XistentialAngst's Blog, page 19
January 8, 2017
teapotsubtext:
can we go back to the part where sherlock deduced faith was in a relationship but...
can we go back to the part where sherlock deduced faith was in a relationship but hadn’t been doing anything
loudest-subtext-in-tv:*pounds fists on table* EMP! EMP! EMP!
I’m not seeing it, sadly. I...
*pounds fists on table* EMP! EMP! EMP!
I’m not seeing it, sadly. I don’t know why they’d go this far down other paths. I’m not seeing Johns alibi either at this point. The last ray of hope is that Mary just turns out to be a Moriarty henchman in TFP, but the way they played Johns feelings in TLD, if that’s the case then he’d really have been a huge fool.
nondeducible:
martin’s acting in the beginning and when he cries is on another fucking level like...
martin’s acting in the beginning and when he cries is on another fucking level like it’s like staring at the sun and i can hear the shower of awards falling to his feet
and of course ben wow he fucking outdid himself truly
He was amazing in this.
Sherlock: Yes, but I'm very busy at the moment, I have to drink a cup of tea.
Billy: This cup of tea... code?
Sherlock: It's a cup of tea.
Billy: Because you might prefer some... coffee.
*gestures to the Lady in Red in the sitting room*
Me: *at top volume* DRINK CODE FUCKING CONFIRMED!!!
January 7, 2017
Look out for the number 702 in TLD/TFP!
I’ve been pondering on this meta for literally years now - but as I don’t want to be the only one screaming in case the number 702 might appear in any form in the next episodes, I’ll try to give you the last minute short version. - Which means, I’ll present you rather the clues and results without a lot of explanation.So what I noticed is, that Moffat has a pattern of using the number 207/702 to mark the beginning and the end of a certain story arc, often in combination with a refrence to apples (sympol of temptation) . The story arcs are often about coming to terms with needs, desire, sexuality and how to make these work in relationships.
JekyllMoffat first used this pattern in Jekyll. At the end of the series, when Hyde gets more and more power over Tom, his wife Claire asks him, where they spent their honeymoon to be sure she’s dealing with Tom and not with Hyde. And he gives her the correct answer: They spent their honeymoon in The Appleyard in room 702. (This scene is near the end of the series, but the memory references the beginning of their relationship, so we have the full arc.)
Doctor Who -
The Story of Amy PondIn The Beast Below (06x03, 2010) we follow Amy Pond and the Doctor travelling through time and space for the first time. This is Amy’s introduction into the Doctor’s world. A girl runs away and Amy asks, “Where’d she go?”, and the Doctor answers: “Deck 207, Apple Sesame block, dwelling 54A”
This episode also features a poem that reflects quite well the process that Moffats frames with the numbers 207/702. People have to enable their deepest desires and impulses to truly experience live/love/passion etc.
A horse and a man, above, below
One has a plan, but both must go.
Mile after mile, above, beneath
One has a smile, and one has teeth.
Though the man above might say hello
Expect no love from the beast below.
In bed above, we’re deep asleep
While greater love lies further deep
This dream must end
This world must know
We all depend on the beast below.Amy’s story arc ends with the episode The Angels Take Manhatten (07x05, 2012). There’s an (unnecessary) preface to this episode. And we get a specific shot of the room number 702. (It is not Rory’s room though, that’s 802 - but the 702
is explicitely shown
to the audience ). The episode ends with Amy and Rory dying after a long, and implied happy and loving, marriage.Sherlock
And finally, Sholto stays in room 207 in The Sign of Three, the episode where Sherlock deduces himself into love with John Watson. (And we have Appledore in HLV) This is the beginning of Sherlock’s journey of discovering and accepting his own emotions and desires and of learning how to be himself in a relationship (or rather marriage, as the couples in the other stories mentioned were married as well).
So watch out for the 702!
702 is the signal for the end of this journey. Sherlock will be able to be true to himself and to his partner in a healthy relationship from there on.
miadifferent:
recentlyfolded:
constancecream:
nothing is a...
*looks at all of the repeated lines from previous eps in TST*
*raises eyebrow*
I was so tempted to reply with the camera in the frame of the Morocco scene… ;-)
loudest-subtext-in-tv:
is this a version of alibi theory that already exists? I can’t keep up with...
is this a version of alibi theory that already exists? I can’t keep up with anything, link me if anyone’s laid it out this way
The real story is that Mary did betray AGRA, she was “the Englishwoman” that the torturers alluded to. But John and Sherlock couldn’t be sure of that at first. They colluded up to the Morocco bit – this could be coded texts if you want, or else the cheating bit happened to show that John did not like or trust Mary or value the marriage (to show casuals John might not be as reluctant to kill her as they’d assume). John killed AJ in Morocco and they rewrote that bit, which was why it was so weird with Kareem walking in with police but like, calmly carrying tea until the last second.
They still have nothing solid on Mary so Sherlock explores other leads and thinks of Norbury. John thinks maybe Mary has been telling the truth and he was going to confess either to texting E, or if it was coded collusion he was going to confess that he hadn’t trusted her before but he was going to try to now, or something. Either reason is why John was feeling guilty or whatever on the plane.
Sherlock asks Mrs. Hudson to say “Norbury” to him when he gets too cocky because he really had believed it was Norbury, but when he showed up at the aquarium, Norbury totally snitched on Mary working for Moriarty.
Norbury is a mirror for both John and Mary because at the aquarium, Mary tried to shoot Sherlock again (out of “jealousy” maybe, like Sherlock says is Norbury’s motive, or just because she was found out) which is why Sherlock is obsessing over escaping death twice (the Samarra story), but John shoots Mary from behind. Norbury also mirrors Moriarty a bit just because Mary was working for him, so it’s part of the Mary mirror.
Mycroft and Lestrade witness it but they all agree to cover it up NOT merely because John killed Mary – the circumstances make it pretty legal – but because it looks terrible for Mycroft and MI6 to have been employing someone like Mary. Instead, they paint a super pristine picture of Mary, someone the government wouldn’t have been ashamed to employ, and just pin it on Norbury because she sucks too and they want an excuse to punish her even more severely. That ties up all of Mycroft’s loose ends.
And they make Mary say all this super nice shit about John to make John look blameless. The cheating-or-whatever texts aren’t part of the story they tell or anything, that’s just for the viewer because it’s a clue to Sherlock collusion or John not being invested in the marriage.
Either the estrangement is faked to strengthen the cover-up story – they figure John would have to be mad if his wife sacrificed herself for Sherlock – or else John was actually angry at Sherlock for not doing a better job of taking out Moriarty’s network and letting him marry an assassin or something. Or John unfairly blames Sherlock and the estrangement is real because having to shoot the mother of his child because his crush’s nemesis had a long game to ruin him is a very “what the fuck is my life” thing to go through, and he’s beating himself up for his attraction to dangerous people and telling himself he needs to have a normal life yet again. He would have a lot of pressure on him not to let his daughter get hurt, and they’d both have reason to think Moriarty’s long game isn’t over. (We see Sherlock admit he’s still expecting something when he puts in the DVD.)
The skull frame shows up for “The Cardiac Arrest” case and glows during the secret assassin working for Moriarty bit because Mary gets shot in the heart and was a secret assassin working for Moriarty, and that’s why she died. That’s also why John is replaced with a fake (the balloon) in that scene. It’s just signalling that there’s a fakeness about those events. It’s not the cleanest set of clues but it sort of works.
Ella’s office is fake because Sherlock sends himself to MP therapy after all that shit goes down, not because the entire story is 100% fake.
The Six Thatchers case was used again because Moriarty knew about the AGRA drive (he was telling AJ where the busts were), knew the Thatcher bust would catch Sherlock’s attention, and was slowly revealing Mary’s past – without Mary’s permission – because he doesn’t care about a henchman and it would really fuck with John and Sherlock both. Maybe Mary really did think she could live a normal life, like Moriarty told her she could just have John because it makes things easier for him, but she’s “shortsighted” (Sherlock’s deduction in TEH) and failed to realize Moriarty will always just use her however it most amuses him. She never thought through that her exposure and death could be a great way to cause a rift and burn Sherlock’s heart out.
What I can’t explain:
- I have no idea what to make of the Miss Me? DVD. I have an EMP reading but even that one is a wild guess. Maybe the “save John Watson” bit was a nice Mary story, but the real DVD just told Sherlock to go to hell because Mary realized things were unraveling? Like, Sherlock goes to investigate a weird murder that has this inexplicable Thatcher bust tie-in, then a bust has an AGRA stick… and Mary realizes that’s not a coincidence and Moriarty must be setting her up for something bad?
- The Duplicate Man case, where a person is dead in one place and alive in another. I can only come up with an EMP explanation. Maybe it’s not significant?
- Why specifically the secret assassin working for Moriarty was administering mind control drugs, which fits perfectly with EMP and the MI6 guy insisting Sherlock was high in the beginning of the ep. But maybe that’s all nothing.
I like all of this. Very logical!
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