Hugo Award nomination!

In ridiculously flattering and amazing news, last week I found out that I've been nominated for a Hugo Award as Best Fan Writer! I hadn't even considered the concept of being nominated for a Hugo, otherwise I at least might have mentioned earlier that I'm eligible. Apparently you need about 50 nominations to be shortlisted in the Fan Writer category, which doesn't seem enormously likely for something as obscure as a costume design/movie review blog. But it doesn't hurt to mention it just in case, right?

Re: eligibility, any of my amateur/unpaid writing counts, whether it's on this blog or on Tumblr or elsewhere. You can check out my masterlist here, but it's a little out of date so here are some of my sci-fi and fantasy posts!

• The Marvel tag for all Marvel-related costume design posts, movie reviews, and Agents of SHIELD recaps.
• Thor: The Dark World posts: Heroes & Villains, and Female characters & representation.
• The costumes and characters of The Avengers. Part 1: SHIELD. Part 2: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and Bruce Banner. Part 3: Steve Rogers, Captain America. Part 4: Black Widow and Hawkeye.
• Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling's new "Fantastic Beasts" movie, and wizarding fashion in 1920s New York.
• Stargate: Watch it. Love It. Learn educational info about real "Egyptian" "archaeology".
• The costumes of X-Men: First Class.
• The costumes of Pacific Rim.
• Mako Mori and the Hero's Journey.
• The Alien series tag, including The costumes of Alien, Costume design and the crew of the Prometheus, and Prometheus: Proof that epic sci-fi doesn't belong in the Alien franchise.
• The Teen Wolf tag for all Teen Wolf recaps, beginning with Teen Wolf 101: A guide to the eighth wonder of our world. 
• The Doctor Who tag. 
• The Star Trek tag, including Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a costume design nightmare and Star Trek's original 1965 pilot episode: The Cage. 
• Only Lovers Left Alive -- already the best vampire movie of 2014.
• The Fifth Estate: Don't. Just, don't.
• Snow White & The Huntsman: How to tell a fairy story. and Snow White & The Huntsman: The prince doesn't get the girl; the girl gets the kingdom.
• Capitol Couture in The Hunger Games. 
• Dressing For The Apocalypse: a guide to post-apocalyptic movie fashion.
• Person of Interest: The man in the suit.  

I read up on the Fan Writer category the other day, and the list of previous shortlisted writers is kinda daunting. Most of them are either professional sci-fi authors or people who edit or write traditional fanzines. One author/fanzine editor was shortlisted in the Fan Writer category 31 years in a row, and has won 28 Hugo Awards total in various categories.  

Apparently there's been some kerfuffle over whether it's impolite or unfair for writers to self-publicise during awards season, partly because of the way women are discouraged from talking about their own achievements. Amal El-Mohtar wrote a really good post about this, highlighting the way female writers are often overlooked because they don't feel able to mention that they're eligible for awards. This spurred me on to actually let people know that I'd been nominated, rather than just quietly going "OMG" to myself.

Here's how Hugo nominations work:

• Only members of the World Science Fiction Society can submit nominations.
• This means either people who bought tickets for WorldCon 2013, 2014 or 2015, or people who have a supporting membership to the Society. A supporting membership is £25 and you get copies of all the books and short stories that are nominated this year.
• In order to nominate, you HAVE to buy a WorldCon ticket or supporting membership by the end of January 31st! Which is, uh, today. But you have until March 31st to actually turn in your Hugo nominations ballot!
• You sign up and nominate people at the website for this year's World Science Fiction Convention, which will be held in London. There's another explainer post here.

I have no idea if any of you guys are Worldcon attendees/supporting members, but if you are, please consider me on your nomination ballot! :) Either way, I'm incredibly grateful to the people who have nominated me already. And for everyone else: my next post will most likely be about Supernatural, because I'm currently in the process of catching up with the last three seasons, and it's proving to be very interesting viewing.

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I watched the Dungeons & Dragons movie so you don't have to.

Oh Jeremy Irons, you multifaceted enigma. Sometimes you're a critically acclaimed Shakespearean actor. Other times you do weird interviews where you imply that marrying your son for tax purposes is the same as legalising gay marriage. And every couple of years, you don some kind of luxious, shimmering robe for yet another role as Classic B-Movie Supervillain.

In 2000, that movie was Dungeons & Dragons. I've never played D&D, and the only reason I watched this movie is because last night I couldn't find my Alien box set, and my friend Alex sadistically recommended that I watch D&D instead. The fact that it was terrible wasn't really a surprise, but the sheer level of terribleness was so remarkable that I ended up being kind of fascinated. I mean, I've seen Krull, Zardoz, and any number of dire straight-to-DVD apocalypse movies. Surely a relatively high-profile idea like a Dungeons & Dragons adaptation couldn't possibly be as grody and cheap-looking as it seemed from the trailer... right?

No. It was definitely worse. 

I'm gonna start with some background info, mostly to clear up the obvious theory that this movie's general lack of quality was a result of them not having any money. It wasn't.

• D&D had a budget of $45 million. For comparison, Galaxy Quest (1999), Blade (1998) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2004) were all made for the same amount of money, at around the same time. The Fellowship of the Ring, which was released one year after D&D, cost $93 million. None of this explains why D&D featured the props and set designs of a '90s live-action Nickelodeon series.
• The director bought the film rights to D&D when he was 19, but it took ten years to fund the film. He'd never directed a movie before, and originally only wanted to produce it, but was somehow ~forced to direct it, for... reasons...?
• 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 14% on Metacritic. Deservedly, it turns out.

One thing we have to keep in mind here is that Jeremy Irons is an Academy Award-winning actor. No matter how many movies he makes where he screams recycled supervillain dialogue at a CGI monster, he will always have that Oscar around to keep him warm at night. Also, the demonic satisfaction of knowing that he warped thousands of Millennials by being weirdly attractive as Scar in the Lion King. Basically, this:

I'll watch anything involving Jeremy Irons erotically clasping some kind of magic/religious sceptre. Fortunately, this is ALL of his movies.
— Hello, Tailor (@Hello_Tailor) January 26, 2014

I feel like there was a period in the late '90s/early 2000s when Jeremy Irons and Malcolm McDowell were locked in some kind of secret contest to see who could be cast in the most preposterous supervillain roles. But despite Irons' very fine showing in this movie, I fear that McDowell still won in the end. He was in two separate movies in one year in which he played a post-apocalyptic overlord with a robot hand. Two!!

I don't have any serious issues with the central storyline of D&D, because what else were you expecting from a movie based on Dungeons & Dragons? Even if they hired a heavy-hitter to write the screenplay, they'd still probably end up with a story where a generic young underdog dude has to hunt down a magical maguffin and then kill an evil wizard with a bunch of CGI dragons. The basic idea idea was that the hero had to track down a dragon-controlling Magic Rod before Jeremy Irons deposed Khaleesi Amidala (played by Thora Birch). So far, so mediocre. But sadly, the execution of this concept was so unforgivably terrible that just I couldn't let it slide.

Usually in a movie like this, the main dude is the most irritating person onscreen (a classic Shia LaBeouf role), but the sidekick and the love-interest in D&D were so awful that he was relatively bearable by comparison. The girl was Hermione Granger with all of Hermione's appealing traits removed, but Marlon Wayans' character was essentially a racist caricature whose entire role was to be comically stupid, clumsy, cowardly and shrill. Also, his name was "Snails". That was literally his entire name. Snails. The only interesting thing about this Harry/Ron/Hermione trio was that their acting was often weirdly reminiscent of kids playing pretend, or LARPing... which I guess is kind of true to Dungeons & Dragons itself. Someone actually pointed out to me last night that this movie is way more entertaining if you imagine that it's a "real" game of D&D being acted out by the players, which explains away the nonsensical plot, multitude of fantasy cliches, and shoddy acting.

Oh yeah, and there's a dwarf character. He has a ginger beard and erupts from a pile of trash halfway through, but doesn't really have a purpose in the movie as far as I could tell. Also, he isn't... actually... a dwarf...? I forgot to GIF him, but I don't have the spiritual energy to go back and make one now. Just imagine a drunk Santa Claus who spilled tomato soup down his beard and likes to start bar fights over money.

Jeremy Irons & his minion = totally in a BDSM relaysh.

You've probably already gathered from these GIFs that this movie looks hella cheap, which is why I mentioned the budget thing first. Like, WHERE THE HELL DID THAT MONEY GO? With the exception of the sparkly gold council chamber (which I presume was filmed in some kind of opera house or something), practically every scene looked like it took place a shitty TV set of sub-Xena quality, with the costume armour and prop weapons (including the endless number of phallic "magic rod" maguffins) very obviously looking like moulded plastic.

Yes, he seriously did interrogate Hermione by shooting worms out of his ears.

Now, I don't usually feel like it's fair to be too harsh on prop or costume departments because they basically just have to work with what they've given. I pay a lot of attention to costuming, and it's vanishingly rare for me to see a movie and think that it looks like the costume design is outright "bad,"  rather than just having a really low budget or perhaps not enough time to get everything finished. It's not really the same as acting, editing, writing, etc, where it's relatively easy to tell when something is legitimately terrible. In this movie, the actual design part is pretty much what you'd expect from the genre: lots of robes, nonspecifically medieval outfits, and silly armour. But for some reason it's all made out of really cheap-looking fabrics...?? As in, a few of them genuinely just look like Halloween costumes. I'm sure most of the people who worked on this film now look back on it with a sort of horrified amazement, if at all. Except Jeremy Irons, who is probably like, "Wow, I did some fine snarling in good ol' D&D. Definitely in my top five Snarl Moments of the early 2000s."

Speaking of which, the casting in this movie is so weird. Jeremy Irons is obviously the big name, but they also included a maze-related Richard O'Brien cameo as a reference to his role as the presenter of Crystal Maze... even though non-British audiences probably wouldn't even get the joke? I have no idea. He was actually one of the better actors in the movie, but this five-minute appearance from Richard O'Brien in his best Essex Girl earrings and gold sparkly robes paled in comparison to the cameo from none other than Tom Baker. As an elf.

Yes, while Dungeons & Dragons is clearly among the dregs of the big-screen fantasy genre, I do have to give it points for including two elf characters, and having those characters be 1) an old fat guy, and 2) a black lady with short hair and an actual job. If you think about it for a moment, you'll realise that this level of elf diversity is practically unprecedented. Lord of the Rings was more or less wall-to-wall caucasian supermodels, a fact that would have annoyed me a lot more if I'd watched those movies at 21 instead of 11.

But wait. I see something in the background there. Something vaguely distracting, that for some reason draws focus away from the central scene in which the bland hero is mourning the inevitable death of his black sidekick. What is it?

Oh, it's boob armour. And a fine vintage, as well! Perfectly designed to not fit very well, AND made from what appears to be spray-painted metallic plastic. A marvel. Most amateur cosplay armour is better than this. It even includes a bellybutton, which you'd think people would have avoided after the infamous fiasco of the main costumes in Batman & Robin, just three years before D&D came out. Still, it's not the worst prop/costume in this movie, a title that can only be awarded to this dynamite combo of fake skeleton and Important Magic Rod.

Considering the importance of the Magic Rods in this movie, you'd think they'd spend more time and money on making this red dragon summoning thingie look less like something you can buy from Amazon for under $10. Luckily, the audience would have been distracted by the extremely unconvincing animatronic skeleton in the background. Seriously, this dude is so weak he'd probably be rejected from most theme park rides.

One final baffling detail I've thus far failed to discuss is the presence of Thora Birch. This movie was made before Ghost World, which as someone on Twitter pointed out last night, is kind of baffling because starring in Dungeons & Dragons would be an EXCELLENT answer to the "What happened to Thora Birch?" question. I don't recall having seen any of her other work, but even in the nightmare of shitty acting that was D&D, she somehow stood out as being extra terrible. Her entire performance consisted of talking directly into the camera while barely moving her face or lips, right up until the end, at which point she showed up in a Queen Amidala/Joan of Arc costume for an underwhelming showdown with Jeremy Irons and his magical rod.

The main thing I took away from D&D was a morbid curiosity as to what Game of Thrones would've looked like if it had been, well... this. Superficially, there are quite a few similarities. The central storyline is a power struggle between warring rulers -- in this case Empress Thora Birch and Jeremy Irons' cabal of patriarchy wizards -- with little care for the common folk. Admittedly there's very little in the way of moral grey areas, but there certainly are a lot of dragons. Terrible, terrible CGI dragons that can be controlled using a plastic sceptre. Imagine if, like in this movie, every major scene in Game of Thrones was preceeded by a swooping exterior shot of a CGI castle that looked like a videogame cut scene. Imagine if Game of Thrones had Jeremy Irons. Actually, why doesn't Game of Thrones have Jeremy Irons? I think he's done with The Borgias now, and it might well be time for his next evil wizard role. It's been eight whole years since Eragon, after all.

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Postscript to "His Last Vow": How things might have turned out.

Previously: Sherlock, "His Last Vow."

In my review of "His Last Vow," I talked about the way Sherlock never seems to suffer any consequences for his actions, and how the quality of the show suffers as a result. It's kind of a balancing act, because ultimately even I don't want Sherlock to face completely realistic consequences. Much of his appeal as a character is down to the fact that he says and does things that no normal person would ever dare to do, so the show wouldn't be the same if he was realistically bound by the legal system, or even by social niceties. But when your protagonist finds himself facing even less pushback than Hugh Laurie in House, MD (who regularly bullied his patients and forced his underlings to commit burglary), then you have a problem.
A couple of readers mentioned to me last week that technically, Sherlock was "punished" for Magnussen's murder, in that his assignment in Eastern Europe was implied to be a death sentence. But the fact is that this potential storyline is erased within minutes. Sherlock may accept Mycroft's legally ambiguous banishment, but it's immediately cut short. The narrative saves him from having to go through any kind of real personal difficulty, which effectively removes most of the power of Magnussen's inevitable demise. It could have been a classic story: Sherlock commits to killing Magnussen because he knows it's the only way to defeat him, but he also knows that by killing Magnussen, he has to make a sacrifice. Specifically, the sacrifice of his freedom and reputation, which he only just got back. The result of removing that sacrifice from the equation is that the act of killing Magnussen comes across as just another example of Sherlock's arrogance.
I've been thinking about the kind of storylines Sherlock could have included this season, if they'd decided to follow events through to their natural end. Obviously these aren't serious suggestions, because Sherlock is never going to disrupt its internal universe to this extent. Like most crime shows, the central characters can perform seemingly world-changing (or at least life-changing) feats, but reality somehow just seems to reset itself afterwards. The inner circle of Sherlock's personal relationships may develop and change as the series progresses, but the world around him basically stays the same, even when he takes on a case that could have a major influence on British politics.

The only major change we see is the gradual evolution of Sherlock's celebrity status, but we still don't see it affect him much in daily life. In fact, by the end of season 3 the celebrity situation has actually become pretty implausible, because he's portrayed as being headline-grabbing tabloid fodder... who is still perfectly able to go about his day-to-day business without any kind of trouble from paparazzi or crime reporters. His supposed fame only surfaces when the writers want to reference fandom, either through Sherlock fangirls or conspiracy theorists like Anderson. His return from the dead is instantly broadcast on BBC news as a breaking story, and yet no one recognises him when he's undercover at a drug den, or breaking into Magnussen's office (which is presumably full of journalists!) or wandering around central London in his trademark coat.

I understand the reasoning behind this. Having the world remain static around your characters means you can still comfortably write the same kind of storylines for multiple seasons, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. While I do think that it's lazy writing for Sherlock to avoid any kind of consequences after shooting someone in the head, it's understandable to want the general scenario of the show to remain within the viewers' comfort zone: ie, John and Sherlock solve crimes in London. However, just think of the possibilities if you really did allow Sherlock's actions to have realistic consequences!

The Empty Hearse
When watching this episode, I began to wonder what it would be like if Lord Moran's plan actually succeeded. Sure, John and Sherlock would have to survive somehow (maybe they were inconveniently arrested for jumping the turnstiles in the Underground?) but the Houses of Parliament would be blown up. Most of the British government would be wiped out in one fell swoop, and the country would suddenly be run by a handful of backbench MPs, local councillors, the House of Lords -- and Mycroft Holmes. Perhaps martial law would be declared. London would certainly be on lockdown. The entire world would change overnight, and all future Sherlock mysteries would take place in a dystopian future AU in which London was ruled by a police state of anti-terrorism paranoia and surveillance. (Well, even more than it is in real life, anyway.)

The Sign of Three
I already mentioned this in my episode review, but I found it HIGHLY unrealistic that no one was filming Sherlock's public meltdown at John and Mary's wedding. In reality, someone would probably have filmed it and put it on YouTube, thus bringing Sherlock to viral fame status and destroying his ability to go undercover without a seriously in-depth disguise. In keeping with the episode's comedic theme, this would be the point at which Sherlock becomes a public laughingstock as opposed to a mysterious cult figure.

His Last Vow
This is the big one. Sherlock shot a man in the head in front of multiple witnesses, so either he needs to face legal consequences or there needs to be a seriously good explanation for how Mycroft prevents this from happening.

• Cover-up. This is presumably what will happen in canon, since Sherlock's only punishment was Mycroft unofficially shipping him off to Eastern Europe. I assume that Mycroft's footsoldiers are all bound by confidentiality laws and couldn't tell anyone about what they saw, but Magnussen's private guards and household staff are another matter entirely. How did Mycroft explain Magnussen's death, anyway? He's a very public figure, after all. And while many powerful people would almost certainly benefit from Magnussen's death, it would still be a major news story, even if they went the route of faking a plane crash or natural death.
• Actual jail time. Sherlock killed a guy. He goes to court, explains the situation, and is sent to jail. He gets a lenient sentence because the judge was one of Magnussen's blackmail victims, but he's still gonna be incarcerated for a couple of years. In the meantime, John and Mary have cool adventures with Lestrade, and visit Sherlock regularly in jail so he can get to know the new baby. He assists in their investigations from behind bars, Hannibal-style, and reconstructs crime scenes inside his Mind Palace. They can even include a chase sequence where he "runs" alongside John, predicting where he's going to go while tracking down a criminal! Totally awesome. The season ends with him being release from jail, ready to start afresh in season 5. 
• Dead man's switch. Sure, Magnussen could store all his blackmail information in his head, but for practical purposes it's stupid to think that he only relied on his Mind Palace. Particularly when keeping hard copies of his blackmail files is perfect insurance against, say, people trying to shoot him in the head. THIS IS BASIC BLACKMAIL SHIT, GUYS. Someone as clever and well-prepared as Magnussen should have kept a bunch of files on hand to be released via automated email, in the event that he was killed or kidnapped. Ideal opening scene for season four: Britain is in disarray after a vast amount of secret government files and shocking personal information about public figures was all simultaneously leaked online following Magnussen's death, like a tabloid scandal version of Wikileaks. Everything is utter chaos, and it's all Sherlock's fault for shooting first and asking questions later. Real, realistic consequences.

When reading an interview with Moffat & Gatiss the other day, I was surprised to discover that the dead man's switch issue does actually have an explanation -- just not within the actual episode. Basically, Magnussen was intended to be a classic supervillain who is brought low by his own hubris. Supposedly, Sherlock was able to kill him because he just didn't even consider the possibility of an assassination attempt. Now, I find this pretty difficult to swallow, considering how many enemies Magnussen must have had. But I might have been inclined to charitably accept it if there had been any significant hint of this character trait in the episode itself. In the Moffat/Gatiss interview, they discussed cutting a scene where Magnussen is swimming in his private pool and ignores John and Sherlock as being beneath his notice -- a scene that was meant to illustrate his aloof nature and lack of concern for other people.
I feel like you can kind of interpret this trait from the scenes where he pees in Sherlock's fireplace or flicks John's face, but those honestly feel more like he's bucking societal convention and acting like an asshole -- much like both Sherlock and Moriarty. This removal of a key character development scene is yet another thing I've noticed Moffat doing before with other characters. Most recently, he talked about deleting a few lines from the most recent Doctor Who Christmas special -- lines that would have explained Clara's tangled backstory and memory issues. But Moffat decided to remove this explanation on the grounds that viewers wouldn't really be "bothered" about it, which inevitably led to her character arc being even more confusing than before. I mean, I understand that not everything can make it into the final cut of an episode, but if you're going to engineer a seemingly undefeatable villain with one fatal, hidden flaw, then you do actually need to hint about what that flaw is. Otherwise, the explanation that he ~just didn't consider the possibility of someone trying to kill him~ kind of sounds like nonsense.

To me, the most serious potential consequence of "His Last Vow" is the dead man's switch. Things like Sherlock becoming a YouTube sensation are only going to happen as a momentary punchline, and he's most likely not going to spend any time in jail for his various crimes. But the fact remains that we never received an adequate in-universe explanation for Magnussen's lack of blackmail insurance against people trying to kill him. It requires us to believe that he had such a gigantic ego that he not only believed that he was undefeatable, but also that he was immortal. Which, in turn, requires us to believe that no one had ever attempted to kill him before. Except... didn't he have his own personal bodyguards, implying that he was very aware that he was in danger of physical attack at all times?

It's a problem. It's a serious problem. So until season four comes out, I'm electing to believe that as soon as Magnussen's death went public, all of his carefully-collected blackmail files began to leak to various news outlets, causing untold chaos among Britain's ruling classes. Sorry, Sherlock. Maybe you didn't win this one after all.

Previous Sherlock posts

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Menswear, Fall 2014: Belstaff, Agi & Sam, Alexander McQueen, Berluti, Balmain, and Alexander Wang

Belstaff
Glad to see that Belstaff has moved on from designing motorcycle jackets and Sherlock's swishy coat and has now adopted "hipster Nazgul" as a style theme.

All photos via Style.com

Agi & Sam
This season seems to be dominated by the monochrome palette, which was an unusual choice for the ordinarily colourful Agi & Sam. I'm not as wild about Agi & Sam as some people (they're kind of the darlings of young British menswear right now), but I prefer their earlier work to this particular collection, which relied too much on grey and white checks and the kind of loose tailoring that makes most people look awkwardly gangly. I was interested to read up on their influences though, with many of this season's prints turning out to be inspired by Masai clothing.

Alexander Wang
OK, so you kind of know what you're going to get with Alexander Wang. Soft, comfortable-looking street sportswear, but priced at a level that you can only afford if you personally have the ability to lay Faberge eggs. It's not something that I'm personally into, but I respect his expertise and I love the boots this year, very badass.

 This next outfit: The Human Car Tire.

Balmain
This season's Balmain will be an A+ choice if you're sylphlike 19-year-old guy who doesn't mind looking like a vaguely bitchy and incongruously rich art gallery intern, but it probably doesn't have much of an audience outside of that specific demographic.

Balmain are way better known for their womenswear, which usually cleaves close to the formula of very shiny, detailed dresses and short, tailored jackets. I find their menswear a little harder to pin down. The best descriptor I can think of is that their mens' clothing looks A LOT like it should be worn by a K-pop boyband, possibly thanks to the overabundance of slim, decorated jackets and boyish models.

I mostly included this next one due to the unusual, boxy cut of the jacket and shirt. Obviously every new season of menswear brings with it a plethora of neutral-toned suit jackets, but it's relatively rare to see one with this strange shape that cuts off just above the hip, and apparently has no waist at all. There's no attempt to widen the shoulders or elongate the legs, which generally tends to be the purpose of most suit-style menswear tailoring. (Also, Balmain's love of trousers with this type of knee padding is another thing that reminds me of Korean fashions, although I don't know if it's actually one of their influences or if it's just a coincidence.)

Leopard print, by the way, was an ongoing theme in this collection. Not the best idea, TBH. The leopard print jackets looked a little tacky, and I'm not overly fond of the shape of those boots. This black sweater/leather trousers outfit is lovely, though.

Berluti
Berluti can get it, basically. This whole collection was classic from beginning to end, and I recommend googling some reviews from the actual show because the craftsmanship behind these clothes is incredible. Despite what my blog title may imply, I'm not actually a tailor, but it certainly sounds impressive to me that some of the coats in this collection involved sandwiching a "membrane" of wool between two layers of boiled cashmere for extra warmth and durability.

Alexander McQueen
Not McQueen or Sarah Burton's most exciting work to date, but still a solid collection. Particularly if you, like me, are kind of a goth. The fashion show's music included Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus, and many of the models wore crow feathers in their hair.

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"His Last Vow," Part 3: No consequences, no impact, no regrets.

Previously: Part 2

My eventual reaction to the final scene of this episode was pretty simple:

I feel like the real title of BBC Sherlock should be "Sherlock Holmes: Special Treatment." Or perhaps, "Sherlock Holmes: No Consequences."
— Hello, Tailor (@Hello_Tailor) January 13, 2014

I love Moriarty, and I'll be psyched to see more of him next season. But his presence is indicative of one of Moffat's worst flaws as a writer: his complete inability to allow serious actions to have serious consequences. Sherlock coming back from the dead is a given, but Moriarty recovering from a gunshot to the mouth? Although, I suppose, he may not actually be "alive" next season. Perhaps he's committing crimes from beyond the grave. Luckily for the purposes of this review, there's another extremely obvious example of the total lack of consequences in this show: Sherlock's near-instant return from "exile" at the end of the episode.
My immediate assumption after Sherlock shot Magnussen was that next season, we'd be in for some kind of Hannibal-style crimesolving scenario where Sherlock is incarcerated but is occasionally sprung from jail to help solve the puzzle of the week. This would be an interesting development both for Sherlock as a character and for the show, because the reason why everything seems like such a hot mess right now is because there are no restrictions on anything. Sherlock has too much freedom, the writers have too much power, and everyone would benefit from cooling their heels in narrative prison for a while.

Of course, then it turned out that instead of going through the normal legal processes, Sherlock would be sent away to die in "Eastern Europe," that well-known bastion of dastardly criminal peril. At this point, one would expect him to fade tastefully off into the sunset, giving us a cooling-off period before he inevitably returns for the next season. Except a) that would be too similar to the gap between seasons two and three, and b) there are no consequences in Sherlock Land. So he's brought back after a mere four minutes, once again learning that he can do whatever he likes, as long as it's for a Good Cause. He doesn't need to feel guilty about Janine, he doesn't need to feel guilty about Magnussen, and he doesn't even need to feel guilty about that whole thing where he faked his own death and lied to his best friend about it for two solid years.

So. Sherlock is right and good and cool and awesome, and lives to play another day. Meanwhile, twenty to thirty people from the British government, Magnussen's personal staff, and Mycroft's team of soldiers, all get to live with the knowledge that Sherlock Holmes shot a man in the head in front of multiple witnesses, but will get away with it because he's famous and has a powerful brother. And that, really, is the true underlying message of this show.
This episode, and a great deal of the basic concept of Sherlock as a show, reads a lot like a story written by a young boy who has only ever been exposed to fantasy-fulfillment male antihero fiction. Sherlock is a stylish, witty, misunderstood genius who doesn't care (doesn't HAVE to care) what anyone thinks, and can be as rude as he likes and get away with it. He doesn't need or want women, but women become obsessed with him anyway, proving his desirability and superiority. He has a loyal best friend who stays with him even when he's acting like a total asshole. The world shapes itself around him. And sure, we know that Sherlock isn't a total Mary Sue because he has a multitude of very obvious personality flaws. The problem is, they just don't  matter. They are window-dressing. Unlike the far less objectionable Sherlock Holmes of Elementary, Sherlock never learns or evolves, because there are never any long-term consequences to his behaviour.
It's pointless to say that Sherlock should be more like Elementary, because that would require the main characters to go through a massive personality shift. But there are certainly things this show could learn from the way Elementary portrays its central characters and relationships. Yes, BBC Sherlock is more extreme than Elementary Sherlock, and that's why we like him. He's a wish-fulfillment fantasy, existing in a heightened reality where everything eventually bows to his power, while Elementary Sherlock lives in the real world. I'm not suggesting that BBC Sherlock should aspire to Elementary's level of realism (or even to its admirable levels of emotional authenticity), but it would be a good idea for them to take a leaf out of Elementary's book when it comes to punishing their lead character when he goes over the line.
In Elementary, when Sherlock is needlessly unpleasant to someone, that unpleasantness has consequences. It has actual impact on his career and his relationships with other human beings. Ditto when he acts outside the law. Not only does he see actual real-world legal and practical consequences to his actions, but there are emotional and social repercussions when he acts without considering the lives and feelings of other people. When he and Joan Watson have an argument, he generally ends up apologising and learning from the conflict. His basic nature doesn't change, but he matures and evolves thanks to his life experiences and growing relationships. Now, I don't think it would be realistic for BBC Sherlock to suddenly develop empathy (or even an ability to treat other people with basic human decency), but the show would actually improve A LOT if his actions had serious consequences. In the Reichenbach Fall, we saw that. But this season? Not so much.
If Sherlock's behaviour doesn't have the potential to negatively impact the world and his own life, then any positive impact feels meaningless. Magnussen's death was inevitable from a narrative standpoint, because much like in the original Holmes story, the ONLY way to defeat him was to kill him. But if Magnussen's death was inevitable, then Sherlock's comeuppance should've been inevitable as well. That's the whole point of this kind of scene. The hero goes to the villain's lair, teeth gritted because he knows he has to make the ultimate sacrifice and do a Bad Thing, and once he's followed through with that Bad Thing, he faces the consequences. Sadly, Sherlock is immortal, undefeatable, and can do whatever he wants without running the risk of serious punishment. I just hope that next season, Sherlock's writers remember that without Kryptonite to make things interesting, Superman is the most boring superhero of the lot.

Miscellaneous

• Child Sherlock was a terrible idea. I assume it was meant to humanise him, so we'd feel more sympathetic once we'd seen cute baby Sherlock crying and playing with a dog?? Terrible. (And apparently the child actor was Steven Moffat's son? Good lord.)
• I loved Mycroft's suit in the Christmas scenes. Very Lord of the Manor. Whereas Sherlock looked convincingly awful in his drug-den outfit.
• Once again, I am in awe of the number of white men in this show. They introduced this Billy Wiggins guy... for what reason, exactly?? And why on earth is practically everyone in this show white. IT'S SET IN LONDON.
• Did you guys notice that Magnussen's scrolling info screens for John and Sherlock both included "Porn Preference: Normal." WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?? "Normal" porn preferences?? So many questions, oh my god. Particularly for Sherlock, who is characterised as uninterested in sex and generally dismissive of women.
• For that matter: did Janine and Sherlock have sex, or not? The shower scene at the beginning suggested yes, but then in the hospital she implied that they'd never slept together. Ugh, I am so sick of Moffat's way of writing Sherlock's sexuality.
• Appledore House was INCREDIBLE. Although all the way through, I just found myself wondering who the hell would want to live in such an enormous, sterile house. Apparently it is some millionaire's actual house, though.
• How long has Mary been pregnant, exactly? This episode ended at Christmas. John and Mary got married in the summer. I'm confused. 
• I'm a little confused about Mary's backstory. Are we meant to believe that she decided to retire from her life as a spy/assassin... and then spent the past five years working as the receptionist at a medical practise, building a social circle of blandly normal British people? Like, of all the things she could've picked, she picked the one job where you have to deal with crying babies, pissed-off methadone addicts, senile old people, and STDs?? And you probably only get paid about £10/hour?? Unless she's working there because of John, in which case: oh, for fuck's sake. It makes sense from the perspective of that's how she fell in love with John, but it does not REMOTELY make sense in the new context of her being a former intelligence agent with a Dark Past.

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"His Last Vow," Part 2: Women, eh?

Previously: Part 1

The role of female characters in this episode was, well... holy shit. To break it down, we have six women: Mary, Molly, Janine, Mrs Hudson, Sherlock's mother, and Lady Smallwood. Lady Smallwood's role was essentially that of a typical crime show guest actor, and Mrs Hudson and Sherlock's mother both had pleasant, relatively unimportant maternal roles. The three recurring female characters who were actually important to the plot were all linked by two traits. Firstly, they're all romantically linked to one of the two male leads, and secondly, the events of this episode transformed each of them from being independent humans to acting like orbiting satellites, helpless to the gravitational pull of Sherlock's personal storyline.

Tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of words have been written by Sherlock and Doctor Who fans, attempting to decode Steven Moffat's unsettling attitude to women. Considering the kinds of things he's said during official publicity interviews, it's difficult to argue that he isn't something of a misogynist. And this regularly shines through in his writing, partly thanks to his repeated use of a very specific fantasy formula when it comes to writing central female characters. This season of Sherlock provided some very interesting examples in this regard, because while Moffat and Gatiss certainly collaborate on their scripts, His Last Vow was the only episode that had Moffat as the primary writer. In other words, the main plot points and characterisation details in the first two episodes were not governed by Moffat's headcanon. Gatiss and Thompson's job was to set up Mary and Janine as characters we would find engaging and likeable, in preparation for Moffat's plan to tear them down and ~reveal their true natures~ in episode three.

Now, obviously this was all planned from the beginning, but I still find it telling that the series overview basically boiled down to this: "We need to introduce two new awesome female characters and then utterly screw them over and make sure their existence revolves around John and Sherlock."
One of the most common criticisms regarding Moffat Women is that he creates female characters who seem to exist purely to support a male hero. Or, more accurately, he creates interesting female characters who are later proven to exist only to support a male hero. In Doctor Who: River Song, Clara Oswald, and The Girl in the Fireplace. In Sherlock: Irene Adler, Mary, Janine, and to a certain extent, Molly, who in this episode saw her engagement broken off (offscreen!) and her role in the episode reduced to that of a helpful assistant inside Sherlock's Mind Palace.
On an individual basis, none the female characters in His Last Vow are enormously problematic. You can rationalise them. Sherlock's mother gave up a career in mathematics to have children? Fine. Lots of people give up their careers to have kids. Mary used to be an assassin, and will do anything to keep her past a secret so John won't leave her? Well, that's kind of fucked up, but romantic in its own way. Janine is surprisingly unbothered by the fact that her boyfriend was using her to get into her boss's office, and faked their entire relationship? Admirably pragmatic. The problem only arises when you combine all of these together, especially when you have any awareness of the kind of things Steven Moffat has said about women and female characters in the past. Let's look at Mary and Janine, the two women who went from being normal people to being cogs in the John-and-Sherlock storyline machine:

• Janine: I said in last week's review that I liked Janine, but found it very odd that Sherlock would be so pleasant to her. Well, now we have a satisfying explanation for Sherlock's uncharacteristically friendly attitude! However, her reaction to Sherlock's betrayal is pure fantasy. Rather than reacting in the way that 99% of humans would have done, her personality was specially constructed to absolve Sherlock of his sins and allow the audience to forgive him for acting like a colossal douchebag. It's OK! She's a "whore" who got even by selling her story to the tabloids! So it's totally OK that Sherlock lied to her and used her throughout their entire relationship.
• Mary: Were it not for the John/Mary/Sherlock scene at Baker Street, I might have accepted the revelation that Mary is a former CIA assassin. It's hardly the most ridiculous thing that's ever happened in this show, after all. But during that scene, I found myself viewing the characters with a strange kind of double vision: they were no longer just people, but also mouthpieces for the writer. As one of my friends put it: This episode says so much about Moffat's views on women that it's actually shocking. John's first reaction to Mary's betrayal is to say, "What have I ever done to deserve you?" and then "You weren't supposed to be like this!" which starts off a whole conversation about how of course John was attracted to Mary, because she is not a Normal Woman, she is Special and Exciting.

Everything is about John. Mary's presence in the show is the result of John's life up until this point, and it's really just as well that we got a nice, neat scene where Sherlock helpfully explains John's own personality traits to him, so we all know that John and Mary are Made For Each Other. Or, more accurately, that Mary is Made For Him, what with her conveniently being Very Exciting on top of her original appealing traits of being Feisty and shockingly tolerant of Sherlock's nightmarish behaviour.

If you think I'm overreacting a little here, please allow me to digress for a moment on the topic of Moffat Women. Do you guys watch Doctor Who? I assume many of you do, but if you don't, let tell you the story of River Song.

River Song was introduced as a guest character in Steven Moffat's excellent double episode, Silence In The Library, back when Russel T. Davies was still showrunner. She's a smart, sexually liberated, confident, middle-aged archaeologist/adventurer -- who, it turns out, is married to the Doctor. They seem to have a really cool relationship where she lives her own life as a kind of intergalactic Indiana Jones, and occasionally meets up with the Doctor whenever he's having an adventure in her corner of the galaxy.

But as the series progressed and Steven Moffat took over as showrunner, the truth of River's backstory was gradually "revealed." Rather than being an independent entity who fell in love with the Doctor, it turned out that she was secretly the daughter of two of his companions. On top of this, she was "programmed" to hunt down the Doctor and assassinate him. When she meets him for the first time in her timeline, she decides not to kill him, and instead gives him a ton of her own life-force in order to save his life, which effectively downgrades her from near immortality to a normal human lifespan. Then, she becomes an "archaeologist" in order to research the history of the Doctor, because she knows their lives are intertwined, and it's the only way she can learn more about him while he's free to travel around space and time without her. Eventually she is imprisoned for "killing" him, and they only spend time together he arrives at her prison to pick her up for a fun adventure in space, and then delivers her back to be locked up again. When she dies, the Doctor has her consciousness stored in a computer so she can "live forever," trapped in a utopian (but extremely dull) CGI garden with various other stored consciousnesses.

Mary and Janine's character development was a microcosm of this evolution from independent character to obsessive follower. I still like Mary a lot, but it's annoying to learn that instead of just being, you know, a person, she has to be this Very Special And Important superspy who is willing to shoot Sherlock in the chest to protect her relationship with John. She's a near-perfect example of the Steven Moffat formula for central female characters: feisty and powerful and "fun" until we discover that her entire role in the show is hopelessly tied up in the male hero's existence, and has been since before she even appeared onscreen. A far more emotionally authentic character journey would've been if she was just an ordinary person who is in love with John, rather than an infamous assassin with a Dark Past who is hopelessly embroiled in a conflict with Sherlock's latest arch-nemesis

Which brings me on to the weirdest aspect of Mary's revelation: the fact that she doesn't seem to care if Sherlock lives or dies. She evidently likes him, but I'm of the opinion that no matter what Sherlock said about her ability to shoot, she was completely willing to kill him in Magnusson's office. I think it's reasonably likely that if Sherlock hadn't set up that scene in that corridor behind the facade, she might have made another attempt to kill him, just to avoid John discovering her secret. But as soon as John knew, she no longer had any reason to silence Sherlock, so she could go back to her original position of finding him likable and entertaining on a personal level. John, inexplicably, is perfectly OK with staying married to a woman who shot his best friend in the chest, but I genuinely can't tell if this was intentional or if it was just another example of the extremely uneven characterisation this season.

Concluded in Part 3

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Sherlock: "His Last Vow" (Part 1)

Previously: "The Sign of Three"

My mind is blown. WHAT WAS GOING ON HERE. WHAT.

My initial reaction to this episode was to vomit ectoplasm at the ceiling, but since I am A Lady, I forced myself to look at the situation in a calm and rational manner. First of all, would I still think this episode was a hilarious seafood gumbo of nonsense if it had been written by someone other than Steven Moffat? Am I biased, as a result of his track record as a renowned misogynist and writer of nonsense television? Would His Last Vow survive a blind taste test? So, looking back on it, I asked myself: would this episode still be a warped tangle of plot-noodles if I thought it had been written by Mark Gatiss, Steve Thompson, or J.K. Rowling?

Well, yes. Yes it would.
This season's big finale hinged on one of the show's most embarrassingly overused concepts, the Mind Palace. The sonic screwdriver of BBC Sherlock. One Mind Palace aficionado was enough, but two stretches credulity to the limit. Plus, having Magnusson admit that his records are all stored in his head is just plain bad writing. Not only is it kind of implausible (seriously, not even Sherlock has that level of detail in his Mind Palace), but it's also tantamount to inviting someone to shoot you in the head. If not Sherlock, then certainly John, who Magnusson would surely know is a gun owner. Unless Moffat was deliberately going for a Bond villainesque "I've brought you here so I may as well tell you my evil plan!" scene. In which case... that pretty much negates Sherlock Holmes' power as a hero who relies on deductive reasoning to defeat his enemies. The denouement was the villain literally explaining his Achilles Heel, and then Sherlock murdering him to get rid of the problem. Not very impressive, when you think about it.

I wish I could say I was surprised that this episode received generally positive reviews (the Guardian called it "perfect," and the Telegraph thought it was the best episode so far) but for some reason, British TV reviewers always seem fall over themselves to applaud Steven Moffat's writing. This is highly frustrating because it makes it seem as if his best writing (Blink; The Girl in the Fireplace) is only slightly better than his worst (ie, the last year or so of Doctor Who), which completely devalues the quality his better work. It's just plain ridiculous to claim that His Last Vow was better than every other episode of Sherlock to date, when in fact, it was really just more dramatic. This kind of blindly devoted attitude reminds me of Aaron Sorkin fans who manage to persuade themselves that The Newsroom is incredible, just because they liked The West Wing.

Last night I had a conversation with one of my friends who thought this episode was even worse than I did -- in fact, that was one of the worst episodes of big-budget TV she'd ever seen. I pointed out that while His Last Vow was nonsensical and often straight-up bad, I did still find it entertaining. I still enjoy Sherlock's flashy excitement, and its ridiculousness, and the sheer high-octane pleasure of seeing Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman play off each other. Also, I'm not enormously invested in the show's future, so it doesn't really bother me that the characterisation was kind of inconsistent this season, or that the finale was a hot mess of OTT plot twists and frustrating sexist undertones.
What does bother me is the idea that this episode might be hailed as an example of good TV writing, when it mostly relied on flashiness and sudden, implausible revelations to dazzle its audience rather than engaging them with a coherent, well-developed plot. Mary's an assassin! There's a third Holmes brother! Moriarty's alive! Magnusson's files are all in his MIND PALACE! Sherlock just drugged everyone! Sherlock's going to jail! No he isn't! He's got a girlfriend! No he doesn't! -- On and on until you're caught between laughter and shock, your critical faculties obliterated by Sherlock running around his mind palace with a puppy, and everyone's "pressure points" being helpfully displayed onscreen. The only aspect of the episode that remained consistent throughout was Lars Mikkelsen as Charles Augustus Magnusson: a gorgeously repulsive performance.

Continued in Part 2: Female Characters

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Sherlock: "The Sign of Three"

Previously: "The Empty Hearse"

I feel like I need to preface this review by saying that I didn't think this episode was necessarily... "bad"...? But it was definitely weird as hell. It was a pile of butts. It was a hysterical LOLfest. It was a Richard Curtis movie written by sadists. Was it "good television"? Well, I personally found it quite entertaining (in between my agonised shrieking at the supreme awkwardness of Sherlock's speech), but I suspect that more serious Sherlock fans will have a bone to pick with the extremely uneven characterisation. If I was a more serious critic, I would also point out its odd story structure, its bizarre lunges between slapstick comedy and sentimentality, and its apparent abandonment of the show's core purpose as a crime drama. It's really no surprise that this episode was so divisive between fandom viewers and the show's more mainstream audience.

The reason why I'm hesitant to label this episode a "bad" is because I've seen Bad Sherlock, and its name is the Blind Banker. That episode was a common-or-garden example of shitty television, with a side order of blatant racism. But The Sign of Three? Was just plain weird. I think what we've learned here is that if they do indeed end up making a fourth season, Steve Thompson's episode will be the wild card. Just think about it: he went from worst ever episode (Blind Banker) to the heartwrenching thriller that is Reichenbach, to this. Meanwhile, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss remain reasonably predictable in that Moffat is excellent at writing individual scenes and snappy dialogue, but will pepper his episodes with offensive garbage and OTT grandstanding... and Gatiss is a horror nerd fanboy who takes the show way less seriously and is entirely happy to take the piss.

I still do not understand the basic logistics of the murders, though. So, Dean Thomas and Watson's old commanding officer were both stabbed in a way that wouldn't show until they removed their belt, which was acting as a tourniquet. But as soon as they did so, they exsanguinated, fast enough that they couldn't so much as call for help. IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? I mean, wouldn't you NOTICE getting stabbed? Wouldn't they feel it, even when wearing a very tight belt? Particularly if it was a wound that was serious enough to very quickly kill you once you removed the pressure? And NO blood leaked out beforehand, at all? Sherlock Holmes stories have always relied upon a certain element of ridiculousness to make their central crime plots more interesting, but this is definitely the most nonsensical murder we've seen in Sherlock so far.
Aside from the barefaced ludicrousness of a crime plot that requires the victim not to notice that they've been fatally stabbed, my main quibble with the plausibility of this episode was the absence of people filming during Sherlock's mid-wedding meltdown.

At any wedding, there is usually SOMEONE filming, but even if John and Mary had elected to not have any kind of footage of the speeches at the reception, EVERYONE WOULD HAVE STARTED FILMING ON THEIR CAMERAPHONES AS SOON SHERLOCK GOT GOING. I mean, the kids and teenagers at least, if the adults were too English and middle-class to get caught using their iPhone during an embarrassing moment at their friend's wedding. Sherlock is a public figure, and he was performing one of the most bizarre and mesmerisingly awful Best Man speeches in human history. I refuse to accept that it wouldn't be on YouTube, Upworthy and UK Buzzfeed within 24 hours. One of this show's gimmicks is Sherlock's regular usage of smartphones when solving crimes, so there's really no excuse for this bizarre lack of cameraphone footage when it's less convenient to Sherlock's personal storyline.
The crackfic tone of The Sign of Three meant that a lot of non-fandom viewers were probably disappointed, especially since the episode's central story (such as it was) was only vaguely adjacent to the crime TV genre. However, one thing that may have been easier for non-fandom audiences to palate was the characterisation. Your average "serious" Sherlockian has probably rewatched the first two seasons multiple times and spent hundreds of hours writing meta posts on Tumblr, discussing the show, and reading fanfic. They have analysed John and Sherlock's personalities until they know them inside out. So to anyone with this level of familiarity with the characters, this episode is likely to have been pretty fucking baffling.
I haven't actually rewatched the last season of Sherlock since it aired on TV, but there were still a bunch of things in this episode that I quickly realised were utterly out of character. The most glaring example was the Maid of Honour. When she was first introduced, I was like, "Man, wouldn't it be awesome if they just spent the rest of the episode with Sherlock acting as her matchmaking service?" but realistically, I assumed that he'd end up offending her and/or deducing that she was a criminal or something. But no. This was a crackfic. A crackfic in which Sherlock did indeed act as a matchmaking service for a woman he'd never met before, despite his utter distaste for romance, people, and quite possibly women in general. Why was he so friendly towards her when he couldn't even force himself to treat Watson with simple human compassion during the bomb scene in last week's episode? Is this meant to be evidence of a character evolution that took place over the intervening months between episodes one and two? Or, more likely, was it just another throwaway joke to add to a comedy episode that was already swimming in "random" humorous asides?

The middle episode of a season of Sherlock has traditionally been the zany/ridiculous one, but I think The Sign of Three indicates that the writers now have the power to do basically whatever they want. The show's ratings are incredible, and it's the reviews of the first and third episodes that really matter. God only knows what they'll do with season four. I'm hoping for a more coherent story arc, though. When it was announced that Lars Mikkelsen had been hired to play Charles Augustus Magnussen, I was psyched because he's a great actor and Charles Augustus Milverton is one of the most interesting villains in the original Holmes stories. The TV crime genre is already littered with terrorists and mass murderers, but a talented blackmailer could be a far more interesting and insidious threat. I can only hope he survives tomorrow's episode so we can get to see a more fleshed-out Milverton/Magnusson storyline in season four, rather than just bringing him in for one episode.

Miscellaneous

• Re: my earlier points about Steve Thompson being the wildcard writer in this show -- I am aware that this episode was credited to all three writers, but Thompson was announced as the original writer. I think Gatiss and Moffat stepped in to rewrite the episode, for whatever reason. Goodness knows what it was like before. More disjointed, or less?? Either way, Gatiss and Moffat are probably collaborating to a certain extent on their own credited episodes, anyway. So Gattiss's first ep would've had some input from Moffat, and vice versa for Moffat's final ep tomorrow night.
• John and Sherlock's drunk scenes: HILARIOUS. Probably my favourite part of the episode. 
• The entire mini-story about the murdered (or attempted-murdered) soldier was utter nonsense, wasn't it?
• Not wild about seeing Naked Irene Adler again. Unnecessary, in more ways than one.
• I WAS happy to see Mycroft hanging around Sherlock's ~mind palace~, though. Mycroft has had a very interesting role this season, possibly the best interpretation of Mycroft I've seen in any adaptation. (Possibly because Gatiss is writing dialogue and character development for himself, LOL.)
• I already wrote about this in the article I linked at the beginning of this post, but this episode was mindblowingly fanfiction-y. Months of John/Sherlock relationship stuff compressed into half an hour of clip show storylines, plus crackfic garbage like Sherlock becoming obsessed with wedding planning. Which is awesome if you like that sort of thing, and if you don't, well... sorry, bro. Maybe there'll be some crime next week, or something.
• Several of my friends are convinced that Mary is EVIL EVIL EVIL. I'm more inclined to suspect that she's doomed to die, although that's not a solid prediction. It's more based on a combination of my distrust for Steven Moffat, and the fact that she dies in the Holmes stories (possibly in childbirth). The main argument against this is that John's already taken enough punishment, and killing off his wife would just be OTT. My favourite future-Mary theory so far came from my friend Grace, who thinks that Mary will survive and have her baby, because having to take care of a child is the least objectionable way of effectively getting rid of her so John and Sherlock can continue with their adventures in future seasons, while Mary continues to be awesome in a more background role.

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