Hounds of Baskerville

[ivyfic]

+ Lots of great character stuff.

- The plot. Pretty much all of the plot. It was stupid and obvious and unworthy of "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

- I can not get over the T-shirt thing. I'm just imagining the T-shirts for Tuskegee. Would they have a sharecropper on them?

- There is no way the guy's password was "maggie." It's too short and has no digits--it wouldn't be accepted as a password by most free email services. I've read Tom Clancy. I know that twenty years ago passwords at super secret military bases were long, random strings of numbers. I mean, Dr. Stapleton's password is at least 16 digits. The "Sherlock can guess any password" thing is just getting stupid.

- Sherlock confirmed that there was no toxin in the sugar by LOOKING THROUGH A MICROSCOPE AT IT. AAAAAAAA. Yes! They're cubic crystals! I see it all now... At least give him a mass spec or NMR machine. If even NCIS can get that bit right THERE'S NO REASON SHERLOCK CAN'T. I'd even accept X-ray crystallography. Just--the complete lunacy of how identification of unknown chemicals is done on TV drives me BONKERS. Must screens for chemicals are for SPECIFIC chemicals. They wouldn't tell you if there was an unknown, let alone what it is. But just--microscope? Microscopes ARE NOT USED IN CHEMISTRY FOR A REASON.

The little flips to the original story were cute (like the Morse code), only they reminded me how much I like the original story. For example, the mine field--neat reinterpretation. But without Dr. Franklin having a safe path marked through it, it's just stupid for him to run into it at the end. And having him blow up has the exact opposite effect of the creeping horror of Stapleton sinking into the moor.

But that was one of the problems with this screenplay--they spent so much time on scary things in woods that the villain only got, what, two scenes? Revealing that he did it at the end isn't satisfying. It feels kind of Scooby Doo. It was also obvious--oh yes! Uncle Bob has always been there for me! I WONDER WHY.

It was also incredibly obvious that it was a hallucinogen. Which brings me to my other takeaway--I was a big X-Files fan. And X-Files pioneered the sci fi horror genre, subset paranoid government conspiracy, for the television medium. I've seen the government mind control experiment plot done many times, and much more effectively. Which made the plot of this rather a cheap knock off. This morning I rewatched "Wetwired" to remind me what a conspiracy to induce psychotic hallucinations plot should look like.

(Also? The explanation of the dad's death MAKES NO SENSE. So, you continued the experiments. Protecting yourself with a gas mask. Which is why the guy NOT susceptible to psychosis beats a man to death in front of his son. ????)

Awaiting next week with a good deal of trepidation. Steve Thompson wrote it, and he's the one who gave us "The Blind Banker." So. I am not filled with confidence.

Comments

[airspaniel.livejournal.com]

Basically this. I feel like this whole episode was really sloppily written, which sucks, because I know Gatiss can do better. :/ And I didn't know that, that Thompson wrote the last one. Dammit to hell, I'm going to be angry about something, aren't I? Prove me wrong, Steve. Prove me wrong.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

I had been assuming the whole time that it was something in the strobe or sound frequency that was triggering fight/flight. That would have been much more interesting, especially for a climax where if you don't cover your eyes you start getting irrationally scared and seeing things.