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!

Great story, Pan. I love the word "alight".

I was looking at the hidden messages this morning while dd was faffing about brushing her hair. She was nearly late leaving for school as we got stumped on the 3rd. Any clues please? So I can pretend I cracked it when she gets home

It's the mice.

Fiderer - in the first two there is an eight letter word in common. In the third, there's an eight letter symbol-word again. If you use that to start decoding, you get a few letters of the other words. Then you need to look for a pattern in the alphabet. (That's what I did as a sort of elimination method)

Alternatively, if you know codes, there is a riddle phrase in the non-symbol part of the message which tells you what decoder to use.

I think it's a bit lame really. Moriarty is better just being sinister and in your face rather than saying ooh look I wrote you a little message in a very common code format.

There was no particular comment on Sherlock's opinion of the suggestively royal tie pin that he received after the Bruce-Partington Plans:

"Some weeks afterwards I learned incidentally that my friend spent a day at Windsor, whence he returned with a remarkably fine emerald tie-pin. When I asked him if he had bought it, he answered that it was a present from a certain gracious lady in whose interests he had once been fortunate enough to carry out a small commission. He said no more; but I fancy that I could guess at that lady's august name, and I have little doubt that the emerald pin will forever recall to my friend's memory the adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans."

Do you think after sorting out the royal issue in BBC's version of Scandal the Queen maybe gave him an emerald mobile phone charm?

mushy did you get the corrolation between that Royal Scandal concerning photos of a Royal in certain explicit photos and what was stolen during the infamous Baker Street robbery?

I'm so glad to have found a fellow fan by the way! Normally when I get started on anything Sherlockian people tend to nod politely and start to back away, but now I can waffle on to my heart's content! [happy sigh]

Have you been to the Holmes museum on Baker Street? I've got a free pass cause I was a regular
Also had a pint in the Sherlock Holmes pub, been to Edinburgh and supped in the Conan Doyle pub and did a pilgrimage to Dartmoor. There is also a Holmes themed pub near Clitheroe that has one of my drawings on its wall.
So, how sad a Holmes fan are you? Let's compare!

So Steven Moffat has apparently said that he's been following all the speculation about how Sherlock pulled off his faked death, and that everyone has missed the crucial clue. Apparently it's down to Sherlock doing something 'very out of character'.

I'm racking my brains! I'll just have to watch it again.

Jumping off a building could be construed as "out of character".

Ha! Yes. I suspect that's not what he means, but I am thinking about him asking Moriarty for a moment of privacy as he stands on the edge. It did strike me at the time that it seemed a bit 'human' and sentimental for Sherlock.

he asks Molly for help, and says he needs her - both totally uncharacteristic.

but then that has been thought of as a (partial) way to explain how he faked his death.

hmmm, will ponder a bit more.

Yes, I thought about the Molly thing too, but that has been extensively discussed ...

Another couple of things I thought were odd at the time:

• him making and serving Moriarty tea.
• (as I mentioned earlier, sorry to repeat self) him sitting on the floor, in the squash-ball-bouncing scene. Both ball-bouncing and sitting on the floor seemed uncharacteristic. Although again that has been discussed online.

the whole fact that he had pre-arranged with Molly (and a cast of thousands ) the fake-death scene means that he must have guessed (sorry, concluded) that he would end up being forced to take his own life.

so:

why didn't he manage the ned result differently?
why did he let himself be manoeuvred into a situation where he has to, seemingly, put everyone else before himself (the ultimate out-of-character experience) instead of handling it differently?

he had to have known, down in the lab, that he would end up on the roof, having to make some kind of public display of suicide. and yet he allows it to continue.

could it be the tear that drips as he's talking to Watson? I think we're looking too hard in the last scenes though, and should be putting just as much on the notepad from the start of the episode and indeed the other two episodes. Anyone else listen to the other Steve writer on Chris Evans at about 8.40 this morning? "dropping bombs" all through the plot, and one writer has something in their episode that necessitates a tweak to something in another ep.

He said they had to film the rooftop scene twice because it was raining the first time. Rain would be really atmospheric so is there something important that would be obscured by rain - hence I think of the tear?

yes, Fiderer, in the 50's they used to "alight" from trains. Such style.

LadyClarice - in The Final Problem book, Holmes asks for a moment of privacy to write a note to Watson. He had already seen Watson go off on a false errand, as in the series and knew his fate.

Nah, that ain't the clue, that's just a nod to the book.

The making Moriarty tea was a reference to the Basil Rathbone film.

Why was Mycroft reading the Sun?

I wondered about Mycroft and the Sun as well, but thought it could just be a dig at the Murdoch empire (along with the stuff about the unscrupulous and not-very-good journalist).
And that's possibly out of character for Mycroft, but it's not Sherlock.

silverfrog, I think (I'm not sure) he has to be seen to 'die' because his public reputation has been smeared and also, he's become too famous. I think he says something in the episode about how he doesn't like it and it gets in the way of his work. 'Dying' is a way to wipe the slate clean, perhaps?

He certainly has to 'seemingly' care about his friends enough to commit suicide to save them. But I personally think Sherlock is still not 'human' enough to care that much; I think he knew what Moriarty's plan was and went along with it knowing that he could fake his death and save both himself and his friends.

The Sun was referenced as they're hinting they can be "bought" by the Govt so when Mycroft needed to plant a story about Sherlock being dead, he was able to buy a front page of The Sun etc and do it that way.

Clever really, given the news at the moment.

diddl - I think he was just following all the controversy about Sherlock and then the post-Fall shaming, which would all be found in a more tabloid-level newspaper than you'd expect to see him reading.

TheRhubarb - I think you would be crowned the Queen of Sherlock fans around here; I'm certainly keen on all things Sherlockian and have got sucked into the online fandom for the BBC series but you have clearly been hardcore for some time!

I didn't know anything much about the Baker Street theft - child of the 80's I'm afraid, and it's not something I'd ever come across before. From some initial googling it sounds fascinating though! Very Red-Headed League. I'm also not at all local to London although I have visited a couple of times; the first time as a teenager I did stop by Baker Street and look at all the signs though I didn't go into the museum. I'm very jealous of your pass! I'd like to go and see the plaque at St Bart's that honours where Holmes and Watson "met" for the first time too...

I love reading all this speculation about post-Fall solutions!

I wonder if the out of character thing is Sherlock bouncing the ball in the lab while waiting for John. But I can't for the life of me figure out what it means!!!!

The huge Guardian thread speculating on how he did it has an interesting point - the binary code converts to the letters IOU...

On another matter, have you all seen that the American TV network CBS has announced that it is commissioning a new series called "Elementary" which will be a modern-day update of Sherlock Holmes set in New York

Smacks of cashing in to me. Did they think no one would notice????!

The Baker Street robbery was brilliant - just as you said, it was almost like the Red Headed League (there is evidence that is what they were trying to achieve) in that they rented the building opposite the Lloyds Bank, which funnily enough IS 221 Baker Street. They then dug a complicated tunnel, complete with lights, from the rented shop to the bank vaults.

The communications between the gang were picked up by a local radio ham who informed the police, but although they knew a robbery was taking place, they couldn't pinpoint the location. They checked hundreds of banks in the area hoping for a radio clue from the gang, but they found nothing so they had to wait until the banks opened to discover which one had been robbed.

Intriguingly enough, on the walls of the safe they had scrawled "Let Sherlock Holmes try to solve this one" or something to that effect. Which is why I think they had read the stories and possibly got their idea from The Red Headed League.

The media went into a frenzy but then all reporting of the robbery was stopped by orders of the government.

According to one of the robbers at the time, they inadvertently found themselves in possession of some compromising photos of Princess Margaret.

Four men were caught and found guilty but there is evidence that others were also involved.

CaveMum, I posted upthread about the squash ball ? you can use it to make a pulse undetectable, apparently ... (got that off the Guardian thread, I think). And yes, 'Elementary] . Total cash-in. But might be good! And at least, with it being American and set in NYC, it won't be TOO close to Sherlock.

Lexilicious, yes, there was a lot of emphasis in the episode on 'IOU', about which for the life of me I can't come to any clever conclusions! He said it on more than one occasion, he says 'You', with some dramatic emphasis, to Molly when she asks what he needs, there's a graffitied 'IOU' visible on a wall at one point, in Scandal I'm sure Irene says she owes him a faked death (or he owes her one, or something) ...

I love panfried's Basil Rathbone story! I've got a not so good one: I've smoked the famous pipe

Well, had it in my mouth, anyway. A pupil at a posh school my dad worked it brought it in (it had been given as a gift to his grandad) when he found out how much my dad loved Holmes. It really was the actual pipe from the films. He was allowed to bring it home for the weekend. I'd forgotten that until now- it must be about 25 years ago.