True story......Nope!
Sherlock can't tell Watson the Anderson Theory.... Too much time in the militarty, he would know a rifle with a scope is NOT what you use in a stairwell.

I know, I know... he was a Doctor..... "And a soldier, as you keep reminding us"

I assume, jumping into a fireman's net and stage that performance around isn't as simple as you think. People, equipment, stuff, timing... Your differences to the Anderson story are just in details, imo. (Net instead of the pillow, mycrofts agents instead of the homeless...) And for me, that doesn't work, it isn't simple enough.

Last edited by s.he (January 10, 2014 11:15 am)

To me the whole 'how did he survive' thing is closely tied in with the original canon. It seems/feels that the writers are perhaps replicating what ACD must have gone through having decided (foolishly with hindsight) to kill off his creation by him falling over the Reichenbach Falls. Subsequently, due to fan pressure, he had to resurrect his creation and come up with an explanation of how Sherlock Holmes survived that fall. The best he could come up with was baritsu. There is even an allusion to this when Sherlock starts to go through the possible solutions.

Agree with Sherlock Holmes. AC Doyle had to come up with an explanation after the fact, since originally, he had no plans to resurrect Holmes. He was lucky, that Holmes' original fall to death left big loopholes, so it wasn't even that difficult to come up with a lame but plausible explanation. The readership didn't expect something elaborate anyway. They just wanted Holmes back, no matter how.
With Sherlock, it's very different. Mofftiss created a death scenario, which was incredibly difficult to explain away in a satisfiying fashion, yet they raised the expectations sky high by planting all sorts of clues, and telling people, there is an elegant solution, parts of it were on film already, and it was solvable, if you just pay attention to all the details. And then they bail out with an ambiguous solution full of holes. And very inelegant to boot, at least IMO.  If they really insist on leaving things like that, it's sloppy story telling to say the least. But I have still hope, that hints will be given in tomorrow's last episode, and more info might come up in season 4.
To give you another perplexing example of sloppyness in theory 3: I went through the footage again yesterday, and something about the conditions and the atmosphere didn't feel quite right. They used part of the old footage of TRF again, but something in the new footage was different. First I suspected the weather inconsistencies, but that was discussed after TRF at length already, and is probably due to the changing weather in England, lol! Then it hit me: In some sequences on the ground you can see, that the trees have no foliage, they are bare! In TRF, they are in full foliage, which creates a very different street atmosphere. So, is this just another incredible sloppyness, or is this a hint, that Sherlock is pulling Anderson's legs. You have to remember, that TEH takes place in November. Might Sherlock just have used in his head the CURRENT conditions? After TRF, Mofftiss said, they had already shot most parts of the real solution, which makes sense, since it's difficult to recreate the same conditions for a re shoot, especially, if a lengthy delay is on the horizon. Yet, in theory 3, we've seen only scenes, which have been already shown in TRF, and scenes with markedly different conditions, which cannot have been filmed, when they did TRF. Where are those scenes, which were done, when they shot TRF, but were not used in that episode?
Food for thought.

Last edited by sherlocked (January 11, 2014 12:28 pm)

Oh, goodness.   Ok  I  haven't read all of the posts,  here.   I  haven't actually seen the episode yet  in the USA;   however,  I  did happen to catch it  online  (but it kept buffering and skipping)   and I  DID  read the subtitles  of it, too.   My  first thought was,   what the dickens was Anderson doing in this episode?   His  involvement is neither here nor there.   The writers could have kept him out and made more screen time for when Sherlock and John were "trapped" inside that train car.   and I'm not amused with the way this episode ended.    Still too many questions.    Darn Moftiss.  Yeah,  I was hoping for the Tardis to rescue Sherlock, too. 

I wouldn't be so sure.

Hey, I like that Latin quote!  Cool.  Now I know two Latin phrases: that one and E Pluribus Unum (which I think means "What good is a damn penny?")

Weirdness, I must confess I've come to agree with your assertion that giving us several wack-a-doodle theories and not telling us the real explanation is the only way Moffat and Gatiss could avoid an avalanche of complaints that the actual solution was too simple (the one with the fireman's net and a team of government agents to pull it off).

Insisting that the explanation be elaborate is actually insisting it be less intelligent -- and a Sherlock Holmes plan must be intelligent.  None of the three theories presented a clever, workable suicide hoax. Taken all together, they had quite a lot in common with the Ringling Brothers Circus, complete with elements like:

* a trapeze act (the bungee cord)

* a clown in make-up (Moriarty's body with the mask)

* a magic act (the disappearing body, played by Sherlock's twin brother-from-another-mother)

* a group of energetic circus roustabouts (the air bag team)

* and a thrilling high-dive climax by the death-defying Great Sherlockian, Acrobat Extraordinaire'!
 
Yes, folks, this confirms what we've all been saying for years – that Sherlock is indeed The Greatest Show on Earth!

Last edited by Bruce Cook (January 14, 2014 5:52 pm)

One thing that's been bugging me is the sniper who was trained on John his scope followed John all the way through to after Holmes' Body was carried off. that meant that his vantage point had an unobstructed view of the point of impact. ergo! he (of all people) would have seen the way Sherlock faked it and as he lived t put down the rifle we have to assume that for some reason he elected to not act on the knowledge that Sherlock didn't meet his end of the bargain.

here a theory i have
He was bought off. It's possible that while Moriarty was in custody, Sherlock and Mycroft had also already "pinched" Moriarty's preferred triggermen and made them counter-offers. Not just monetary but as Mycroft was in the government he could ensure the triggerman/men that they would be given full immunity/pardons and yes rewards for simply playing at being on Jim's side.

Sorry, Golddragon71, but you're mistaken about the sniper being able to see the sidewalk where Sherlock landed.  HIs view of the sidewalk was blocked by the low brick building positioned between the snipers's 2nd floor window and the sidwalk beneath the hospital.  John stood at the far end of the brick building (by desgin, as Sherlock planned it), and it prevented him too from the seeing the sidewalk.  (In the picture below, John has not yet moved back the far corner of the building as Sherlock insisted he do before he jumped.)



If you look carefully at the view through window where the sniper was located, there is a shot when the camera was positioned higher than the man, and you can see the brick side of the building, because the view is angled downward. (The bricks are much easier to see on TV.  Check and see if I'm right.)



In the other shot of the sniper, when the camera is looking straight out the window, we see the upper part of the trees along the sidewalk across the street.  The roof of the brick building is below the view through the window, so we don't see it. (Again, the tree leaves are easy to see on TV.  Take a look at the episode and see for yourself.)



The sniper could see John's upper body over the roof of the brick building as John stood on the sidewalk after Sherlock jumped, but not John's legs or the sidewalk itself.



However, the sniper was actually in a good position to see the opposite end of the building from where John stood, looking out the window to his right -- which meant he could see the alledged airbag being inflated and moved by the crew of men. 



And the sniper would get an even better look when the ground crew brought the airbag back around the build to hide it from John.  He could easily figure out what had happened and know the suicide was a hoax.  He would then dutifully blow John's brains out.


That's why I'm convinced there was no big blue airbag.  Sherlock lied to Anderson about that and several other aspects of his fake "explanation" for how the hoax was committed.

Last edited by Bruce Cook (January 20, 2014 7:55 pm)

Bruce Cook wrote:

Sorry, Golddragon71, but you're mistaken about the sniper being able to see the sidewalk where Sherlock landed.  HIs view of the sidewalk was blocked by the low brick building positioned between the snipers's 2nd floor window and the sidwalk beneath the hospital.  John stood at the far end of the brick building (by desgin, as Sherlock planned it), and it prevented him too from the seeing the sidewalk.  (In the picture below, John has not yet moved back the far corner of the building as Sherlock insisted he do before he jumped.)



If you look carefully at the view through window where the sniper was located, there is a shot when the camera was positioned higher than the man, and you can see the brick side of the building, because the view is angled downward. (The bricks are much easier to see on TV.  Check and see if I'm right.)



In the other shot of the sniper, when the camera is looking straight out the window, we see the upper part of the trees along the sidewalk across the street.  The roof of the brick building is below the view through the window, so we don't see it. (Again, the tree leaves are easy to see on TV.  Take a look at the episode and see for yourself.)



The sniper could see John's upper body over the roof of the brick building as John stood on the sidewalk after Sherlock jumped, but not John's legs or the sidewalk itself.



However, the sniper was actually in a good position to see the opposite end of the building from where John stood, looking out the window to his right -- which meant he could see the alledged airbag being inflated and moved by the crew of men. 



And the sniper would get an even better look when the ground crew brought the airbag back around the build to hide it from John.  He could easily figure out what had happened and know the suicide was a hoax.  He would then dutifully blow John's brains out.


That's why I'm convinced there was no big blue airbag.  Sherlock lied to Anderson about that and several other aspects of his fake "explanation" for how the hoax was committed.

Wow! thanks for the clarification.