Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century S1E2: "The Crime Machine"

Alright. Let's see if this show redeems itself in its second episode, or if it remains room temperature feces.

Ortega drives Holmes to Reichenbach Falls, where he and Moriarty had their duel, to make sure that he hasn't been resurrected. Holmes is pleased to see that this one area of natural beauty hasn't changed much in the intervening centuries, aside from some saplings (including the one he grabbed on to save himself from the fall) having matured into large trees.

But also...apparently Moriarty's body is still here, and Holmes knows exactly where to find it.

Which means that he found the body, and then just fucking left it there without telling anyone.

Show of contempt for his enemy, just leaving his body to rot on the riverbank without a proper burial? That...seems out of character for ANY version of Sherlock Holmes, including this one. What the hell?

An explanation soon comes, but it's one that makes things even more WTF rather than less. Apparently, after catching himself on the sapling and watching Moriarty fall to his death, Holmes climbed down into the canyon, fished the corpse out of the water, dragged it into a nearby cave, and gave it a secret burial on his own without telling anyone else.

-____-

Why?

Also, the...holy shit what even is this...he leads Ortega into the cave, down a passageway where the air is much colder than on the nearby surface and any water freezes, and pushes a flat rock aside to show HOW he, ahem, "buried" Moriarty.

I want you all to imagine the process that Sherlock would have had to go through to get Moriarty's body like that.

Working by himself.

Well, that sanity-obliterating tangent aside, if Moriarty's body is still here then he could not have been resurrected (or at least, not through the same method as Holmes). Their adversary is thus either a cosplaying fanatic like I mused in the last episode, or some kind of simulacrum. A clone, or maybe an AI reconstruction like a more complete version of what they've been doing with Watson.

Inspecting the icy tomb, Holmes spots something new. A thin core taken out of the ice block, forming a delicate tunnel from the surface to the frozen corpse.

Ah, well, cloning it is, then.

...the French guy Neo-Moriarty was paling around with in the pilot was a gene-modder. He was also said to be very small-time, so I doubt he'd be this ambitious on his own, but I could definitely imagine someone else having hired him to clone Moriarty. Probably some over-ambitious crimelord who wanted the advice of the legendary "consulting criminal" and foolishly thought he could keep a leash on him. The fact that French Geneticist Dude was referring to Moriarty as his "master" indicates that it didn't take Neo-Moriarty long at all to depose his patron and assume control of the syndicate and all its subcontractors.

As for the clone having the original's personality and memories, well...even without the dumb cloning tropes common in the era, we've established that a robot can somehow learn to faithfully replicate Dr. Watson's voice by reading his handwriting, so recovering the original Moriarty's personality and giving it to the clone one way or another should be easily doable lol.

Also, Holmes doesn't point out the drilling to Ortega, and she doesn't seem to notice it herself. Why he doesn't bother doing this, I only wish I could say.

Suddenly, the cave starts collapsing! They are forced to run and leave the frozen carcass to be buried in rubble. Looks like Neo-Moriarty doesn't want anyone poking around back there!

...why didn't he recover the original's body first thing after coming to power?

He's taking pains to hide genetic evidence that could confirm his identity. He knows where the body is. Wouldn't removing (and probably incinerating) it have been the first damned thing he did, once he had the freedom of action to do so?

They manage to escape the cave before it collapses entirely, and surprisingly there isn't a squad of armed mercenaries waiting for them with guns drawn right outside the entrance. In fact...the show never gets back to the collapsing cave at all.

...please tell me that wasn't supposed to be a coincidence? The cave just HAPPENS to implode the moment they came back to check on it, without it having been enemy action? Please?

Cut to New London. A montage of hovercars (and hoverbuses. Hover-vehicles in general) smash their way through walls, and their drivers stealing shit from the buildings.

Including a "zoo" full of robotic imitation-animals. Probably to steal valuable robot parts or something, idk.

Ortega's hovercar brings herself, Holmes, and RoboWatson back into the city, weaving around to avoid multiple traffic collisions from erratic drivers. Ortega murmurs that she's never seen the airlanes in so much chaos before. As she's trying to decide what to make of this, she gets a summons from the chief telling her to report to the station immediately. All off-duty officers are being called in to deal with this burgeoning crisis.

When they arrive, Chief informs them that there's been a sudden outbreak in looting and burglaries city-wide, with the vast majority of perps being people with absolutely zero criminal records at all. And they're doing it very recklessly, as we saw with the air traffic.

Also, the chief's VA fucks up his English accent completely during this briefing and lets his American Midwest slip through lol.

...actually, the only character whose VA isn't making even a token effort at pretending to be British is Ortega's. Even though she's supposed to be a direct descendent of Lestrade's.

Her being the only American in the cast...well, this is actually related to something I hope I won't have to talk about at the end, but that it's looking more and more likely I will.

Damnit.

So, they look over a holographic map of New London while the chief describes these new activity patterns. Holmes is already smiling smugly over the map and murmuring "very clever" and just daring anyone else to ask what he's figured out so he can not answer and just smarmily hold it over their heads for the rest of the episode. Chief takes the bait. That's going to be his main job in this series, I can already tell. He also randomly insults Holmes and tells him that he's dumb and stupid and they shouldn't even have him in the station.

"Nineties cartoon obstructionist bureaucrat" has got to be the worst job ever. You're contractually obligated to always be wrong, oppose any correct idea or course of action on principle, and never learn from past experiences. You're not even allowed to pretend to have a rational motive for this, in most cases, or express any kind of flawed-but-reasonable-sounding logic of your own.

Now, the fact that some of the baddumbwrong things you're supposed to say include stuff like "please try to avoid collateral damage," "the law should apply to everyone, including its enforcers," and "human rights are important even when they're inconvenient for your immediate short-term goals" SHOULD compensate for this. But that's not how the writers think. It's not how any character besides you thinks. It's not how reality works in your world, and it's not a perspective that will yield any practical or even moral dividends. It's just one more set of bad ideas you're forced to cling to, and to be wrong for clinging to.

Well. Anyway.

Holmes points out that a bunch of looters in a mall seem to have gone right passed a number of luxury item stores in favor of stealing jewelry, specifically; makes sense, as jewelry is hard to track and easy to fence. Meanwhile, in the warehouse district, several microchip stocks were stolen, with the culprits once again ignoring other equally valuable goods, but in this case their choice of targets seems stranger since the chips aren't especially fenceable. Same goes for the robot zoo animals. When Chief asks Holmes what he thinks this is all pointing to, Holmes gives the complete non-answer of "they're simply following their master's orders."

Well, yeah, no shit. But why is their master ordering them to steal these specific items and not other stuff?

Chief laughs him off. Not because of him having given a smug, grating, non-answer, but because of the idea that there's a mastermind behind this highly sudden and coordinated massive crime wave. Because Chief's job is to be wrong about things and get in the heroes' way, no motive necessary.

...

There are still less bad ways of doing this, though.

Like, look at the mayor from SWAT Kats. Same role in the story. Same kind of caricature. But he at least had SOME kind of flawed motives behind his insane decisions that you can somewhat relate to. He valued expensive buildings and decorations more than the public safety. He thought that any troublemaker can be bribed or paid off if you wave enough cash in front of them, presumably because that's the kind of troublemaker he's used to dealing with in his political circles. And, in the end, when his stupid preconceptions just couldn't be held onto any longer, he stopped bitching and let the good guys (and the not-so-good guys, like Commander Fararalalalra) do their job.

Was he a frustrating, trope-y character? Yes. But he was still better executed than the police chief in this show, or the stupid captain in ExoSquad.

...

Holmes also, when asked where this mastermind can be found, declares that he is in the underground. The reason being that the thefts are all concentrated around those open, unguarded entrances to the sprawling undercity labyrinth that the police aren't normally allowed to follow people into.

Because, somehow, all the crime in the entire fucking city hasn't already been happening around those areas for as long as this has been policy. Somehow. For some reason.

Really making me appreciate the genius of Sherlock Holmes, show. What a cunning detective.

Sherlock says he wants to go into the underground to find the central hub of this, accomponied by Ortega if the chief will let her. He supposed the annoying Watson robot can come to, if it insists. Chief lets Ortega go with Holmes, reluctantly, but demands she update him regularly. That last bit should be SOP to begin with, but okay.

From there, cut to a girl on a hoverboard peddling various and sundry to passerby in a horrible, HORRIBLE attempt at a cockney accent. She gets a DM from a friend telling her about some likely customers a little ways up the street behind them, so she hovers over to hawk her bad Cockney at them now.

Whatever it is she's trying to sell them, she doesn't do a very good job of it. Fortunately for her, one of her business associates is already on the way to catch the customers once she's slowed them down a bit. He arrives and, oh, okay I see now. The hawkers saw that Ortega and Holmes were about to descend into the underground, and these guys are offering their services as guides in the underhive labyrinth.

Hmm. These hawkers are getting a lot of characterization and visual detail, which suggests that they're going to be recurring characters. I remember in the original stories Sherlock Holmes had a little band of street urchins who he paid to spy for him. Maybe this bunch of lower-class teens are a play off of them? Well, they're a little older and a bit better off than OG Holmes' orphan minions, but still conceptually recognizable. Certainly it could have been done much worse.

And hey, a lot of adaptations leave these guys out entirely and have Holmes' entire social group consist of pipe-smoking gentlemen and the occasional femme fatale, so this is necessarily an improvement over that route.

Holmes and the leader of the bunch have a friendly cold reading contest, divining things about each other from their appearances, which Holmes handily wins of course. It's actually a clever way to give these new acquaintances a bit of a bonding moment, since the peddler leader Wiggins, prides himself on his own observational skills as a salesman.

Some of Holmes' observations are satisfying and logical, in the traditional Holmesian way. He can tell Wiggins has been both a soccer player based on the way he kicked a can, and a boxer from the little scar running across his eyebrow. He can tell how he likes his pasta from the bit of noodle stuck to his shoe and the tint left on his tongue from a recent meal. Etc. But then some of the stuff he divines is just bog stupid, like determining that he's in love with a girl named Jacie and doesn't get to see her as much as he'd like because of a name and phone number written on his bandaged hand. Um...would he need to have his girlfriend's number written on his hand? Wouldn't that name and number be much more likely to be from someone who he's just met in the last day or two? Also, Holmes deduced that he doesn't get to see her as much as he'd like from the fact that "she's not here right now, is she?"

Overall? I'd give this 5/10 as a Holmesian cold reading scene.

Anyway, for winning the bet Holmes gets them a big discount on Wiggins' guide services in the underground. On the flipside, Wiggins does infer that there's some timey-wimey shenanigans going on with Holmes based on his speech, mannerisms, and outfit (wait, why ISN'T he wearing modern clothes lol?), and prompts Holmes to identify himself (though he defers most of the exposition for later). So, they go down into the tunnels. Wiggins warns them that the underground has been unusually violent of late, so they'd best take care and keep weapons at the ready. Sure enough, just a little ways in they are accosted by a trio who look like a watered-down part of Zimbacca's pirate crew from ExoSquad. They aren't intimidated by the badge-wearing policewoman, and indeed decide that this is their perfect chance to steal a police comm device so they can listen in on police movements. They draw their lightsabres and charge.

I don't think I have anything to say about this that isn't self-evident.

They reach the good guys, and everyone else backs off while Ortega solos the trio. She's really, really good at fighting, apparently. And Sherlock apparently already knew this and planned around it. Despite every single combat showing of hers up until now pointing to the opposite.

I guess she's been hitting the gym since the last two times she went down like a wet potato sack despite having a positional advantage and the element of surprise.

Watsonbot thinks they should go help her, since it's wrong for a lady to fight while men simply stand back and watch. Holmes assures it that she can handle herself, and interviews Wiggins about recent goings-on in the underground. An interview that he should have conducted on the surface before even making a plan to go down there. Heck, an interview that even an incompetent police department like this one should have already done, considering how much detail Wiggins is able to give them despite not being in any way connected to it. Basically, he tells them exactly where in the underground the recent unpleasantness is centered around, and warns him about the rumors that "if you go in there, you don't come out yourself again."

-_____-

He knew that, and didn't mention it the minute they wanted him to take them into the underground.

Street people in general know this, and neither the police nor GENIUS INVESTIGATOR Holmes was able to learn it before going down there to wander aimlessly?

Well, anyway, I'd suspected that the titular "crime machine" was going to be something like this. Neo-Moriarty or possibly another one-off mad scientist villain is going to have a machine that makes people steal things for them in a completely predictable repurposing of the state's Ludovico brainwashing torture devices. The jewelry is for profit, the microchips are either to maintain the machine or to actually convert into implanted control chips that keep the victims under more permanent control.

Eh. Well, I guess so much for my "Neo-Moriarty, Hero of the People" interpretation, if he's the one behind this. Hopefully he won't be.

Ortega finishes subduing the thugs and has Watsonbot cuff them so they can be handed over to the department for neural resocialization. Then, the party moves on in the direction Wiggins told them to find the plot in; Wiggins himself is afraid to follow, so Holmes bids him goodbye until next time. They go to the place. Watson detects an illegal quantity of ozone pollution coming from up ahead. They round a corner and find themselves face to face with the genemodder dude - Fenwick, right, he's named Fenwick - and an armed robot that he promptly siccs on them.

Also, his accent has changed from terrible fake French to terrible fake German. He's doing the cliched "herr scientist" thing now, when he was cartoon-Parisian last time. I have no idea.

So, firefight happens. Ortega gets immediately chumped. I guess her performance against those three thugs was a one-off. A one-off that Holmes somehow saw coming. Genius, go figure. Watsonbot proves its utility by lassoing and tripping the big robot (whether that was part of its original programming or something it thought Watson would do, I couldn't say), but then gets grabbed and disabled by the bigger drone's flailing limbs. Still, while its prying Watsonbot open and cutting his wiring, it's distracted enough for Holmes to get to an old rail control switch. He then lures it toward him and turn on the electricity. The old electrical rails still work after all this time, it seems, and the current is strong enough to fry the big drone at least temporarily.

Unfortunately, while Holmes was doing that, Fenwick was creeping up around his flank. With Watsonbot damaged and Ortega already paralyzed by an energy-tether thing she got hit with in the opening round like a total schlub, Holmes has no one to protect him when Fenwick puts a stungun to his head and fires. Stun rather than kill, because he has uses he can put them up to with his new mind control thingy, most likely.

Yeah, that's it. Before stunning the restrained Ortega as well seemingly just to shut her up, he informs her that she's about to become number one on Scotland Yard's most wanted thanks to his "crimenosis" machine. Lol.

Writing this guy off as "mostly harmless" to begin with was either just another brainfart of the Chief's, or he's had a major, major negative character arc since that assessment was initially made.

...

Granted, one of the things that's been really bothering me about this show is the lack of distinction between crimes of different severity. It connects to a number of other, much more complicated, things that have been really bothering me, but here it's calling a lot of attention to itself mostly on its lonesome, so I'm noting it in the text.

I'm not going into the other stuff yet his show still coooooooouuuld redeem itself. The commissioner informed me that these first three episodes do form an arc that establishes things going forward, so I'm being charitable and waiting to see before tearing it an absolute new one.

...

Fenwick drops the bound and unconscious fuckwits in an old subway train and leaves to go take care of...erm...something or other?...before doing the thing to them. Holmes wakes up first, and manages to get his hands in front of him (though still cuffed together) and shake Ortega awake. While grumbling to himself about needing to turn to the "female" for assistance.

Holmes having an ongoing thing about 19th century sexism wouldn't bother me so much if the show was more consistent about it. Having him do the Victorian misogyny thing right after dismissing Watsonbot's chivalrous attempts to help her in combat and assuring him that she can handle herself in battle just seems...well, it makes Holmes seem like an asshole instead of simply a man of his time.

Anyway, he wakes her up, and she helps him hotwire Watsonbot back into functionality, who then frees them from the cuffs.

They escape the train (Ortega bangs her stupid face against the door trying to break it until Holmes triggers the train's fire safety alarm and causes the door failsafe to release, lol) and Holmes tells Ortega and Watsonbot to see if they can get it mobile again. He's going to go try and solo the guy who just mopped the floor with all three of them, and he thinks they might need a quick getaway when he comes back. Good luck, asshole.

...you know, the chief told them to keep in touch with him. They know where and what the bad guy is. They have a robot with a built-in comm system. Why aren't they just informing Scotland Yard? I mean, the chief would find a reason not to help them even if they did do that, but still, it seems like something they should at least try lol.

Holmes moves on in whatever direction he thinks Fenwick is in. How does he have any idea where that is? He doesn't know where Fenwick brought them when they were unconscious, so...oh who fucking cares.

Holmes follows his mystical plot senses, and they lead him to Fenwick's hideout despite them having lost their orientation and sense of direction. No security cameras or anything, obviously, why would the guy with a high tech villain lair have security cameras. Holmes climbs up a...thing...with a ladder built into the side of it, and finds Fenwick's homemade crimenosis lab. He's got a big machine that looks, as I predicted, fairly similar to the police's Ludovico devices. He's got a row of civilians restrained in chairs awaiting turns in the device, as he moves them through the assembly line.

...I thought Fenwick said he wasn't taking any chances with these ones, and wanted to turn them immediately? Why is he spending time on these randos, right after saying that? Why did he lock them in that train car instead of just bringing them straight here and securing them into these seats?

Meh.

Sherlock watches as Fenwick "crimenotizes" the next civilian in queue. The visual depiction of this raises some...erm...questions.

Before the helmet descends into place and the energy flashes, the captive looks like this:

And, after the process completes, they look like this:

One thing that still images can't capture is that Fenwick's machine actually seems to be significantly torturous than the police version. We don't see any twitching or struggling, or hear any cries of pain, as it works. In every single instance of the police resocialization process seen so far, there was twitching and yowling. So, to all appearances, the villain is actually using a less inhumane version of this technology than the "good guys." Not that that's saying much, when we're talking about abduction and mind control either way, but still, it's a very strange choice on the creators' part.

Now, with that out of the way, what is the implication we're supposed to draw from the victim's changing expressions?

Are they supposed to be drugged in that first shot? They've got this dopey, placid smile on while a hideous-looking supervillain cackles over them and applies a scary-looking machine to their head. They don't say anything. They don't react. Just smile dumbly and stare straight ahead. Honestly, it reminds me of how people look when they've just emerged from the police brainwashing device, but these are supposed to be upstanding citizens with no criminal records. Not Ludovico'd convicts who are getting the treatment reversed. So like...are they supposed to have been drugged or something?

Then there's the expression the "criminal" version of that civilian makes afterward. Like a feral animal or something. And, despite looking like a feral animal, they don't flip out and attack people at random when Fenwick lets them out. Instead, he gives them a specific list of items he wants them to steal from a specific electronics store, and they stop the bestial scowl just long enough to acknowledge his order with an evil grin before marching off to obey it.

Bizarre indeed.

Watching, Holmes sees that his suspicions have been confirmed. Even though Wiggins already basically confirmed them for him in as many words in response to being asked a few minutes ago. He also confirms that Fenwick has a particular shopping list, but muses about what it could possibly be for. He's building something else with these stolen parts and wealth, but what?

So, when Holmes implied that he already knew what they were doing with the specific robbery targets (aside from the jewelry stores), he was just bullshitting. Okay.

Holmes slips around to behind the big apparatus, and sees that Fenwick has unwisely cut corners by hooking the machine up to an old steam engine water tank for cooling purposes. Evidently this thing produces a LOT of heat. Or maybe he's actually using a 19th century vintage steam engine to power it for some strange reason. Well, anyway, the tank is hot and pressurized. Holmes starts scampering around it banging open weak spots with a chisle. I'm guessing that it IS coolant Fenwick is using it for, because Holmes establishes that this will cause the device to overheat and explode with the steam escaping.

Holmes is found by one of Fenwick's minions while he works, though. A crimenotized minion or just a normal one, who can tell. Holmes has to quickly stop breaking pipes and start dodging laser fire, with one shot only missing him because Watsonbot suddenly dives out of the side of the frame and tanks it for him.

Is Watsonbot going to do this every episode? We're batting 1:1 so far, heh.

With that interruption, they manage to stun the guy. Holmes expresses genuine concern for Watsonbot, which...is way to quick of a turnaround. I guess it having saved him changed his opinions about it very, very rapidly, because up until now he was just sort of irritated by its presence even if he grudgingly acknowledged its utility. He insists that he needs to get himself and it out of here before the machine explodes.

He helps the hobbled robot away, leaving the unconscious criminal (or, just as likely, brainwashed abductee) to die in the explosion.

Along with all the other captives we saw restrained in Fenwick's queue awaiting their turns.

...

Holy fuck.

...

Holmes and Watsonbot make it back to the train that Ortega's still working on. I thought she'd have only let Watson go help Holmes after they'd finished repairing the train, but I guess that's just too out of character for Garfield Minus Garfield. Turns out the control board just needed a kick to get it finished working though, which Holmes immediately knows (somehow) and provides.

The train uses the still-live rails to escape that region of the underground just before the explosion. A quick cut to Fenwick shows him and a single minion of his escaping as well. It may or may not have been the same guy they stunned before, but in any case I guess it sucks to be all the rest of the prisoners who were left bound to their dentist chairs watching the machines melt down around them until the inevitable explosion.

There's also a quick shot of some manhole covers in New London being blown open by pressurized steam, and the ground shaking. In what appears to be a somewhat busy shopping district. Holmes, what the fuck?

I guess Steven Moffat wasn't the first showrunner to decide that "sociopath Holmes" was a brilliant idea that the world couldn't do without.

Karma isn't totally sleeping on the job, though. The explosion cuts off the power, and the escape train goes out of control. Their train ends up breaking through a bricked-up wall and tumbling out of a raised riverside bulwark and into the Thames.

I'm surprised they aren't calling it the New Thames. Small mercies.

Holmes and Ortega swim to shore, but then Holmes realizes that Watsonbot isn't with them anymore. He calls out over the river for "Watson," seeming to be in genuine emotional distress. Even when Ortega gives him a baffled expression and says that she'll get a new one, whatever. Holmes protests that no, this is WATSON, he needs to save WATSON, he's not just a piece of equipment.

I'm guessing the creators wanted this to be "the episode where Sherlock learns to accept RoboWatson," but forgot to do the part where he actually does the learning. It's more like a switch gets flipped in his brain about 2/3 of the way through the ep.

Also, it's funny because "Watson" was literally just a vanilla police robot that was given the instructions "read these books and try to act like the person who wrote them." Any other of these robots would behave exactly the same way if given those orders. The show has utterly failed to establish that Robowatson has evolved beyond its programming and become an individual.

A lot of scifi shows do something like this with an AI character. Usually with at least one episode in the mid series dedicated to determining if they really do count as a person now and what that means for them and the people around them. They don't usually do it in the second episode, and they don't usually do it without having the AI character demonstrate some kind of actual evolution beyond their programming first.

I'd say that the emotional stakes here are comparable to Holmes mourning the loss of a volleyball with a handprint on it, except that "Cast Away" did a very good job of making us understand why Tom Hanks' character cares so much about this inanimate object so we can at least feel for him when he loses it. So no, this isn't even volleyball-with-a-handprint. This is more like GLaDOS telling Chell she's a monster for burning the companion cube and Chell actually believing her.

As Holmes despairs and Ortega tries to get him to chill out over a Cleverbot with a few hours of custom behavior programming, Watsonbot staggers out of the polluted river. Triumphant, dramatic music, trying to convince me to care. You stupid piece of shit soundtrack. You think you can make me care about THIS? THIS? If this show's soundtrack was a person I'd get a decade+ prison sentence.

Holmes kneels over Watsonbot and says that they really need to get him better waterproofing.

This robot just walked across the bottom of a polluted river, after being cut open by another robot and sustaining multiple gunshot wounds, and it's still moving and talking. How much fucking better can waterproofing get?

Watsonbot points out that Holmes just addressed it as Watson, for the first time since it was told to start immitating him. Holmes smiles, and tells it that that is it's name, isn't it? Heartwarming music as Holmes learns to accept this custom Siri UI as a genuine replacement for his lifelong friend and colleague. Whatever. Chief calls Ortega back to the department to whine impotently at her for letting Kovacs...holy shit, I actually typed that on accident lol, the parallels really are something...Holmes blow up an entire city block.

Well. We don't see the political aftermath, assuming there was any. Just cut to an indeterminate amount of time later, with Ortega telling Holmes that "they finally found a way to de-crimenotize" the victims. Referring to the ones who weren't blown up, presumably, but with resurrection tech being a thing now who knows. Ortega expresses satisfaction that "we've got the criminal element back under control." Her words, not mine. As they talk, she drives him to Baker Street, where she's just finished having that closed-down museum renovated into something else. A familiar something else, for Holmes. His old apartment restored to the way he kept it in life, to the best of her and the refurbishers' ability.

As he's thanking her for this, Watsonbot comes into the room, only now he has the head of the original Dr. John Watson. Ortega apparently had it put on one of those shapeshifting masks that the Chief demonstrated last episode so that it could immitate Watson's face as well as his voice. Because that's not fucking creepy or anything.

Along with this eerie and borderline ghoulish measure, Ortega tells Holmes that she's convinced New Scotland Yard to take him on permanent retainer as a consultant. I don't remember if that was the contractual arrangement he had in the original stories exactly, but it's close enough, and the job title of "detective consultant" at least is identical.

Holmes tells Ortega that this is all good as far as he's concerned. She can have the Chief send his cases to him directly. Ortega shakes her head, and tells him that no, that's not how it's going to work. Holmes is going to be her special consultant. He'll get his cases through her, and answer to her in turn.

Because I guess blowing up a big swathe of the old underground and possibly letting a busy shopping center collapse into the earth makes the department trust her control over Holmes more rather than less.

How did she finagle this, seriously?

I'm starting to think she just outright has dirt on the chief.

Holmes reacts in shock at the idea of being the formal subordinate of a woman. Ortega gets understandably annoyed at this. When Holmes asks her what sort of a world this has even become (lol he notably DIDN'T react this strongly to the many technologically-enabled horrors we've seen villains and "heroes" alike carry out in this future), she glares at him and says "A better one...for women."

Holmes then asks "And men?"

Watsonbot cuts in to say that that depends on what kind of man we're talking about. OH SNAP. Holmes is forced to concede that he's not being the person he should aspire to be, and apologizes.

Watsonbot says that if that's all, then he'll be returning to the station now. Holmes asks him why. Watsonbot says that that's where he belongs, he's a police robot after all. Holmes tells him that no, he's going to be staying here in his reconstructed Baker Street address, where he will answer to "Dr. Watson" fulltime.

Watsonbot smiles. Ortega shakes her head, and reminds Holmes that she's sorry, but she can't just leave police property sitting around in civilian hands overnight. Both men protest, and Ortega tells Watsonbot to revert to its original personality, which it promptly does, its Watson mask going eerily expressionless as it resumes its previous robotic monotone. When Sherlock reacts in shocked dismay that she'd effectively murder Watson after all he's done for them, she just outright laughs at him and points out the obvious.

This isn't the same "Watson" that accompanied them in the tunnels. That one was severely damaged, and it's not like they were going to make her wait for it to be fully restored before giving her another standard issue unit. She had it read the same memoirs and gave it the same instructions before handing it the mask device. So much for observational acuity, Holmes.

As Holmes stammers, clearly at a loss for words, Ortega takes a menacing stride toward him and explains that this is the dawning of the twenty-second century, the century of the GIRLBOSS. She is a GIRLBOSS. The chief defers to her GIRL POWER and ATTITUDE, just like Holmes, himself, will defer to her GIRL POWER and ATTITUDE. All men will submit to the POWER of WOMYN, regardless of the type of man they think they are.

She then reaches out the window and grabs a brown-skinned street urchin, pulls him into the apartment, and demands proof of citizenship. When the struggling youth can't provide it, she bites out his jugular vein, chewing hungrily as the blood oozes down her chin. She looks directly at the camera, still chewing, and demands that the audience buy this show's merch at once or else they'll be sexist, and that racial and economic injustices are lies peddled by bad people to hurt the corporations who love and own you. THE WORLD MUST BE RID OF BUGS. She kicks Holmes in the balls, and the end credits roll.

Everything after that last screencap was 100% my own invention, but I maintain that it is nonetheless the true and indeed only ending of this episode.

First of all, just as an addendum to my little DNC approved embellishment at the end there, I'm amused that they showed Ortega being completely chumped in battle, at moving heavy things, and at fixing machinery, all the most stereotypical masculine things...with the exception of that one obviously shoehorned fight against rando opponents that contributed nothing to the plot and had no impact on anything after it was over. Like, they remembered to stop being sexist JUST long enough to put in a context-agnostic girl power scene to set up this ending before going back to business as usual. So, that's funny too.

Now, as for everything else. @krinsbez refunded episode three to commission something else instead, so I've got nothing to wait for when it comes to analysis. To make absolute sure I'm being fair, I just went ahead and watched episode three to see if it pulled any rugs. It did not. It was much more enjoyable on its own merits than the first two, with much less stupidity and some actual interesting use of the 22nd century setting to boot (a play on the "Hound of the Baskervilles" set on the moon, with a robotic hound). But, while it didn't compound or add to any of the existing problems, it didn't do anything to mitigate them either, and I suspect that things get dire again as soon as the gang comes back to Earth in episode 4. So.

The essentialization, and medicalization, of criminal tendencies has a long and varied history. Late nineteenth century Europe, naturally, went all in on the skull-measuring here. This is the era when eugenics was considered a better preventative measure than wage increases for petty theft. When miserable brainlets were being taken 100% seriously by the academic community when they proposed that crime only existed because of evolutionary throwbacks to our apeman ancestors. The Sherlock Holmes stories were a product of their time in this regard. They didn't usually offend thaaaat badly, and they did occasionally have Holmes and Co show mercy and understanding to perps with sympathetic motives behind their crimes, but they did take it for granted that at least many (if not most) criminal tendencies were congenital.

If "Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century" had decided it was going to go the whole nine yards and make these Victorian-era ideas a factual part of its world as part of the show's gimmick, my feelings would have been...mixed. I don't think I'd have thought it a good idea, or particularly liked a story that was written that way, especially when taken to such extreme conclusions, but I'd have been willing to cut it quite a bit more slack.

Thing is, a wildcard cop who needs to be allowed to cause as much collateral damage as she wants and follow her wild hunches wherever they take her in order for the city to be safe? That doesn't play into Doyle-era morality. If a character like Garfield Minus Garfield had appeared in the original Sherlock Holmes stories, they wouldn't have been treated as just an unhelpful buffoon like the original Lestrade. They would have been a villain.

The way this bounces off the Holmesian ethos that the show sometimes pays lip service to is utterly whiplash-inducing. The cowboy cop who follows her instincts and doesn't let things like bureaucracy, ethics, or rational thought get in her way is anathema to everything the Sherlock Holmes stories were about. The show doesn't seem to understand this. We get Ortega (and eventually Holmes himself!) both doing these insane extralegal quests based on nothing but hunches and gut feelings, and then waxing poetic about elimination of impossibilties and acceptance of improbabilities, and eyes and brains, and so on. Seemingly with zero self awareness.

Victorian medicalization and modern copaganda are bad enough on their own, but this show seems to be determined to mix the absolute worst of both of them together to produce something even more grotesque than the sum of its parts. Which it then promotes uncritically. Unlike either the 19th century bullshit or the modern bullshit, this mixture doesn't even pretend to care about a law-abiding genotypical majority or a demographic subset of sheep who need sheepdogs. Ortega and Holmes disagree about some superficial things, but they have an unspoken consensus that they aren't in the business of protecting people at all; they're just in the business of stopping crime. Anything that prevents "crime" from happening is good. Anything that promotes "crime" is bad.

There's zero concern, or even token humanization, of victims. No token attempts at keeping civilians out of harm's way. Most people are vapidly smiling noncriminals, or angry snarling criminals eager to follow the orders of the closest evil mastermind, and changing one into the other is *literally* just flipping a switch. If some of them die, or suffer, then whatever, crime needs to be prevented. "Crime" which is characterized most frequently by stealing expensive luxury items from businesses. Crime isn't bad because it hurts people, it's bad because it threatens private property.

The show does all this while simultaneously patting itself on the back for shoehorning in the absolute most vapid, shallow pseudo-progressive soundbytes once or twice per episode.

Also, just to remind you, it's just plain stupid. It's a badly written, badly paced, insulting-to-even-a-child's-limited-intelligence low effort turd even before you get into its ethos and politics. Decently drawn, but that's literally the only thing it has going for it.