10 Incredible Similarities Between Doctor Who And Sherlock

5. The Imagery

I've talked before about Handles, that Cyberman head from 'The Time of the Doctor' that was in fact a reference to Yorick's skull (Hamlet). Skulls are representative of death that's about to follow, but also on the meaninglessness of life. I'll try not to get too morbid on you, but it's understandable for Sherlock Holmes and the Doctor to both contemplate how unavoidable death is; they're two characters who meet death an awful lot, as the Doctor's constantly fighting it, and Sherlock's looking for its causes. Staying with the deathly imagery, Sherlock in 'The Reichenbach Fall' and the Doctor in 'The Time of the Doctor' face death at dawn: could that be a reference to execution perhaps? There's so much more imagery though; there's a carved apple that surfaces in both shows, which maybe represents temptation to solve a mystery, as both Moriarty and Amelia give Sherlock and the Doctor a puzzle to solve. There's the imagery of the almost-celebrity Doctor talking to Sally through a screen, almost mirrored by Sherlock minisode 'Many Happy Returns'. And then there's the imagery of the Doctor facing the Atraxi, the man who makes people better, standing on a hospital roof, above all the other people who make people better, banishing demons from the sky; and it rings true of Sherlock, playing mind games until Moriarty kills himself. Sometimes, these things are accidental, but hopefully not always.