The final problem (of Sherlock's second series)

Continuing my trend of bang-up-to-date posts on the BBC’s Sherlock, I’ve finally taken the time to get my ass in gear and type up a word or two (or more) on my opinion of the second series’ finale, “The Fall of Reichenbach”.  It’s four weeks ago since the thing aired on British television, but hey, better late than never – and I’m sure you’ve all been clamoring to hear this, right? …right? Don’t give me those dejected looks! Hey, anybody want to hire me to write timely reviews of prime time television shows for their magazine or website? I don’t have a problem with deadlines, no siree! I can be punctual with this stuff, I swear!

In my defense, I’m a busy man (those academic papers don’t write themselves, or so I hear) and I needed some time to mull this one over – because like it or not, you can’t deny this is an episode that left an impact. A word of warning, there’s going to be heavy spoilers around the bend, as it’s kind of impossible to discuss this episode without ‘em – so if you haven’t seen it yet and aren’t just reading this to enjoy my immaculate ability at writing criticism (haha, as if), I strongly urge you to go and give it a watch. Go on, I have a Game Boy and my trusty Tetris cartridge, I’ll be alright.

What, back already? Shit, I haven’t even scored enough points to see the rocket ship blast off! Well, I guess there’s more important things than Russian puzzle games from the 80’s – like silly British detective drama, for instance, so away we go!

While in television land it’s only been a week since we last saw our heroes (and yes, only a month on this blog, shut up), it’s obvious more time has passed in the Sherlockverse, for Mr Holmes and Mr Watson have been doing a good amount of legwork. After recovering a famous painting of the German Reichenbach Falls (the case referred to in the episode title, but I’ll get to that in a bit), Sherlock’s fame in Britain has steadily been rising. This is making it harder and harder for the dynamic duo to operate successfully, as reporters swarm the pavement outside their Baker Street apartment, ready to catalogue their every move. And that isn’t the only thing breaking the great detective’s balls this time around: for James Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ arch-nemesis, is on the move again. After a series and a half of predominantly lurking in the shadows, Jim Moriarty finally takes center stage to solve the problem of his rivalry with Sherlock once and for all: their ‘final problem’, as he calls it, referencing the similarly named Arthur Conan Doyle story depicting the last struggle between the criminal mastermind and the illustrious detective. 

  

There's a smilie face in there though, so his intentions can't be that bad. 

 

In “The Reichenbach Fall”, Moriarty has gotten his hands on a string of computer code that’ll let him hack into any computer system in the world – say, kind of like the Konami code, only instead of getting thirty extra guys on Contra so you can finally beat the game and move on with your life, you get to do things like steal classified information, fire off nuclear missiles and break into any security system simply at the click of a button. Using his new toy, Jim sets out to rob the Bank of England, unlock each cell at Pentonville Prison and stage a one-man heist of the British Crown Jewels all at the same time (you know how it is: buy yourself a barbecue and you need to throw a few parties to convince yourself it wasn’t a waste of cash; be a self-styled master criminal in the UK and you gotta make a grab at the Crown Jewels sooner or later). He gets caught and jailed right away, and is subsequently put on trial: but Jimmy-boy was merely showing off, and he effortlessly bribes the jury and walks out with a not-guilty verdict without presenting a single shred of evidence or witness. Turns this was meant as a prelude to his real plan to crush his rival once and for all. Jimmy’s scheme is to turn the very press that has been singing Sherlock’s praises against him. Through spreading misinformation about the great detective, Moriarty has everyone believe that Sherlock has been staging crimes and pretending to solve them, and that he simply invented the Moriarty character to give himself a supposed rival and further bolster his reputation – in short, Moriarty sets out to "expose" Sherlock to the public as a fraud.

The rivalry between Sherlock and Moriarty is, as I assume you’ve figured out by now, at the forefront of the plot, and it’s what makes this one imminently watchable to me. Much of it has to do with Andrew Scott’s superb portrayal of the dastardly Jim Moriarty, without doubt the highlight of the episode. Initially, when Scott’s Moriarty showed up during the last few minutes of the previous series’ “The Great Game”, I wasn’t sure if I was gonna like him in the role. I was all fired up that the great James Moriarty was finally going to reveal himself, and then after all the build-up suddenly there was this scrawny-looking, tiny little guy, over half a head shorter than his nemesis, standing there slinging insults at the great detective’s face and walking around like he owned the place. He seemed not a year older than twenty, and his goofy, camp gay-ish mannerisms made it hard for me to take him all that seriously. A weird choice for the modern-day rendition of Doyle’s criminal mastermind. Of course, by now, my opinion on him’s pretty much done a one-eighty, though maybe he just needed an episode to himself to really get a chance to shine and have all the little nuances of his performance sink in. Andrew Scott’s Moriarty in “The Reichenbach Fall” is, in a word, simply terrifying – and that despite his slight frame, youthful appearance and goofy mannerisms, or, I’d venture, maybe even because of it. His faux-comical modus aperandi belies a volatile, malicious and downright nasty inner nature. Scott’s portrayal of Moriarty is magnificently disconcerting. After the unusualness of the performance wears off he quickly stops being silly and starts becoming, well, frankly kind of scary. His high, goofy voice is at the same time laced with venomous anger, and his creepy stares and sudden bursts of rage all underline how much of a complete and utter psychopath he really is. He's kind of like a ticking time bomb, with no one ever sure what exactly he's going to say or do next - he's got a lot of screen presence, and unless Cumberbatch is in the frame with him it's generally hard to look anywhere else.

And man, just look at all that bling. Hail to king Jim, baby!

 

While I wouldn’t say Moriarty and Sherlock are as similar as the dialogue sometimes makes them out to be (Sherlock has shown himself to be capable of empathy on more than one occasion, while Jim pretty much demonstrates total disregard for human life, for one thing), one can’t deny these two guys are in some ways shockingly alike: both have genius-level intellects paired with a general disregard for social conventions, two big kids who like to consider the world their own private playground. But while Sherlock is, as Moriarty sneeringly accuses him, “on the side of the angels”, Jim feels no such moral obligations holding him back, wreaking havoc wherever he sees fit for the sheer fun of it. While I jokingly referred to Holmes and Watson as the ‘dynamic duo’ earlier, I think we can actually draw some pretty profound Batman parallels here, for Holmes and Moriarty’s rivalry smacks of some serious Batman versus Joker overtones in this one. Two exceptional individuals with self-styled careers in respectively crime-fighting and criminal activity, operating according to their own moral compass and engaged in a battle of wits from opposite ends of the law, one with an overbearingly serious attitude and the other with a rather warped sense of humor? Gee, I wonder where I’ve heard that one before (hell, Batman is usually described as being more of a costumed detective in his operating methods than anything else). But unlike ol’ Bats and uncle Joker, who’re usually portrayed as being doomed to play their cat ‘n mouse (or bat and, uh, psychotic man in clown makeup, I guess) game for all eternity, the rivalry between Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty did, surprisingly, end up getting resolved at the end of this episode… and in a way that I think I can confidently say no one really saw coming.

 

If you’re scanning this thing to get an idea of the episode without ruining too much of it, this is the point where you should probably stop reading, ‘cause I’m pretty much going to spoil the entire thing from here on. After Moriarty’s plan to disgrace Sherlock and make him seem a fraud pretty much succeeds, the two meet on the rooftop of a London hospital. Here, Jim reveals that he has several assassins following Sherlock’s closest friends around the city, and unless Sherlock wants them all to bite the bullet, he’s going to have to admit his defeat at Moriarty’s hands… by jumping off the roof to his death. The two banter for a bit, with Sherlock convincing Moriarty that he hasn’t lost yet, and that he can convince Moriarty to call off the hitmen. Shockingly, Jim agrees – and at this point I can only assume writer Steven Thompson had just about downed his sixth or seventh whiskey of that particular writing session, for Moriarty proceeds to pull out a gun and shoot himself in the face. This leaves Sherlock with no other alternative than to make the jump, which will signal the hitmen to abandon their posts. Sherlock calls up Watson on his cell phone and bids him farewell – a spectacular bit of acting by Benedict Cumberbatch, who really shows the asocial, so unused to emotion Sherlock struggling to tell his only real friend goodbye – and jumps. He plummets to the pavement, cracks open his skull, and lies there. Dead.

…OR IS HE?

Well, no. No, of course he isn’t. Don’t be silly.

To be fair, at first I wasn’t sure either. It seemed clear-cut enough. He dropped down at least four stories, with no apparent way to escape or switch the body, and that head-wound seemed nasty and real enough. Sure was a lotta blood. There’s this bit at the end where John is walking away from the grave and the camera swivels to show Sherlock standing at the foot of the tombstone, but I figured that was just symbolic or something. Of course, I was just being silly and got swept up in the moment. I figured this might be the show’s ending (y’know, British brevity being what it is and all), but when I read later that evening that Sherlock got renewed for a third series all doubt about the situation evaporated from my mind within a day or two. He tricked his way out of it somehow, of course he did. There’re some pretty brilliant fan theories about the incident floating around the net, for sure. John, who is at the scene of Sherlock’s jump, rushes across the street towards the body but gets hit by a cyclist and arrives dazed to find his friend dead – perhaps Sherlock somehow switched the body or pulled some other kind of trick in the meantime, and Watson didn’t notice due to the blow? A garbage truck is seen to go by at the same time, perhaps that has something to do with it? Maybe corpse-wizard Molly Hooper, a girl with a crush on Sherlock who works at the city morgue, had something to do with it? Earlier in the episode Sherlock’s shown to be absent-mindedly bouncing a rubber ball back and forth against a wall: apparently if you jam one of those things under your arm tightly enough it’ll stop the blood flowing towards your arm, making you seemingly without a pulse, dead.

 'tis But a scratch! ...what, that joke is worn out? Screw you, writing original material is hard!

At this point I could digress into an analysis of the ins and outs of the situation and try to come up with my own theory - but frankly, I’m not particularly interested in that for the purposes of this blog. I like to play the guessing game as much as the next twenty-something white guy who spends a lot of time on the internet, but I’m content waiting for the Grand Moff and company to unveil how shit actually went down when the show goes back on for its third season somewhere next year (as much of a fucking wait as that’s gonna be – c’mon, Moffat ol’ boy, you’re killing us!). What I’m here for is to give you my personal opinion and a critical analysis on the episode: I’m interested in the quality of the script, in the way the entire thing is built up on a narratological level, in whether I was properly able to suspend my disbelief and all that jazz. Basically, my ‘final problem’ is figuring out whether this episode worked for me or not and why.

So, did it work?

Well, yes and no – or rather, a fairly resounding yes, though with a few notable caveats.

While watching the episode for the first time and when considering it in its direct aftermath, I was quite positive about it. It certainly is a thrilling little piece of television if nothing else. It keeps a brisk pace through the entire ninety-odd minutes of run-time, and I’m actually kind of impressed with how much they managed to jam in there without making the thing seem bloated. If nothing else, this was an episode that certainly wasn’t at a loss for ideas. The whole “expose Sherlock as a fraud” part of the plot, while perhaps a bit trite (it reminded me in part of films like Face/Off and The Fugitive, with the whole unjustly accused man running from the law thing) was in my opinion very well executed. It raises issues of media misguidance and corruption and public perception, and underscores some of the validity of Sherlock’s paranoia about publicity and about interaction with other people in general: “alone is what I have, alone protects me”, he snidely says to John at a certain point, and in some points, indeed, it’s not hard to see why he’d prefer to fake his own death so he can go back to operating under the radar. Moriarty’s plan is of course all the more genius because it allows people to believe something they want to believe, namely that the brilliant, pompous Sherlock Holmes really isn’t possessing of such super-human intelligence after all. Moriarty is using Sherlock’s tendency to lord his superior intellect over his fellow human beings as part of his plan to bring down the great detective, and in this it’s actually a pretty clever and fitting plot idea for a Holmes story.

There are several great moments scattered throughout that I’m not going to forget any time soon. Both the rooftop showdown between Jim and Sherlock and an earlier scene in which Moriarty visits the great detective at his Baker Street apartment to gloat about his not-guilty verdict are fantastic. Cumberbatch and Scott have a great deal of acting chemistry together, with the tension as the two engage in their various verbal duels often being thick enough to cut with a broadsword. I once read a review of Quentin Tarrantino’s Inglorious Bastards that said that while making a thrilling action sequence that really manages to grip an audience and keep them glued to the screen is impressive in its own right, crafting a scene that evokes a similar level of excitement, tension and engagement by just having a few people sitting around talking to each other is infinitely more admirable. I’d like to think that at several points, this episode of Sherlock does exactly that. There’s also a hilariously bombastic montage near the start of the episode, with scenes of Moriarty’s break-in attempt at the tower of London interspersed with scenes of police rushing to the scene, all overlaid with the overture from Gioachino Rossini's Lagazza ladra which comes to its crescendo as Jim takes a few ballet steps and theatrically breaks the glass of the cabinet containing the Crown Jewels. Another montage, of the events leading up to Moriarty’s trial, is set to Nina Simone’s rendition of American jazz standard Sinnerman, which’d be a great theme song for everyone’s favorite master criminal. So yeah, plenty of fun to be had in this episode, for sure.

The deerstalker hat makes its triumphant return to the papers.

Thing is, however, that after seeing the thing on its air date I couldn’t help but wonder how well it’d really hold up under scrutiny, and how much sense some of it actually made – and after rewatching it and thinking it through a bit more, I did start noticing a few problems here and there.

One of the major ones has to do with Moriarty’s computer code that hacks into any computer system in the world. It’s initially presented as being the manner by which he managed to break into three highly secured institutions at the same time, and also the reason that Sherlock’s brother Mycroft held ol’ Jim prisoner for what was apparently several months on end before the start of the episode, as he wished to obtain the code to ensure it couldn’t be used to do any wrong. However, during the rooftop confrontation, Jim reveals to Sherlock that it was all a sham, and that the code doesn’t actually exist – moreover, that it couldn’t even exist in the first place. “You don’t think a couple of lines of computer code are gonna crash the world around, do you?”, he snaps, ridiculing Sherlock’s tendency to wish for everything to be clever. A cute little illustration of one of the great detective’s intellectual blind spots, but honestly, I have all sorts of problems with this. If the code was so obviously nonexistent, why did not just Sherlock, but everyone else buy into the idea? Surely Mycroft, with the combined intelligence of the entire British government backing him, wouldn’t spend many fruitless months interrogating Moriarty to obtain a code that, apparently, obviously doesn’t exist? And where did the idea that he had it come from anyway? After walking out of the trial of the century scot-free, Moriarty visits Sherlock and makes him guess how he managed to break into the Tower, Pentonville Prison and the Bank of England all at once, and Sherlock comes to the magical computer code conclusion all by himself. How did Sherlock arrive at the idea? How did Moriarty know he was going to draw that conclusion? I’m sorry, but as one of the main elements that drives the plot, this just seems a little wonky to me.

Also, while I’ve been praising the final rooftop confrontation between Moriarty and Sherlock, parts of it and of the conclusion did feel kind of artificial. Apart from the fact that I have to wonder why Inspector Lestrade gets to make Sherlock’s BFF shortlist as one of the three friends Moriarty’s hitmen are pointing a sniper riffle at (last episode he didn’t even know the man’s first name),  I really have to ask what the fuck was up with Moriarty blowing his own head off after Sherlock somehow convinced him that he hadn’t been beaten yet. What the shit exactly did he convince him of? Sherlock seems to be implying that he can get Moriarty to stop the assassins, but what’s he gonna do, torture him? Jim survived months of being big brother Mycroft’s personal whipping-boy, so I kind of fail to see what Sherlock could do to him that’d suddenly break him within those four or five minutes before the triggers’re pulled. He was obviously not afraid to die, with him blowing his own brains out ‘n all: if he had to go, why not force Sherlock to drop him off the rooftop himself, making the man into a murderer as well as a fraud while he’s at it? I get that it’s supposed to show us that Moriarty was going to stop at nothing in his quest to get the better of Mr Holmes, but it just feels like a very illogical decision to make. Moreover, it seems a waste of a great character. I don’t know what was going on behind the scenes: maybe Andrew Scott wanted out and they had to figure out a way to write him out of the show, but it just felt very forced to me. Also, while Sherlock’s “death” leaves lots of wiggle room for the writers to ninja him out of the ordeal, Moriarty’s death is presented to us in no such ambiguous terms: unless the man is somehow possessing of a bullet-proof brain, I doubt we’ll be seeing the consulting criminal make any more cameo appearances any time soon, and I find that a real shame.  

Speaking of Sherlock’s death, while a lot of the fan theories floating around the internet about how he managed to cheat his way out of it are quite brilliant, I really am keeping my fingers crossed that the official version of events’ll make as much sense as some of those do. It’s not that I don’t have any faith in the Grand Moff and company (Moffat hasn’t particularly let me down yet, though I’ll give that the way he wrapped up the last series of Who did feel a bit sloppy to me), but this is really a high-wire act they’re engaging in if you ask me. If it ends up being resolved satisfactorily it’ll be a pretty grand achievement, but if the solution to the problem is lacking then that’ll be a severe downer. And to give one more small nitpick concerning the final scene: did we really need a full-on shot of Sherlock standing beside his own grave, eliminating any doubt that he had faked his own death? In my opinion it would’ve been more fun if they hadn’t included that bit, maybe only shown a hand resting on the tombstone or a pair of shoes walking up from behind the tree, and, I don’t know, kept the fact that the show was picked up for a third series under wraps for a while. Woulda made it more ambigious and all that, y'know.

It was in the opening credits all along though, so maybe he just watched the DVD beforehand.

 

Lastly, while I argued earlier that despite its wealth of ideas the episode did not end up feeling bloated, certain bits of the plot did end up feeling a bit overly fast-paced. Some of this stuff I’d have actually liked to see more of, such as Sherlock’s run from the law and his attempts to figure out how the hell’s he’s going to beat Moriarty. Somewhere around the one-hour mark of the episode Holmes and Watson run into Moriarty in the house of a reporter, where Jim claims to be an actor hired by Sherlock to play the villain’s role, and he shows them his website and television programs he’s appeared in and everything. The scene almost borders on the surreal and existential, where not only does John starts to somewhat question Sherlock’s authenticity, but even Sherlock himself seems to go through a split second of wondering if he’s going out of his mind. It reminded me of the episode “The Schizoid Man” of The Prisoner (a show which everyone should watch right now – in fact, stop reading this and go watch The Prisoner, then come back) and might’ve been milked for a bit more, but alas, no time, gotta keep moving! The bit where it’s revealed that Mycroft actually had Moriarty in prison for rather a while also made me wonder how the shit they managed to capture the guy in the first place, and why exactly they let what Mycroft calls “the most dangerous criminal mind the world has ever known” back on the street. But again, no time to explore that. This isn’t severe criticism per se: in fact, saying I’d have liked to see more of certain things can be taken as praise in a certain way, but that was how I experienced it, 's all.

You know, to come back to the Batman comparison I made earlier, this episode kind of felt like The Dark Knight in more ways than one. Apart from the parallels that can be drawn between the Jim contra Sherlock and the Bats contra Joker rivalry, watching the episode itself is kind of like watching that movie. It’s one hell of a ride that sweeps you up and generally moves along at breakneck pace, leaving you thrilled and excited most of the way through – but if you start to consider it more intimately afterwards a few problems do start to show themselves. That’s not to say it’s bad, however. I love The Dark Knight and, conversely, I thought this was a fun episode. While parts of it don’t entirely make sense in hindsight and we’ll have to wait and see how much the gamble really paid off, it sure was a gutsy series finale.

Really, my main concern here is if they’ll be able to top the impact of this episode. Part of me thinks that after going as balls out as this there’s no way to go but down, especially if the next series ends up restoring the status quo that “The Fall of Reichenbach” so decidedly shattered. The more I consider it, the more I think that I would really be able to love this episode like no other if only it’d been the last episode of Sherlock, as I thought it might be before reading there was going to be a series three. It would be such a magnificently bittersweet ending. Now that would’ve been taken some guts. But the show must go on, so we’ll just have to wait and see where the BBC’s Sherlock is going to take us next year.

The hounds of what now?

As you will recall (and if not all y'gotta do is scroll down, it's in the post directly below this one) I was very positive about the opening episode for series two of the BBC's Sherlock, calling it a thrillingly entertaining bit of television and all that sort of shlock. My laziness being what it is, by the time of this writing the third and final episode of said series has already aired. But we're not going to talk about that one just yet, as first I'd like to say a few words on the previous week's offering, "The Hounds of Baskerville", written by big brother Mycroft Holmes, beter known in the real world as Mark Gattis. Yes, I know I'm late to the party, but this is my blog, I can write about stuff whenever the bloody hell I want! Don't like it, go back to reading the opinion pages in the newspaper or something. Go on. Get out. We don't need your kind here. 

Is he gone? Good, I hate that guy. Alright, so, "The Hounds of Baskerville". What did I think of it? Well, compared to last week's offering: an outing of perfectly average quality. Perhaps even disapointingly average. Why was it less good than "A Scandal in Belgravia", you ask? Well, I sorely lamented the lack of naked chicks compared to that episode, for one thing. That's right, nothing to see here people, move along. These aren't the hounds you're looking for. 

...or are they, though? "Less good" in this context certainly doesn't imply awful. There were things to like about this episode, and as they say, one must take the good with the bad - so let's see how the various elements hold up. 

Problem #1: these dogs aren't scary at all! Hounds my ass, what do you take me for?

 

The episode is, of course, based on the Arthur Conan Doyle classic The Hound of the Baskervilles. I've not read it yet myself and don't expect you guys to have either, but as its one of the Holmes adventures most often adapted and referenced in other media I'm sure the title alone will give all you pop culture pundits an idea of what we're in for. That's right, this is The One With The Big Dog™, in which everyone's favourite jackass detective is called in to investigate reports of a monstrous hound terrorizing a village in the English countryside. Of course as this series' premise is basically Sherlock Holmes IN SPACE THE PRESENT DAY (wouldn't Sherlock in space be awesome though? ...what're you looking at me like that for?) the tale gets the obligatory modern upgrades. The main of these is that the titular Baskerville isn't the name of a wealthy family propagating the myth of the hellish hound, but a government research institute implied to be running all sorts of shady experiments, including among others, you guessed it, illicit animal testing, with popular belief around the village being that this practice spawned the creature. 

And with that I suppose we might as well get to the bad without further ado, as the plot is where the episode kind of falls off a bridge in my oh so humble opinion. I'm going to go into spoiler territory here, so if you haven't seen the episode, tread carefully throughout the next two paragraphs - though, to be frank, it's nothing you couldn't have deduced (haha) on your own. 

Yes, I saw the twist coming, if you can even call it one. There was no hound. Of course there wasn't. There are hints to its existence here and there, with even the ever-rational Sherlock at some point believing that he saw the creature, but it's all a sham. As it turns out, the countryside outside the village and near the Baskerville institution is strewn with pressure-sensitive pads that release a hallucinatory chemical when stepped on, which, mixing with the ever-present fog in the region, makes people very susceptible to hallucinations, to seeing what they expect to see; in this case, a monstrous dog waiting to tear them limb from limb. There was bound to be a rational explanation of course - that's not what I'm complaining about. It should be clear to anyone who's seen as much as half an episode of Sherlock that this series is not gonna do supernatural stuff, and while the hound being created in some sort of mad science experiment is hinted at, even that's obviously too much of a stretch - this show is just too rooted in down-to-earth realism to incorporate an element like that.

In all fairness, the fluorescent bunny does make for some bonus points.

My problem with this is the fact that they hint at the possible existence of the creature so strongly, while it's just so obvious it's all going to be explained away near the end: they didn't need Sherlock Holmes for this case, the Hardy Boys could've polished this one off in between lunch breaks. Hell, stupid old me even saw it coming a mile away. The fact that drugs of some kind were involved was fairly obvious from the parallels between Sherlock's twitchy state after believing he'd seen the hound, and the nicotine withdrawal-fueled rage we see him fly into at the start of the episode. While it's not a bad thing per se to have an obvious solution to a mystery, it is a bad thing when you write your characters as being unaware of said solution much longer than your audience will likely be - especially if one of said characters is Sherlock Holmes, the genius detective. It stops the show from being interesting and exciting and turns it into a waiting game, the viewer waiting for Sherlock and crew to figure out what's already obvious. 

Of course the plot of "A Scandal in Belgravia" wasn't particularly strong either, as I said in my discussion of that episode. Sure, in "Scandal" the plot mattered, but there it was mostly a means to an end, a way to plop down sets of characters in a situation so we can watch them play off of each other - and it was a very loose plot, a story spanning across several months. "The Hounds of Baskerville" however is different, for this is a proper adventure, a much more plot-focused outing. It comes close to fulfilling the classical unities of action, place and time. It's obviously conceived as a much tighter narrative than "A Scandal in Belgravia", and thus the fact that the story just feels kind of weak and mundane becomes harder to overlook. 

But perhaps I'm being overly harsh. I'm making it sound as if this was a terrible episode but it really wasn't - while watching it I did find it enjoyable enough. Of course most of the enjoyment has to do with our lead actors, who, (and I'm sorry if I'm sounding like a broken record) once again do a marvellous job at portraying their characters. Benedict Cumberbatch remains amazing as Sherlock, continuing to play the great detective as a right bastard with no sort of social graces whatsoever. For a while it seems he's continuing the slightly less asocial trend witnessed the previous week, when we saw him apologizing to Molly for scolding her and seemingly somewhat opening up to Irene Adler. In this episode, after crudely ignoring the findings of Martin Freeman's Watson and pushing him out of the investigation into the Baskerville case, Sherlock runs up behind him and apologizes. He states that indeed, like he told Watson, the great detective Sherlock Holmes doesn't have any friends... emphasizing the plural: he just has one. A touching moment, indeed - which ends up being kind of subverted at the end of the episode, when we find out Sherlock used Watson as an unwitting guinea pig in one of Baskerville labs to determine the cause of the hound hallucinations. What a pal! 

Clearly a man you can trust with your life.

Speaking of John Watson, I have to say it's good to see Martin Freeman got a lot more screentime in this episode as compared to "A Scandal in Belgravia". There he got kind of sidelined in favor of Miss Irine Adler (as he himself at a few points wryly observed), but this week he's much more a part of the action, showing his worth to Sherlock through his medical expertise and his clear intellect, offering a few clever deductions of his own. He is ever the voice of reason to Sherlock's manic tendencies, the ying to his yang, and Martin Freeman once more puts a lot of sympathy and tenderness into his performance. 

Of course one of the reasons "A Scandal in Belgravia" worked so well was that although the plot was somewhat inconsequential, with Steven Moffat at the wheel you got all those wonderful little character moments he's shown himself to be so apt at writing. And perhaps big brother Mark's been using Moffat's writing as a cheat sheet (or maybe they collaborated, or maybe Gattis is just quite good on his own - I'm just cracking jokes here), for while said character moments might be less bountiful and less good than the previous week they're still certainly here. I've described Sherlock and Watson's rather touching friendship moment, but there were a few others. One that really got me was the following exchange, when John and Sherlock run into a holidaying Inspector Lestrade at a local pub. Sherlock accuses Lestrade of spying on him, blurting out that "that's the reason you're using the name Greg, isn't it?" Watson soothingly tells Sherlock that that's the man's actual first name, to which Sherlock replies: "...it is?", seeming so genuinely dumbfounded that it made me laugh out loud and miss the next couple of lines. 

I also have to mention that the story being set in a small village in the English countryside is actually a rather nice change of pace compared to the busy urban jungle of central London in which we usually find our heroes. There are some lovely shots of  the sprawling green English hills and the picturesque little village where much of the action takes place. Several reviewers have noted the similarities between a shot of Sherlock looking out over the landscape from atop a rocky mound and Caspar Friedrich's famous painting Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, or Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. The shot certainly gives off much the same feel of wonder and adventurousness. I wonder if the similarity was deliberate? Either way, I think we could've done with a few more of these landscape shots: they provide a nice parallel to the stark, sterile lab environment of the Baskerville installation, really drawing you into the surroundings and making you enamoured with this tranquil landscape that is being threatened by the big bad Baskerville science guys.

Speaking of the visuals, however, I do have to bring up one more thing that bugged me, namely the terrible CGI hound that shows up near the end. For while the creature is indeed not real the episode still decides to show us a representation of the dog Sherlock and the others are imagining - and boy does it look horrible alright, but probably not in the way intended. Maybe I'm nitpicky, but for me... eh, it just didn’t work. I'm against the use of CGI in general unless it's absolutely necessary, and while I can stomach it in shows like Doctor Who where it happens all the time, here it just felt out of place. It really took me out of the experience. 

The 90's called, they want their special effects team back.

But yeah, that’s “The Hounds of Baskerville” for ya. In all fairness it wasn’t a bad episode by any means. More likely my being underwhelmed by it stems from its status as being the middle child of this season, being neither the opening episode that really has to go all out to draw the audience in nor the series finale that has to wrap up the proceedings in a spectacular blaze of glory and excitement. The previous series' “The Blind Banker” faced a similar problem, being entertaining enough in its own right but seeming kind of unremarkable in comparison to the tightly plotted opener “A Study in Pink” and the fast-paced and exciting finale “The Great Game”. In all honesty though, I didn’t go into it expecting to be blown away or anything along those lines: I always force myself to be critical about things in hindsight, but I was certainly entertained by this episode. If you don’t expect too much of it, there's a good chance you will be too.

"This episode was pretty much detective sex."

Yup. “Pretty much detective sex.” At least, that’s the way a friend described “A Scandal in Belgravia”, the first episode of the second series of Sherlock, when I lamented it was airing a full week before I thought it would. Yes, remembering air dates isn’t always my strong suit. I get scatterbrained. Shut up.  

Either way, having now seen the episode, I gotta say it’s a rather astute description. “Pretty much detective sex”. In a few words, yes, that’s more or less what it boils down to. But of course, the point of this blog is to give me the opportunity to not just stop at a few words when voicing and developing my opinion… so let’s see what we can add to that, shall we?

So, did the series two premiere meet with the high expectations set by the by and large extremely entertaining series one? Why, how very kind of you to ask! To give you my answer, yes, I would certainly say it did. For the full hour and a half I found myself glued to the screen. I felt engaged, thrilled and intrigued, I often laughed and I think I even applauded at one or two points (hey, don’t look at me like that, I get overly enthusiastic about stuff some times). It had everything that made the first season fun and more – but I realize I’m not being very specific with that, so let’s go through some of the episode’s more interesting elements one step at a time.

The great hope of the British nation. No, I don’t know why he refuses to wear pants. 

In my bit about the show’s previous season I remarked that the main thing that makes Sherlock a good time is generally the characters, and in keeping with that, the thing most people’re likely to be talking about with this series’ premiere is the introduction of the character of Miss Irene Adler. While I haven’t read “A Scandal in Bohemia” and thus don’t have much tabs on her original portrayal, I’m told she’s kind of like the Boba Fett of the original Holmes stories: someone who really isn’t in the actual canon all that much but is by fans nonetheless considered a pretty Big Deal™. Here she’s cast as a sort of con woman, a dominatrix who tricks her clients into providing her with incriminating photographs and information. Sherlock and Watson are sent after her by Sherlock’s brother Mycroft to recover a number of incriminating photos of a person of rather high social standing indeed, though it soon becomes clear that Miss Adler is safeguarding data much more volatile than simply a bunch of dirty pictures for her nefarious purposes. She’s quite convincingly played by up- and coming actress Lara Pulver, who portrays her with that particular combination of sexiness, confidence and an air of danger typical to the femme fatale archetype, obviously the characterization Moffat and company were shooting for. She quickly has the dynamic duo of Holmes and Watson running around in circles, proving a capable foil to Holmes’ genius and even seeming for a while to be able to inspire some sort of extra-professional interest in the usually extremely asexual detective.

Apparently there’ve been some complaints from the feminist camp that the portrayal of Irene Adler as a sort of sexual predator, a female character relying more on her charm and seductiveness than her wits to get by is a step backward, that there’re some misogynistic undertones to the whole affair. Honestly, I’m not really seeing it. The femme fatale is indeed a rather old archetype that’s certainly not always used to portray female characters at their most compassionate or likeable, but I say that in and on itself it’s much more of an empowering than a demeaning way to portray women. Irene’s method of controlling people through her sexual prowess is, lest we forget, spearheaded and supplanted by her intelligence rather than some sort of basic instinct. The fact that (mild spoiler warning) Jim Moriarty turns out to’ve masterminded part of the plot by which she outwits the Holmes brothers might have something to do with the complaints, but I say that nonetheless she comes off as anything but dumb and helpless. Moreover, she’s a much more three-dimensional character than that. Despite her tough as nails exterior she does in the end show a certain amount of emotion and vulnerability, which some might say paints her as a weak little girl but in my opinion rather helps flesh her out as a person. And guys, let’s not forget we’re talking a piece of genre fiction here. This is pop culture entertainment, it’s not particularly serious business. If some of the aspects of her portrayal were a bit questionable I think it can be excused. Let’s not go overboard, it’s not like the Holmes brothers told her to get her ass in the kitchen and she obligingly scuttled off to make them a sandwich. I think she’s a rather strong and interesting character, and I wouldn’t mind seeing her make a second appearance if possible.

Then again, maybe the reason she’s getting all this attention is simply because she spent about ten minutes of the episode walking around butt-nekid. Or am I the only one who took special note of that? 

“A Scandal in Belgravia” sounds fine, but I have an alternative title: “Fanservice: The Episode”.

Well, whichever way you slice it, it’s pretty clear ze sexy plays a pretty big thematic role in this episode, if you’ll forgive me a bit more analytical wanking (and I just realised I might’ve done well to choose another verb there than wank). Of course as we’ve seen most of it revolves around Irene Adler, who I’ve already said does seem to stir some sort of attraction in Cumberbatch’s extremely asexual Sherlock. Of course what exactly it is he sees in her is anyone’s guess, for it being any real sort of sexual attraction still seems rather unlikely: if it’s there, the rather stoic Sherlock certainly isn’t betraying any of it. Still, there is a clear amount of tension in the air whenever the two are in the same frame. Lara Pulver and Benedict Cumberbatch have some great acting chemistry together, really making you believe that whatever is going on here, there certainly is something between these two people – which, incidentally, twice leads John Watson to butt in with a demure yet annoyed “don’t forget I’m in the room as well, guys” type of reply, two great little moments from Martin Freeman. Likely Sherlock simply holds some sort of intellectual respect for this woman who seems to be just barely outwitting him at every turn. After all, as Irene says to Sherlock, “smart is the new sexy”, and if that is so then both of them certainly have that in spades.

And while we’re on the subject of sexy, at this point I should probably mention the proverbial pink elephant in the room (Jesus, Buddha, SpongeBob, forgive me for that horrible turn of phrase), especially since I glossed over it in my remarks on last season. I’m talking of course about the John and Sherlock bromance, the bromance to end all bromances. The whole heterosexual life partners thing is rather ubiquitous if we’re talking a Sherlock Holmes adaptation, but here it's often really blatant: hell, Martin Freeman himself describes Sherlock as, and I quote, “the gayest story in the history of television”. If that’s not really your sort of thing I’d just advise you to ignore it, though I give in this case it could be kind of tricky: but come on children, this is the twenty-second century we’re living in (or is it the twenty-fifth? I lose count so easily these days). Either way it doesn’t bother me. At times I actually find it kind of endearing, and Sherlock tends to lay it on so thick that it’s often just completely hilarious. Irene Adler certainly seems to believe the two to be a couple, which of course prompts a fervent denial from Watson. And indeed, dear John had just earlier been reassured by his girl that he’s really a sweet boyfriend… to Sherlock that is, after which she promptly dumped Watson’s ass, so make of that what you will.

“Pretty much detective sex”, indeed. 

Whoops, my bad. These two clearly aren’t into each other at all. 

But look at me talking about characters and sexuality and bromance and all that sorta thing when I’ve barely discussed the episode’s plot in any sort of detail! Well, to be honest I might’ve been dancing around the issue, because this is where the episode at times falls a tiny bit flat. The situation I described earlier, in which Holmes and Watson are sent after Irene Adler to recover a number of incriminating photographs, pretty much kicks off the main plot of the episode. This soon develops into something a tad more complicated, in which the earlier so confident and in control Miss Adler ends up on the run, because some of the information to which she is privy is key to preventing a terrorist attack on British soil, or to simulating such an attack, or to fooling the terrorists which are planning said attack, or… something. Maybe I’m just dim-witted or wasn’t paying good enough attention all the way through, but I did feel that near the end of the episode things ended up getting a wee bit convoluted. Luckily it doesn’t end up being much of a problem, as this is a series very much about the characters and the way they interact, with the case-related happenings often simply functioning to get people from point A to point B. If you’re not entirely sure what part of the mystery we’re at, you can always wait for Sherlock to make another motor mouth deduction speech to pinpoint the moment things’re all solved and done with.

And hey, who cares about the plot being somewhat on the vague and convoluted side when there’s so many great moments in the episode, so many fun little discoveries to be made? Both of our leads are at the top of their game, turning in a smashing performance with lots of little nuances and subtleties. I’ll have to give another spoiler warning here, but near the end of the episode there’s a fantastic scene where John comes into Sherlock’s study having been given the information that Irene Adler has been executed, yet telling Sherlock she has moved to America and taken on a false identity, making it unlikely he’ll ever see her again. Sherlock however sees through the act, and as he holds out his hand, asking for her cellphone as a memorandum, he seems unusually shaken. His hand trembles and his voice momentarily yet noticeably cracks when requesting the phone, in a manner that is uncharacteristic for the usually aloof Sherlock yet so subtle and seemingly unintentional that it can't be anything but genuine. Soon afterwards, however, we find out he knew that she’s not dead at all, and that he was just playing along: it wasn’t Benedict Cumberbatch, but Sherlock Holmes who was acting in that situation! 
 

  

To conceal his face, Sherlock dons a cap with bow amusingly similar to Holmes' classic headgear. 

 

Indeed, watching the episode it becomes immediately clear that we have Stevan Moffat writing the script, because as with the previous Doctor Who Christmas special barely five minutes ever go by without a fantastic little character moment and at least one excellently quotable line. Probably my favourite one of these is when a CIA agent breaks into Sherlock’s apartment and holds his landlady, a terrified Mrs. Hudson, hostage. The man threatens to blow her brains out unless Sherlock cooperates and hands over Irene Adler’s stolen data, but Sherlock promptly kicks the shit out of him and drops him out of the second story window. When Watson declares Mrs. Hudson to be in shock and recommends her a short vacation, we find out she was in cahoots with Sherlock and was simply playing scared. “Mrs. Hudson, leave Baker Street?”, Sherlock exclaims bombastically: “England would fall!” 

On a cinematographical level (sorry if I’m being a snob by using that word all the time, can't let that quick course in film analysis go to waste I guess) there're once again some fun little things to be found in this episode. The parallel montage of Holmes and Irene Adler getting ready to meet each other comes to mind as being especially noticeable. First we have shots of Sherlock looking through a pile of photographs of Irene in full dominatrix gear interchanged with shots of Irene looking at photo’s of Sherlock wearing nothing more than a bed sheet, taken when he was suddenly picked up at his house against his well to go see Mycroft. Then we have shots of Irene seemingly busy picking out a dress interchanged with shots of Sherlock trying on different blazers and dress shirts. And finally we have shots of Irene applying makeup and lipstick interchanged with shots of Holmes and Watson roughing each other up in an alleyway (no, not like that) to make it appear as if Sherlock just got mugged as part of their ploy to get into her house. This seems to be emphasizing there being some sort of similarity, some sort of match between Irene and Sherlock before the two even meet, as if the two are simply meant to be friendly rivals of each other. I also liked the scenes in which Sherlock is giving Irene a lesson in deductive reasoning (or showing off his lightning-speed investigative skills to her, more likely) in which the two are suddenly transported to the scene of an unsolved crime, with Sherlock showing Miss Adler the various facets of the mystery as time stands still all around them. Perhaps a representation of Sherlock’s vivid way of describing the scene to her? Clever stuff at any rate, and quite effective.

And this doesn’t really have much to do with anything, but did anyone catch the location cameo of the Battersea Power Station, made famous by the cover for Pink Floyd’s Animals? Because I know I certainly did!

 

Useless trivia like this is one of the advantages of being a classic rock fan. Or something.

As if you couldn't have deduced it from all of the above (see what I did there?), let me tell you in no uncertain terms that "A Scandal in Belgravia" is a fantastic piece of television, carrying on the legacy of Sherlock's first series without missing a beat. I can only hope that the next two episodes, sadly not written by Steven Moffat (I know Mark Gattis and Steve Thompson're capable writers, but the previous season's Moffat episode was probably the best of the bunch) can hold to the same high standard of quality. I’m not sure if I’ll be blogging about both upcoming episodes separately or if I’ll just look back on the series as a whole some time after it finishes airing - that kind of depends on my schedule and if I find myself motivated to write or not. What is certain though is that I will be watching, and I hope you will too!

Is this the Holmes you're looking for?

While we’re merely a scant few days into the new year, we’ve already reached one of my most anticipated television moments of 2012. No, I’m not talking about the first episode of the Napoleon Dynamite cartoon. What kind of schlub do you think I am? That’s not airing until January 15th! I’m not an idiot, I have the ability to remember air dates! 
 

No, I’m talking about the series two premiere for the BBC’s Sherlock, which aired the previous Sunday on New Year’s Day. And when I said just now that I have no problem remembering air dates I was of course lying, because said episode turned out to be on about a full week before I actually thought it'd be.
 

I’d been planning to blog about the new episode in some amount of detail and still plan to do so. However because I thought I had an extra week before it aired I was thinking of rewatching the first series somewhere along the line beforehand so I could give you a detailed opinion on Sherlock so far before going into series the second - but by now it’s clear I’m not gonna have time to go through the whole thing again any time soon. Still I wanted to at least give something of a general overview of the show and its merits for the uninitiated, so I started typing up some remarks to kick off my bit about the series two opener. That quickly ended up becoming a tad lengthy for a mere introduction though, so to prevent things from getting cluttered I figured I might as well develop it into a short separate entry. If you already know what’s going on, feel free to skip this one and wait until I post something about the new episode. 
 

The premise of Sherlock can quite easily be summed up in a small number of words. As I said in my bit about the Hobbit trailer, it’s basically a reimagining of sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective classic set in modern times. This brings with it all the cultural and technological trappings of our beloved period of history. Big international corporations and crime syndicates, secret services such as the CIA, and of course the world-wide web (this Holmes refers to Watson as his blogger rather than his Boswell). Oh, and especially cell phones, because hoo boy, does this show love itself some cell phones.

Pictured: a man and his mobile. A lovely couple.

Anyone who’s seen the show’s first series is likely to agree that the main reason it was so much fun was its main characters and the actors who portrayed them. Steven Moffat, nefarious mastermind behind the show along with Mark Gattis, obviously has an eye for talent. I’ve already said that his tenure on Who brought in one of my favourite actors so far to portray the Doctor, and with Sherlock he’s struck gold again. Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch’s portrayal of the titular Sherlock (haha, I said tit agai– alright, fine, I’ll quit that now) is a smashing good time – for this version of the great detective is pretty much a complete and utter jackass. This Sherlock Holmes is aloof, arrogant and socially withdrawn, a man who lives entirely inside his own head, barely bothering to interact with people unless he can prove to them his intellectual superiority. Cumberbatch’s performance is spectacularly cold and rough-edged. He never becomes unlikeable, however: because as they say (and if they don't, I guess I just coined a phrase), snark sells, and Sherlock's got it in spades. Martin Freeman’s take on John Watson is equally refreshing, a mild-mannered, soft-spoken little man with hidden depths that contain a surprising amount of intelligence and bravery. He’s the perfect counterweight to Sherlock, not as quick-witted as his friend but a lot more down to earth and practical, often acting as his link to the outside world and his social compass.
 

In this, Sherlock actually stays very true to the roots of the characters in the Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Instead of the Victorian gentleman Holmes tends to be portrayed as, the original Sherlock was usually a snobbish, apathetic shut-in who could only really function in the outside world when either presented with a case or drugged off his ass on cocaine. Cumberbatch’s Sherlock fits this description to a tee (well, not the drugged up bit, though he is often seen applying fucktons of nicotine patches to kick his smoking addiction). Similarly, Doyle’s Watson wasn’t the dim-witted oaf he usually is in modern adaptations but a clever and resourceful army vet, even something of a ladykiller. While not quite as rough-edged as the original, Freeman’s Watson is certainly a very strong character, often quite helpful to his friend rather than just a bumbling counterpoint to his genius. I don’t think any modern reimagining has really gone for this angle except Guy Ritchie’s Holmes film franchise, and if I’d have to choose between the two I’d certainly go for the BBC’s adaptation. Martin Freeman’s Watson is a lot more multi-faceted than Jude Law’s version, who is a real outright badass but little more than that. And as much as I like Robert Downey Jr.’s Holmes he just doesn’t quite have the same degree of smug confidence as Benedict Cumberbatch, who is pretty much a complete magnificent bastard all the way through.

 

Presented for your approval: one hardass motherfucker.

Indeed, though being set in modern times, the entire production seems to be infused with the desire to do justice to the essence of Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation. Steven Moffat’s words at least imply a good understanding of the source material: "Conan Doyle's stories were never about frock coats and gas light; they're about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes – and frankly, to hell with the crinoline. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures, and that's what matters." There are a lot of little references to the original stories scattered about the show’s episodes, from plot structures to quotes to obscure character names to the occasional extremely tiny detail. What? You want examples? Go check TV Tropes or Wikipedia, I’m not going to do all your busywork for you. I don’t get paid for this!

One thing I feel I should mention is that the show is often quite cleverly filmed with good attention to lighting, angles and shot composition. It’s refreshing to see a modern TV production spend a good amount of care on its cinematography. The fun little cinematographical qualities of course mostly come into play when our protagonist is employing his patented Sherlock Scan™: in such situations a combination of words, graphs and numbers flashing across the screen and rapid-fire editing is usually employed to emphasize the speed at which Sherlock’s brain goes through the ubiquitous process of deduction. The show does also use its modern setting as an excuse to have some more fun with cinematography, as the text contained in things like emails, browser screens and especially text messages often pops up in the frame in amusing little ways to forego the neccesity to include constant shots of computer and telephone screens. A bit of a cheesy little trick but it actually works quite well, and quickly becomes one of the show’s staple visual techniques.

Indeed, this is a show that puts a lot of attention into tiny little details, showing that a lot of care and labour goes into every episode. Beyond the multitude of references to classic Holmes stories there’s a lot of fun little Easter eggs lying around for the attentive viewer to discover. One that I’ll mention is a scene at the end of the third episode, in which Watson is taken hostage by a villain, shoved into a coat rigged with explosives and forced to repeat lines to Sherlock dictated to him via a wire. While he obediently parrots the lines given to him to his baffled friend (to, you know, avoid having both of them ending up smeared across the walls, because that wouldn’t be much of a satisfactory season finale), one who looks closely will see that he is also furiously blinking his eyes at Sherlock while talking. No, he’s not flirting with him (though I wouldn’t fault you for thinking that, but more on that next time) – he’s actually spelling out a distress call. Three quick blinks, then three slow blinks, then another three quick. That’s Morse Code, buddy. S.O.S. If that ain't a fun little inclusion I don’t know what is.

Seriously, if you've seen it, go watch that scene again. I’m not kidding.

Up to this point the best modern adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes character has probably been doctor House (that’s right, I said House – search your feelings, you know it to be true) but if the BBC's Sherlock isn’t a strong contender, then shit, I don’t really know what is. Can it keep up the high standard of quality set by the first series? Find out in a few hours (or maybe tomorrow, or Sunday), as I give you my opinion on the opening episode for series two, “A Scandal in Belgravia”!

Of widows, wardrobes, and of doctors

As I write this entry in the final days of the year of our lord 2011, that special time of year is upon us once again. The days have gotten shorter, winter’s got our beloved Northern Hemisphere in the midst of its icy grip, and I get a feeling that there’s something in the air… for every ten minutes or so, I have the pleasure of being catapulted from whatever train of thought I’m on by the echoes of an explosion reverberating across my eardrums, no doubt the result of another bunch’a goddamn children running around outside trying to shove firecrackers and roman candles up each others’ asses. Man, don’t you just love New Years?

But what this time of year also entails is the passing of everybody’s favourite Coca Cola-sponsored holiday, that joyous occasion known as Christmas. And you know what that means, boys and girls! Alright, granted, it means a lot of things, but one of the more significant of those to a pop culture connoisseur such as myself (I'm sorry, I have a cold) is that this past Sunday, those savvy enough to tune their television sets into the BBC were gifted with the pleasure of being able to watch this year’s special Christmas episode of Doctor Who (known colloquially quite simply as 'the Christmas special').

And, well, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been looking forward to this. Current show runner Steven Moffat has done a smashing job on Doctor Who so far, and it should be no secret that I thoroughly enjoy Matt Smith’s portrayal of everybody’s favourite bi-hearted, police box-travelling, otherworldly yet quite distinctly British television hero. The Christmas special is the only helping of Who we’ll have to sate our appetites until the seventh season of ‘New’ Who starts up uncharacteristically late in August of 2012. Thus while I did see it somewhat belatedly I still watched the special like a good little boy, and afterwards I figured, why not pop over here and share some of my thoughts on it.

Before I say anything in depth about the episode however, let me express my amusement at how it starts off by replicating the opening shot of an obscure little sci-fi flick from the 70’s known as Star Wars. A shot of the upper part of a planet sitting peacefully at the bottom of the screen and the pointy nose of a star ship slowly gliding in from the top? Seems pretty unmistakeable I say. That’s right Moffat, can’t sneak anything past me! I’ve seen Blue Harvest! Quick, someone get on the phone to George Lucas!

You can't convince me I'm seeing things here!

In all seriousness though, apart from being a cute little reference that’s really neither here nor there. Thus now that I’ve demonstrated my mastery of the minutia of science fiction cinematography, let’s get to the actual episode. How was it?

Well, apart from that opening shot it didn't have very much to do with Star Wars, that’s for damn sure.

In fact, the entire pre-credits scene is something of a red herring, with which the Grand Moff seems to be promising us the sort of episode we quite distinctly do not end up getting. As we’re shown several shots of a gigantic war-like spaceship cruising over the earth, a menacing voice croons “People of earth, you stand alone!” over a speaker. Doctor Matt is outrunning several explosions, apparently having somehow sabotaged the ship into self-destructing, after which he narrowly manages to hoist himself into a spacesuit and comes crashing down to earth with the debris. “Wow”, we say to ourselves, “this all seems mighty exciting! I wonder how the Doctor ended up in this situation? What kind of alien menace did this gigantic warship actually belong to? And surely, they’ll try to get back at the Doctor for how he managed to thwart them in the nick of time!”

None of these questions end up being answered – it’s all just a way of setting up a completely different story. We see the Doctor crash-landing his spacesuit into a field somewhere in the English countryside. How he didn’t burn up in the atmosphere and why he landed in Britain of all places is anyone’s guess, but I suppose asking questions like that makes me a spoilsport so I’ll refrain from it. A friendly lady, Madge Arwell (portrayed by Claire Skinner) discovers him at the bottom of a crater caused by the impact. Doctor Matt somehow put his space helmet on in reverse and is temporarily blinded, so she helps him out of the suit and back to his TARDIS (which is also conveniently located in the immediate area – I know, I know, I’ll shut up now). Several years down the road Doctor Matt, being the nice guy that he is, decides to repay Madge for the favour that she’s done him by showing her and her two small children the best Christmas ever – a plan that ends up transporting the four of them to a far-off planet covered in eternal snow and acres upon acres of naturally-occurring Christmas trees, a veritable winter wonderland. However, as usual things aren’t quite as idyllic as they seem. Three soldiers are stomping about in the snow wearing power armour, talking about how the forest is soon to be ‘harvested’, and more importantly, there might be more to these trees than meets the eye… 

  

Then again, maybe this is what Christmas on Hoth looks like. Hey, anybody want to watch the Star Wars Christmas special?

I’ll forego summarising the entire episode (just go watch it if you haven't) but the point I'm trying to make is that instead of a big scale, fast paced, action packed story, what we get here is a simple character-driven piece with a nice quiet feel to it, in a rather calm and intimate setting. This isn’t the first time Moffat’s pulled a trick like this. He used a similar set-up with the two-parter at the end of the fifth season, teasing a big confrontation between the Doctor and many of his most iconic enemies in the first episode, yet sweeping all the baddies under the rug in the second and having the Doctor and his companions deal with the problem of a dying universe with nothing more than a single Dalek and of course the pressing threat of time and inevitability standing in their way.

That’s perfectly alright, of course. In fact, I wouldn’t have it any other way. If I want space opera I’ll go watch the aforementioned Star Wars or something like Battlestar Galactica. If you'll forgive me a quick aside, as much as I enjoyed Russell T. Davies’ run on Doctor Who with him it was usually the fast paced, highly dramatic type of stories that you got. Of course that's not neccesarily a bad thing, and often times the results were good fun (though sometimes not so much) but that’s not the way Moffat usually operates and I applaud him for it. I feel Who is at its best when keeping the story relatively uncluttered and easy to follow, choosing simply to plop a select few characters into a unique and difficult situation and seeing how they react. This is what this year’s Christmas special does (and last year’s did as well), and it is all the better for it. We’re given the time and opportunity to get to know the few characters there are, to get a feel of the ins and outs of the situation and of what exactly is at stake before it all comes to a head.

To be fair part of the reason this episode worked for me is the reason that pretty much every Moffat-era episode of Who has to me so far been at least watchable, and that is that Matt Smith’s portrayal of the Doctor is once again outstanding. What I like about his performance is that it encapsulates so well those aspects of the character I consider to be essential, being both childlike and energetic and somehow old and venerable. The scenes where the Doctor shows Madge and her children around the country home he has prepared for their Christmas celebration is a great example of that gleeful childishness Matt brings to his portrayal of the character, as he is so obviously proud of the many toys and gadgets he has prepared to entertain them, being infinitely more excited by his handiwork than they are. Yet as soon as the children leave the scene Doctor Matt shows himself to be more than just an ignorant little kid, sympathizing with Madge over the recent death of her husband and instantly understanding why she hasn’t been able to break the news to the little ones. 

Seriously, look at how excited he is!

While these may seem rather contrasting personality aspects to combine into one character Matt Smith just manages to pull it off so well. His energy and enthusiasm makes him a joy to watch, but it’s those times when the veneer of youthfulness is lifted and the centuries old Time Lord underneath is glimpsed that his performance gains a weight and intensity that frankly transcends his young age as an actor. When he says lines like “Look at these eyes. They’re old eyes”, we actually believe that this young fellow running around our television screen being all energetic and inquisitive is at the same time this tired, wise old man of the universe. Of course each actor who's portrayed the Doctor has worked this duality into his performance, as it is indeed a staple of the character, but with Matt Smith it never seems forced, it's always very natural. His performance never feels pretentious or overimportant. Moreover, he’s never really in control: most of the time he’s more like a bumbling old fool who’s not entirely sure what’s going on, yet tries so hard despite all that, always with the best intentions. As a particularly tense and bizarre situation develops itself in the episode in question, Madge’s daughter inquires of the Doctor: “What’s happening?”, to which he unabashedly, yet in a somewhat panicky voice, responds: “No idea! Do what I do: hold tight, and pretend it’s a plan!” That really says it all, if you ask me.
 

Anyway, I’m getting off track, I’m not writing this merely to gush about Matt Smith (and I swear, one day I will write a blog post that does not include the word ‘gush’), so don’t let me give you the impression he is the only capable actor in this piece. Without Karen Gillan or Arthur Darvill to act off of he certainly serves as the episode’s centre of gravity most of the time, but Claire Skinner gives a solid performance as the widow Madge Arwell that should not go unmentioned. She’s obviously an experienced actor, with a lot of the strength of her role coming from the little details, like the way she can never seem to quite look her children in the eye when they ask her what’s happened to their daddy, responding with a dismissive answer and that forced little smile that looks so genuinely painful. The actors portraying her children do a passable job, with Holly Earl as daughter Lily Arwell getting a few moments to shine as the concerned and savvy older sister. Guest star Bill Bailey, whose role I was kind of excited and curious about, gives a rather understated and sober performance as the chief of the three soldiers patrolling the otherworldly forest our heroes find themselves stranded in. I’m tempted to say he’s phoning it in, but maybe I was expecting too much: it is a pretty small and simple part after all. If I want to get my jollies off’a the old guy I can always watch QI or Black Books, or some of his comedy routines.

Of course, the episode certainly wasn’t spotless: there are things here that might turn off some people. I’ll be honest and say that a good chunk of it felt somewhat overly silly and corny to me at times. We’re not quite talking flying shark level of silliness like last year’s Christmas special (though I enjoyed that one even more, so on second thought maybe this episode did needs its equivalent of the flying shark) but some of it is rather out there. A lot of the aforementioned toys and gadgets Doctor Matt prepares to entertain Madge and kids are overly comical (the kitchen faucet labelled “lemonade” comes to mind) and the happenings in the otherworldly forest of naturally occurring Christmas trees did at times come close to inducing a reply somewhere along the lines of “really now?” And of course, being a Christmas story and all, it is rather obviously designed to tug at your heartstrings, what with the grieving widow and the kids oblivious to their father’s death and all that. However unlike last years special (even if that was ‘just’ a clever reworking of the Ebenezer Scrooge theme) I have to say that it didn’t really hit home with me on an emotional level. I certainly cared about the characters and what was going on in the story, but I didn’t feel myself moved quite as deeply as the writing probably intended me to be. Maybe I’m just a bitter old curmudgeon, but it took less than five minutes for Up to stir something in me: come on Steven, you’re gonna have to try harder than this if you wanna reach this guy!

 I'm being sarcastic, of course. I need this in my house. 

Also, since this is Steven Moffat writing a Doctor Who episode, the time travel as plot device aspect is once again quite blatantly present. We’ve certainly gone a long way since ‘Old’ Who, in which the TARDIS was used as nothing more than a convenient way to dump the Doctor and his companions in a new location and time period to kick off a story without needing to explain how he got there (hell, most ‘Old’ Who stories implied that the Doctor barely knew how to properly fly the thing at all). Indeed, time travel is oftentimes the proverbial meat and potatoes of the Grand Moff’s plots, regularly being used as a clever way to solve problems, though, as much as I like his writing, it sometimes becomes a bit too much of a ‘get out of jail free’ card. He doesn’t quite pile paradox upon paradox here as he does in stories like “The Big Bang”, and, well, most of season six, but he does use it as something of a trick near the end of the episode to give the entire story more of a happy ending than it would’ve otherwise had. I did think it was a bit of a cop-out, though to be fair I kinda saw it coming – and hey, it’s a Christmas story, it’s supposed to have a happy ending right? 

And y’know, thing is, I’ve just spent two paragraphs being critical of aspects of the Christmas special but while I was actually watching it none of that stuff really bothered me all that much. Sure, it’s all rather silly, but what has Doctor Who been recently if not at least a tad silly at all times? Sure, it’s all kinda corny and there is at least a small amount of plothax at work, but sometimes you have to be able to look past that sort of thing. In this case, the story is just so fun, engaging and intimate and the performances are just so sincere and heartfelt that it transcends its shortcomings and becomes enjoyable despite, or maybe even because of them. The same paradox might be at work here as is present in the character of Doctor Matt: that combination of silly, gleeful, childish energy and some kind of aged, venerable weight and sincerity is probably as present in the television show as it is in it’s titular character (haha, I said tit). We have to remember that this is a family show, after all, made to appeal to both kids and adults, so it has to have something for everyone. In the recent years and in this particular episode, it has certainly stayed true to that vision.

And another thing... wait, is that monkey in the picture wearing a smoking jacket?

So in conclusion, I must say I rather enjoyed this year's Doctor Who Christmas special. I have to say I didn’t think it as good as last year’s special, which was truly something, well, special (and no, not just because of the flying shark – I thought it was genuinely a deeply moving and engaging story). Despite its shortcomings, “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe” is a perfectly good piece of television, very charming, quite intimate and very entertaining. It’s well worth your time, and of course I am very much looking forward to what the Grand Moff has in stall for us next year!