Give it up, you're an illusion
I've got over 4000 words for my Sherlock fic, and I'm still stuck on the fictionland challenge :-/ No extract seems good complete or clever enough. Ugh.
So I thought I'd just fangirl for a bit until the block fades away :P
Part of the glory of BBC Sherlock is that it's only three episodes, so after one evening at eponine254's place I was all caught up. Why it's also really horrible is that there are only three episodes :( So out of curiosity and a compulsive need for more, I watched the unaired pilot. It was funny and embarrassing and the words 'potential disaster' were not used lightly when describing it.
The first thing I noticed was the direction was horrible compared to the aired series. Bad like wow. The pace was weird, the actors seemed lost and the smart, potentially brilliant script was drowned in awkwardness. The plot was also completely different because it was only 50 minutes, so there was no suicide note, no Mycroft kidnapping John, and Sherlock just sort of figured the whole thing out in one bound. So that was pretty dumb. And Sherlock's character was completely under-developed - Benedict Cumberbatch is awesome, but his first try at Sherlock is almost bland. There was none of that bold confidence and charm that makes Sherlock appealing, so he just looked like a jackass and we're left wondering why John would want to be around him.
The two interesting things about this version was that it spelled out things the broadcast one only hinted at. Firstly that Sherlock is asexual, rather than just 'unattached'. Secondly that he'd used hard drugs in the past, so much that he was almost resistant to the tranquilizer the evil cabbie injects him with (so much for being lured into the cabbie's world by the mystery of the suicides, then...) and he's drugged throughout the confrontation scene.
The bigger decision of drugging Sherlock in the climax scene was an odd one, I think. We don't know the character well enough to be edge-of-our-seats intrigued by this artificial dampening of his intellect, and that he later admits that he "lost track" (!) of which pill was which is a total buzzkill. Maybe later on in the series it'll be interesting to see something like this happen, but in the first episode it just undermines a character who's supposed to be one step ahead of everyone.
There's also a really uncomfortable moment when Sherlock's drugged up and writhing around and the cabbie says "I could do anything to you right now, anything at all..." and there's a really long shot of Sherlock lying helpless and disoriented on the floor, until the cabbie adds, "But I'm just going to kill you." Ding ding ding! We just found what made the BBC not want to air this. Nothing quite like a male-on-male rape threat to kill the ratings. As much as I approve of slash, that line was really like WTF. If they were gonna go there, they may as well have made the cabbie hot. That was wrong.
So yeah, overall it was interesting to see the 'draft' phase of the first episode. I'm glad I watched it for a few cute and thought-provoking moments. It was funny to see the bad bits too, and the awkward renditions of soon-to-be perfect lines. It's cool to see what things they changed and how they added so many layers of character development to make the broadcast episode so awesome.
So I thought I'd just fangirl for a bit until the block fades away :P
Part of the glory of BBC Sherlock is that it's only three episodes, so after one evening at eponine254's place I was all caught up. Why it's also really horrible is that there are only three episodes :( So out of curiosity and a compulsive need for more, I watched the unaired pilot. It was funny and embarrassing and the words 'potential disaster' were not used lightly when describing it.
The first thing I noticed was the direction was horrible compared to the aired series. Bad like wow. The pace was weird, the actors seemed lost and the smart, potentially brilliant script was drowned in awkwardness. The plot was also completely different because it was only 50 minutes, so there was no suicide note, no Mycroft kidnapping John, and Sherlock just sort of figured the whole thing out in one bound. So that was pretty dumb. And Sherlock's character was completely under-developed - Benedict Cumberbatch is awesome, but his first try at Sherlock is almost bland. There was none of that bold confidence and charm that makes Sherlock appealing, so he just looked like a jackass and we're left wondering why John would want to be around him.
The two interesting things about this version was that it spelled out things the broadcast one only hinted at. Firstly that Sherlock is asexual, rather than just 'unattached'. Secondly that he'd used hard drugs in the past, so much that he was almost resistant to the tranquilizer the evil cabbie injects him with (so much for being lured into the cabbie's world by the mystery of the suicides, then...) and he's drugged throughout the confrontation scene.
The bigger decision of drugging Sherlock in the climax scene was an odd one, I think. We don't know the character well enough to be edge-of-our-seats intrigued by this artificial dampening of his intellect, and that he later admits that he "lost track" (!) of which pill was which is a total buzzkill. Maybe later on in the series it'll be interesting to see something like this happen, but in the first episode it just undermines a character who's supposed to be one step ahead of everyone.
There's also a really uncomfortable moment when Sherlock's drugged up and writhing around and the cabbie says "I could do anything to you right now, anything at all..." and there's a really long shot of Sherlock lying helpless and disoriented on the floor, until the cabbie adds, "But I'm just going to kill you." Ding ding ding! We just found what made the BBC not want to air this. Nothing quite like a male-on-male rape threat to kill the ratings. As much as I approve of slash, that line was really like WTF. If they were gonna go there, they may as well have made the cabbie hot. That was wrong.
So yeah, overall it was interesting to see the 'draft' phase of the first episode. I'm glad I watched it for a few cute and thought-provoking moments. It was funny to see the bad bits too, and the awkward renditions of soon-to-be perfect lines. It's cool to see what things they changed and how they added so many layers of character development to make the broadcast episode so awesome.