The way he talked about it, I was thinking in the back of my head "I hope you didn't kill thid guy just so you could kill yourself". I dunno, I think it's possible, and I certainly wouldn't be surprised if he knew about the murder and didn't stop it.

As this was a Mycroft led operation and Sherlock was just the bait I wouldn't ask to many questions.....'just look frightened, and scuttle.'

Last edited by dartmoordoggers (January 20, 2014 4:39 pm)

Bruce Cook wrote:

I'm pretty sure Sherlock was lying outrageously throuhout his "explanation" of the hoax.  His claim that he used a body which "looked a lot like me" was a prime example.  The body was only used for a few seconds to fool John while Sherlock stood twenty feet away to allow a little blood to be smeared on his face.

Why bother with a body?  Why didn't Sherlock just lay down, play dead, and allow his support team to quickly smear the blood on him? That would have been much quicker than throwing a body out the window and then hauling it away again.

And it seems pretty odd that Sherlock used this alledge dead body for his hoax but never bothered to find out the man's identity!  Sherlock's statement --  " . . . that man, whoever he was . . . "  -- clearly indicates that Sherlock didn't seem to know or care who the man was.

Sorry, but that certainly doesn't sound much like Sherlock Holmes.

I'm certain that the whole purpose of Sherlock's extremely flawed "explanation" was just a bit of clever pay-back to Anderson, one of the two people who had supported the idea that Sherlock was a fake and a fraud.

I would imagine the body was needed for some of the other planned falls. For example if Moriarty had lived and Sherlock had jumped when he asked Moriarty for some time. Gatiss explained that one of the solutions was for Sherlock to land on a platform and a body would have been thrown from the platform. This was referred to in the newspaper headline from ASiB.
In addition when Sherlock talks about finding the body or any of the other mechanics of the operation I assumed Mycroft got the security services to supply all the backup required.
 

Bruce Cook wrote:

I would imagine the body was needed for some of the other planned falls. For example if Moriarty had lived and Sherlock had jumped when he asked Moriarty for some time. Gatiss explained that one of the solutions was for Sherlock to land on a platform and a body would have been thrown from the platform. This was referred to in the newspaper headline from ASiB.
In addition when Sherlock talks about finding the body or any of the other mechanics of the operation I assumed Mycroft got the security services to supply all the backup required.

Land on a plateform?  Assuming the plateform was sufficiently padded, where did this plateform come from in the brief time they had between the approach of John's cab from the left end of the brick building (from Sherlock's point of view) to the time it was needed to catch Sherlock.

How was it taken away quickly enough to prevent John from seeing it in time between the moment he saw Sherlock laying on the sidewalk and the moment he arrived at his side after recovering from the being knocked down.  It's 30 seconds exactly. I timed it.





The story Sherlock told Anderson claims that the body was placed on the ground immediately after Sherlock landed in the airbag and the airbag had been taken away.  But the time between Sherlock jumping and John first seeing him on the ground is only 17 seconds!

Are we really supposed to believe that Sherlock landed on the airbag, the bag was moved, the body was thrown from the window after the bag was out of the way, and the blood was placed on the ground around the head -- in just 17 seconds?



Sorry, I don't buy it.  I'm sticking my fireman's net theory and no body thrown from a window.  Seventeen seconds is enough time for Sherlock to roll off the net, lay on the ground, and have blood poured around him while the ground crew puts the net back into the laundry truck through the wire mesh door at the rear.

As I have already said, the platform idea was around at the time of ASiB. Hence the newspaper headline about Barts. It was dropped when they decided to use the ambulance station as cover. Thats factual. I'm not trying to tie it in with anyones 'theories'.

Bruce Cook wrote:

I'm pretty sure Sherlock was lying outrageously throuhout his "explanation" of the hoax.  His claim that he used a body which "looked a lot like me" was a prime example.  The body was only used for a few seconds to fool John while Sherlock stood twenty feet away to allow a little blood to be smeared on his face.

Why bother with a body?  Why didn't Sherlock just lay down, play dead, and allow his support team to quickly smear the blood on him? That would have been much quicker than throwing a body out the window and then hauling it away again.

And it seems pretty odd that Sherlock used this alledge dead body for his hoax but never bothered to find out the man's identity!  Sherlock's statement --  " . . . that man, whoever he was . . . "  -- clearly indicates that Sherlock didn't seem to know or care who the man was.

Sorry, but that certainly doesn't sound much like Sherlock Holmes.

I'm certain that the whole purpose of Sherlock's extremely flawed "explanation" was just a bit of clever pay-back to Anderson, one of the two people who had supported the idea that Sherlock was a fake and a fraud.

Rewatched this episode and have exactly the same question (but haven't found a clear answer here yet): Why is this body needed??? Why doesn't Sherlock jump off, lay down and everything's being prepared? And, to go a little further, if the body isn't actually needed - why did Sherlock need Molly to get involved???
Or did I miss anything significant?
 

I would think Molly is needed to do the paperwork - Sherlock's death certificate, or whatever. That's the easy part, the rest is more difficult:

As for the sound - in order to get the right one, one would have to throw the guy from the roof, or at least one of the upper floors, not just a first-floor window behind the ambulance station.  And if he's thrown from the roof, Sherlock couldn't jump as well, at least not while John is seeing him...

Then there's the little problem of why would Sherlock tell Anderson, of all people, the true story? (According to the commentary, etc, this is supposed to be the correct version). And I don't buy the airbag. Anybody who looked out of a higher-up window in this street would have seen this huge blue thing. Okay, the street was blocked off, but what about the people inside the houses? How were they removed without them ever becoming suspicious?

I suppose one could get them out with a gas leak warning. But wouldn't somebody begin to wonder when they read the headlines of Sherlock's suicide?

I always thought John's assassin would have seen the airbag and realised that Sherlock had faked it then bumped John off.

SolarSystem wrote:

I always thought the body is needed to get the right 'sound' of a human body crashing to the ground. I'm not sure however why that body needed to look like Sherlock. Maybe because there was the danger of John getting a glance of the body?

I always thought the same as well. John needs to see (and hear) an actual body dropping from the sky and crashing horribly to the ground. That can only be done by a dead body. Then the swap to real Sherlock for when John gets a close-up of his face.

So I figured (as Sherlock says himself) that Molly was needed both to find this dead look-alike, and to do the paperwork on Sherlock's "death".

Vhanja wrote:

SolarSystem wrote:

I always thought the body is needed to get the right 'sound' of a human body crashing to the ground. I'm not sure however why that body needed to look like Sherlock. Maybe because there was the danger of John getting a glance of the body?

I always thought the same as well. John needs to see (and hear) an actual body dropping from the sky and crashing horribly to the ground. That can only be done by a dead body. Then the swap to real Sherlock for when John gets a close-up of his face.

So I figured (as Sherlock says himself) that Molly was needed both to find this dead look-alike, and to do the paperwork on Sherlock's "death".

 
Hm, I can't believe that John really NEEDED to hear the body crash to the ground. If you see your best friend falling from the top of a roof obviously to commit suicide, you'll forget everything else and are so deeply shocked that you don't draw your attention to something like "Is there a crash or not". Moreover, the dead body was thrown from the first (?) floor, that makes a difference from falling from the top of the roof.
Hm, I'm still wondering ...
 

I suppose it would normally be up to the family whether or not a body was available for viewing (and Sherlock's parents were in on the deception).  So it's plausible enough to me that John would not see a body after Sherlock was carried away.