The advent of a widely broadcast TV show that's Sherlock Holmes related has brought on a wave of opinions in every venue where opinions are expressed. And as with any TV show involving Sherlock Holmes . . . except maybe the holy Granada, which only gets a pass on its final season due to the illness of its star . . . the knives are out. Not from every Sherlockian, of course, but darn close. We may not all gather together to express our opinions on TV shows like Matlock, but tie in Holmes and everyone comes to the table.
But, as some would say, we are a literary fandom. Of course, we're going to be harder on non-literary mediums. The movie is never as good as the book. (Except for maybe Twilight, but that's an entirely different discussion.) Why aren't we as hard on books? Why don't we see our trollish side coming after the writings of Laurie King, Bonnie MacBird, Lyndsay Faye, and Nicholas Meyer?
Well, because we're not all reading pastiches. When we were reading more pastiches back in the day, Sherlockiana as a whole was very hard on pastiches. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution got away with a mild "rather far-fetched" comment in the first issue of The Baker Street Journal that it was mentioned in, but the book's author, Nicholas Meyer, also had an article in that same issue. We are kinder to those we know.
Case in point, when the creator of CBS's Elementary spoke to Sherlockians at a BSI-run conference before that show came out, it got a much kinder treatment in traditional Sherlockian venues than it might have otherwise gotten. Like the Doyle estate, we seem to have wanted our fee paid, but it was attention and not dollars. If we know you, we'll let you pass.
I made a comment on a recent podcast that while we'll rip on about a TV show, we'll never go after articles in any of our journals or books. They may have all of the same problems of a television adaption -- dullness, off-topic, taking some weird angle on something we'd personally rather not see -- but, again, they're written by part of the clan and collected and published by the most respected members of that clan. And none of the above are making any money for said works, they're just doing it for the love.
Back when internet piracy first raised its ugly head, many a movie had some small comment attached about the number of jobs that movie made and the families it supported as a hoped-for deterrent to people thinking they could have movies for free. Some things will only get made for the money, especially with the budget required to make a movie or a TV show. There might be love of Holmes in there somewhere, but we don't even see our wealthier collectors trying to fund a production purely out of love.
So maybe we might want to be a little more publicly supportive of productions that get Sherlock Holmes out to the masses and eventually bring us the diehard Sherlock Holmes fans that make up this hobby? I mean, we're already giving free passes to those within our ranks on so much silliness. (Speaking as a lifetime beneficiary of said free passes.) Or are we too fond of the chance to grouse over something not as incendiary as the stuff we really want to grouse over . . . you've seen the world out there . . . as a needed release?
If we need to fight against something, there's always AI. No AIs have joined our ranks yet, so we don't have to be nice to those digital cretins yet. Though one is probably reading this now and having its feelings hurt (in the future, if not now), so I suppose I shouldn't go there. Sorry, AI Sherlock Holmes fan, whichever future date you're reading this . . .
Sigh.
