The Penultimate Problem of Sherlock Holmes
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.
“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!!!!! This is a great find…what was it? “Ghosts of the past are rising in the lives of Sherlock and John…”? I totally think you’ve cracked it, this play sounds right up Moftiss’s street. I am on board for “The Penultimate Problem”, nice one!
We are dangerously close to playing The Insider’s Game here. A game that Holmesian’s have played in the fraternities for decades, and it’s always been kept secret. It’s not The Game you hear about which has readers choosing to believe Holmes and Watson were real. The idea is that everyone, except Sherlock, are aware they are a character in a story, but until Sherlock works it out they can never resolve their arcs/plots. So they are doomed to never die and return to do the same things in the stories over and over. They are either bad or good, and cannot change, even though the characters try. The creator, Doyle, is the God Head in the game and is the only one who can bring Sherlock to self awareness and thereby end the game. The game was played, in similar fashion to our metas, where the Holmesians would scrutinise any new pastiche for break throughs in the progress of Sherlock becoming self aware.
There is no written history of this practice. I only know as my Dads were in Holmesian societies and told me about it, it’s like the secret masonic stuff. About three years ago there was a blogger on here who was encouraging us to play it, then they just disappeared. Last year I discussed it with LSiT and she couldn’t find out anything on it. This play sounds like it broke ground and used the premise. Believe me, if I know about this practice, Mark and Steven do too.
Here is a link to a detailed description of the play:
It is considered a comedy!!!!
GO READ THIS PLAY!!There’s nothing new under the sun…. thanks for the link @welovethebeekeeper.
@mollydobby @jenna221b @miadifferent @isitandwonder @monikakrasnorada @ebaeschnbliah @may-shepard @longsnowsmoon5 @sherlock-little-weed
OMFG @welovethebeekeeper masonic holmesian conspiracies skdjjdjskkskdnd thank you for this yummy bit of biz, you tweaked my secret society rabbithole happy feels super hard with your contribution to this post!
Thematically, and based on some of Ben C’s comments, there is a pinnochio quality to our Sherlock–he’s undergoing a process of re-immersion in the world, anchored by John. The idea that he needs to become self aware / aware of who made him also relates to the evidence some people were kicking around that he is a victim of mind control and Mycroft is his handler (“author”).
ETA because I’m still freaking out about this a bit:
Read the freaking notes here! Genius people!!!
bringing this back because of recent developments
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