nakahara wrote:

DramaQueen wrote:

No one, damaged or not, have a right to kill a child.
Being damaged is NO alibi.

Point.

P.S. Mr. Holmes acted in self-defence and his vis-à-vis was an odious blackmailer who used to harass people.

I absolutely agree with you, DramaQueen.
 

Thank you a lot, @nakahara!

Would you mind to take a look at my thoughts about "fourth brother"? 😉
 

I stand by my comment: that's exactly what CAM was.
A gratuitous execution.

The problem as I see it, is that Sherlock's actions are being understood as part of a TV reality and therefore treated as such, whereas characters like John and Mary are treated as if their actions were done in real life. It's double-standard.

You're right Liberty, but I know exactly what Vhanja means...
For some it seems to continue with Eurus, too.
For a very sick lady, she gets a raw deal from some fans.

Liberty wrote:

I'm not so sure on the "innocent".  But I do agree - this is one of those cases where I'm prepared to see the TV universe differently, and I think it's quite forgivable there - not so much in real life!   It's complicated, though.  CAM was a despicable person, but it would have been extremely difficult to get him to court, and probably the worst he could be tried for was blackmail - and that might have been complicated by the fact that he didn't actually have letters, etc.  He got people killed, but indirectly, so there was no murder involved.   Even his threats against Mary might have been baseless.  We don't know exactly what he knew - he just needed John and Sherlock to believe it.  From Sherlock's point of view, protecting those close to him and the world in general, the only way to stop him was to kill him at that moment.  From my point of view, obviously it's not a good thing to execute people without a trial (or even with a trial - I'm not a fan of the death penalty), unless they are posing immediate threat, which an unarmed man wasn't. 
 

Sherlock is just a re-imagination of a Victorian classic and some parts of it knowingly mirror Victorian attitudes to some problems, I think.

And Victorian + Edwardian attitude towards blackmailers was hardly favourable.

Let me cite you an excerpt from another, this time Edwardian mystery in which a man Pembury/Dobbs killed a blackmailer Ellis:

"And, between ourselves," said Thorndyke, when we were discussing the case some time after, "he deserved to escape. It was clearly a case of blackmail, and to kill a blackmailer—when you have no other defence against him—is hardly murder. As to Ellis, he could never have been convicted, and Dobbs, or Pembury, must have known it. But he would have been committed to the Assizes, and that would have given time for all traces to disappear. No, Dobbs was a man of courage, ingenuity and resource; and, above all, he knocked the bottom out of the great bloodhound superstition."

(R. Austin Freeman, "A Case of Premeditation")

HLV and the beginning of TST seeems like a distant echo to these opinions on blackmail....

 

Last edited by nakahara (November 16, 2017 3:21 pm)

Liberty wrote:

   I also wondered if Sherlock's Victorian/Edwardian attitude has been mixed with a more modern attitude towards the press, hence the change of Magnussen's occupation?

I think the change in M´s occupation was realised for solely practical reasons. In the original, Milverton gained most of his blackmail material from unfaithful servants and staff of higher-class households. But domestic servants aren´t the feature of modern households most of the time, hence the need for a change - and so Magnussen obtains his blackmail material from journalists and such in this new adaptation... nothing to do with the attitutes towards the press, I think.
 

I was so sad and confused all at the same time! Poor John was devastated; and so was I!! I cried for days when I saw that episode. But I was confused and pleasantly surprised when I saw the ending. Did you all know that Benedict really cried when he did that scene? He said he felt Sherlock's pain and it made him cry.

I think he cries at a lot!

Benedict is well-known for being able to cry on cue so I am not at all surprised that he cried in this scene. 
 

Same here!