Sherlock: 10 Ridiculous Plot Points Lifted Straight From The Books

5. The Poison Giant

Just before the start of the new series I posted an article speculating on which elements from Doyle's The Sign of Four would be adapted for the episode The Sign of Three. In that article I confidently predicted that one element we almost certainly wouldn't be seeing was the very silly use of a dwarf, a blow pipe and a poison dart as the murder method. Skip forward a couple of weeks and we saw just that. Of course the main plot of the episode involved a scarcely more plausible combination of a photographer and military men with very tight belts, but the many other cases brought up as incidental remarks in Sherlock's best man speech included The Poison Giant. The only snippet that we see of this particular adventure is just that one image from the original novel: a dwarf, a blow dart, and Sherlock and John on the run. And Another Thing: The episode's almost victim, Major Sholto, is named after a character of the same name in Doyle's The Sign of Four. Doyle's Sholto is an army friend of Mary's father, Captain Morstan, who double-crossed Morstan, covered up his death and hid the Agra treasure they had worked to recover. The name of the TV character is perhaps a hint toward the secrets in Mary's past and family.