#scriptlock

[hot-on-my-watch]

An "Always the Grown-Up" Rant

I know that a lot of fans are angry at Moffat and Gatiss for a lot of things, and most of all for Season Four.

I personally am mad at them for a few things. Mostly things that I can easily let slide given the immense enjoyment I've had and continue to have from their BBC Sherlock series.

But THIS FUCKING LINE!!!

A woman's wedding ring is dirty even though the rest of her appearance is carefully curated? I'll handwave it and maybe google when we started using soap.

Man wears same large thick coat outdoors in all seasons? Fine. It's England. And I have an old (autistic) friend who actually does this.

John's eyebrow says that he hasn't rung his sister, and Mary's a bread baking disillusioned Guardian reader with a secret tattoo? Hahaha why not?

Sherlock has to use his incredible mind over matter to restart his heart but also "it was surgery"? Bit much, but I'll overlook it. For you.

Evil genius simultaneously hacks every screen in the country? Eh, ok.

Secret island prison? Sure. Let Sherlock live his pirate fantasy. Let John point his gun at someone. Let Moriarty play Queen while dramatically disembarking from a helicopter.

Predicting multiple terror attacks at lightspeed from Twitter? Well, we've come this far.

I do not watch Sherlock for 'slice of life' realism and dear lord I hope no one else does. I do not WANT realism. I want to forget that I am vast majority bedbound and that people are out there having coffee and going for a pint and working at normal jobs with payslips and lanyards and spreadsheets. And generally speaking, BBC Sherlock has helped a lot with that!

But WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK were they THINKING WITH THIS LINE???

SERIOUSLY?!?!?!

Sherlock is barely a fucking grown-up on his own, but I'd allow it. Especially after the "baby" jokes John, Lestrade and he himself have previously made at his expense.

But COMPARED TO MYCROFT?!?!

WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK. LADS?????

WERE YOU HIGH? WERE YOU OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN MINDS? WHAT THE FUCK???!!!

See, after I first heard this, I quickly recon headcanon-(is this a thing? Is there a name for this soecific thing?) -ed it into Mrs Holmes the mad genius being completely out of touch with the social reality of her children- especially as she's been so harsh to Mycroft in this scene and not massively had to look after adult Sherlock herself. Because, y'know, Mycroft was doing it!

Then I complained about it on Reddit.

To my HORROR, another user told me that Steven Moffat had said in an interview that it was meant to be taken as true. But y'know, we're all just randoms on the internet and people get things wrong.

Then another user told me they theorised that Eurus had reprogrammed her parents to favour Sherlock, which is an interesting theory.

But clearly in the script, everyone... including Sherlock and Mycroft... just quietly agrees.

What....

What is the reasoning for this?

I know some will say "mate, welcome to all of season four" or even "three and four" or all of it.

I know some people consider Mycroft a bully, but I really don't. Certainly not after the scene on the plane and the 'Redbeard' reveal.

I'm open to persuasion though. If anyone has any thoughts on this, feel free to share! I might well not agree, but I won't attack you either.

Or the writers. But again, if I ever end up trapped with them in a lift or some such... I WILL have questions!

/rant.

[hot-on-my-watch]

And here we have it: the post that sent me head first down the rabbit hole of the scripts for much of the last 24 hours. Thanks @whipsoutlaptop !

i am once again rifling through the bbc sherlock scripts and here is a scene that got cut from TLD

why did moftiss cut so many genuine and emotionally poignant scenes from s3 and s4?

[characteroulette]

All the cool kids are doing it, so. I guess, year in review for me.

First off, I finished Game Kids! like, officially. Still so insane to me that my love letter to video games and Code: Lyoko is now complete. Wow. Their story is ended for now. I even finished my 2 year long comic project for them waow. (Although I did write a chapter I mused about having the series end on that explains what happened to Dante, if you were interested in seeing that. I didn't put it in the book in the end because each one starts and ends with the character's narration who is the main focus of that book.)

(also while I'm promo-ing my original stuff, go read my Moon Sickness series. I started it last year but wrote some good stuff for it this year too.)

Secondly, I participated in a big bang! Fun and scary stuff. Absolutely go look at everyone's work, it's all fantastic. I made an ukagaka for it! Fun times for sure.

Third, I wrote my explanation for Snufpollo! Hooray!! The RGB boys have been haunting me since last year, but @detective-piplup and I have done a good job just going buckwild over them this past year lmao. I have contributed best I can (with some highlights being unhinged Snufkin in Prosecutor Luke au, isat flavoured Snufkin in RPG au, and the saddest Snufkin fic I have written so far lmao) and I'm gonna write more next year, I'm sure XD

Speaking of, ao3 stats say I wrote 400k words this year! wow. didn't get around to updating FtSotM, unfortunately (an update is in the works it's just taking me a while to get through the culture fest augh), but I did update several other of my fics I am trying to finish (Crystal Scriptlocke and Laywright Werewolf being the key two). It was an insane start to the year because ISAT is still on my mind, Siffrin my buddy Siffrin....

Also shoutout to my Study on Prosecutors I wrote the first 3/4ths of in just two days. This year was for insane writing and also meta analysis for sure. XD

[watsonmycompass]

fuck stevblam moffat and mark gahtiss

[stirpicus]

Are there any other kind of podcasts/videos you’ve been in where you talk about things such as writing or working at Telltale? I find em really interesting and your work has countlessly inspired me ha

Aw, well that’s very kind of you to say! I haven’t actually done a ton of podcasts or anything like that before. But! I’ve done the podcast Scriptlock twice, haha.

First, in 2016 with the story editor of Gone Home

And then again this past spring with Molly :)

[miileskine]

January commission log!

Red and Blue for @ilovecrt

Possessed!Kotone for @americanjack

A Crystal Scriptlocke: Defective (team shot and crossover with Emerald Double Nuzlocke) for @characteroulette

If you want to contact me check out my commission chart!

Btw if i see ANYONE who’s not the clients i listed using these arts i’m going to find you and i’m going to kick your ass C:

Smackjeeves | DeviantART | Tumblr | Patreon

[ngpnuzlocke]

THE RETURN

us: *disappear for three months without any updates or announcements*

people: *think this comic is dead*

us:

Hey, so, we are very sorry about disappearing for so long but happy to announce NGP will be returning on this Saturday, May 11!!

Why the big unplanned hiatus? Just was just a long series of events that kept the both of us busy and wouldn’t be super interesting to recount in detail, so I’ll skip over most of it. What matters is that almost everything besides the timely output of pages has turned out well. - Everyone is in better health now than the last time we checked in. - Our living space is much improved and we are enjoying it immensely. - Tree now has a much better art workspace and a more comfortable job with steady hours. - Beryl just finished the penultimate draft of the script for island one and sent it off for a final round of beta reading. That’s pretty great!

So, what can you all expect from NGP’s return? - Well, we would like to go back to a page a week but since Tree isn’t starting her new work schedule until Friday we aren’t sure how well that will actually shake out. BUT a page every other week at least. - Our first silly little bonus comic is finished and will be going up on the 18th! We’re planning on making these dumb meme comics a somewhat regular thing so look forward to more stupid shenanigans I guess?? - Remember that Q&A? Probably not, but the answers are coming! They’re written up already and Tree just wants to do some more doodles to accompany them so they should be up on the 18th or 25th.

Lastly, I just wanted to assure y'all that even if we stall out or move on from the comic end of this project, the story of NGP isn’t going anywhere. We have a rough draft of the script all the way to the League, a very decent chunk of which is in the second draft or better. So even if somewhere down the line we decide to put the comic aside, we will put the rest of the story up for y’all as a scriptlocke or storylocke. It’s already there and we love it and we really want to share it with you.

Thanks for sticking with us so far!

[lillielilliall]

😂😂😂

[hot-on-my-watch]

Reading Sherlock Scripts- The Final Problem

As always, here's a video from Erik Voss at New Rockstars for a bit of a refresh and detail spotting from the episode if desired:

What follows will be notes in a few minor differences between the script published on the BBC's website and the finished episode, a few bits of stage direction etc. that I personally enjoyed, and interesting things that I didn't spot before.

I will say that in terms of line changes, I DO realise that scenes need to be shortened, technicsl stuff doesn't always work, and even the best actors get lines slightly wrong - like that one guy that was supposedly amazing as Hamlet but kept mispronouncing "penguin"... so when John says the buffalo gun was from the 40s and the script said 50s... I don't care which is right. I'm not going to google buffalo guns. I'm just writing about bits that amuse me!

Firstly: Mycroft's cheesy noir detective film. I'm not sure I had cottoned on to all the lines about the man "keeping a close watch" on the woman, as Mycroft likes to do, not least on his siblings. Then she refers to "putting (herself) in the hands of the authorities" as Eurus has ostensibly done since TLD.

We then get a few extra lines of dialogue:

Obviously 'Persephone' refers to the Ancient Greek myth of a goddess abducted to the underworld who then becomes its queen, with the use of Greek mythogolgy tying into Sherlock's fake suicide operation 'LAZARUS'. And, "a parade of all the cliches" would have lampshaded the trope-filled nature of the scene.

On to Baker Street! In the script, Mycroft calls himself "an era-defining genius", but in the episode he has been downgraded to "remarkable" and the former label is given to Eurus, who remains "beyond Newton." Poor Myc.

The published script also has Mycroft saying "we played pirates" and describes "an overgrown pirate ship climbing frame", neglecting to mention the "funny gravestones" at this point. Probably Mycroft was too bored and serious to make a show of playing pirates at thirteen.

Something then that I hadn't previously noticed: in the shot of the three children in the kitchen the table is set for four; Redbeard has only just gone missing. In the script, Mrs Holmes can be heard asking where he is.

There's also the stage direction that Mycroft is eating "A LOT", and a description of a following shot of Eurus being interviewed by a policeman following.

Something else I hadn't even slightly noticed - I'd blame the ME/CFS but probably wrongly- the song that Mrs Hudson is vacuuming to. Obviously Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast (which I have seen live) is a fantastically amusing choice genre-wise, but it also cuts off at "hell and fire about to be released."

I'm also compelled to comment at this point on the insanely ridiculous layout of 221 Baker Street and that although I enjoy the transition through the carpet of the living room, that's meant to be where Speedy's is, no?

Anyway, we get these delightful notes for one of the most improbable escapes in television history:

Hahaha, the shipping forecast. We weren't all born Radio 4 listeners, Moftiss! But I love it.

So we go to Sherrinford. Here John has an extra line about seeking work in it as a hospital, to which The Governor replies "it's not a hospital".

Again, I often fail to notice things: this time that the voice radioing for help was John's (even though nothing else would make sense) and that the recorded announcements e.g. "doors opening" are ALL Moriarty. And they planned to have "smiley face insignia" on the doors, and later a "frowney face" on the screens when the alarm goes off- I see why they abandoned that! My favourite bit here is that last sentence about Mycroft:

Mycroft then says in the script that Eurus has been capable of influencing people since she was seven, which has since been changed to five, now fitting with when she would have been institutionalised. In the broastcast episode Eurus gets extra lines now about The Governer's wife: "She smiles at you when you come home...smiling is advertising... I can help you with your wife...I'll fix her and give her back to you." In the published script it is not clear that she has any interest in The Governer's wife at this point.

Rather than being initially compliant to the men with guns and then making his daring escape, the script has John absolutely throwing down. he "lunges" at The Governer in an attempt to stop him from pressing the alarm, and when the orderlies arrive: "Mayhem. Mycroft is already restrained, but John is fighting like a madman. Slams one orderly against the wall, punches another across the room-" Wow.

And then: Moriarty! What a joy! There are a couple of notable changes from final script to episode here. Firstly, the bodyguard on his left has been promoted from "very uncaring in the afterglow" to merely "less caring." And then there's Jim's extra line between "insane criminality" and his question about cannibals:

There's a whole insect metaphor that goes on once our boys are locked in Eurus' cell:

In the Garridebs scene, Eurus gets a few more lines on her view of morality: "

I regret to say that in the script, the phonecall between Sherlock and Molly is even more heartbreaking! Why? How?! Because right before he asks her to tell him that she loves him, she says "for once don't make fun of me." Brutal! My heart!

Continuing notes on the script. The fake cell outside Musgrave has a window with a view possibly involving some kind of visual trickery that I don't understand. The aerial view we get of the London is hauntingly described as "the bomber's view." And to the news that John is in a well Sherlock replies "ding dong dell" which google tells me is a nursery rhyme suitably about a cat having been put in a well by one child and saved by another.

We then get to some of the omitted dialouge that sent me down this script-reading rabbit hole: Sherlock's admission regarding Mycroft.

I also enjoy the insult Sherlock gives Mycroft later in the scene: "he always lies, he's a corkscrew in human form", to which John replies "this time he's been protecting you. *beat* They're not dog's bones." Victor actually gets some lines in the flashback here too "Come on Captain Yellowbeard! We can take the ship and all her treasure! Quick! Quick!" Poor little Victor!

A couple more missing lines here. At the moment of realisation, Sherlock gives us another Greek reference, this time to Homer's The Odyssey: "'And Odysseus replied... Nemo'- latin for no one." Bloody private school kids and their latin ;-) I've written a pretty basic post on the tombstone cipher, but there are far more detailed analyses on here! Then, on speaking to Eurus in her room script Sherlock states the obvious, calling her ritual "a cry for help".

When we get into the closing scenes, we have another moment for the history books: Sherlock calls Lestrade by his actual first name unprompted! Here the script reads "A beat as Lestrade goes- Sherlock has always known his name. He heads away..." But what does this mean? Does Lestrade just think that Sherlock has known his name the entire bloody time, or has he actually? I'm big on the Death of the Author stuff and psychoanalytical readings, and in this case I choose to headcanon that Sherlock really did not know and only memorised "Greg" in The Six Thatchers. I'm open to being convinced otherwise though.

I've written a whole rant on the part where Mrs Holmes says that Sherlock was "always the grown-up" and no one disagrees.

In the script, we also get Eurus acting as violin teacher to Sherlock once again:

I have mixed feelings on Mary's "who you really are, it doesn't matter" speech and was horrified when I first heard it, but the script's shorter version is significantly worse. In the script, she doesn't say "A junky who solves crimes to get high and a doctor who never came home from the war." or "It's all about the legend. The stories. The adventures." She does say "what matters is who everbody else thinks you are. Knows you are." I'm glad they rewrote this!

Also, while the choice of "Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson" mirrors Arthur Conan Doyle's canon and Mycroft's lines at the close of A Study in Pink, it is a bit weird that Mary not only puts her beloved husband second, but also omits his first name. Oh well, they did they thing.

Meanwhile, the montage of the restoration of 221B and life going on. I wouldn't have realised that John is holding the letter on the msntelpiece for Sherlock to stab it, had I not read that bit of script posted by another Tumblr user! Thankyou whoever you were!

A couple of slight differences from the script here. Firstly, the episode has Lestrade and Molly visiting separately, but in the script they come together. One has to wonder why- were they at any point supposed to have been intended as a couple, and it was decided against, given that them arriving together for a professional matter seems unrealistic? Would Molly waiting outside seem like she hadn't recovered from The Phonecall? Did they just want to show her a bit more? Would it have ruined the fun circling camera thing they're doing here? I know, I'm definitely overthinking this!

Personally I really enjoy Cumberbatch's face as he directs Rosie back to johh with an expression we've pretty much never seen from Sherlock! And the fact that where he's pointing at "Daddy" is clearly where the baby's actual father was standing, not Freeman. But it works!

Secondly, Eurus and Sherlock's furious violin jam was intended to turn into: the Sherlock adventure theme! Fun! But, for whatever reason, this seems in the episode to be played by deeper sounding instruments over the top instead.

Finally, the cheesiest of the cheesey. The script ends with these words appearing on screen: The Beginning. That was cool when my friend did it in his children's novel, sure, but I'm not sure it would've worked here. Or would it?

Anyway, if you've made it this far, many many thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my extremely minor contribution to the rich BBC Sherlock fandom! Either way, I very much welcome comments and discussion. "Obviously."

[mazemerised]

New followers!

carrylovescurry started following you

scriptlock started following you

Welcome! :) ♥

[characteroulette]

KRISTAL has been waiting her whole life to go on her Pokemon journey, wanting to follow in the footsteps of the legendary Red. Because, when you're one of the notorious Poke-Kids, escaping an environment that doesn't accept you for one that does is all she could hope for.

She just didn't expect the journey to be so life-changing.

I’M FINALLY DOING IT I’m finally compiling my goddamn magnum opus together onto Ao3 for easier archiving!!

(I’m not kidding also this thing is like 156k words long ughhhh)

I can’t believe I started this in 2011 that’s a whole ten years ago holy shit

anyway I could dump the whole thing, since I finally have it all typed up, but I also need to go over like, the first 27 chapters, so uh. that’s gonna take me a while. but, hey, go ahead and read what I got? maybe? or just check out the first 27 parts on the Nuzlocke forums I guess (I can’t finish posting it there because wtf is a tapas account RIP me)

[pledoi]

Tonight, I just wanna be a Script Bender.

[hot-on-my-watch]

I'm allowing myself to write one more post on the differences between a Sherlock episode and its script.

But Jesus Fucking Christ Jim!

[hot-on-my-watch]

"The Cipher was the Song": The Musgrave Ritual and Nemo Holmes

In reading the script for The Final Problem I inevitably returned to the puzzle of the fake gravestones and whether the code works.

Clearly, if this was going to be worked out, it would've been done long ago by someone much cleverer than me, a new fan with a dodgy brain, but hey ho...

So here we have the numbers:

And the song:

BUT, it doesn't quite work from the numbers we're given. After the numbers on the third gravestone, we're missing:

28, 1, 2, 3, and 8 = 281238

Corresponding with the words:

LOST WITHOUT YOUR LOVE SAVE

This post by @ explains the theory that most makes sense and immediately became my head canon: the cipher does work, if there is a fifth fake gravestone. And we know that there is. Sherlock's. If we take his date of death as 2/8/12 and his age as 38, it works.

The shooting script somewhat supports this- notice how "NEMO HOLMES" is given its own line as though it's a separate piece of code.

However, where would this "date of death" come from? Did Sherlock fake his death on the 2nd of August, 2012?

John's first blog entry following Sherlocks's death is 6th June and I don't know what year it was actually posted, and The Reichenbach Fall first aired on the 5th of January 2012. Even if we go all American with the date, and why would we, we still have the Fall occuring after the episode was broadcast in reality and not even slightly lining up with John's blog.

But... it's television. The writers very much seem to have forgotten that the "real" online blogs existed in season four and they have given us contradictory information prior to this too; in The Empty Hearse Mary says "finally, the famous blog" as if she's never seen it before, but in "blogland" she's bloody commented on it! And as for the episode release date, we know that A Scandal in Belgravia too place over several months, release dates mean nothing. But to my mind it IS weird that it would ever have happened in world after in real life.

But again... it's not real. Slip-ups happen.

It's entirely possible that the entire thing with the unworkable cipher was just a mistake, and I know that.

But, are there any other possibilities? Does NEMO HOLMES somehow equate to 281238 or LOST WITHOUT YOUR LOVE SAVE in some other undiscovered way?

Again, if it did, someone cleverer would've already cracked it. But...

After some brief googling I can tell you that the Odyssey, which we get 'Nemo' from, was written in the 7th or 8th century BC and the surname Holmes was first recorded in about 1300 AD. I can also tell you that you can buy a chair called Nemo 28 Stone and that an artist called Nemo had a song called 'The Code' in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest. That's where I'll leave it!

And, I'm really not sure that any of it would work 'in-world'. Eurus' god-like powers of deduction allow her to predict terrorist attacks from Twitter, sure, but do they enable her to predict a faked suicide over three decades in advance? Would this even be what was meant, or would it be intended as a nice little easter egg from the writers? Is nothing meant to be real? Or was it just a standard slip-up?

I solemnly swear that show I ever become trapped in a lift with Steven Moffat or Mark Gatiss, I will absolutely ask.

For now, the headcanon continues!

[hot-on-my-watch]

Script for 'The Tarmac Scene' in BBC Sherlock S3E3 His Last Vow

All of the different bits in 'The Tarmac Scene' that me and @whipsoutlaptop were somehow both reading the other day:

Re. my use of screenshots: it has been brought to my attention by a dyslexic friend of mine that screenshots with text are really not accessible for her (as well as obviously for blind people). I would really like to ultimately add plain text to these posts and hopefully I'll get the chance, but it is very much a matter of competing access needs at the moment! Some people need plain text; I have a severe energy limiting illness, so I need posting to be quick and dirty easy. Apologies to anyone unintentionally excluded! Xx

[hot-on-my-watch]

Final Script- BBC Sherlock S4-

The Lying Detective

For a bit of recap and a few things we might have missed I recommend this vid:

And onto the script!

As I suspected, there were FAR fewer differences between the script on the BBC website and the broadcast episode than with The Six Thatchers, which had many! I do think there may have been a later 'Amends' script for TST and the Beeb uploaded the wrong one, but hey, I'll never know.

Anyway, what follows are a few minor changes I did spot, interspersed with my favorite bits of stage direction.

Fake Faith's Hair

The 'Faith Smith' that comes to Baker Street is described as having both jet black hair and her roots grown out- it seems at some point they were considering Eurus appearing with her 'natural' hair colour here but looking as 'Faith' as if she's dyed it. I mean Eurus' looks completely too, but I've headcanoned about that elsewhere! So perhaps that was a discrepancy left from an earlier vision. That or someone had to fill in Steven Moffat on the workings of dye.

It's Mrs Hudson's Episode!

There are too many amazing lines of hers to quote here, but I also enjoy these notes.

"Sherlock Vision"

Mildly amusing.

Childhood Flashback

As with TST, they were intending to go further with this sooner. Notice also that Sherlock 'freaking out' has been condensed from two incidents to one.

Another interesting line here that I think got cut:

And...

I think my tiny attention span and poorly ME/CFS addled brain failed up pick up on the cut to the aquarium until now.

"We just carpet the wall.."

I enjoy the 'it'll be easy I promise!' vibes of the description of Sherlock blurring locations and dimensions on his return to the flat. Tumblr won't let me upload more images though.

"Once More..."

Something that surprised me about the script is that it has much of Sherlock's Henry V 'Once more unto the breach dear friends' speech delivered off-camera, showing Mrs Hudson nervously moving to investigate in the hallway and Wiggins dashing out, building for longer to the reveal of Sherlock reciting and gesticulating wildly with a gun.

One can only imagine that the decision was (correctly) made not to waste even a few seconds of Benedict Cumberbatch having the time of his theatre nerd life!

Missing Scene

We eventually get to the deleted part that sent me down my script-study rabbithole: John's failed attempt at drink driving. I too was horrified when I first read these lines, having always had the abject disgust at the very notion of drink-driving that many millenials do and that older generations often lack.

Not that I approve of John's extramarital text flirtation, of spectacularly dumping his best friend and violent attack of the same!

John really is out of control and as always, he appears somewhat normal next to Sherlock. John's quiet breakdown involves whiskey at home, chronic insomnia and just about managing to hide his hallucinations from his therapist; Sherlock's much louder one involves wild eyes, track marks, an elderly landlady in a sports car, a helicopter chase and an ambulance. But as always, while Sherlock is by far the most unpredictable and flamboyant, John is just as dangerous if not more so.

I feel that this scene was cut because it really wasn't needed, and it doesn't make massive sense for Sherlock to have been sneaking around successfully watching over John when he was meant to be "off his tits" anyway.

Smith's Mobile Phone

There's then a minor point in the script about Sherlock having deduced Smith's phone password/code and another reference to something being hidden "in plain sight". It seems that it was actually the "Serial number" on the back of the phone. I don't think we lose anything from this seeing as 'plain sight' comes up a lot and it's been long established that Sherlock can crack most passwords with ease.

Smith as a Mirror for John

I have seen Smith described as a John mirror before, particularly in the shot where they stand opposite each other across the slab. And while that shot IS compelling and lord knows their hair styles are the same, I did wonder if it was just a case of them both having the same stylist- Mary's do has the same kind of vibe about it after all. However, on this rewatch I finally got it: neither is the man with morals beyond reproach that he is often seen as, both carry darkness and at least one secret, and both have killed without remorse. The irony of Smith- clearly delighted- saying "no violence please" as John takes out all his fury on the frail, felled Sherlock is appropriately sickening.

The Stolen Scalpel

The script in the mortuary scene describes close ups on the tray of tools when Culverton Smith would've had a chance to swipe a scalpel, and him standing with his hands behind his back as if he has, giving the impression that Sherlock was reasonable to think he had done that- when in reality of course it was Sherlock who had grabbed it. In the episode Smith does stand right by the tools and technicaly could've pocketed one or something but shows his hands very demonstrably after that, making Sherlock's accusation seem to appear from nowhere. I'm not sure if this will have been cut down because of the blocking and camera stuff not quite having worked, but making Sherlock look even more unhinged doesn't hurt. If he can hallucinate Smith taking the scalpel, Smith laughing non-stop, then has he hallucinated Faith?

'The Scene'- Yes That One :-(

I was intrigued to see the stage directions for 'the scene' i.e. John's rather extreme violence against Sherlock, and indeed the script describes him as having completely lost control in a fury that's upsetting and disturbing to see.

Without any intention of trying to justify John's behaviour (though he clearly was Not Fucking Okay), I have mentally disputed the idea that John "put him in the hospital" before. Sadly I did once see a loved one take a beating at least as bad as that and the police barely even check them over, let alone have them taken to the hospital. But enough of my trauma...

In the script Nurse Cornish says that Sherlock will "probably need" the walking stick, and that has been cut from the final product- as have a lot of unimportant lines, to be fair. Though we can assume John, being a doctor, reasonably thought he might benefit from it, perhaps having cracked a rib or too.

It was only on my latest rewatch that I realised "Mary" isn't in this scene at all. And last time we saw her, she was asking if John still missed her- presumably now that's back out on a case with Sherlock. In fact since Sherlock arrived to get John, Mary's ghostly prescence has been less and less. Here in the mortuary, John's mind is completely occupied with the drama of it all, never projecting her.

I'm not sure what I think of this, especially because there can only be so many things shown at once, but back in The Empty Hearse it was Mary constantly trying to calm John and push him.to reunite with his old friend. Here hallucinated Mary encourages John to tell the truth to his therapist and sticks up for Sherlock at every turn. Is this the nadir of what John and Sherlock could become "without (her)", as Mary intimates in the "I miss you" video next episode? Sadly it seems so.

"Isn't That Right, Mary?"

On to a much more pleasant scene: drinking tea in Baker street. The script mentions here that it be blocked and shot as if John is talking to theoretical Mary instead of a hallucinated/visualised Mary that's actually there. Sherlock doesn't say "isn't that right Mary?" after "I'm Sherlock Holmes, I wear the damn hat." A nice addition I think. I'm not dure it would really have worked without John speaking to a specific Mary there and then without Sherlock deducing otherwise.

"Unless she calls."

Finally, in the following scene between Mycroft and Lady Smallwood, the gender of the PM has been changed. The script calls "him" an "idiot", where the finished episode merely implies that "she" is a nuisance of some kind. Another minor change is that Mycroft is more indecisive about taking Lady Smallwood's card-in the script he is seen nearly taking the card at least twice. Her seeming to be hitting on him threw me a little the first time as I read Mycroft as openly gay, but hey, that's just me. I hope they became besties at the very least!

If you made it this far, thankyou for tolerating my ramblings and proving to myself again that yes, the changes made from the shooting script were improvements. You're welcome Moftiss.