4 Great Things And 4 Abominable Things About The Sherlock Special
Abominable Things...
4. The Twist
Moffat, oh Moffat... Beloved of Sherlock and Doctor Who alike, why do you make these strange decisions? Steven Moffat is, at his best, a genius writer who, along with Mark Gatiss, has made Sherlock into a worldwide phenomenon through great plots, scripts and casting. But as with Doctor Who, something has started to go a little bit off.
The recap of Sherlock so far at the beginning of the episode is perfect as is the 'Alternatively' and subsequent alternative recap of the show which we could have had if it had been set in the original time-period of the stories. This was all we needed it lets us know that the main series continuity has not been forgotten but that, for the next hour and a half we don't need to worry about it; just sit back and enjoy the hypothetical ride. And then, as the hour mark passes, something goes terribly wrong. What we have been watching, what we have invested in, for the past hour has been nothing more than an elaborate fantasy constructed in Sherlock's head, making everything that has happened redundant. This is akin to the 'and then he woke up and it was all a dream' trope which has been so derided no-one dares us it for fear of being ridiculed. In all fairness, there were some subtle hints that all was not right (such as 'how could he survive' rather than 'she survive') but this comes so out of left field and this is a left field that pre-episode fan-theories had touted but never dared to believe could be true.
And this comes back to the something that's off. Like Doctor Who, Sherlock seems to be becoming more and more an exploration of just the title character and nothing else. This is comparable to the 'what is the Doctor's name?' thread that has run throughout much of Moffat's tenure as showrunner. The importance placed on Sherlock and The Doctor means that all other characters become accessories, rather than the audience surrogate which they are meant to be. Sherlock is enigmatic, that's what makes him so interesting we get brief insights into his mind, but he's so impossible to relate to as a real person that learning more and more about him simply makes him less interesting.
Besides the fact that it makes every character but Sherlock irrelevant, it also makes a mockery of...