The Penultimate Problem of Sherlock Holmes

isitandwonder:

tendergingergirl:

ebaeschnbliah:

isitandwonder:

tendergingergirl:

isitandwonder:

tendergingergirl:

deducingbbcsherlock:

tjlcisthenewsexy:

oscarthewilde:

waitingforgarridebs:

isitandwonder:

waitingforgarridebs:

So, Bad Luck Assistant, Mark Gatiss and Benjamin Caron seem to have a new favourite word… and with the first tweet being from 12th Feb, that’s not just a recent development.

(x) (x) (x) 

“penultimate”, by definition, means “last but one in a series of things; second last” - which, in all those tweets, makes perfect sense. But, you have to admit, it’s an odd(ish) choice of words… 

So, yes, I made a mistake. 

I googled “Sherlock Holmes penultimate”.

And ended up with a play by John Nassivera called “The Penultimate Problem of Sherlock Holmes” (x).

I don’t have the play, so for now there are only summaries to work with:

This play about the famous detective has Holmes venturing into the occult where, during a seance, he is warned that he is about to meet his maker. The play has Holmes, Watson and Prof. Moriarty meet their maker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wishes to end their existence literally with the final stroke of his pen. Holmes cannot accept the fact that he is the product of another’s imagination, a mere pawn of another man’s genius. Who is the creator and who the pawn becomes the central question as Holmes and the others threaten their creator with the death to which he has sentenced them. 

… I don’t even know where to start.

But, it goes on (x):

In the course of two evenings, the lodgings at 21 Baker Street are visited by the ghosts of Irene Adler (Marion Lines), Poe’s Monsieur Dupin (Yusef Bulos), and finally, of course, Prof. James Moriarity himself (Edward Zang). But playright John Nassivera has yet another deus ex machina in the wings of this Victorian setting. Just when the skeptical Holmes has worked his way thorough every possible explanation for the ghostly phenomena, he receives a visit from Conan Doyle, whom he of course does not recognize at all. The confrontation between fiction’s most famous detective and the fictionist who became a leading advocate of spiritualism provides an climatic showdown for Mr. Nassivera’s speculative play. 

Yeah… I’ll just leave that here.

Bu also, wouldn’t that be a nice episode title - since they always have a variation of canon titles, even if it’s just ever so slightly as from Hounds to Hound - to call the episode that would have been called “The Final Problem” “The Penultimate Problem”? 

(After “abominable” not a single word of the English language can be ever too fancy again.)

And finding out what made Sherlock is not the Final Problem, it is the Penultimate Problem - something leading up to the Final Problem. As many people have already said, you cannot burn the heart out of Sherlock as long as he’s not aware that he’s got one. 

Therefore, the penultimate series, series 4, is going to set the stage for the last big showdown in series 5.

And I really wouldn’t be surprised if all we get for 4x03 is the resolution of the Mycroft-problem (26 pages of dialogue), therefore what really happened in TRF + the “fake” handshake scene with Moriarty, maybe Garridebs, a sort of a “happy ending”, because everything seems to be resolved when there’s only 3 minutes of episode left, and then BAM - Moriarty’s helicopter lands, and THIS is going to be the cliffhanger of series 4.

Moriarty is always the cliffhanger. In every series. Why not this time? 

(Can you tell that I’m excited? I hope so.)

@mollydobby @jenna221b @miadifferent @isitandwonder @tjlcisthenewsexy @makeyourdeduction @victorianlovers @johnnlocked @hudders-and-hiddles @inevitably-johnlocked

Wow @waitingforgarridebs - meeting the creator would be very meta (as if TAB wasn’t complicated enough). Crack theory: it’s all just a story on John’s blog…

No, but seriously, I’m sure you are on to something here. Look what Loo Brealey has tweeted last week:

We need this play!

So I didn’t hallucinate that tweet of Loo… (why didn’t I find it when I looked for it lol”) - Thank you! ♥

Well, the creator could be anyone, really. It doesn’t have to be breaking the 4th wall in any way, but Sherlock didn’t make Sherlock, despite all his attempts of wanting to believe this. It’s either Redbeard or something else. 

Looking at that slate… my bet’s on Mycroft. He made quite a lot of things, it seems…

you ALL

I’m not sure if this is actually relevant (because honestly it would be super Extra if mofftiss actually wrote something similar to the events in the Penultimate Problem), but Conan Doyle does exist in Sherlock’s universe

(screencapped from TRF)

So, technically, the possibility of Sherlock somehow meeting ACD or hearing about him is possible without breaking the fourth wall

OH YESSS!!! THIS IS SO COOL

I am in love with everything in this post.

Well…if Arthur Conan Doyle had his own after-life medium, it might be possible. You won’t believe this, but @freeform1895 posted THIS asking if anyone had theories about the flower in John’s hair. Well, I personally link the flower in John’s hair to Hawaiian tradition, so I went on a Googling spree to find any links between ACD and Hawaii and found this:

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is probably best remembered as the creator of Sherlock Holmes…. But Holmes was only one small part of Sir Arthur’s prolific writing career. He published over fifty books during his lifetime, spanning such diverse genres as historical romance, science fiction, military history, and spiritualism. He was one of the most popular pulp-fiction writers of his time, delighting readers with tales of mummies, dinosaurs, ghosts, and classic characters like Brigadier Gerard and Professor Challenger.

And then, on July 7, 1930, he dropped dead.

Sir Arthur’s story is an all-too-familiar one. An author achieves prominence only to be struck down by the icy hand of death….. Sadly, there isn’t a religion or spiritual belief that addresses the fears that haunt most writers during the wee hours of the night. Namely, does death mean an end to the written word? When we leave this mortal coil, will we also be giving up books and all things book-related? Are earthly pleasures like writing and reading reserved solely for the living? The only person who could feasibly answer such unanswerable questions would be an actual dead author. Someone like, say… Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

This exclusive interview with Sir Arthur was conducted with the assistance of Arthur Pacheco, a psychic and trance medium from Hawaii. Pacheco has been regularly communicating with the dead for almost thirty years. Unlike many psychics, he goes into a trance and allows departed souls to speak directly through him, using their own voices and their own words. Mr. Pacheco purports to be on friendly terms with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who has been his main “spirit guide” since the early eighties….”                                                                The rest you have to buy from a publishing company, but LEAVE IT TO YOUTUBE. There is a 15 minute piece of the “interview” being done.       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH98IUtOvdc                                                     You have to hear this at 7:50 for yourself                                                  “…It’s one of the last places upon the planet, where certain forms of Love are common, and thus it is from this place that that Love or Aloha as they like to call it is broadcast.” Wasn’t there mention of a possible seance scene?

BROADCASTED!?

I don’t know but that is a lot of weird coincidences, and you know what they say about that. A play about a seance and talking to ACD, with the same name they are throwing around, and breaking the 4th wall, and there is (was) in real life, a medium that channelled Doyle. That would be one way ACD could exist in Sherlock’s world.

But Sherlock doesn’t believe in ghosts (THERE ARE NO GHOSTS!) - can something be real even if you don’t believe in it?

Oh! I remember there is this film ‘The strange case of Sherlock Holmes & ACD’.  It’s the story how ACD created SH and why he killed him. Dark family secrets. And Mr. Seldon (Tim McInnerny) - his biographer - turns out to be a ghost in the end.
@isitandwonder @tendergingergirl @tjlcisthenewsexy @waitingforgarridebs @oscarthewilde @deducingbbcsherlock @stillgosherlocked @monikakrasnorada @mollydobby @sherlock-little-weed @the-seventh-stranger @welovethebeekeeper

I have not seen that one @ebaeschnbliah.I’ll have to look for it. I know what Sherlock said @isitandwonder but John INSISTED he must have a past, or impulses and John’s always rightWe’ll see. I am enjoying this stream of ghosts-and-ghoblins talk. I’d like to throw in something else. Why didn’t any of you Nutters tell me that not only had Amanda been on Mr. Selfridge, but..

…that Martin had, also, on EP 1.7and that there was seance scene, hosted by Arthur Conan Doyle, played by…

…our own Kenny Prince, from TGG, actor John Sessions. Now that is fun.

Are you shitting me @tendergingergirl?! OMG! The universe is rarely so lazy… ok, I’ll be reading Inamorata by Joseph Gangemi NOW!

Crazy!