The Trouble With 'Sherlock'

So I no doubt offended half of the world by saying that not only is current Doctor Who severely flawed, but the show has never been perfect. Now, I might as well offend everyone else in the world by being possibly the only person on the internet to criticise Stephen Moffat’s other massively successful BBC show: Sherlock.

Perhaps Sherlock would be a far better show if I wasn’t overly-familiar with Moffat’s work. If the opening credits said that the show was written and produced by Sheridan Ponsonby, I would probably look upon the whole thing more fondly. But, the fact is that Sherlock himself is stuck between two worlds: intentionally flawed, and unintentionally heroic.

Sherlock is emotionally oblivious, self-absorbed, and constantly endangers others for the sake of the case. These are all character flaws created to produce drama and tension as Sherlock attempts to function in the real world. This is a good thing, and was something sorely lacking during Matt Smiths reign of Doctor Who – as the Eleventh Doctor was basically a god of time and space.

But that’s the problem – despite the base flaws, Sherlock is perfect. He can solve cases in a matter of seconds. He walks into a room and knows everything about it. He’s anti-authority. He has a fussy, mother-like figure look after him. He has at least two women perpetually attracted to him despite him acting like a jerk to them. The closest thing he has to a female antagonist is one who constantly flirts with him. He rents a flat in the heart of London, and never has to worry about money. He’s portrayed by a curly-haired heartthrob with a voice that’s ruined a thousand upholsteries. He does science, but not the icky kind of science where he dissects things but the sexy kind of science where he wears goggles and fiddles around with tubes. He can play the violin so well that he actually composes his own music. He even comes back from the dead! He also evades arrest at the end of series 3 because he’s just so awesome we can’t possibly punish him for MURDER.

He’s actually the most intelligent version of Holmes since that one time Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation cosplayed as him in one episode…and Data was an android capable of learning every language in the world in a matter of seconds (hence his name).

Sherlock is a fantasy. Specifically, it’s Stephen Moffat’s fantasy. He’s created a character that’s perfect in the sense that he has no responsibility or care for anything other than the thrill of the chase. Women find him attractive, and everyone else sticks by Sherlock despite the fact that in reality Watson would’ve left after the first series and Sherlock would’ve been kicked out of his flat the moment he started putting heads in the fridge – then would have been dropped by the police after he almost gets innocent people killed

Out of interest, I took this Mary Sue* test for Sherlock, and got a score of 125. The test says that anything above 50 is a very bad Mary Sue. I think that says everything, really. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to board up my shattered windows in preparation for the next wave of abuse. 

*A ‘Mary Sue’ is basically an author surrogate, or self-insert character. It’s a character who’s idolised by the author despite being poorly written and shallow.