Since the new year is always a moment to contemplate change, sometimes it's easier to look at how we have changed over the years instead of how we hope to change in the future. So let's step back to January of 1991. Instead of this blog, I was writing a monthly column for our local Sherlockian society's newsletter, Plugs & Dottles. (The Hansoms of John Clayton version -- it's a newsletter name others have used too.) And what did I write that January?
"Out, Damned Watson!" -- an essay that proposed eliminating Dr. Watson from future Sherlock Holmes adaptations. I know, right? What the heck!
It begins with the words, "One of the nicer points of Sherlockian scholarship is that when things get complicated, you can always blame Dr. Watson." And then it proceeds to complain about all the Watson problems -- chronology, wound, Doyle's name on the cover of the books, and then starts to go even further. Watson somehow caused acid rain and international terrorism? I was not in a good place in 1991, I suspect.
The editorial gets into how Granada added Watson to their adaptation of "The Musgrave Ritual," a case he had nothing to do with, and that seems to spark an opposite proposal: Take Watson out of the adaptations and just focus on Holmes's detectivework. Watson was there as a narrator was needed in written form, but for movies and TV?
(Quick side note on the podcast Sherlock & Co.'s latest case: Sidelining Watson for "The Adventure of the Three Gables" and making Marianna Ametxazurra the person who accompanies Holmes for most of the adventure. So it is possible to do an enjoyable show without Watson . . .)
My 1991 proposal of removing Watson claimed that the new adaptations would "move at a quicker pace without having to wait for Watson, thus allowing them to keep up with the fast-paced adventure films that would be their competition." (1991 me had not seen a certain Robert Downey Jr. film yet.) "New blood will be drawn into the Holmes cult, and these new Sherlockians won't have to worry whether Watson was a woman or Jack the Ripper. They won't have to worry about Watson at all."
Apparently, 1991 me had a moment where the idea of amputating Dr. Watson from the pair might make the world a better place. Fast forward to 2025, and I'm beginning my seventh season as the host of a podcast called "The Watsonian Weekly," having gotten there during a stint as editor of The Watsonian, the journal of the John H. Watson Society. So I guess that idea didn't stick.
Had the internet existed in 1991, I suspect I'd have been a bit of a Sherlockian troll. But, thirty-four years later, I'm a much nicer fellow. Although I do always like that BBC Sherlock line from Holmes, "Oh, I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second that I am one of them." I'll try to be kind to Watson in 2025, as I have, apparently, evolved since 1991.
But you know how New Year's resolutions go . . . .
