We hope it's not The Final Problem. Sherlock - 9pm Sunday - BBC1

[givemushypeasachance]

I thought it might be an idea to start a new thread for The Reichenbach Fall since The Hounds got its thread up to over 200 pages since last Sunday!

Non-spoilery vague preview description: "Sherlock and John lock horns with their old enemy in one final problem that tests loyalty and courage to their very limits. Sherlock must fight for his reputation, his sanity and his life. But is he all he claims to be?"

BBC link for The Reichenbach Fall

Take note of the later start time of 9pm. Get your deerstalkers and spiffy pocket magnifiers ready!

Ah yes, the books have changed since the 1980s. Holmes no longer wears flares and multicoloured capes.

This is what your first child will come out looking like.

And the problem is?

And I like the sound of "first" child. It implies there would be more.

With different men, yeah

I loved Basil Rathbone's Sherlock, that man fitted my image of Holmes perfectly. Hated Watson though.
Brett was good too, but he got plump towards the end.

Oh and Cushing - Cushing was great! Mind you, I love Peter Cushing anyway.

How vair rude!

Benedict is the only one for me.

DH? Who ...? Oh yes. Love my DH.

Just a thought. These Sherlock masks - do you think they might become commercially available? Just asking.

The "IOU" is definitely significant. In the scene when they escape from the police it is grafittied on the wall behing them, with a pair of wings.

Also the Chief Superintendant is bugging me, why bring him in now?

[overthinks]

Well the guy who was going to kill Lestrade was the other policeman trying to convince him Sherlock is guilty. Not sure about the chief super

I think the mask theories etc are too complicated. These plans always end up being far simpler than expected.

Look at Moriarty - he achieves all his plans through bribery. he has people everywhere (see policeman mentioned above). He doesn't really go for overcmplicated trickery - it is bribery (people who helped him break in) or threats (jury delivered not guilty verdict)

Now I want to know where he got all his money!

I think you're probably right. Moffat and Gattis will have planted loads of fake "clues" to keep us guessing.

How many of us would have guessed that the swimming pool scene would be resolved by a phone call??

Ooh Lestrade was going to get killed by another policeman?! I missed that entirely...going to have to watch it again I think.

Why didn't Moriarty count Molly as one of Sherlock's friends? She had been on dates with Moriarty, after all, and presumably Moriarty was using her to get close to Sherlock...hmm...

DH is back early from the gym. Rubbish. If I suggested re-watching Sherlock and also sat there taking notes, he would look at me like this . There'd also be a lot of "you are kidding aren't you?". Damn.

Favourite quote of the episode:

On St Barts rooftop

Sherlock: "You're insane!"
Moriarty: "You're just getting that now?"

Geti g to the end of the episode now!

Sherlock asks for a moment of privacy on the rooftop. He looks down for a fraction of a second then starts to laugh. Has he just given a signal to someone, are things being moved into position for his fall?

marshmallowpies - Sherlock had always been pretty distant with Molly; she might have had a crush on him but he pretty much used her for lab access/as a gofer, until the Christmas party scene in Scandal when he apologised for crushing her feelings over the gift for him. That was the first example of any sort of interaction between them that wasn't purely functional - since Fall was set in June that gives six months of time for Sherlock to soften a bit more in his brusque attitude to her. If all Moriarty knew was series one Molly-Sherlock interaction then he might not have thought her worth including in any considerations.

I was too busy going "aww" over the opening scene of Fall the first time to pay much attention to Sherlock's hilarious reaction to being awarded thank you gifts; deducting diamond cuff-links and then complaining that all his cuffs have buttons, and a tie pin but he doesn't wear ties. Mr Impossible-to-buy-for! (he'd probably like a nice antique section of hangman's rope or maybe an obscure book on botanical poisons...)

1950's, and my friends dad finds a bloke waiting the 'last train' to Manchester approx 11.30pm - it's already gone. Long and short he offers to put this bloke up forthe night at his house and walk him back to the station for the first train. ( bloke seemed a decent sort), so long as it's okay with his ( friends dad's) wife.
Get home, bloke is seen into the parlour - friend's mum enter's parlour, walks back into the kitchen and notes " Erm...did you know you've just brought home Basil Rathbone?"

for younger viewers, it's like finding Alan Rickman in your front room. And he is staying for the night.

Anybody tried the third hidden message puzzle in the "Sherlock's blog" site?

Yep, got it

Right. I have a pen and notepad and DH has gone to bed. However, I'm only going to watch 20 or 30 minutes of it.

Ok. You know when he's on the roof and you see him looking down at Watson and you see his hand, I think? The hand he has no phone in. It's his right hand, yes?

When you see Watson looking at him, he is holding the phone in his right hand, I think.

I don't have access to it right now so I can't double check. But maybe Watson and the assassin did not see what they thought they saw.

If you read Watson's blog from the beginning you can work out the 18 month timeline with the therapist, Ella Thompson is the therapist and initially recommends that Watson write a blog to rationalise things. Sherlock decides/deduces that Watson's Afghanistan injury limp is psychosomatic - I can't recall if that was in series 1.

They've made an 'Anonymous' commenter on the blog who is obviously meant to be JM. Or is it 'theimprobableone'? The blog sites are either too weak a back story or I am too tired tonight to understand that they are actually briefly but precisely geeky.

It took me a minute though, I recognised the cipher straight away, but it was slightly different to the way I do it, so the first time it came out all garbled!

Got it too, Scatter, but more by elimination than deduction. Although over on Connie's website (WHO??) the method is given.

My sister and I used to write notes to each other using it. Then we moved on to the one from Artemis Fowl, but I hated drawing all the little pictures.

Holmes was actually given a precious ruby or some such as a gift for his services in the books (The Master Blackmailer? Can you remember mushy?) and treated it with equal contempt as Benny boy did.

They have actually read the books thoroughly and have thrown in so many references from there, I've probably missed loads! That scene in the courtroom where he describes Moriarty as a spider - that's a direct quote from the book.

Moriarty was a criminal mastermind who, we later discovered (in the books) was responsible for nearly half of all crimes that Holmes had managed to solve or prevent (such as in the Red Headed League) and that is why he was so determined to get rid of Holmes, because he was losing money. After their death at the Reichenbach Falls, Moriarty's brother writes a series of letters defending him and no doubt seeking to destroy Holmes' own reputation, which is possible where Moffat and Gatiss got their idea from.

Panfried Seriously??? That is a cracking story!

I have a vague recollection of Holmes seeing a woman off on a train but there was a problem with her shoes - they were dirty or something? Probably a Jeremy Brett one, possibly not in the books and more than likely I've made the whole thing up. Does it ring any bells with the Holmes experts?

Can't say it does, no. I'm racking my brains. Erm, The Copper Beeches he was fond of the woman in that but I don't think he saw her off. She accepted a place as a governess somewhere else. The Solitary Cyclist? Can't think it was that either. It's just not ringing any bells at all and I was pretty familiar with the Brett ones too. Mind you, my befuddled brain is not as it was once.

indeed, TR! Friend'd dad worked "on the papers" in Liverpool and alighted train late at night at Widnes where he lived. For some reason Basil thought he had to change at Widnes to get to Manchester, and was the only person left on the station when friend's dad got off his train from Liverpool.
Hotels in Widnes were unknown in the 50's.