Looking for inspiration in all the wrong places.

As we are now fully into the aftermath of Sherlock's "The Abominable Bride," which brought the Cumberbatch and Freeman incarnations of Sherlock and John to the Victorian era, the sheer meta whirlpool it invoked is like staring into Pandora's box as chaos swirls out.

We now have either a.) A Victorian Sherlock Holmes who occasionally dreams of a modern Sherlock Holmes, or b.) A mind palace Victorian universe existing solely in the mind of a modern Sherlock Holmes, or c.) Two parallel universes with Sherlocks sharing a psychic link, or d.) A TV show Sherlock Holmes whose writers can do any strange thing with him, or e.) A modern Sherlock who has fine-tuned combinations of drugs to work like wonderful cable TV package able to tune to any sort of personal AU programming, or f.) whatever else the hell you might imagine it to be.

It's almost like somebody just looked at fanfic's depth and breadth and went, "Let's just make anything possible within the Sherlock Canon since they're going there anyway."

But at the same time, the fanfic writing world didn't need any help letting their imaginations play out as many possible scenarios as anyone literally could imagine. An imaginary episode doesn't really add much grist to that mill. You've got to have solid ground to build on.

What "Abominable Bride" did dish out, as some have observed, is a mindscape of Sherlock's brain for analysis. Does this mean we'll see fans dividing up along Freudian, Jungian, and other psychiatric school lines during this hiatus? Heading into arcane realms of dream analysis to see what it all meant? Or worse, theorizing/experimenting about/with psychoactive drug cocktails to see which produces the best Victorian adventure? It's definitely a different set of puzzles from the "how did he not die?" days.

One almost wants to grab Moffet by the shoulders and shout, "Did you make a TV listing? For God's sake, is there a TV listing?"

My original thought, before all of this, was that I would ponder "Abominable Bride" for a while and consider what sort of adventures that Victorian Sherlock might have. But if you can teleport yourself to Reichenbach Falls and then fall-fly off of it, well Stoke Moran and doing lasso tricks with a swamp adder, Baskerville Hall and bucking-hound-riding, and herding pygmy cattle across the Thames . . . whoa there, pardner? Cowboy Sherlocking? Now you're going too far . . . unless Matt Smith . . . .

Oh, for pity's sake! That thing will ruin your brain! Just say no to thinking about "Aboominable Bride," kids. Because Toby the Victorian crime dog says so!

Too late.