[The
following contains spoilers about the first episode of the BBC
television series Sherlock.
Don't read any further if you don't want to know 'em. But if you've
read, and remember, the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel the episode is
based on -- A Study in
Scarlet --
then this won't be too spoiler-y]
I
have to apologize to Steven Moffat. Mind you, he probably doesn't
know he needs to be apologized to. Or, rather, as a writer for the
new Doctor
Who
series on BBC, there are probably lots of people he thinks should
apologize to him (such as fans who aren't happy with the direction
he's taken the character and who aren't shy about saying so, or
providing hate mail), but he doesn't know that I'm one of them. Not
like I went out and sent an angry e-mail or wrote a scathing blog
about it or posted a YouTube video rant.
By
the way, though, this isn't about Doctor
Who.
This is about the BBCs Sherlock,
another show helmed and written by Moffat. I'm coming to this show a
bit late, since it started in July of 2010, but I watch most of my tv
on DVD or Netflix, so I'm a little slow on the uptake on some
programs worth mentioning. And Sherlock is
worth mentioning, since after I watched the first of the three
currently-available episodes I was minded to say, "Despite a few
flaws, that was quite entertaining."
What
were the flaws? Well, primarily I was annoyed with writer Moffat for
having gone with the Princess
Bride gambit
for the big reveal on how the murderer got his victims to commit
suicide.
What
is the
Princess
Bride gambit?
Does this line ring a bell: "My name is Inigo Montoya, you
killed my father, prepare to ..."? -- Oh, wait, that's not it.
That' s the other famous
bit that everyone quotes from the movie. The one I'm referring to is
the one that ends, "I spent the last few years building up an
immunity to iocane powder."
That scene.
This
comes when our hero, Westley, as the Man in Black, has been forced
into a combat of wits with the Sicilian, who has placed two glass of
wine on a table in front of himself and Westley. One of the glasses
contains deadly iocane powder; the other does not. Westley must
choose one to drink while the Sicilian will drink the other.
So,
when the climactic moment comes in Sherlock's A
Study in Pink and
it's essentially the murderer putting two pills on the table in front
of himself and Sherlock Holmes, one poison and the other not, I
groaned and said, "That's cheesy; they went with the Princess
Bride gambit.
I expected more from the man who brought us BBC's Jekyll
and
the excellent Doctor
Who episodes "Blink",
"Silence in the Library," "The Beast Below" and
many others.
Rather
disappointing, it was.
Except
I was wrong.
I
should mention here that I have read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel A
Study in Scarlet,
which is the first story to feature his most famous literary
creation, Sherlock Holmes. It's the story where Watson meets Holmes
and moves into 221b Baker Street with the detective. It's the story
where Watson and Holmes first collaborate on an investigation.
Apparently,
despite reading it, possibly twice, I didn't remember how the murder
victim was killed, which was ... drumroll puhlease ... by the
murderer offering his victim one of two pills, one of which was
poison and the other of which was not.
That's
right, Steven Moffat didn't borrow from The
Princess Bride to
give umph to his modernization of the Sherlock Holmes stories;
rather, The
Princess Bride borrowed
from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create their famous iocane powder
scene.
Shocking.
I
would still complain that Moffat made his scene a little too much
like the staging in Princess
Bride,
but then again it's quite possible that he did it on purpose, to make
the letter-writers and the bloggers and the YouTubers make themselves
look silly by complaining about it.
Like
I was going to.
So,
wait a minute, that's a really tricksey way of going about things.
I'm not going to apologize for almost being
tricked into making myself look silly. Nope, I'm going to write a
nasty letter to Steven Moffat demanding that he apologize
to me.
Or
maybe I'll just go watch another episode of Sherlock.