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sherlock60It's canon discussion time, everybody! What were your impressions of The Five Orange Pips? As always, I've written up a few of my own random thoughts and comments, which are behind the jump. Add your own in the comments!
Note: There is no Granada version of FIVE for us to watch this week, unfortunately.
- You may have noticed the explicit reference to the Sign of the Four, but we haven't read the Sign of the Four yet, and we're reading in order. How is that chronologically possible? We're using Baring-Gould's chronology, which makes a few certain assumptions in order to work. One of them depends upon the fact that the stories that mention SIGN out of order (SCAN, REDH, IDEN, and FIVE) were all published when Watson was married to Mary Morstan. The theory goes that Watson inserted anachronistic references to SIGN to refer the reader's mind to Mary when he referenced his "wife" and so to avoid a constant reminder that he had been married previously to another woman.
- Elias Openshaw drowns in a scummy pool of only two feet of water, and the official jury verdict is suicide. Does that seem likely? As the Sherlockian Benjamin Clark in Baring-Gould's Annotated puts it, "Who, drunk or sober, would ever attempt to end his life by lying face down in a two-feet-deep puddle?"
- "the charming climate of Florida" - I take it Sherlock Holmes has never been to Florida.
- "That he should come to me for help, and that I should send him away to his death --!" - Reading in chronological order makes FIVE even more of a gut punch. This is Holmes' first client that dies on his watch, and it deeply affects him. "That hurts my pride," he says, but it certainly seems as if it hurt more than that when he dedicates himself to a personal mission of vengeance against his client's murderers.
- The ending here is very dissatisfying. I wanted to see the Captain get Holmes' pips. I wanted to watch the detective avenge his lost client. We are deprived of all of that, as is the detective. I wonder how he reacted to it. If it is frustrating for a reader, it must have been excruciating for Sherlock Holmes.
Note: There is no Granada version of FIVE for us to watch this week, unfortunately.
- You may have noticed the explicit reference to the Sign of the Four, but we haven't read the Sign of the Four yet, and we're reading in order. How is that chronologically possible? We're using Baring-Gould's chronology, which makes a few certain assumptions in order to work. One of them depends upon the fact that the stories that mention SIGN out of order (SCAN, REDH, IDEN, and FIVE) were all published when Watson was married to Mary Morstan. The theory goes that Watson inserted anachronistic references to SIGN to refer the reader's mind to Mary when he referenced his "wife" and so to avoid a constant reminder that he had been married previously to another woman.
- Elias Openshaw drowns in a scummy pool of only two feet of water, and the official jury verdict is suicide. Does that seem likely? As the Sherlockian Benjamin Clark in Baring-Gould's Annotated puts it, "Who, drunk or sober, would ever attempt to end his life by lying face down in a two-feet-deep puddle?"
- "the charming climate of Florida" - I take it Sherlock Holmes has never been to Florida.
- "That he should come to me for help, and that I should send him away to his death --!" - Reading in chronological order makes FIVE even more of a gut punch. This is Holmes' first client that dies on his watch, and it deeply affects him. "That hurts my pride," he says, but it certainly seems as if it hurt more than that when he dedicates himself to a personal mission of vengeance against his client's murderers.
- The ending here is very dissatisfying. I wanted to see the Captain get Holmes' pips. I wanted to watch the detective avenge his lost client. We are deprived of all of that, as is the detective. I wonder how he reacted to it. If it is frustrating for a reader, it must have been excruciating for Sherlock Holmes.
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