Lately Mycroft has come up in a number of other threads and the general feeling was there is more to him than meets the eye. I was in for a re-watch anyway and I have focussed on Mycroft specifically this time. I am only at TRF, but here are some things that I have not noticed before.
 
I get a feeling that Mycroft is steering Sherlock more than is usually admitted. It is Mycroft who sends Sherlock after the Bruce-Partington Plans in TGG (and he is very assertive about it), he wants him involved in them. How secret could those plans really have been if they were on a simple USB stick that an employee was allowed to take with him and that Moriarty could have gotten “anywhere”? Those plans are the initiator for the first meeting of Sherlock and Moriarty without his cover. In SIB, it is Mycroft who initially sends Sherlock after Irene. She, too, turns out to be connected to Moriarty and Mycroft does not seem at all surprised by that fact. Mycroft is also deeply involved in the Reichenbach Fall. He is presumably the only person aside from Sherlock and Moriarty himself who knew what exactly happened on the roof of Bart’s Hospital. Of cause, it is Mycroft who brings Sherlock back to London. He is, as it turn out, after CAM, despite anything he tells Sherlock. Lady Smallwood, who sends Sherlock after CAM inthe first place, turns out to be a colleague of Mycroft. Also, apparently Lestrade does what Mycroft tells him (THoB) and it is Lestrade who gets Sherlock into a lot of cases.
 
Is Mycroft trying to use his brother to rid himself of his own enemies? Maybe, but I am willing to believe that Mycroft also goes to extreme lengths to protect his little brother. He cannot do it out in the open though, Sherlock would rebel. So he gives him what he wants: cases, but cases that Mycroft has some control over.

Because the things I wrote above I also think that Mycroft and Moriarty are connected, though I’m still struggling with trying to figure out what the nature of this connection is.
 
However, there is a much darker side, too. There are at least two instances where Mycroft lets Sherlock go into very dangerous territory. First: Mary. Within 48 hours of John’s and Sherlock’s first meeting, Mycroft had done a quite thorough background-check on John, kidnapped him and made sure he knew which side John Watson was on. He kept surveillance on John during Sherlock’s absence, down to his location on a specific evening. And yet he is supposed to have failed to do a background check on Mary? A check that enabled an incapacitated Sherlock to find out the truth within days?
Then there is Sherlock’s drug relapse. For a case or not, Mycroft must have known that his brother was using again if it was obvious enough to hit the papers. He has surveillance on Sherlock, too. Why did he not intervene sooner? Did he really not care that his brother, an addict, was using drugs again?
 
 

Last edited by Lola Red (March 31, 2015 4:46 pm)

Lola Red wrote:

However, there is a much darker side, too. There are at least two instances where Mycroft lets Sherlock go into very dangerous territory. First: Mary. Within 48 hours of John’s and Sherlock’s first meeting, Mycroft had done a quite thorough background-check on John, kidnapped him and made sure he knew which side John Watson was on. He kept surveillance on John during Sherlock’s absence, down to his location on a specific evening. And yet he is supposed to have failed to do a background check on Mary? A check that enabled an incapacitated Sherlock to find out the truth within days?
Than there is Sherlock’s drug relapse. For a case or not, Mycroft must have known that his brother was using again if it was obvious enough to hit the papers. He has surveillance on Sherlock, too. Why did he not intervene sooner? Did he really not care that his brother, an addict, was using drugs again?
 

Yes! And I would like to add: why doesn´t he investigate Sherlock´s shooting after it happens? One would think he would turn heaven and earth upside down and yet - nothing....
 

Vhanja wrote:

As for Mycroft being a sosiopath, I don't see that at all. I think the only ones in the show that can fit the bill of being a psycopath by any meaningful sense of the word are Magnussen and Moriarty.

That´s why I put "sociopath" into quote marks. I believe Mycroft simply can´t tolerate people less intelligent and smooth than him and prefers his own company rather than suffering their presence.

Vhanja wrote:

And, yes, I also see Mycroft as much more adept at social interaction and social skills than Sherlock. He would have to be, to navigate to the position he is in.

Maybe he gained that position through intrigues, Machiavellistic tricks and cunningness more than through social skills? 

Vhanja wrote:

However, I think that the fact that he is better to hide and control his emotions also means that he is more isolated than Sherlock. Sherlock actually dares to let his guard down and have close friends. Mycroft never does that.

To wear a ring of power is to be alone... and Mycroft, British goverment by proxy, is a very powerful man...

Last edited by nakahara (March 30, 2015 10:00 pm)

Vhanja wrote:

However, I have to admit I struggle to see a "dark" side of Mycroft.

He did use very hard interrogation techniques on Moriarty. I’m tempted to call it torture.

Vhanja wrote:

I've always wondered, though, if Mycroft influenced Lestrande/Scotland Yard to let Sherlock help to begin with.

Lestrade hints at doing whatever Mycroft tells him to do in THoB. My own head canon is that Mycroft took matters into his own hand just before SIP. Lestrade has known Sherlock for 5 years at that point, but is still astonished by his deductions (“if you’re just making this up”). He also still has to explain to Sherlock what the rules are (“you can’t withhold evidence”). We never see them interact like that later on, so they have not worked together before often, possibly it is their first official case together. Sherlock also has to fight a bit to get on to the case in the first place; later he is much more actively searched out for NSY investigations (if Anderson and Donovan like it or not). Who is powerful enough to get an amateur (and in the end that is what Sherlock is) into a NSY investigation? And get him all that special treatment (Sherlock, exclusively, does not have to wear protective clothing to not contaminate the crime scene, he can bring someone with him etc.)? I got the feeling that Sherlock had turned up at crime scenes before (not necessarily making friends with all of the present officers), but that this was (on of) his first official case(s). We know that Sherlock solves crimes as an alternative to getting high; maybe this was Mycroft’s attempt to help his brother getting clean.
 

Last edited by Lola Red (March 30, 2015 10:56 pm)

Sherlock is lazy? I always get the feeling that Sherlock is constantly operating at the max of his abilities. He cannot eat during a case, because the extra energy he would have to spend on digestion would slow him significantly. (The canon goes deeper into this than the show does: there, Sherlock stops eating until he passes out and has to go to the countryside at least twice to recuperate, because his body is breaking down under the constant strain.) Mycroft, on the other hand, can still take it up a notch when he needs to. He is very well able to get into the legwork if he has no other choice (see Serbia). He can glimpse from a police report what Sherlock needs additional visual input to make out. He casually out-deduces Sherlock (“Sofa, Sherlock. It was the sofa.”). He does not need techniques like a mind palace to help him retain information (“this ridiculous memory palace of yours”). He does not do out-loud casual deductions, but apparently is constantly doing them unconscious (he deduces the hat owner, without having the hat in his hands, he did the deduction long before they started the game).
I believe Mycroft is definitely the smarter of the two, but he is generally less of a show man than Sherlock is. For Mycroft, the only person he wants to constantly remind of his superiority is Sherlock, while Sherlock wants the rest of the world to know he is superior to them. Given what we know about their childhood, that seems to make sense.
And yes, Mycroft tries to control Sherlock and Sherlock rebels vehemently, but is Mycroft trying to execute damage control when it comes to his “junkie detective brother” or is he trying to help a troubled sibling?

I agree with you that Mycroft could never get away with the behaviour Sherlock is prone to get into. It would be the end of his career. But I think the scene with Mummy shows us that there is some of this kind of childish quality in Mycroft, too. He has just learned to suppress it better than Sherlock. I think it comes out when he is in an environment he knows will tolerate such kind of behaviour. He does quite childishly banter with Sherlock when they are alone, playing operation or deductions with him and you have already mentioned Mummy. Deep down both he and Sherlock are quite alike in their sensibilities. E.g. Mycroft, too, loves to be dramatic, as evidenced by his repeated kidnapping of John. It just comes out in different ways than with Sherlock.
 
I do see the interrogating of Moriarty a bit darker: repeated slabs to the face, prolonged social isolation (he had time to etch Sherlock’s name on every available surface in the cell) and either repeated exposure to long times of darkness or complete lack of privacy or control thereof by being held in bright lights while surrounded by darkness (“he just sat there, staring into the darkness”), while being held in a very barren environment. All of that “for weeks”. I’m not quite sure how pathetic that attempt on torture really is.
 
I think Mycroft’s attempts to control Sherlock might indeed be a mixture of damage control, habit and genuine caring. We get hints that they (for as of yet unknown reasons) were both poorly socialised as young children. [From here on: head canon] Both would have trouble adjusting to the world that they were thrown into, a world that was collectively intellectually inferior to them, but which’s social refinements they were unable to comprehend. It would have been one of the first times that Mycroft was just as clueless as Sherlock. Both, being poorly prepared for social interactions with anyone outside their family, would fail to make social bonds, without really understanding why (even as late as SIP Sherlock thinks that his worst qualities are his violin playing and his tendency to not speak for days on end; no one has ever pointed out to him what the real problem in his interactions was). Mycroft coped by banning sentiment from his life, Sherlock tried to do the same, but failed. Unable to come up with another coping mechanism, he turned to drugs. Mycroft still feels guilty for being unable to protect his little brother, but at the same time Sherlock is a loose cannon and a constant danger to Mycroft’s work. So Mycroft uses his brother’s love for crime solving both as a tool to help him and to control him.
 

I'd just like to state for the record that just about everyone, even the British gevernment, becomes 12 again in the presence of their parents. 

tonnaree wrote:

I'd just like to state for the record that just about everyone, even the British gevernment, becomes 12 again in the presence of their parents. 

I see what you mean (I think), but I do disagree. Most adults are able to be mature about family gatherings that they might find boring. I know grown men who will play with the train set their toddler got for Christmas and in general goof around like kids (which is just adorable), and I also know grown men who find social gatherings tiresome and boring.

However, I have yet to find a middle-aged, educated man who whines to his mother like a teenage brat for having to - oh, the horror! - spend Christmas with his family. He is being rude and childish, and not even to his brother (who can be rude and childish right back at him), but to his poor mother, who is nothing but lovable in these scenes.