BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 » Mary

RavenMorganLeigh · July 11, 2015 8:42 pm

SusiGo wrote:
I found this quote by Steven Moffat quite interesting. It is from SDCC panel:

This may apply to all sorts of plot twists but here he was speaking expressly about Mary with the gun in her hand. And it indicates that we indeed get hints that something is off with her if we look closely.

Totally! "Liar" and "confidant" and the whole skip code thing were big clues... And, possibly the scene in the resturant where we see her at the top of the stairs and she's dressed like Mata Hari....

Mattlocked · July 11, 2015 10:37 pm

Swanpride wrote:
Yeah, but Mary's intent wasn't to kill, it was to delay Sherlock long enough that she could talk to him later on. And if she intended to kill Magnussen...well, if she had done it, Sherlock wouldn't be forced to do it.

How do you know? Did you read her mind?
This is what I can read:

SusiGo · July 12, 2015 10:07 am

But this is exactly what I have said more than once. We get hints that she is not just sweet and lovely before HLV. And what in the above quote does suggest she loves John?

SusiGo · July 12, 2015 10:16 am

I have just posted this in "My thoughts about Mary" and include it here for your information. I think it conforms with how Lola Red has conceived this thread:

As the existence of three Mary threads has caused some confusion, I am going to close this one. 2,200 posts are an amazing number which shows the great need for discussing the character. In order to avoid further misunderstandings, I would suggest this:

Why we love Mary: I think this is self-explaining
Mary - the subject of discussion: open, controversial but polite discussion of Mary as a character

As for respecting other's opinions: This means that no one should post negative views in the former thread but also that no one should be prevented from discussing negative views in the latter.

Last edited by SusiGo (July 12, 2015 10:17 am)

Lola Red · July 12, 2015 1:09 pm

Thank you Susi. I would just like to add part of the opening of this thread:

I have one request to all of you: I know many of you feel quite passionate about Mary’s character, but please be polite to each other. We made a good start in the “My thoughts about Mary” thread, so please continue in the same fashion. Use the tips from this thread http://sherlock.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=6107 amply, read your posts twice before posting them and check if someone could feel rightfully offended by your choice of words. If you accidently do cause offence, don’t be shy about apologising.

That translates to: if you see or feel that someone took offence by anything you said and you did not actually mean to do that - do apologize. Discussions can get heated and since we are limited to the written word here, stuff can get another meaning for the reader than it had for the writer. Don't just tell people to not take stuff personally or make fun of them, it makes for a bad atmosphere, apologize instead and you will see that people tend to calm down quickly. It is ok to not like the character, but please state your opinion in a way that still allows discussion, same if you love the character. This is not the "Why we love Mary" thread, nor it is a character bashing thread. We had a nice tone of constructive discussion in the beginning, let's please try to go back to that.

Last edited by Lola Red (July 12, 2015 1:27 pm)

SusiGo · July 12, 2015 5:05 pm

I am fine with that. Just one small addition - I hope we do not have any "character bashing threads" on this board.

RavenMorganLeigh · July 13, 2015 5:05 am

So, this particular thread is still open?

SusiGo · July 13, 2015 5:10 am

I just closed "my" Mary thread for said reasons. This one here remains open and unchanged.

RavenMorganLeigh · July 13, 2015 5:14 am

Aha! Got a little confused for a minute... :-)

lil · July 13, 2015 12:22 pm

Swanpride wrote:
Yeah, but Mary's intent wasn't to kill, it was to delay Sherlock long enough that she could talk to him later on. And if she intended to kill Magnussen...well, if she had done it, Sherlock wouldn't be forced to do it.

Not sure about this .The reason Sherlock gave was that Mary shot him because he was a witness to her attempt to kill Magnussen, not to stop him telling John , but had a moment of sentimentality and so didn't take the immediate kill shot.Thats where 'shortsighted' came in , because once she realises Sherlock has survived it becomes obvious he will tell John, thus she threatens him and goes prepared to silence him permanently at Lauriston Gardens.
Having her shoot because she expects Sherlock to never tell makes her stupid and we know how smart she is.
Shortsighted...is a bit better...I think.
Either way it annoys me that they make her yet another woman who when faced with Sherlock throws all her training and smarts out the window and gets caught or beaten because of sentimentality. This is another reason I would prefer Mary had a reason -other than sentiment-to let Sherlock live.
But eh Moffat and women....

tonnaree · July 13, 2015 1:26 pm

The simplest explination is that Mary DID intend to kill Sherlock and failed.
However we do get mixed signals. This is something they need to clear up without question in S4.

Liberty · July 13, 2015 1:34 pm

I took Sherlock's words to mean that Mary knew she was going to have to negotiate with/threaten Sherlock later, and she incapacitated him to buy her time - i.e. she still had the long view in mind. And in a way, she did "win" in that Sherlock carries out her work for her in the end. Magnussen is dead, she's safe, John isn't broken and he's still there. It's actually quite a good outcome, although I do take your point that it didn't all come about through her planning. You could say that Irene wins in a similar way - she "officially" does lose the game, but she has managed to manipulate Sherlock into rescueing and covering for her, and she's (relatively) safe too.

lil · July 13, 2015 3:25 pm

I don't think killing Sherlock in the hospital and getting away with it is plausable, she puts herself into a very small time and suspect window.
Having Mary not kill Sherlock because of John , makes her not care about people other than herself and John.
Having her be the kind of assasin that doesn't automatically kill innocent witnesses makes her more sympathetic.
If they want to do that we might get a - she left a witness alive before scenario and thats why she had to go on the run.
People won't care much if she shot Magnussen bad guy types , they will if she has killed innocents.That I think is the line between grey/black for Mary.

Kittyhawk · July 13, 2015 3:54 pm

lil wrote:
I don't think killing Sherlock in the hospital and getting away with it is plausable, she puts herself into a very small time and suspect window.....

Sorry, but if Mary is incapable of killing somebody who's lying seriously injured in a hospital bed in such a way as to not attract suspicion, something has gone seriously wrong with her assassin training... (and who would suspect her?) No, if Mary wanted to kill Sherlock, Sherlock would be dead!

nakahara · July 13, 2015 4:32 pm

Kittyhawk wrote:
lil wrote:
I don't think killing Sherlock in the hospital and getting away with it is plausable, she puts herself into a very small time and suspect window.....
Sorry, but if Mary is incapable of killing somebody who's lying seriously injured in a hospital bed in such a way as to not attract suspicion, something has gone seriously wrong with her assassin training... (and who would suspect her?) No, if Mary wanted to kill Sherlock, Sherlock would be dead!

The way I see it, Mary came into hospital awaiting the news about Sherlock´s death. She was very unpleasantly surprised to hear that he survived her attempt to silence him forever. Because she was not prepared to hear that, she could not kill Sherlock right away (she did not bring guns with her, didn´t know if Sherlock´s room is not supervised, didn´t know where the doors for her possible exit are, etc.), therefore she decided to just threaten Sherlock and force him into silence that way, before she could find a way how to dispose of him. And then, I believe, she could not kill him in a hospital, because John or Sherlock´s visitors were always in Sherlock´s room and didn´t give her a chance to do it.

Liberty · July 13, 2015 4:57 pm

Kittyhawk wrote:
lil wrote:
I don't think killing Sherlock in the hospital and getting away with it is plausable, she puts herself into a very small time and suspect window.....
Sorry, but if Mary is incapable of killing somebody who's lying seriously injured in a hospital bed in such a way as to not attract suspicion, something has gone seriously wrong with her assassin training... (and who would suspect her?) No, if Mary wanted to kill Sherlock, Sherlock would be dead!

I agree about the hospital - I think that in some ways it's the ideal situation for a nurse/assassin to do away with somebody. It's the very place that people are expected to die, particularly somebody who has been so close to death within hours.

Kittyhawk · July 13, 2015 5:44 pm

nakahara wrote:
The way I see it, Mary came into hospital awaiting the news about Sherlock´s death. She was very unpleasantly surprised to hear that he survived her attempt to silence him forever. Because she was not prepared to hear that, she could not kill Sherlock right away (she did not bring guns with her, didn´t know if Sherlock´s room is not supervised, didn´t know where the doors for her possible exit are, etc.)....

Nobody in their right mind would shoot somebody in a hospital. Determining whether the room is supervised is a matter of seconds or at most minutes. Ditto for exists (well, probably minutes, not seconds). Sherlock would have been absolutely helpless against a pillow on his face. Though that would have set off the monitors, so it's probably not the best of ideas. But air bubbles in blood vessels are supposedly rather bad for people's health, as are insulin injections for non-diabetics and heaven knows what else one could find lying around in a hospital (I have neither medical nor assassin training). What about a morphine overdose? A trained assassin might even have the capacity to reprogram a PCA (which, by the way, does not work as shown in the show!)

Lots of ideas, and I'm not even in the habit of killing people...

nakahara · July 13, 2015 6:06 pm

I still don´t believe Mary would kill Sherlock spontaneously, without any kind of back-up plan in a hospital. Sherlock´s room had a big window leading to the hall, Mary could be seen by any person through it. John could return from the loo/the place he had been at any time, or a doctor / nurse could enter the place unexpectedly and see Mary by the deed. Or she would suddenly be arrested, because Mycroft´s hidden camera was place in some wretched location she overlooked in a hurry....

Mary would need to know something about the daily regime in that particular hospital to be sure that no one would see her injecting Sherlock with mysterious deadly stuff or manipulating with his medication. She would also have to ensure that John would be elsewhere and that Mycroft doesn´t have the cameras all over the place. She would have to devise a method how to make Sherlock´s death look natural... and all of this would take time and careful planning.

Liberty · July 13, 2015 6:57 pm

But if you look at the cases in the news of "medical" serial killers, it actually seems to sometimes take quite a while to catch them, and quite a while to even notice that people are being murdered. And that's when the murderers are people who are known to have the means and the opportunity. Catching a visitor committing a single concealed murder would be much harder, I'm sure. There are loads of people working in hospitals, cleaners, porters, etc., and loads of visitors. It obviously wasn't even a problem for Mary to be alone with Sherlock as she manages to do it early on (she wouldn't have been threatening him if John or other people were there). If they really want us to believe that Mary wanted to kill him in hospital but couldn't - well, I just don't buy it.

Last edited by Liberty (July 13, 2015 6:58 pm)

nakahara · July 13, 2015 7:32 pm

Liberty wrote:
But if you look at the cases in the news of "medical" serial killers, it actually seems to sometimes take quite a while to catch them, and quite a while to even notice that people are being murdered. And that's when the murderers are people who are known to have the means and the opportunity.

Medical killers had it easier than Mary, don´t you think? They were already knowledgable about the daily regime in hospital /medical facility they worked in and they were mostly a part of the staff there (nurses, doctors), so nobody was finding it strange if they injected something into patient´s body. Mary doesn´t have such a advantage.

Liberty wrote:
Catching a visitor committing a single concealed murder would be much harder, I'm sure. There are loads of people working in hospitals, cleaners, porters, etc., and loads of visitors.

Loads of people who can see you from the hall when you are trying to hurt a patient.... and as I pointed above, there´s a high possibility of Mycroft´s camera being hidden somewhere.

Liberty wrote:
It obviously wasn't even a problem for Mary to be alone with Sherlock as she manages to do it early on (she wouldn't have been threatening him if John or other people were there). If they really want us to believe that Mary wanted to kill him in hospital but couldn't - well, I just don't buy it.

I know where you are coming from, still, I don´t think Mary could kill Sherlock in the moment when she threatened him. She probably promised John to look out over Sherlock for a while - something happens to him now and she is the first one who would be implied as a cause of his death....