The poster meant the year in which the series is now set. That question has been answered:

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/sherloc...day-after-all/

By most estimates, last night's episode was still set in 2014, since it followed on directly from 'The Abominable Bride', which followed on directly from 'His Last Vow'.

It can't rely on the viewer having to go and read an original story. This TV series is its own thing and whatever clues are in there have to be self-contained within the episode or the TV series, not in one of the original novels.
It's true that sometimes information is missed, and I confess that I occasionally miss something until I rewatch an episode of something, but the TV viewer can't be expected to go and research some old Sherlock Holmes novels to understand the TV series. Everything has to be self-contained and work within the world of this TV show.

What plots???? The whole thing is total rubbish now!

I couldn't agree more with the above. It's long been a fanboy/fangirl tactic to claim someone should have read such-and-such or previously been aware of this-and-that in order to fully understand a piece of art, whether it's a movie, TV show or something else. It's usually a defence for objectively poor writing, which is certainly the case for this latest episode of 'Sherlock'. If something's too opaque for a casual or first-time viewer or reader, then it's failed its purpose. It's not a case of people being stubbornly obtuse; the fault lies with the creators.


I'm still curious about your text here, to the point I daren't ask... you, erm, do know she wasn't pregnant, right?

Not to be picky, but most of the episode would be set in 2015. Especially when you consider them sorting out getting Sherlock off the hook, then of course there would be a small time skip with the baby being born and then the christening.

Someone may have already written this, but what was all that tosh about Mary 'rolling the dice' randomly to go to various places. If it was random ,how come she found a brick in a wall with a passport in it and then got on a motorbike. What was the point anyway? If she thought she had to do all that to avoid detection, she must have known she would be found ,so why not just stay in London, ludicrous.

Wow I thoroughly enjoyed that. Great story with lots of twists and turns.

I only twigged it was the secretary when they arrested her boss - Lady Whats-her-name.
Why would the secretary be in that scene otherwise?

Mary doing the convoluted escape routine, only to he found by Sherlock was funny, then poignant when you realised he brought her home to London to die

Haven't read the thread, as it's bound to be full of the usual professional windbags moaning, and I haven't the patience.

Well-done Sherlock makers - this episode had me on the edge of my seat, and guessing all the way

Lol, all good points... and if Sherlock's explanation was that he was tracking her through the USB drive, why did he arrive at her destination before she did? Answer: very poor writing!

As long as the show works it's okay to have additonal things that readers of the books (I'm not one) would pick up no?

The bit that seems ridiculously self indulgent is if they've added a character that is not in the books but is in... Dr Who...? I've never seen Dr Who so I'm not sure if the post I read on this (referring to a third brother) was serious but if they've cross referenced to something entirely unrelated then I give up on them.

Forget it. I tried to let it pass hoping no one would notice. Tiredness, too much booze, take your pick.
I got my shows mixed up and I was tired.
I think what I should have said is that she'd just had a child and she'd be risking a lot. For some reason I got it into my head that she was actually pregnant. But nevertheless it can't hide the embarrassment I feel for my error. What can I do other than to hold my hands up for making an idiotic mistake?
But if you and I keep quiet about it hopefully no one else will notice.

Yes that's absolutely fine. In fact I like that as it's a nice touch and people on forums or on social media have something to encourage other people with to read the original book.

But it should never rely on the viewer having to read the source material to understand the narrative of the TV series.

I watched live on New Years Day. I rewatched yesterday. Almost all the things I was confused about were cleared up. It was much better 2nd time around. The episode looked off kilter though. So much blue, the skull wall hanging looked different. Why did Doctor Watson not try to save his wife. Check exit wound get her flat and raise her legs to ease blood loss? The flirty bus woman is connected to Culverton Smith in the next episodes. His image was on an advert in the bus stop when JW was about to break it off by text.
As an individual story I think we're only a third of the way through.
As an aside many posts here say thank goodness Mary is gone let's get back to crime solving. This show has really never been about the crimes. Go watch Elementary if you want that kind of police procedural Sherlock Holmes. This is always been more about the detective. His character development over these episodes is fascinating. John and Mary have softened his edges but, the real Sherlock is simmering just underneath. This may well be the last series for a long time.
I really can't wait for the next two episodes

I don't think Mary 'died for sherlock' at all, rather she thought he could protect John & Rosie better than she could, and if she lived there would always be people from her past to potentially threaten them. She was trying, imo, to save John & Rosie which would definitely make her instinctive action understandable not random & stupid. She didn't abandon them, in her mind anyway.

I have never seen Doctor Who either.

I made the post about DW, after googling the name that Mycroft said on the phone.
That is how I know about their (Doctor Who) addition of a third brother.
The brother is not in the book, but was added as some scifi thingy in DW.

I cant stand anything scifi, so will not watch DW for any clarification.

I like it when they include small, irrelevant things from the books.

The Blue Carbunkel is my favourite, so I liked the little betting scene in Hound of Baskerville.

Presumably they were able to find or work out where all her safe places were. It was just which ones she travelled to and in which order that were randomised by throws of the dice.

I thought that she had six destinations, each for the eyes of the dice. So if the dice says three, she goes to Norway, and if it says five, she goes to Egypt (or whereever she was)

Hence, she knows where to travel, but not when she will get there.
The whole thing was stupid anyway. Her poor baby needs both her parents in the first precious months.

Can anyone help me with a couple of things?

With respect to the son dying in the car at the start, wouldn't the most basic police work establish that the phone call had been relayed by the mobile phone mast nearest to the house itself? In other words, the son was not in Nepal, and was most probably at home? Also, passport checks would have revealed that he returned to the UK a day earlier or whatever. Why do the police not know this?

Also, how did the family end up with the Thatcher bust? Was it a pure coincidence that Sherlock happened to be on a case where he noticed (the lack of) it and it just happened to be linked to Mary's backstory. Seems kind of...ridiculous.

And when on earth did Sherlock become so skilled at hand to hand combat that he could beat up an SAS veteran in a swimming pool?

I only half watched the episode so the answers may be obvious.

It was a fun little subplot but absolutely full of holes and you're right, the most basic police investigation would have revealed all the evidence they needed to establish the facts. So they brought Sherlock in before they had done their own investigation, which is surely against the "rules" of Sherlock Holmes stories.

This is the problem: if you start playing with the basic ground rules of a genre you lose the goodwill of the fans. It was an enjoyable episode but the sheer volume of criticism here shows that it's now lost a lot of good will by making simple textbook errors (possibly intentionally).

I quite enjoyed the episode. Not as much as series 1 and 2, but much more than anything since then, at least for the first half or so. After that, slightly less.

I am aware of Holmes’ principle that once you have ruled out the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (Of course with the Sherlock incarnation we can never be sure whether what we see is ‘real’, a dream, someone’s flawed recollection, or possibly something else altogether.) Here are just a few of my improbables.

Improbable that a young man would quietly die of a seizure and his body not slump even after rigor mortis wears off.

Improbable that the memory stick should have stayed inside the bust when whoever was in charge of finishing/shipping the ‘artwork’ picked it up. (And it does also seem improbable that super-ninja-agents would carry the memory sticks around anyway, but then maybe that's what they do.)

Improbable that Mary should wander the world, and without even checking whether the memory stick has been tampered with at any point in the last six years – after all, its owner is known to want her dead.

Improbable that a lone Moroccan policeman should happen upon an armed stand-off and immediately determine who is the bad guy and then shoot him without warning and using the kind of improbable bullet that, even at such close quarters, just lodges quietly in the victim’s body and does not inflict any further damage on persons or items nearby.

Improbable that John would text a woman who chatted him up at a bus stop (or was it indeed a dream, as someone suggested above?).

Improbable that Sherlock should call Mary and John to the showdown with a potentially desperate woman (and also improbable that said woman would pull her gun and shoot once the police have arrived).

But entirely impossible that someone could jump in front of someone else into the path of a bullet, or out of the path of a bullet, let alone one fired from a few feet away. (Another of those magic bullets, incidentally, that hit their target and then conveniently stop without inflicting any further damage or even causing more mess than just a rapidly spreading bloodstain in the precise centre of the target’s chest.)

So as it was impossible for Mary to jump into the path of the bullet, and impossible for Sherlock to jump out of the path of the bullet, we are left with a few more improbables: Moffat and Gatiss don’t know physics, or don’t care, or think the audience doesn’t know or care. Or, as Mary was the one who was (or appeared to be) hit, the pistol was in fact aimed at her. (Did she have information on ‘Amo’ that Sherlock and Mycroft missed?) Or the pistol was indeed aimed at Sherlock, and he was the one hit, only it was all a dream where everything is possible. Or there was no actual bullet – everybody just thought there was – and it was all yet another elaborate hoax, never to be cleared up satisfactorily.

(Now why wouldn’t that surprise me…)

I did not like the fight, it was too much of a "real" fight (in want of a better word) than we are used too when it comes to Sherlock.

Hos fights usually ends fasts, and are elegant, because he predict his oponents moves.

I have one issue with Sherlock as it is now.
The show seems like it wants to be a very involved & intricate program that relies on the viewer having a more than normal concentration on the show and the story it is telling. (It's not aimed at people that multi-task with their phone or tablet at the same time as too many details are easily missed).
The problem here is that by making the show in this way, people are actually paying attention and starting to see that the writers are actually nowhere near as clever as they would like their stories to be. Gaping Plot holes are left staring people in the face which then puts them off watching.

Viewing figures suggest otherwise. As for the alleged gaping plot holes, alleged is all they are. Are some of the plot details a little fantastic? Yes. But that's entirely in keeping with Conan Doyle's invention. Holmes is a man who survives a fall of hundreds of feet from a waterfall and is able to disguise himself so expertly that even his closest ally recognises him. Nobody expects realism from this series (well nobody who matters!) To demand it in Sherlock is like demanding the laws of physics be obeyed in Star Trek or that Merlin be deprived of magic.

All great points!
The annoying pat at the end however is that with the right editing, Mary could have started the desperate jump to save Sherlock before the gun was fired, allowing the (still improbable) occurrence of her being hit and stopping the close range bullet without it being a through-&-through taking out Sherlock as well. By arranging it this way the actual story would not have changed but the realism of the event would be maintained.

The whole randomising sequence for Mary was just farcical, either the premise was not clearly explained or the writers simply didn't understand what they were doing & did it simply for the gag of Sherlock waiting for someone to arrive at a random destination (having tracked them seeming from the future & then coming back to beat them there!).

Rules? There are no rules!