the bbc sherlock series by the dr who 'bloke' and starring tim from the office

Yeek, post could've used some proofreadin'.

Note I am not getting involved.

Every series is hugely patchy but the good bits make it worth persevering. If you get through the Ecclestone series and don't like any of it (especially Dalek, The Empty Child/Doctor Dances and Father's Day) then it probably isn't going to be for you.

yeah, i'm not sure i'd recommend jumping in on something like 'Blink', i think it'd be like starting watching Buffy with 'Hush' or 'The Body'? but starting at 'eleventh hour' might work, as that's quite an introductory episode.

Blink is a) totally standalone, b) by Moffatt and c) a MYSTERY!!! hence recommended for someone coming to Dr Who blind because "the sherlock 'bloke'" does it

otherwise yes Eleventh Hour is totally introductory and...

Each season is only 13 episodes, so it won't take that long,

...with the Christmas specials and the final year of Tennant, this is telling someone who hasn't liked her first RTD episode "oh it's only another FORTY-SEVEN HOURS of that to sit through to get to the Steven Moffatt run!"

TEHRESA!: The Moffatt episodes in the first five years are
S01e09 and S01e10 - a two-parter of The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances
S02e04 - The Girl In The Fireplace
S03e10 - Blink
and S04e09 / S04e10 - a two-parter that's his weakest, but the only one that actually sets up stuff in his run proper. Silence In The Library / Forest Of The Dead.

Then there's a year without a series number, and Moffat has been in charge through S05 and S06. S05e01 is The Eleventh Hour.

You will ABSOLUTELY NOT miss anything by only watching his episodes* - if you find you enjoy a certain Doctor/companion combination, you can go back and fill-in later. I have tested this method on ladyn00bs before (with 3 optional non-Moffatt eps thrown in, including the one you've watched) and it has been totally effective.

*the Doctor is an alien with a blue box that travels in time and space, and his face changes periodically. OK, you're set.

this is telling someone who hasn't liked her first RTD episode "oh it's only another FORTY-SEVEN HOURS of that to sit through to get to the Steven Moffatt run!"

Wait, NOBODY liked "Rose" all that much! This is cutting the nose to spite the face for real, especially when there's great non-Moff episodes like "School Reunion," "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood," "Midnight," and "The Shakespeare Code." (I should note that I've found Moff's run to be incredibly disappointing, what with its phallocentrism and such.)

The sixth season was disappointing, but the fifth season to me was perfect and everything I ever wanted from this show. Well, except for the Silurians.

teensy lol that "hey, mark gatiss wrote some doctor who episodes too!" has not come up as a selling point thus far.

IT NEVER WILL.

Just thinking about The Idiot's Lantern annoys me.

I read one of Gatiss' Who novels that was quite good. And one of his audios that was trying hard but non-entirely-awful. All his TV eps until Night Terrors have about five minutes of great business and otherwise suck terribly though. Night Terrors is PERFECTLY DECENT Dr Who, there I said it

Wait, NOBODY liked "Rose" all that much!

Almost everything shitty about Rose is Boak stuff they couldn't reshoot, it's Davies' best-written episode IMO - does an amazing job of setting up the premise and characters for new and old viewers alike, establishing the tone of the series, grounding it in present-day reality and very steadily opening up the alien and adventure aspects. It LOOKS absolutely awful (especially in hindsight), but in 45 minutes singlehandedly invented a working paradigm for a massively successful family-friendly C21st version of Dr Who. I p much hold RTD on estimation with JNT as a showrunner, but the dude is a TV genius for the way he envisioned and enacted nu-Who, and most of that is encapsulated in Rose.

This is cutting the nose to spite the face for real, especially when there's great non-Moff episodes like "School Reunion,"

<3 the hell out of School Reunion, but it's of 0 use to Tehresa trying to get into the sherlock "bloke"'s other series.

"Human Nature"/"Family of Blood,"

OK-ish adaptation for most of the time, but soooo much lesser than the novel, which is still free on archive.org. and the ending is so infuriating that I'd write the entire two-parter off even if it was original. iirc me and st3v3m argued abt that on the Who thread of the year tho.

"Midnight,"

RTD purposefully trying to write a Moffatt-style episode, but let down by his own complete disinterest in plotting that makes sense.

and "The Shakespeare Code."

dude c'mon

Rose, Spearhead and Eleventh: the only good "new Doctor" episodes ever.

Night Terrors is no shoddier than Hounds Of Baskerville

</on the real>

No place in that list for Robot? Really?

<I>OK-ish adaptation for most of the time, but soooo much lesser than the novel, which is still free on archive.org. and the ending is so infuriating that I'd write the entire two-parter off even if it was original. iirc me and st3v3m argued abt that on the Who thread of the year tho.</I>

This is some pretty severe challops dude, it's one of the three or four best Tennant episodes, admittedly partly because of the lack of Tennant-as-Doctor, also a feature in Blink and Love & Monsters (and I'm well aware that my love for the latter is challops).

(But agree entirely about Rose - the episode's job was to get old fans and new fans simultaneously giddy, and it did a great job)

I was kind of wondering, was the point of the ending "The Reichenbach Fall" to get the viewers to apply the "Sherlock method" on the episode itself? I.e., did the makers deliberately include all the bits of information you need to decipher how Sherlock survived in the episode, and then refuse to explain it, so you'd rewatch it and try to find all the clues yourself? Because there certainly were a lot of potential clues: the ball Sherlock was toying with, Sherlock's final meeting with Molly, the biker who ran down Watson, etc. I can't see any other season why they'd end the final episode of the season with such an infuriatingly open note. (Ok, the first season ended with a cliffhanger too, but at least the mystery was solved before that.) Has the writer/director/producer addressed this after the episode ran in Britain?

He said that "everyone" had missed a crucial piece of evidence that explains how Sherlock did it, so yes, it does seem a little like they were imagining viewers could piece together the puzzle.

He still says "everyone" has missed something in The Eleventh Hour that explains everything too, so Posts Very Much In Character.

Robot is 40% good I guess? Lots of it is rly rly shaky and it doesn't have anything like the confidence of presentation that the other three do. (It's possible that ep 1 of Robot is 90+% great, I can't think what's in episode by episode. The CSO in ep 4 is bad enough to mark the entire story down though!)

I've never rewatched Love & Monsters but I think I really really like it too - it's an entirely elegant way of using the show to tell a story that's simultaneously about fandom and communities in general, and in many subtle ways about Who itself. Also a VERY elegantly-conceived and handled way of handling a 'holiday' episode for the stars!* Would have been way better without the Blue Peter villain, but that said, lol Ian Levine.

we should probably migrate to a Who thread rather than dig into Human Nature (/ any of the last couple dozen posts) here, but I note you're not counter-arguing that it's BETTER than the novel!

*I recently watched both The Aztecs and The Time Meddler for the first time in full, and these do great jobs of being busy and interesting enough that you don't miss the holidaying actors tbf

The only thing I know Moffatt's said about clues in The Eleventh Hour is that Rory's badge was a production error, so anyone looking for more is on a hiding to nothing

Moff has referred to the extra stairs as well, for example, and gone 'aaaaaah'. (No, not aaaaah. This is not an aaaaaah situation.)

I still like Ian L, but I suspect if I rewatched it I would not be as vituperative about how much of an attack it was on him. Still, paving slab blow job jokes DO NOT WANT.

The CSO and Action Man tank let Robot down, but the first ep interaction with Harry and AGLS is joyous. And I love the whole plot about the elderly scientist being taken in by the Not Nazis Honest Guv and their anti-human meeting in a school sports hall. (Agree though, this should probably be in a Who thread).

Still, paving slab blow job jokes DO NOT WANT.

I 100% agree with this, mainly because you can't use "it's a kids' show, stop moaning about it being for kids" as a defence if you're then including things that are not suitable for a kids' show. Also, blow job jokes in Doctor Who are just tacky.

OK. I think I decided this isn't actually very good. Maybe if I was 10 I would like it.

Seriously, does it get better? I only seen the first two. There's nothing too wrong with them, it's just a bit bland?

i think i like it because it makes me feel a bit like a kid, yet still an adult, obv - suspension of disbelief stuff. though the show doesn't always work to that effect, it's true.
(lol @ yr display name)

Adam, the second episode is probably the worst in the series, you should at least watch the third one, it's much better. But if the main concept (aspie guy solves outlandish crimes with the power of deduction) doesn't grab you, that isn't gonna change, though the second series at least has more interpersonal drama.

Amazon in the UK currently has the first series on region-free blu-ray for £6. I'm guessing there's not much in the way of frills on there.

bbc dvd/blu-rays are normally pretty extra-laden (cf their doctor who discs), i know these discs have commentary tracks, at the v least

old-school Dr Who extras are largely compiled by a dedicated nerd network though, not through endemic BBC policy AFAIU. (no idea about the new series ones though)

or you know, we could google

The extras on the DVD are a little thin on the ground. There are commentaries for A Study In Pink and The Great Game, along with a short ‘behind the scenes' feature, Unlocking Sherlock, and the original 60 minute pilot. To be honest, there's little point in watching the pilot, as it's a 60 minute version of A Study In Pink, but it's nice to know that it's there.

I could go and open the one that arrived from Amazon today, but I'm too lazy.

Not to drag out the Who thing, but I just wanted to point out that as awesome a sci-fi story as it is, and arguably as good a Who episode as it is, "Blink" doesn't really introduce viewers to the Doctor?

It just takes us back to a time when Carey Mulligan wasn't a bland nonentity like she was in Drive.

:(

xp - actually I think it does! It's an intro to the Doctor from the point of view of a bright civilian, we learn what she learns, it's a little brisk but doesn't I think skip past anything you need to know, and by the end you have a decent wordcloud of him - alien, energetic, travels through time, frequently sorry.

An alternative entrypoint could be the Girl in the Fireplace, which has equally beguiling time travel tricks up its sleeve but features a lot more of the Doctor.

A little of that Doctor goes a long way :)

Isn't there a separate thread for Doctor Who?

Sorry if that sounded harsh, but it's sad to notice new posts in this thread, but when I click on it none of them are about Sherlock.

We have nothing to say until Smilin' Steve Moffatt deigns to drop the revelation bomb on us.

Tuomas we are talkin about which Dr Who eps a Sherlock fan might like. So it is sort of connected. Sorry you're bummed out tho.

http://circletheglo.be/post/19574276992/redscharlach-otters-who-look-like-benedict

https://twitter.com/#!/StarShaped_Girl/status/199913017574563840/photo/1/large

I watched Hound of the Baskervilles on the plane recently, and actually enjoyed it despite some of the cheesy bits. Cumberbatch is quite a good Sherlock! Think I will investigate more of them.

That's the weakest of all of the episodes --which is not to say I didn't enjoy it -- so I think you'd better.

Second weakest. Skip S01e02 altogether Veg.

you're not the boss of me

http://youtu.be/yrDVSxNycKc

Trailer thingy for CBS' own Sherlock Holmes series, Elementary. Looks like a rather generic police procedural with a 'quirky' lead character - a la Monk - to me.

If I want a Yank Sherlock I'll watch House, I think.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m45a6hTNoB1rr2txjo1_1280.png

What is it with America casting short arse Sherlocks. Johnny Lee Miller isn't Robert Downy short but he's hardly tall and striking. (one of the reasons that Cumberbatch makes a good Sherlock)

what is it with american television and british film actors of the 90s