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January 17, 2017 6:09 am  #1


Our favorite villains

Our favorite villains

Simple question: who was the "best" one - most interesting, evil, creepy, dangerous,...? 
Do you have your favorites?
 

Last edited by Naavy (January 17, 2017 11:29 am)

 

January 17, 2017 9:51 am  #2


Re: Our favorite villains

I think Moriarty will always be my no. 1, probably because he isn't just psycho, he is also entertaining and charming. With Eurus in second place when it comes to who's more interesting - or maybe even first. 

CS was without a doubt the most creepy.


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January 17, 2017 9:58 am  #3


Re: Our favorite villains

Moriarty was too psycho for me, I never really understood his motivations.

Besides, I rather rank my psychopaths according to their emotional pay-off for me as a viewer. CAM is still no.1 for me with Eurus and CS sharing a very close second place.


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January 17, 2017 10:25 am  #4


Re: Our favorite villains

I found CAM to be the worst. He had a coldness about him that I couldn't see in the others.
 


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January 17, 2017 11:09 am  #5


Re: Our favorite villains

 I think, the first title of the topic was not right - to restrictive, since there are many interesting characters, technically not being the psychopaths (like - Mary), who were Sherlock's enemies. 
I decided to change it from "Our favorite psychopaths" to "Our favorite villains".

...And now I can to mention Jeffrey Hope, murderous cabbie. He had only one good scene, but he managed almost convince Sherlock to swallow the potentially poisoned pill - in time of minutes. Obvious similarity with Eurus, but Hope was not a psychopath - he loved his children. And - he was the first

Last edited by Naavy (January 17, 2017 1:37 pm)

     Thread Starter
 

January 17, 2017 11:18 am  #6


Re: Our favorite villains

Eurus wasn't a psychopath, just sayin'. She had delusions, inner insecurity, pain. Psychopaths don't work like that. She had a mixture of psychopathy and psychosis, I don't know if this kind of pathology can even exist in reality...

Moriarty and Magnussen could be really psychopaths but after The Final Problem I don't know what 'psychopath' really means in the Sherlock universe. In real life, psychopaths don't have hidden sufferings (at most boredom), but it's like the series would like to proove the opposite.

Umm... maybe the whole 'Sherlock' project is for making people believe psychopaths do have a heart. What a conspiracy... Or maybe psychopath's emotional world is just too boring, and it's more cathartique and exciting this way.

Last edited by Azor (January 17, 2017 11:23 am)

 

January 17, 2017 11:28 am  #7


Re: Our favorite villains

My favourite up until S4 had always been Moriarty. But after The Final Problem I'm not sure anymore...

As a result of introducing a character that doesn't even exist in ACD canon, they have reduced Moriarty to some puppet who basically recorded stupid video clips for an even bigger bad boss Eurus. I'm still not sure how I feel about that... but it's disappointing.

 

January 17, 2017 12:24 pm  #8


Re: Our favorite villains

Well, for some reason, for years I had a craving for a female archvillain.  And I really didn't want her to be Moriarty's minion - I wanted her to be bigger than Moriarty.  So I got what I wished for, unexpectedly, and can't really complain!

I do really like Magnussen and Smith.  They sort of based on real people, but taken a stage further.  I find them the most believable.   Both of them were part of the establishment, rather than mystery figures, and in a way that's more scary.   I particularly liked that Magnussen didn't directly kill anybody.  His acts of direct "violence" are extremely petty and controlling, like washing his fingers in somebody's water glass, peeing in fireplaces, licking and flicking faces.  Just a show of power.  I love Moriarty in TRF, but I find him less "relateable", despite what he says.  I never felt like I really knew him or understood him.   Eurus is less easy to understand because she's not like other people, but I feel we knew more than we did about Moriarty - her childhood, her relationships, where she'd lived, her interests (artwork, violin), etc. 

Just thinking - this sort of thread would go very well in general discussion, rather than specifically TFP.  It really covers the whole show. 

 

January 17, 2017 1:24 pm  #9


Re: Our favorite villains

My favourite one is probably the cabbie from ASIP.
The other ones were bigger and more powerful, but the cabbie is in a way the scariest because he is the most believable as a realistic person you can actually encounter on street. I loved how his benign look and inconspicious job covered something cruel and sinister.
His crime was cruel and shocking and yet they managed to make him somewhat human without reducing him to a "poor baby" cliche.
Also I like the theme of "banality of evil" that was embodied in him. 


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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window there. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?

 

January 17, 2017 6:05 pm  #10


Re: Our favorite villains

From my heart...darling Jim.
From creepiness value, well I first typed CAM. But actually, Culverton was probably worse.
But I really think Sian did a brilliant job as Euros.


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January 18, 2017 12:07 am  #11


Re: Our favorite villains

Whisky wrote:

I found CAM to be the worst. He had a coldness about him that I couldn't see in the others.
 

Not to mention that he had John kidnapped and put in a bonfire.

 

 

January 18, 2017 12:09 am  #12


Re: Our favorite villains

nakahara wrote:

My favourite one is probably the cabbie from ASIP.
The other ones were bigger and more powerful, but the cabbie is in a way the scariest because he is the most believable as a realistic person you can actually encounter on street. I loved how his benign look and inconspicious job covered something cruel and sinister.
His crime was cruel and shocking and yet they managed to make him somewhat human without reducing him to a "poor baby" cliche.

And without making him a sympathetic figure, as ACD did.

 

 

January 18, 2017 7:52 am  #13


Re: Our favorite villains

My favourite villain remains Moriarty, even though he is probably less realistic than Magnussen or Smith who were both incredibly creepy incarnations of dangerously powerful people in modern media. But the award for doing evil things in style goes to Jim Moriarty. And he is by far the most entertaining of all the villains. My least favourite has to be Eurus. Am I the only one who was put off by her monotonous whining? I found her less frightening but rather grating on my nerves especially in the scene where she repeated "etcetera etcetera..." ad nauseam. I almost wanted to jump out of my seat and tell her to shut up. And her mind games with Sherlock were a far cry from the elaborate, clever puzzles that Moriarty invented in TGG. Instead she simply resorted to put Sherlock under pressure by setting up situations where he had to sacrifice someone's life or make someone miserable to save his brother and his friends (John, Molly). Boring.


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January 18, 2017 9:49 am  #14


Re: Our favorite villains

diva wrote:

My least favourite has to be Eurus. Am I the only one who was put off by her monotonous whining?

They also reduced her to an omnipotent talking head on-screen in this episode. She was much more interesting as the red-haired seductress in TST or fake Faith/psychologist in TLD, but here she had practically nothing to do.


-----------------------------------

I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window there. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?

 

January 18, 2017 1:23 pm  #15


Re: Our favorite villains

Azor wrote:

Eurus wasn't a psychopath, just sayin'. She had delusions, inner insecurity, pain. Psychopaths don't work like that. She had a mixture of psychopathy and psychosis, I don't know if this kind of pathology can even exist in reality...

Moriarty and Magnussen could be really psychopaths but after The Final Problem I don't know what 'psychopath' really means in the Sherlock universe. In real life, psychopaths don't have hidden sufferings (at most boredom), but it's like the series would like to proove the opposite.

Umm... maybe the whole 'Sherlock' project is for making people believe psychopaths do have a heart. What a conspiracy... Or maybe psychopath's emotional world is just too boring, and it's more cathartique and exciting this way.

Sorry, this is off topic, but Sherlock was never supposed to be a psychopath/sociopath. Yes, he used to call himself a high functioning sociopath, but I don't think he was ever professionally diagnosed
as such. I think one of the main goals of the series was to establish that he never was a psychopath/sociopath to begin with.

Now back on topic, it's hard to decide which is my favourite villain. Moriarty was very entertaining, his dark humour was very amusing (not just The Hungry Donkey Nativity). But I didn't find him very scary or creepy. CAM and CS both made me feel much more uncomfortable, they were creepy and cold, not funny like Moriarty. So as villains, they worked better for me. I liked Eurus because of the whole Sherlock/John/Mycroft dynamic she created with her psycho games, so as far as the actions of the villain and their effect on the protagonists are concerned, she was my favourite.

Last edited by Kae Em (January 19, 2017 6:34 am)

 

January 18, 2017 5:32 pm  #16


Re: Our favorite villains

nakahara wrote:

diva wrote:

My least favourite has to be Eurus. Am I the only one who was put off by her monotonous whining?

They also reduced her to an omnipotent talking head on-screen in this episode. She was much more interesting as the red-haired seductress in TST or fake Faith/psychologist in TLD, but here she had practically nothing to do.

Yes, I was a bit disappointed about that.  I loved her in TST and TLD, and was looking forward to more disguises and personas.   We really only got one (the little girl on the plane) and that was another actress, visually.   I thought there would be more.  I even wondered if she would cross-dress as a disguise (as Irene did in the original story, and managed to fool Sherlock Holmes!).   I suppose we did get Sherlock and Mycroft's disguises to make up for it.
 

 

January 18, 2017 6:10 pm  #17


Re: Our favorite villains

Kae Em wrote:

Sorry, this is off topic, but Sherlock was never supposed to be a psychopath/sociopath. Yes, he used to call himself a high functioning sociopath, but I don't think he was ever professionally evaluated as such. I think one of the main goals of the series was to establish that he never was a psychopath/sociopath to begin with.

Maybe he was never supposed to be a psychopath, but... how to explain. His character wasn't consistent. As if he was sometimes psychopath, and sometimes not. That's not how personality works in real life. You either a psychopath or not. Sherlock did things only psychopath do, but it turned out sometimes he is an emotional one. That is exciting but totally irreal.

 

 

January 18, 2017 6:52 pm  #18


Re: Our favorite villains

Well possibly he is a sociopath, rather than a psychopath.


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January 18, 2017 8:00 pm  #19


Re: Our favorite villains

I don't think he has ever been either (they are sometimes used synonymously)

 

January 18, 2017 8:09 pm  #20


Re: Our favorite villains

Yes I was going to add on my last post:  possibly he's just Sherlock...does everyone have to have a label?


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