BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 / The Abominable Bride: Post Mortem - Cast/Creators interview

**Posted by nakahara** February 20, 2016 10:05 pm

besleybean wrote:
I thought we'd decided that it was the ambulance station blocking John's view as the point Steven thought we'd all missed...when actually most of us had picked up on it straight away.

Yes... it was only we, the fans, who decided that... Moftiss never bothered to explain themselves.

**Posted by besleybean** February 20, 2016 10:06 pm

No, I thought he actually said so in an interview...unless it's one of those stories that grows arms and legs.

**Posted by nakahara** February 20, 2016 10:16 pm

besleybean wrote:
No, I thought he actually said so in an interview...unless it's one of those stories that grows arms and legs.

Can you cite this interview?

**Posted by besleybean** February 20, 2016 10:34 pm

No, I am unsure of the origin of the story...as I indicated!

**Posted by nakahara** February 20, 2016 10:56 pm

"you know, you’ve had a major revelation about mary - mary is not who you thought she was in the previous episode. she can’t just go - as i said earlier - go back to what she was before. she’s got to be super good at this. so she has to be super good at it in the victorian version, which she actually solves the crime. and indeed in the modern version, actually solves it as well. because if we did anything else, then it’d be like we’d forgotten. she’s actually - she’s the professional. sort of looking after our two bumbling amateurs."

These people claim that they are the life-long fans of Sherlock Holmes but I think it´s obvious thay are not. The idea of Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective of all times, being a bumbling amateur and playing a second fiddle to some Mary Sue....

You really want to destroy ACD creation that much?

**Posted by besleybean** February 20, 2016 10:58 pm

I am perfectly happy with what my favourite writers do with the show.
I am confident they will never ruin it.

**Posted by nakahara** February 20, 2016 11:10 pm

besleybean wrote:
I am perfectly happy with what my favourite writers do with the show.
I am confident they will never ruin it.

I would really like to have your confidence. Recently I have watched "Poirot: The Halloween Party" which was an abyssmal adaptation of Agatha Christie´s book, badly characterised and melodramatic to the point of absurdity... and I was dismayed to discover that Mark Gatiss, of all people, was responsible for the mess...

Even the hand of the master can slip....

**Posted by besleybean** February 20, 2016 11:13 pm

Don't think that's the one I'm thinking of...
I saw the Poirot where Mark wrote the last ever episode. Loved it.
Not that it's relevant to Sherlock.

**Posted by tonnaree** February 20, 2016 11:51 pm

Finally got a chance to watch. Most enjoyable.

I didn't hear anything particular that made me think Mary is going to be around for a long time. And of course I'm dying to know what Mark let slip to Ben!

**Posted by RavenMorganLeigh** February 21, 2016 1:29 am

nakahara wrote:
besleybean wrote:
I don't think it's too surprising that Sherlock likes Mary so much...she's very like him.
They are nothing alike.

Thank you!! Sherlock would never shoot a friend just to protect himself from the repercussions of a lie he told. Actually, he's far more likely to let his friends hit him, humiliate him, and err, shoot him!

**Posted by RavenMorganLeigh** February 21, 2016 1:43 am

nakahara wrote:
"you know, you’ve had a major revelation about mary - mary is not who you thought she was in the previous episode. she can’t just go - as i said earlier - go back to what she was before. she’s got to be super good at this. so she has to be super good at it in the victorian version, which she actually solves the crime. and indeed in the modern version, actually solves it as well. because if we did anything else, then it’d be like we’d forgotten. she’s actually - she’s the professional. sort of looking after our two bumbling amateurs."

These people claim that they are the life-long fans of Sherlock Holmes but I think it´s obvious thay are not. The idea of Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective of all times, being a bumbling amateur and playing a second fiddle to some Mary Sue....

You really want to destroy ACD creation that much?

I really do think that's what Mofftiss' endgame is-- to deconstruct ACD's original characters and update (remake) John and Sherlock to suit their post-modernist, cynical, irreverent tastes.

Nowadays, the anti-hero is pretty standard for main protagonists in film and fiction, to the extent that every main character is supposed to be given a "fatal flaw"-- the more outrageous the better. So, why wouldn't they make Sherlock and John "bumbling amateurs", or Sherlock a junkie and a cold blooded murderer, and make John the kind of man who forgives the woman who shot his best friend, and thereafter lives with her in wedded bliss? And makes that woman the only really competent character in the show, as she's actually even smarter than Mycroft??? Not sure I get it.

**Posted by Liberty** February 21, 2016 7:53 am

I was puzzled by that, because Sherlock did solve the crime in TAB, presumably both the Victorian one and the present day one (how did Moriarty fake his death? Or did he?). Mary works as an undercover agent, and has a particular advantage in that it must have been easier to find a secret group of women when she was a woman herself. It was Sherlock who came up with the rest - the motivation, the means, the method, etc. Mary tries to help in the modern times too, but doesn't actually get anywhere. Mary is the professional, but she isn't a detective.

(It's the same in TSOT - Mary remembers the room number, but she doesn't get anywhere towards solving the crime, despite having much the same information as Sherlock).

I suppose in the Victorian version (in Sherlock's mind) she's crucial to solving it, but I don't see what she does in the modern day? They haven't accidently given away something that hasn't been shown yet, have they?

**Posted by besleybean** February 21, 2016 8:23 am

Yeah I thought it was just me being thick!
I just thought they were referring to her hacking into the MI5(or 6, or whatever it is!) files.
Maybe it's a scene they've cut and they'll just say' oh it was all in the Mind Palace' Ha!.

Last edited by besleybean (February 21, 2016 8:23 am)

**Posted by ukaunz** February 21, 2016 12:10 pm

Did anyone catch what they said about filming extra scenes that weren't used in TAB? One was something like Sherlock looking through the window and seeing the modern Baker Street flat (how, from the window ledge one floor up?) and there was something else about the morgue scene. I'll have to watch the panel again, because I'm not making much sense here, but it got me thinking of that person we see from the back in the morgue scene when Stamford is taking Watson to meet Holmes, that people thought might be Sherlock.

Ariane dear, are you doing a transcript by any chance?

Last edited by ukaunz (February 21, 2016 12:10 pm)

**Posted by besleybean** February 21, 2016 3:06 pm

Ah yes, that could be the morgue scene they mentioned...
But we do see the window one in Baker St don't we, at the end?
Where it goes from Victorian to modern?

**Posted by nakahara** February 21, 2016 8:04 pm

RavenMorganLeigh wrote:

I really do think that's what Mofftiss' endgame is-- to deconstruct ACD's original characters and update (remake) John and Sherlock to suit their post-modernist, cynical, irreverent tastes.

Nowadays, the anti-hero is pretty standard for main protagonists in film and fiction, to the extent that every main character is supposed to be given a "fatal flaw"-- the more outrageous the better. So, why wouldn't they make Sherlock and John "bumbling amateurs", or Sherlock a junkie and a cold blooded murderer, and make John the kind of man who forgives the woman who shot his best friend, and thereafter lives with her in wedded bliss? And makes that woman the only really competent character in the show, as she's actually even smarter than Mycroft??? Not sure I get it.

Anti-hero is still a hero. Despite his fatal flaws, he still has skills and characteristics to be admired....
Taking a beloved character and reducing him to a bumbling idiocy is not even deconstuction, it´s a destruction of a character...
I start to suspect that despite their claims of loving Sherlock Holmes, Moftiss simply attatched themselves to this franchise to make some bucks from a successful story written by someone else. Steven Moffatt previously tried to do something similar with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - and I doubt he is a lifelong fan of Robert Louis Stevenson....

**Posted by besleybean** February 21, 2016 8:07 pm

As he is Scottish and taught English in a Scottish school, he may well be a huge RLS fan.
I know he is a huge Conan Dolye fan and that shows in his loving recreation of the man's work.

**Posted by nakahara** February 21, 2016 8:13 pm

besleybean wrote:
As he is Scottish and taught English in a Scottish school, he may well be a huge RLS fan.
I know he is a huge Conan Dolye fan and that shows in his loving recreation of the man's work.

Lovely recreation? In this very interview he claims that Doyle´s women characters are all silent, mindless dolls which is patently untrue... did he even read ACD, or has he this ridiculous idea about Doyle´s writing from hearsay?

**Posted by besleybean** February 21, 2016 8:15 pm

To be fair, I think he means that Victorian women were not as free as twenty first century women...something upon which I would have thought we could all agree.
Anyhow, I like Steven and Mark's female characters.
I loved the suffragist theme of TAB.

**Posted by nakahara** February 21, 2016 8:25 pm

besleybean wrote:
To be fair, I think he means that Victorian women were not as free as twenty first century women...something upon which I would have thought we could all agree.
Anyhow, I like Steven and Mark's female characters.
I loved the suffragist theme of TAB.

And Doyle is guilty of the fact that women weren´t enjoying the rights they enjoy now? Preposterous...

Also, Moftiss claim that the women depicted in TAB were not suffragists...