Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century S1E1: “the Fall and Rise of Sherlock Holmes”
This review was commissioned by @krinsbez.
This one is from slightly later than most of the western SatAm cartoons I've looked at for this project, having run from 1999-2001. I'd never heard of it before, though my partner claims to have seen a few episodes on TV as a kid so that's cool I guess. The concept is...well, I think the title is pretty self-explanatory.
I can't say these shows have been impressing me overall, but Swat Kats was a pleasant surprise, so this might be another pleasant surprise. Anyway, let's have a look.
I know that intros can be unrepresentative, but even taking that into account this show looks much better than I was expecting.
Sharp art, without oversaturation. Less jarring blend of CGI and hand-drawn elements than usual for the era (still jarring, sure, but much LESS jarring than most). Detailed, realistically proportioned characters, with a slightly animesque look to them (heck, the character and environment designs even reminds me of Ghost in the Shell specifically). We're definitely entering the era when western animation studios realized they'd really have to step up their game to compete with Japanese exports. Animation is pretty smooth as well, though that's more likely to be inconsistent with the actual show. But anyway, it's generally much more visually appealing than I'd have thought, and also quite distinctive. It fuses a scifi-Victorian look, an American noir-ish look, and the classic SatAm aesthetic into something that works pretty well and also looks different from just about anything else.
I wish I could praise the song as well. Unfortunately, it's just the words "Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century" repeated over and over against a soft techno-metal backdrop.
Anyway, from the visuals and bits of dialogue that sound under the repetitive song, it looks like the cast includes neo-Holmes, neo-Watson, and neo-Moriarty, along with the lady above who I guess could be neo-Adler, or a rule 63'd neo-Mycroft or neo-Lestrade (though she looks a little too cool and competent for Lestrade). Dunno if these people are going to be clones, or cryo-frozen, or if the story is just going to change the Holmesian setting without acknowledging the vanilla version.
Well, so far it's pretty if nothing else.
My last question gets answered right off the bat, as we start out with a flashback to the London of 1891. Doctor Watson has just returned from Switzerland and is writing his account of "The Final Problem." It looks like in this version of events, Holmes will be resurrected after his fateful plunge by 22nd century biotechnology rather than Doyle having his arm twisted by an insatiable readerbase catching himself on a rock or whatever stupid thing he decided for the later stories.
As far as depictions of Holmes' plunge go though, I can't say that this one of my favorites. Even considering that they had to make things simpler and more self-explanatory for a child audience. The "boy" who approaches Holmes and Watson atop the cliff to call for a doctor is an old man in this version, and the old man ends up being Moriarty himself in an extremely silly disguise. Apparently, Holmes' "genius deduction" that let him detect the setup was based on the fact that Moriarty was running at top speed while affecting a hunchback, and that he was wearing weathered old man clothes that were too small on him. And also that his makeup was bad.
Right off the bat, this makes me less optimistic. The whole point of Moriarty is that he's supposed to be Holmes' intellectual equal. Having him make mistakes this obvious reduces him to a joke in his first introduction.
Even the detail of him posing as the messenger himself instead of having a minion do it a la the original story diminishes his threat level; part of the reason he was so dangerous was that he ruled a large and deviously compartmentalized crime syndicate. In the original story, the only reason he faced Holmes alone in the end after drawing Watson away was because he'd decided the occasion called for a gentlemanly duel. The cartoon version makes it seem like he doesn't even have the resources for anything better.
When Holmes explains how he saw through his shitty disguise Moriarty gets flustered and says "well, brains aren't everything" before attacking with a club like some bottom-rung street thug.
Sigh.
Anyway, they fight and fall off the cliff. Watson hears the scuffle and turns around just in time to see it from a distance, which...hmm. Well, on one hand I want to say I like this better than the original version, where he only finds out what happened after the fact. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure book!Watson was packing heat, so that might have changed the ending heh. We're then shown Watson back in London, writing his account of Sherlock Holmes' final case and mourning his best friend.
Then, we fastforward to New London, in the year 2103.
"New London?" Is this on another planet or something? It has its own version of Big Ben, so they took their gimmick seriously when building the city.
A hovercar police chase is going on, with the fugitive being a parole violator who failed to show up for one of his mandatory "hypnotic reprogramming" sessions and stole a hovercar to escape when the police came for him. Okay, so this place is slightly less dystopian than the Victorian era, good for it. The pursuer is the police lady from the intro, who manages to clip and damage a statue with her hovercar as she chases the perp. The New Scotland Yard has an AI dispatcher named "Watson" who notes the collision and informs her that this will be going on her record, to which her reply is a contemptuous "snitch."
I guess I'll take back what I said about competence. She *looked* like she had her shit together, but apparently she doesn't.
Also, the dispatch AI is named Watson, but there's also Actual Watson back in the 19th century segment? Did they name the AI after him or something? Weird choice, if so.
Eventually, cop lady gets frustrated with the chase and shoots the perp's vehicle down. In the middle of the city. It crashes and skids across a street, tearing the pavement opn and knocking down a full row of ornamental light posts.
Like I said. Slightly less dystopian than real life Victorian England.
She lands next to the wreck, and gets out of her own hovercar to chase the perp - an alien or mutant or something with a puffy white face and a horrible fake French accent - when he climbs out of the hulk and tries to flee. She manages to shoot him with a horrible CGI energy-bola thing whose animators had no sense of depth perception, and captures him.
As she leads him back to her hover-cruiser, she hears a fiendish laugh from the wreck. She turns back around just in time to see it take off and fly away again, despite her having just shot it down in a plume of smoke and fire and crashed it into the ground. I guess these hovercars have a REALLY good self-repair system. Anyway, she manages to catch a glimpse of the other perp who she just now learned about, and identifies him as Professor Moriarty.
He looks pretty much like a slightly older version of his 19th century namesake. Is he a clone or something? IDK. Anyway, the fact that she ID'd him on sight suggests that he's already a wanted man at this time, which...once again, undermines the whole point of the character. Moriarty's shtick was being an upstanding member of society who only ever commits crimes by proxy, with his identification as a criminal mastermind and acknowledgement of it by the police being pretty much the end of his career. If we're starting the story with him as already a known criminal, then we've pretty much de-fanged the main antagonist from the outset.
This show is probably going to be playing Moriarty as a more typical cartoon supervillain, whose threat comes from having a hidden lair and lots of well-armed minions rather than subtlety and legal finesse. I just think that that's a waste of James Moriarty. SatAm cartoons CAN do villains of this kind. Gargoyles did, with Xanatos. Spiderman TAS did, with Kingpin (hell, Kingpin was literally a Moriarty expy to begin with). So, why didn't this one?
Oh well.
French alien dude cackles at the cop lady as Moriarty flies away in the mysteriously functional vehicle, saying that even if the police catch him again his master will forever allude them. Eh, can't grudge a mutant his copium. Then we flash forward to New Scotland Yard, where the cop lady is getting a well-deserved chewing out from the chief.
Destruction of public AND private property. Reckless endangerment. Excessive force. All just to catch some rogue geneticist whose crimes were never that dangerous in the first place. What the hell has gotten into her?
Well, she replies, she NEEDS to know why the fake French accented gene-modder's Ludovico treatments weren't working. It was important for her to learn that. Thus, she did what she did.
...the chief called her by name at the beginning of the conversation, but was speaking too fast for me to catch it. That's okay, though, because at this point I think we all know who this lady is.
Detective Kirsten Ortega takes a robot assistant (I think it's actually Watson controlling a robot avatar) and goes to watch the guy's new Ludovico session. I was being facetious before, but "Ludovico" is actually just about spot on. From the noises he's making, it actually seems to be more torturous than the Clockwork Orange version.
Yes, that yellow flash is from the guy getting electroshock as part of the "hypnotic therapy." Yes, he twitches and yelps in a way that makes it clear that it really is electroshock and not just a cartoony visual shorthand.
Also, Ortega doesn't seem to have gotten any actual sanction. Just a scolding and maybe some docked pay or something.
...I'm pretty ready to side with Moriarty's organization, at this point. I wouldn't blame anyone from this society in the slightest for throwing in with him.
Anyway, the technicians reported nothing wrong with the Torture Device of Rehabilitative Justice, and after this latest session the genemodder guy is acting polite, deferential, and submissive, just like he should be after the treatment. Either the device has been sabatoged, or the perp has been immunized against it. A genemodder being immune to things that most people aren't? How could that possibly be? Ortega proposes that "some twisted genius" has developed a countermeasure to the mindrape torture machine, what a despicable fiend. Sure, Ortega. Sure.
Cut over to...wait, what?
Okay, we're told that they're now going to Baker Street, where the Sherlock Holmes museum can be found at the site of the triplex he once lived in.
-____-
So, this is London. Just London in the future.
...why is it called New London if it's just London?
Seriously, I thought this was supposed to be on a terraformed Mars or something just because of the city's name. Or, barring that, Connecticut.
Did the writers just decide that at some arbitrary point in the future we're going to slap the prefix "new' on all of our cities, to remind ourselves that it is currently the future? Is it supposed to be like Futurama, where New New York is built over the subterranean ruins of Old New York?
More likely, I think that the writers just thought that children are much stupider than they actually are, and that they wouldn't be able to reconcile "London" with "120 years in the future" unless they slapped some pseudo-futuristic bullshit onto the name. Demonstrating, in so doing, that their child audience is not only smarter than the writers thought, but quite possibly smarter than the writers.
Okay. Moving on.
The Sherlock Holmes museum is closing down, due to lack of public interest. Kind of surprising for a future where Holmes' career is well enough known for the police dispatch AI to be named after Watson, but to be fair this is a bad show. Anyway, Ortega has apparently been tracking the genemodder dude ever since he completed his Ludovico session, and now she sees him breaking into the Holmes museum.
She also, somehow, gets completely blindsided and knocked down by the guy like a total chump even though she should have had the element of surprise.
Just another day on the job for Garfield Minus Garfield.
The perp gets away with some stolen artifacts and disappears into what looks like an old subway station or something. Before Ortega can follow him in, Watson - via his robot body - reminds her that unaccompanied police are prohibited from entering the old Underground without special authorization.
WHAT.
If these tunnels are THAT ridiculously dangerous, why the hell are they open and unsealed?
Does the hulking android companion really not count as "accompaniment?"
What the actual fuck even is this city?
Ortega tells Watson that that's fine. She wouldn't want to go down there anyway. There are rats. They turn and leave, and a very cute rat comes out of hiding and watches them leave.
What a little cutie.
More to the point, though, I have to wonder. Did Ortega stop pursuing the guy because Watson reminded her of the regulations and she grudgingly obeyed them while making a snarky sour grapes comment about the rats? Or, was she actually about to ignore Watson and go down there alone anyway, but only stop because she remembered that there were rats down there and decided that this was, in fact, a more serious obstacle than her standing orders?
I'm up in the air on this myself.
Ortega leads her useless robot companion into the broken-into museum to see what the weirdo was even stealing, since she saw him run away with something in hand. Turns out, it's the pieces of the shitty old man costume that Moriarty wore for his final confrontation with Holmes in Switzerland. As she's trying to figure out what to make of this, she...okay wait no I have to go back and check something because this doesn't make any sense.
...I went back and checked, and yeah, the creators fucked up.
Ortega looks at a framed picture of Moriarty on the wall beside the smashed exhibit, and is shocked to see very nearly the face of the man who magically got that hovercar flying and ran away with it the other night, and who genemodder dude identified as his "master." Later, back at the precinct, she looks up old images of Moriarty at various ages and in various disguises and is shocked when the computer confirms a match with the driver (who I guess she got a photo of as he was escaping). But how could that be, when James Moriarty died over two centuries ago?
Okay. Show. You had Ortega say the name "Moriarty" out loud when she saw the man in the car. She identified him at the time, and said his name in this hissing, adversarial tone that suggested he was a longtime frustration for her department. I thought I must have imagined it, but I went back and checked, and I didn't imagine it.
Now, it's just one word of dialogue that's causing the continuity problem here. That's easy enough to pretend never happened. But, the fact that something so egregious AND so easy to fix made it through postproduction at all just reinforces my impression that nobody behind this show cared very much about it, or had any respect for their intended audience. Like I said though, kids aren't this stupid. They're stupid, sure, but they're not this stupid.
...
One of the biggest failures of some of these nineties cartoons - worse than the cheapness or the toy-shilling and right up there with the rabid jingoism - is that they seem like children's shows created by people who don't like children.
Not all of the SatAm shows I've looked at for this project give me that vibe, but some of them do, and it aggravates me a lot when I see it.
...
Next, Ortega turns on the TV and watches some news updates. There's one neat little worldbuilding detail here that I actually like, with the news anchor actually being an AI that just looks like a CGI newswoman behind a CGI station, but reacts to Ortega prompting her for more information in realtime. That's a cool blending of future (well, now modern) technology with modern (well, now retro) aesthetics. Anyway! Tonight's news is dominated by a city-wide crime wave, conducted by people who had supposedly given up their criminal ways after Ludovico treatments. It seems that society's method of "removing criminal urges from the human psyche" has failed, and is failing, on a large scale. Oh no, how terrible. Meanwhile, in completely unrelated news, a local biological research institute has just made a major breakthrough, and developed a technology that allows long-decayed genetic material to be restored well enough to use in cloning.
Ortega puts it together and figures out the plot, silly though it is, at once. She goes back to the chief, but all he can see is the silliness. Also, he reminds Ortega that seeing someone who looked like someone famous doesn't mean shit in a world where changing one's appearance is as simple as putting on this high tech mask-collar thing. He illustrates his point by putting on an old woman mask and becoming instantly convincing as an old woman once it sticks onto his face and reshapes itself to adapt.
Also, he can't manage to get it off again, and is stuck with an old lady face for his next few appearances, and is played for humor each time. I'm sure you can all feel the hilarity from wherever you are sitting.
Frankly though, the chief is completely in the right. At least, as far as evidence is concerned. If the genemodder dude's co-pilot looked just like James Moriarty, and they're stealing James Moriarty memorabilia from museums, AND these perfect high tech costume masks exist, then it's overwhelmingly probable that some whacko collector has gotten obsessed with this minor historical figure and is hiring thugs to steal things related to him. Unless James Moriarty somehow got a reputation for undoing techno-hypnosis during his original life 200 years before techno-hypnosis was invented (she says he was a great cryptographer, but I'm not sure how applicable Victorian-era code breaking is to this), there's absolutely nothing to suggest that this isn't a coincidence. Other crimes are also being committed by Ludovico-relapsers right now. Ortega has no reason to think that the Moriarty-related perps were the firsts of the bunch.
But, of course, a core part of Kirsten Ortega's character is that the story proves her right even though her logic is insane and stupid at every step on the way to her conclusion, and that we're expected to admire her spunk and determination instead of recognizing this as naked Mary Copaganda Sueism.
...
Also, there's a bigger problem here. A more philosophical one. But I think I'll get into that at the end, assuming it's still being a problem by then. There's a chance it might not, depending on how a certain upcoming plot beat gets played.
...
After being - completely justifiably - told she should consider taking a medical leave and dismissed from the chief's office, Ortega picks up the lab results from the DNA recovered from the crashed aircar's steering wheel. Um...I guess they found it again after Neo-Moriarty got it magically flying? Why did the show never mention that they found the car again? This is a pretty goddamned important plot point. Anyway, they sampled and tested some skin/hair flakes from the car and discovered that it had no matches in the gene archives. Which should be impossible; every human being born in the last century should be in the archives.
I'm not sure which is funnier. The writers already forgetting that they've established postnatal gene-modding as a thing in the setting less than ten minutes ago, or the notion of CRIMINAL SUPERGENIUS Moriarti not wearing gloves on a heist.
Anyway, this is puzzling. Disturbing, even. However, the chief still thinks her wild inference about a genetically restored Neo-Moriarty is just that, a wild inference. He's right, even though the writers disagree with him.
So, the following night, Ortega breaks into...a lab? warehouse? the basement of that failing museum that was already broken into in the last 24 hours? Someplace, anyway. Even though she's clearly breaking and entering without any kind of warrant or other authorization, she still has her Watson robot with its tendency to, ahem, "snitch," with her. Lol, they really weren't paying attention to what they'd already written. In a voice memo that she plans to later send to the chief once its too late for him to stop her, she explains that she thinks she knows the reason they stole the Moriarty costume. It's to prevent the police from matching the genome with any biological evidence Neo-Moriarty might be leaving at crime scenes and figuring out what they were dealing with.
That makes more sense than anything else that's happened so far. Congratulations show.
She also decides that the only way to beat Neo-Moriarty is with Neo-Holmes, so she's just going to break into the basement where they have Holmes' remains stored and unilaterally create one.
It's funny, because in the prologue sequence they had Watson (actual Watson I mean, not the AI) say that they never found Holmes' body. "No man could have survived the fall," was all he said, and this is consistent with the original story too (the unfound body is also what allowed Doyle to retcon it into Holmes surviving when he got his arm sufficiently twisted). So, I guess they um...found it months or years later, as a fish-eaten skeleton? And were able to identify it? And it still has enough genetic material in it, decomposed or otherwise, for a resurrection with the new technology?
She finds the cold storage cell that they have whatever's left of Holmes in, and starts stealing it. Always stealing frozen bodies, Detective Ortega, always stealing frozen bodies.
I guess she's going to kidnap that scientist and force him to create Neo-Holmes now. Or just steal the machine he invented. Whatever.
As Ortega talks up what a massive threat Moriarty poses to the modern world by undoing the civilizing measure of mass Ludovico treatments for petty criminals, and how Holmes was the only one who was ever able to give him pause, we get a look into Holmes' cryo-coffin. It's. Um. Confusing.
This does not look like a fish-eaten skeleton.
In fact, it doesn't look like it could have been in the water for more than like. A day. At most.
Maybe Watson was just being dramatic in his "no man could have survived" phrasing.
...wait a minute no. I went back and watched that intro bit again, and Watson - 19th century human Watson - ends his account with:
“No man could survive that lethal abyss. The world had lost its greatest detective, and I my best friend...or had I?”
So, he was being dramatic with his phrasing there when they actually did find the body pretty quickly, AND HE ALSO knows that Holmes will be revived in two centuries. Or...maybe both of them are about to get revived, and we'll get Neo-Watson AND the robot Watson side by side for maximum confusion?
Or, no, okay, this actually all gets explained in just another couple of minutes! But the explanation makes this entire thing even stupider.
Ortega informs us that Holmes did *not* actually die at Reichenbach Falls. Doyle's readers twisted his arm so hard that Holmes managed to catch himself on a rock and survive the plunge while Moriarty died alone. Holmes laid low for a little while to wait out any of Moriarty's allies, and then reunited with Watson and solved many more cases before dying of old age, accounting for the state of the body in the cryocell.
Okay, we're acknowledging the later Holmes stories after all then. Sure, nothing wrong with that. But in that case:
1. What the fuck was even the point of that intro?
2. Why is Ortega telling this part of the story as if it's a big secret most people still don't know, when Holmes' old man corpse used to be displayed in the damned museum before it shut down and his full exploits are apparently an open part of the historical record?
That first question is the one that bothers me the most. It's a fakeout that serves absolutely zero purpose to the episode. If Ortega had revealed that Holmes actually survived into the 1960's and had himself Walt Disney'd awaiting the advent of de-aging technology, that could have worked as a surprise twist. Him dying of old age and then having his body taxidermied and eventually frozen for display purposes is...not that. And it also makes it completely unimportant that he died of old age rather than his duel with Moriarty. What did that have to do with anything, seriously?
Sigh.......
So, Ortega has her robot help her steal the cryocell. It prematurely sends her voice recording to the chief before she can finish completing her crime, which prompts her to bitch it out and then promptly turn it off after it's sat back down in the car.
So, is someone gonna be coming after her now? Maybe.
She flies to the palatial home of that scientist dude who figured out how to restore dead tissue. He agrees to do it, if only to prove to her that he had nothing to do with Moriarty's return. I...don't see how that proves his innocence of that, but okay. Also, is the implication supposed to be that she low-key threatened to investigate him for possibly bringing back Moriarty if he doesn't help her? It kinda feels that way.
So, they put Holmes' corpse in a bacta tank and start doing science to it. Apparently, the body is well preserved enough that they can just restore the tissues in situ instead of having to grow a copy.
When he comes out, he's not only ready to be shocked to life, but has also de-aged to exactly the same age he looked in the intro flashback.
So. Um. This scientist just invented eternal youth, I guess. He can not only revive dead cells, but also de-age them to an arbitrary earlier point in the person's life.
I'm sure the implications of this will be acknowledged by the story and given their due weight.
Also, are we getting any explanation for why Holmes got restored to *this* age, specifically? Obviously not, but I'm going to ask anyway just to emphasize the point.
On a positive note, AT LEAST this show is avoiding the common pitfall of having clones keep all the memories of their original selves. I thought it was going to do that. A lot of shows in the nineties did that, and a few of them still do. I was ready to just roll my eyes and avoid complaining about it, because it's just so endemic in the genre, but it having been averted in favor of other stupid stuff is at least somewhat refreshing.
...speaking of stupid stuff, the scientist says that they're lucky that they preserved Holmes' body in honey after his death and until his eventual display-freezing, as otherwise they might not have had enough to work with now. So, that's positive confirmation that they didn't Walt Disney him rather than just implication. There really was no point to the fakeout with how he died at all.
Anyway, Holmes is de-aged and de-deadified. He gets off the slab they revived him on and is immediately ready to return to work with zero curiosity or sense of wonder at his new surroundings or the nature of his reborn existence. They even get him a perfect replica of his old outfit.
That lack of reaction from Holmes is actually fairly in-character, if a bit exaggerated. This is exactly the sort of thing he'd adjust to disconcertingly quickly, and be unnervingly apathetic about. On a less positive note though, no one else has any sort of reaction to his bizarre reaction or lack thereof. No one seems to notice how strange this behaviour is. No one asks him if he's sure he doesn't need more orientation, or concern about family descendants, or just a space of his own to sit and think in before he gets to work.
Which in turn makes me think that Holmes' behaviour here isn't the writers intentionally hewing to the characters' eccentricity, but them never even thinking about it. I suspect they'd have had any character returned from the dead act the same way, with it actually being kinda-sorta in character for Holmes being a happy coincidence.
...
Also? Holmes might react to "hey wake up its 2103" differently and more nonchalantly than a normal person, but he'd still have *some* interesting thoughts and words about his situation.
Think about how the writers of Gargoyles (1994), Batman TAS (1992), or hell, even the shmucks behind ExoSquad (1993) provided you can make them keep their power level to themselves, would handle this premise. There'd be thought put into this. There'd be an effort to actually show the human impact, even if it's a watered-down and cartoonified human impact, of events like this.
My point? None of the flaws I'm pointing out in this pilot had to be there. Other SatAm shows created before and after it had much more thought and care put into them. This is just a bad show, both in absolute terms and for its own genre.
...
Also, Holmes recognizes Ortega as a descendent of Lestrade, and expresses distaste at his memories of her ancestor. Which is funny, but I'm not entirely sure if the creators know why it's funny.
Ortega takes him home, and shows him an interactive newscast covering the continuing crime wave. It's...a lot of incredibly petty, disorganized minor property crimes. Some lady getting her purse snatched on the street. Security footage of a random burglar breaking into a random building. They're up to seven criminal relapses of Ludovico'd offenders, which apparently is enough for the mayor to declare a crisis. Lol. Lmao. Ortega then shows Holmes her photo of Neo-Moriarty, and tells him that she's sure he's responsible, which provokes a shocked and horrified reaction from Holmes.
-____-
Why would Moriarty want to cause petty robbers and street toughs to relapse?
How could this benefit him in any way, shape, or form, especially considering the sort of crimes and underworld companions he *could* be involving himself with?
Is he just charging people a flat rate to undo the brainwashing?
The only other motive I can think of is that Moriarty, while hardly a man of scruples, finds New London's mass torture and brainwashing beyond the pale even for himself, and is sabotaging the system for ideological reasons. Making him unambiguously the hero of this story.
Also, when Holmes expresses disbelief that Moriarty could be back, Ortega delivers the funniest line in the entire episode.
“I thought you’d wait for the facts before you jump to conclusions, Holmes.”
Just...let that sink in for a minute.
To get Holmes up to speed on what the modern world entails, she gives him some autohypnotic history lessons to watch on a whacky headset thing and leaves him alone for a while. Then...oh my god, now it feels like the writers are actually trolling.
Holmes starts his history lessons, and has shocked reactions to several things he hears about. Those things, at least the ones he gasps about out loud, include "flying cars, talking picture screens, auto-learning devices, and women in charge."
Okay, MAYBE this is supposed to be a crack at Holmes' expense, that the things he's being shocked to learn about now are exactly, 1:1, the things that he's already seen and interacted with in person since resurrection. The way he grips his headset as he lists off "auto-learning devices" does suggest that his circumstances are only now really catching up to him. It could be a joke. Unfortunately, this show is also incompetent enough to do something like that fully unintentionally. So, if it's a joke, it's one that I'm not sure I can give them credit for.
The crack at Holmes outdated Victorian social views with "women in charge" is something I'll come back to at the end. For now I'll just say that, in context, I don't find it all that amusing.
While Holmes is learning new things that he already knew, Ortega goes to the precinct to face the chief. He's almost trembling with rage at the shit she just pulled off. The crimes include, oh gee let's see; insubordination, breaking and entering, felony theft, possibly some other crime related to treatment of dead bodies and/or historical artifacts, and pretty much any and every law that a high tech society like this one would have had to have enacted about bioethics just to not immediately collapse. In response, she tells the chief that the police will either have Sherlock and Ortega's assistance, or neither; she'll quit if he tries to shut this insanity of hers down. And also tells him that she's sure someone in the media will be willing to make her extremely rich in exchange for an exclusive interview with a perfectly resurrected Sherlock Holmes.
So. Ignoring the question of why he doesn't just strip her of her badge AND ARREST HER for any of a long list of criminal acts she's just committed, she just opened the door on the absolute biggest warehouse full of WTF so far.
Who the fuck is she to promise or deny exclusive interviews with Holmes?
Does she own him, now?
I mean, she might. From what we've seen of this society, personally owned slaves might very well just be an open and accepted thing. But then again, she hasn't exactly filled out any paperwork for him, and there couldn't be legal contingencies for this situation yet if raising the dead is a brand new technology. So yeah, no, I don't think she could own him even if people can legally own other people in general.
So, how is she going to dictate who Sherlock can and can't talk to?
She could be bluffing, of course. But this should be a very, very easy bluff for the chief to call her on.
Also, now that the technology for reanimating the long dead has just been successfully field tested, it seems like a LOT of interviews with historical figures might be flooding the airwaves for the next while. I don't know if Sherlock Holmes, specifically, is such a loss. But oh well.
So, he gives up and lets her do whatever she wants without consequences. We're very clearly supposed to side with her. On the bright side, at least he got that old lady mask off.
Back to Ortega's place. She gives Sherlock a formal introduction to her Watson robot, who apparently isn't controlled by a central AI, he was just offscreen and only apparent as a disembodied voice in that first scene so I got a mistaken impression. Also, she just named her own assigned police assistant robot "Watson," that isn't the department itself naming it.
...so, is the implication that she was already a Holmes fanatic before this case ever came up, if she named her robot that? She seemed to only be researching all this stuff after the fact when...oh who even cares.
Holmes is enchanted by Watson robot, and even comments on the "similarities in girth" and also some similarly obnoxious habits.
Why does everyone always make Watson fat and stupid?
He wasn't fat in the stories. He was buff. He also was only "stupid" compared to Holmes.
…
Do two out of three, if not more, Sherlock Holmes adaptations get this wrong? Yes.
Should I hold that minor point against this particular cartoon? Probably not.
Will I hold it against the cartoon anyway just because it's already earned my contempt? Yes.
…
Ortega tells Watson to read the real Dr. Watson's memoirs and try to act like the author to help makes Holmes feel more at home. Okay whatever.
While the robot reads, Ortega and Holmes go to a Ludovico lab to watch the latest street urchin being tortured into compliance.
He screams through most of the process, and grimaces for the parts when he's not screaming. Everyone watches nonchalantly, including Holmes.
The chief comes in and is mean to Holmes for a while. Clearly just taking out his frustration with Ortega on her new pet. Holmes brushes him off. After they release the brainwashed vegetable that was once a human being from the machine and he wanders out of the room with a doll-like grin on his face, Holmes bids Ortega (and the chief, if he must) to tail the guy with him. Proceed to them driving their hovercar after his hovercar. Holmes says that he believes he knows what's going to happen now; the treatment will fail to take, once again. And also, they should probably disable the autopilot on their hovercar and switch to manual control. When neither of the cops are sure what to make of that last suggestion, the aircar suddenly falls out of the sky.
The chief, in the back, can't do anything. Ortega screams uselessly about how the autopilot won't boot back up no matter what she does. Um...Ortega? Even if Holmes HADN'T just told you to switch to manual control, shouldn't that be your immediate reaction?
It ends up being Holmes who hits the button to turn off the autopilot and taking the wheel himself literally two meters before they hit the ground. I guess those hypnolessons he took also included how to drive a hovercar. And...what the...
Okay. He tells them that his hypothesis has now been confirmed, and their real target is actually the central computer back at the New Scotland Yard headquarters. Apparently, their Ludovico machines and their hovercars are all controlled by a central computer, but their AI assistants whose jobs include communicating and coordinating between cops in the field and the chief at the station AREN'T connected to that computer. Lol. Lmao. Holmes also insists that the culprit must be at the central computer right now to be doing this.
Also, Holmes says that he doesn't think this is Moriarty. An evil genius, but not Moriarty. Okay.
So, they head to the station. And he's still there when they arrive. A dude in a mask and an armed robot bodyguard are in the central computer, fucking with things.
An extremely bad fight scene happens. Ortega gets taken out like a total chump within milliseconds of it beginning just like last time, of course, but Holmes manages to throw off the robot's targeting with his coat, shoot it, and then close the distance with the culprit. Whose mask fails to hide his highly distinctive hairstyle.
Neo-Moriarty uses a poison gas grenade to force them to back off, and also to give himself a smokescreen. Okay, that makes his decision to wear a mask that doesn't actually hide his identity make a bit more sense, heh. He's able to escape. The wounded Ortega gets pulled out of the poison gas at the last second by the sudden return of Watsonbot who I guess has finished his light reading.
After the fact, the assholes are all sitting around in the chief's office. The chief is butthurt at Holmes for solving the case for them, and also assuring him that they're upgrading their computer security. Ortega is asking why Holmes doesn't think the very Moriarty-looking man in the mask wasn't Moriarty. Holmes simply says that while that entity may look like Moriarty, and may think like Moriarty, he is absolutely sure that it is NOT Moriarty. Why is he sure of this? No clue. Ortega reminds him of his own "once you remove the impossible, whatever remains - no matter how improbable - must be the truth" credo that this pilot has had every character including Holmes shit all over from beginning to end, and Holmes shits on it once again by just brushing her off. Then they ask the robot why he came back to help randomly, and it tells them that that's what the real Watson would have done. And also it now speaks in the original Dr. Watson's voice.
Apparently it learned what his voice sounded like by reading his hand-written notes.
End episode.
So.
I'm at a crossroads here.
On one hand, there are a couple of points I said I was going to return to at the end of the episode, depending on how it treated certain plot points. Based on the criteria I set for them at the time, I now have a looooot to dissect.
On the other hand, I just looked at the queue, and was dismayed to be reminded that this is only the first of three SHit22C (appropriate acronym) episodes comissioned.
For...I think this is the third? Maybe only the second?...time since I started doing reviews, I'm tempted to just refund the rest of this order. However, at the same time, the somewhat open ended conclusion of the pilot leaves the possibility that the show MIGHT be about to pull the rug out and do the things I was hoping the pilot would do. There's probably a reason that the person comissioned episodes 1-3 specifically, rather than 1-2 or 1-4. Maybe?
I'll need to decide. If I do episodes 2-3, I'll save the analysis for the end. If I don't, I'll just make my 95 theses against this show its own standalone post next week sometime. We'll see.
Well, that was what Past Leila said. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion in which she makes her decision.
