.
But on the other hand I see some pattern and parallels and images that it becomes clear that it's not stirring the canon but doing something on purpose.

RavenMorganLeigh · February 28, 2014 3:15 am

I gotta say-- I keep waiting for someone to go up for murder, and use the " I wasn't trying to kill him, I was performing surgery" defense. Most likely, it'll happen in Florida!

Last edited by RavenMorganLeigh (February 28, 2014 3:16 am)

besleybean · February 28, 2014 7:10 am

But in real life people are ' incapacitated' by injuries all the time...
This was just an extreme case...and it's a TV show!

Willow · February 28, 2014 10:09 am

Swanpride wrote:
Medical students are supposed to learn how to safe live...and yes, I agree that this is a different skill set. But Sherlock excessively studied how to kill someone. It's approaching the problem from the opposite direction, but Sherlock should be better qualified to judge a kill shot than a standard doctor who never deals with crime. It's what he trained himself to know.

Same is true for Mary...being an assassin she knows exactly how to kill someone. It's what she was trained to do.

On the other hand, people survive being shot in the head. Not many, but some do, Gabrielle Giffords being an example.

And the surgeons who saved Sherlock's life clearly deal with the results of crime, just as the medics, the physios, the nurses and so on and so forth. We do not have many gunshot wounds in London, because we have exceeding tight gun laws, but we have some. You do not have to serve full time in the Services, as John did; many trauma surgeons join the Reserved Armed Forces where they spend a limited amount of time each year in places like Afghanistan where there are all sorts of fascinating cases for them to operate on; one of my daughter's mentors did exactly that.

And he is far better placed to decide whether that was 'surgery' than Sherlock...

Willow · February 28, 2014 10:17 am

Swanpride wrote:
Well, it does make a difference if shoot someone and leave or if you shoot someone and call an ambulance before leaving. Never mind that Sherlock survived, so Mary wouldn't be tried for murder but attempted murder at the worst in this case.

And would get a very heavy sentence because she was using a silenced gun, along with another five years for possession of said gun. The law of England and Wales does not allow for a plea in mitigation that she called the ambulance, and having seen the screen shots I doubt whether she did call it.

As I have previously noted, a billionaire is likely to get a faster response than an anonymous caller who might be a hoax, and all 999 calls are recorded.

RavenMorganLeigh · February 28, 2014 9:21 pm

Willow wrote:
Swanpride wrote:
Well, it does make a difference if shoot someone and leave or if you shoot someone and call an ambulance before leaving. Never mind that Sherlock survived, so Mary wouldn't be tried for murder but attempted murder at the worst in this case.
And would get a very heavy sentence because she was using a silenced gun, along with another five years for possession of said gun. The law of England and Wales does not allow for a plea in mitigation that she called the ambulance, and having seen the screen shots I doubt whether she did call it.

As I have previously noted, a billionaire is likely to get a faster response than an anonymous caller who might be a hoax, and all 999 calls are recorded.

I WISH the US had gun laws like those in the UK. It's fairly often that I hear gunshots in my neighborhood-- and one of my freinds was shot to death, brillant musician, only 52 years old.

Anyway. I agree with you, Willow.

Sherlock Holmes · March 1, 2014 12:30 pm

I thought of something else that's in defence of Mary.

If she had intended to kill Sherlock when she first shot him, but didn't shoot him in the head because she needed time to make her escape (because John would have pursued the killer if he'd found Sherlock dead) she still could have killed him later.

She had a chance to finish him off when he was in the hospital and she came in to warn him not to tell John. She could have just put a pillow over his head or upped his morphine to lethal levels. But she didn't. She allowed him to live, knowing that he knew her secret.

lil · March 1, 2014 12:33 pm

Think maybe people saw her go in...come out..those wires @machines have alarms tht bring people running.

Last edited by lil (March 1, 2014 12:45 pm)

Willow · March 1, 2014 12:48 pm

lil wrote:
Think maybe people saw her go in...come out..those wires @machines have alarms tht bring people running.

Yep; we have a gunshot victim whose first word when he came round was Mary, who dies when he has just been visited by Mary.

To paraphrase Sherlock, even the police would notice that...

Willow · March 1, 2014 12:50 pm

lil wrote:
Think maybe people saw her go in...come out..those wires @machines have alarms tht bring people running.

Yep; we have a gunshot victim whose first word when he came round was Mary, who dies when he has just been visited by Mary.

To paraphrase Sherlock, even the police would notice that...

besleybean · March 1, 2014 1:09 pm

No alarm sounded when Janine switched off the morphine.

Willow · March 1, 2014 2:18 pm

besleybean wrote:
No alarm sounded when Janine switched off the morphine.

As I recall it has been pointed out before now that such equipment is usually secured to stop people doing such things; even if no alarm went off we would still be left with a crime which even the police could solve

belis · March 1, 2014 7:08 pm

besleybean wrote:
No alarm sounded when Janine switched off the morphine.

That's dramatic license. Normally patient controlled analgesia pumps are locked behind a cover that can be only opened with a key or are password protected. Or both. For obvious reasons we don't want people interfering with them. They also have alarms. If you start messing with the pump or IV line the device will start screatching and lighting up like a christmas tree. Keeps things safe and at the same time ensures that no patient on a ward gets any sleep as those things keep alarming all night long for most silly reasons.

Willow · March 1, 2014 7:49 pm

belis wrote:
besleybean wrote:
No alarm sounded when Janine switched off the morphine.
That's dramatic license. Normally patient controlled analgesia pumps are locked behind a cover that can be only opened with a key or are password protected. Or both. For obvious reasons we don't want people interfering with them. They also have alarms. If you start messing with the pump or IV line the device will start screatching and lighting up like a christmas tree. Keeps things safe and at the same time ensures that no patient on a ward gets any sleep as those things keep alarming all night long for most silly reasons.

It's been a long time since I was on a ward type ward, since I'm usually treated on the CF floor where we are all carefully segregated, but they do, don't they? And then the nurses go on the rampage looking for one that actually works, and recidivists like myself end up with the ones which will work if you coax them a bit.

For reasons unknown to science a machine which works fine at 6 am, and 2 pm, invariably throws a hissy fit at 10 pm; I think it must be a highly specialised form of poltergeist...