BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 / Time scale

**Posted by Sherlock Holmes** April 21, 2012 10:29 am

The time scale always niggles me in this episode.

When they're looking for graffiti out on the streets and eventually find some near the railway, there's a clock on the wall that shows a couple of minutes after 11.

When they get back to the flat it's clearly late because John is going on to himself about how he needs to sleep, so maybe 1am by this point?

Then they go back to the museum. Now, I know that they could feasibly gain access at any time because those places always have some security on duty throughout the night even when it's closed, but why would that guy Andy still be there? Unless they'd got his number previously then contacted him to arrange to meet him there.

Then at the police station, which is still really busy but you can kind of get away with that because the police might be working through the night too. Same at the hospital and the scene with Molly. It's believable that she could be working nights, so I'll let them off with that.

The next part that really annoys me is when they get back to the flat and get the books sent over. By this time it would realistically be about 3 or 4 in the morning. Why would Mrs Hudson still be awake and why would she think anyone was collecting for charity in the middle of the night?

**Posted by kazza474** April 21, 2012 10:33 am

I think you will find that, like a lot of episodes, all these things happen over a few days rather than hours, although I haven't really looked at this one that closely so I may be wrong here.

It's like with any storytelling, you only see the relevant bits. eg in Scandal, we didn't see the days between Xmas day & New Years day, so it seems that Irene was in their apartment straight after the Xmas scenes where in fact it was a week later.

**Posted by Davina** April 21, 2012 11:31 am

I think, like Kazza, that it is just a compressed time scale. Molly certainly wouldn't be working nights because with her line of work there is no need to do so. Knowing someone who worked in pathology the upside of the job is no horrible shifts to do. I think only the porters would have to wheel corpses in at any hours and put them in the fridges. It does mean that Molly must has specially gone in for the scene with the identification of Irene's body in Scandal.Bit of a gory post this. Sorry!

**Posted by Sherlock Holmes** April 22, 2012 6:18 am

I know, but when you watch it these things all happen in very quick succession and the whole theme of it is the fact that John isn't getting any sleep. And all of the scenes are at night because it's dark.

**Posted by Davina** April 22, 2012 6:56 am

Yeah. I think it's one of those suspend your disbelief things going on her from the writers & director.