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polk-a-dop · 6 years ago

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The variations of the canon of Sherlock Holmes

This is my very overdue essay I wrote last year on the variations of the canon of Sherlock Holmes. It should just be under the cut, and Im very sorry to mobile users who dont get a cut and just have the full post.

Why am I posting this now? Because i remembered about it and I wanted to share it before the 17th.

Thank you to everyone that helped with my research, mostly by just doing my survey and blogging it so more people could answer it. I would tag you all but I either cant remember who shared it or I dont want to annoy you.

The variations of the canon of Sherlock Holmes

My EPQ is about the different adaptations and variations that exist of the canon of Sherlock Holmes, the canon is the 56 short stories and 4 novels that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, why they exist and other adaptations and interpretations that could be seen in the future. For this I am classing works that are almost identical to some of the canon as adaptations alongside works that follow on or show a different story from the original canon, along with this I will also mention works which have been clearly influenced by the original canon but these are not included as being adaptations of the canon. I have chosen to do this topic for my EPQ as I am very interested in the canon and variations of the Sherlock Holmes stories and feel as though there will be a lot of variations to write about as the canon has been around for over 130 years.

The original author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was a Scottish born British writer that is mainly known for writing about the fictional character Sherlock Holmes from 1887 to 1893 and 1903 to 1927. The gap that is present from 1893 to 1903 is because Doyle attempted to kill of the character in “The Final Problem” as he felt burnt out and tired of writing about the same characters and wanted to focus on his other writing which mainly consisted of historical novels, he later brought the character back in 1903, ten years after he originally killed the character, in “The Empty House” as he no longer felt as burnt out as he previously did and he was also offered a large amount of money per story he subsequently wrote.He also wrote about the character Sherlock Holmes in “The Field Bazaar” which was originally published in 1896 to help raise money for the University of Edinburgh and is sadly not considered part of the canon, and then again in his 1901 novel “The Hound of the Baskervilles” which, due to how the public and publishers received it, then lead to Holmes’ return in 1903. During the time that Holmes was killed Doyle also wrote several short stories which do not explicitly mention Holmes or the characters in Holmes’ universe but two of them,“The Lost Special” and “The Man with the Watches”, are implied to be Sherlock Holmes stories as they involve an unnamed detective and are written in a similar style to the other Holmes stories, because of this these implied stories are not included in the canon. In 1921 Doyle also wrote “The Crown Diamond: An Evening with Sherlock Holmes” which is a one act play and is almost identical to his short story titled “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone”, the play is also not included in the canon although the short story is, another work that is sadly not included in the canon is a very short story titled “How Watson Learned the Trick” which is a total of 503 words which was written for Queen Mary's dolls' house and involves Watson attempting to show Holmes his own deduction skills.

Ever since the first few short stories about Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson were written people have been hooked and the Sherlock Holmes fandom was created, despite there being two Sherlock novels already written and published before the short stories people didn't quite take to the character until the shorts were written. The fanbase surrounding the character continued to grow at such speed that by the 26th installment of the canon in 1893, titled “The Final Problem” in which Holmes dies, society was acting as though it were a real death by dressing in mourning and wearing black armbands to commemorate the detective, obituaries were also published in newspapers and multiple people also canceled their subscription to The Stand which published the Holmes stories at the time. To society's delight Doyle brought Holmes back in order to create the other 34 works in the canon. Some suggest that Holmes was originally so popular in the Victorian era because the general public were able to relate to the stories because of their representations of Victorian society including all the good and bad qualities. It can also be suggested that Holmes was portrayed as a true Victorian gentleman which would have aided in success of the canon, along with how it is never fully known how Holmes fits into the class system that was present at the time as he can’t simply be thought of as ‘upper class’ because he needed Watson to help pay the rent in the property they shared but he also can’t be thought of as being part of the ‘working class’ because of the lifestyle he leads.

Despite their being 60 canon works and 4 non canon works by Doyle that did not stop the public's demand for more Sherlock Holmes which has, over the course of the past 130+ years, caused there to then be multiple sequels, pastiches, imitations, plays, movies, TV shows and over 100,000 fan created works following the story of the detective. Most of these adaptations have been made because the creators of them felt a strong connection to the original series and wanted to either update it or add their own little changes to the canon the most notable change is the addition of Holmes trademark deerstalker and cloak which despite never being mentioned in the canon appear in the illustrations drawn by Sidney Paget that went along with the canon when it was originally published. Following on from this some of the other adaptations were even created whilst Doyle himself was still alive and writing more Holmes stories, in this particular instance Doyle had just written a Holmes based play that ended up being rewritten by William Gillette who asked Doyle “May I marry Holmes?” to which Doyle replied “You may marry him, or murder or do what you like with him.” which is now a rather famous quote regarding changing Doyle's work and is often brought up in a response to those people who believe Doyle would not agree with some of the changes done to the canon such as Watson becoming a woman or Holmes being set in 21st century London. Despite this their are always gaps between when new adaptations are created because the public will have lost interest in the canon itself or creating an adaptation of it. The most recent resurface of the public's interest in Sherlock Holmes began in 2009 with the release of the RDJ(Robert Downey Jr) film aptly titled Sherlock Holmes, since then RDJ has starred in sequel to that film and two wildly popular TV shows have been created titled Sherlock in 2010 and Elementary in 2012.

The first film series containing Sherlock Holmes was a collection of 5 films released in 1931-37 starring Arthur Wontner as Holmes. They were titled ‘The Sleeping Cardinal’ which was based on ‘The Final Problem’ and ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’, ‘The Missing Rembrandt’ which was based on ‘The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton’, ‘The Sign of Four:Sherlock Holmes’ Greatest Case’ which was based on ‘The Sign of the Four’, ‘The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes’ which was based on ‘The Valley of Fear’, and ‘Silver Blaze’ which was based on ‘The Adventure of the Silver Blaze’ and ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. These films and their success would have likely contributed to the creation of the Basil Rathbone film series which was released from 1939-46 which what most likely introduced a new generation of people to the Sherlock Holmes series and has also gone on to be the influence of more modern adaptations. The Rathbone series consists of 14 different Holmes based films only two of which are following Holmes in Victorian London. The first film in the series titled ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ and the second film in the series titles ‘The adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ is based on the play Sherlock Holmes written by William Gillette. The rest of the films are set in World War II London as they were being produced during the second World War, this means that the Rathbone series was one of the first series to adapt the Sherlock Holmes canon to the modern day equivalent at the time. Another notable film series is the RDJ adaptations which are also set in Victorian London, although their are only two films in this series it is quite likely the most well known Holmes series out of the three, according to my survey 88 out of the 97 people that answered that question have heard of the adaptation and a further 67 people have watched the adaptation. The RDJ series is as popular is it is because it has been released in the last decade, ‘Sherlock Holmes’ in 2009 and ‘Sherlock Holmes:A game of shadows’ in 2011, which means that t has had more of a world wide reach in both release and advertising than the other two series. This series in particular first follows Holmes take on a new case but has elements drawn from the original series and the second film also mainly follows a new case but has more prominent elements from the original canon such as the character Moriarty and the fate of Holmes at the end of the film. There is also supposed to be a third installment in the series but it is unknown when it will be released, if it does get produced it will most likely follow the same main cast on another new case but will still contain elements of the canon series.

Alongside the three main film series there have been several standalone film adaptations made of the original canon. Some of the most notable of these standalone films are ‘The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’ which was released in 1970 contains a rather convoluted new case for Holmes but also shows some of Holmes and Watson's personal life which the writer has embellished upon such as Holmes being written as a rather ambiguous gay man. ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ which was released in 1985 and shows Holmes and Watson meeting at a young age in boarding school and the rest of the story is fairly original but contains some aspects from four of the original canon stories, ‘The Great Mouse Detective’ which is inspired by the Rathbone series but is actually an adaptation of a book called ‘Basil of Baker Street’ which was inspired by the original canon, the film was released in 1986 and was made by Disney which causes this to be some people's favourite childhood film, the main character named Basil, which is a play on Basil Rathbone, and contains several references to the canon stories and includes a clip of Rathbone as Sherlock. And finally ‘Mr Holmes’ which was released much later in 2015 and follows an elderly Holmes, played by Sir Ian McKellen, trying to remember and solve his last case, it is also set in 1947 30 years after Holmes retired. This film is also and adaptation of a book titled ‘A Slight Trick of the Mind’ which is continuation of the canon Holmes character. The majority of the film adaptations were released during the 63 year gap between the final film in the Rathbone series and the first film in the RDJ series, and as shown by ‘The Great Mouse Detective’ the Rathbone series was still inspiring films and new adaptations at least 40 years after its last installment.

Continuing from the film adaptations many different TV variations have been made that are either adaptations of the canon or have been inspired by the original canon. There are several notable TV variations the earliest of which is from 1954-1955 and is simply titled ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and stared Ronald Howard as Sherlock Holmes. This series ran for only one season that consisted of 39 half hour episodes, the series was primarily made up of new stories but some episodes were adaptations from the original canon with some slight changes. This series was also the first american TV adaptation of the original canon, the second american adaptation is ‘Elementary’.

The next adaptation is titled ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ which ran from 1984-1994 and starred Jeremy Brett and Sherlock Holmes. As this series ran for ten year it is very likely that it introduced a generation to the original canon, in my survey 68 of the 97 responses said that they had heard of this series, 42 of the 68 said they had watched the series and 27 people said that it was their favourite adaptation. The series itself ran for 9 seasons and had 41 episodes in which it covered most of the original canon. Brett also starred in a play titled ‘The Secret of Sherlock Holmes’ which was written specifically in response to the TV series.

The next series is not a full adaptation of the original canon but is instead heavily influenced by it, it is titled ‘House’ and is an american TV show which ran from 2004 to 2012 and had 8 seasons with a total of 177 episodes the series also featured Hugh Laurie as Dr Gregory House, it was set in the modern day of the time and often followed House treat his hospital patients. The way House diagnoses his patients is similar to the way Holmes solves his cases, along with this House’s apartment is 21B and he suffers from an addiction to prescription painkillers much like how Holmes suffered from a drug addiction. House also has a friend called Dr James Wilson which is very similar to Dr John Watson, who has been referred to as James in the original canon. Along with these there are some direct references to the original canon, for example the patent in the pilot had the name Adler like Irene Adler, the man that shoots House is credited as Moriarty and the last episode of the series is a homage to the canon and how Holmes faked his own death. In my survey 79 out of 97 people said that they had hear of House and 54 of the 79 said they had watched it and a further 11 people said that House was their favorite ‘adaptation’ of the canon. I think that this is because this series is more modern than the previously mentioned ones and has benefited from the rise of social media and advertising, much like the RDJ film series, that the older series did not have. This series also could appeal to a much broader audience than the older series as it is only influenced by Sherlock Holmes and not a full adaptation of it.

The following series is titled ‘Sherlock’ and has ran so far from 2010 to 2017 and it stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes. This series is predominantly based in the modern day with the exception of one Christmas special titled ‘The Abominable Bride’ which is primarily based in Victorian London with the exception of a few scenes. This series has 4 seasons with a total of 13 episodes with a length of 90 minutes, including the special, these 13 episodes are primarily based on the original canon stories with the exception of the newer season which contains elements of the original canon but mainly follows its own plot line, the writers have also included several of their own characters to develop the series more with the modern age. Along with the TV series the creators have also technically produced a total of four tie-in websites, one of them is a diary of the character Molly Hooper, one is the official website of Connie Prince, one is the blog of Dr John Watson that is actively mentioned and was updated along side episodes with the exception of the newest season in which the blog was no longer updated and Sherlock Holmes own website. After the release of the second episode of the fourth season the character of Sherlock Holmes took to the social media outlet twitter via the BBC one account and had fans on the site help him solve a case of a dead man, the character also had an opportunity to correspond to fans on the site also, this then lead to a fan creating an account for the character and has been active on the account since.The writers and creators of the show have also stated in an interview that The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes inspired this series along with the pace and style of the Rathbone film series. From my survey all 97 of the people asked has said they had heard of the series and 96 of the 97 people asked said they had watched the series, in addition to that 77 of the 94 people that responded said that the series was their favourite adaptation and 81 out of the 90 responses, including myself, think that ‘Sherlock’ would have the largest fan following as it appeals to a wide range of people and age groups, the chemistry between the actors playing the main characters is excellent which causes the characters friendship to feel real and the series has had a lot of media publicity, including publicity stunts for example for the release of the third season a hearse drove around London with flower letters spelling ‘Sherlock’ inside of it. The final series is titled ‘Elementary’ and has so far ran from 2012 to 2017 with 5 seasons and a total of 120, 43-46 minute long episodes This series much like the series mentioned above it is set in the modern day but in New York and not London, although Sherlock Holmes, played by Jonny Lee Miller, is still from London. Other noticeable differences between this series and others including the canon is that John Watson has been turned into a female character called Joan Watson and James Moriarty has also been turned into a female character Jamie Moriarty and is the same character as Irene Adler in this adaptation. In my survey 88 out of 97 people had heard of the series, but only 25 out of the 88 had watched the show and a further 5 people think that it is their favourite adaptation.

Along with these well known TV and film variations there are also several other variations in different forms. Books, and equivalent works of literature, are the next main form of variation with numerous books and fanworks being written as either an extension to or a retelling of Sherlock Holmes story. As a result of my survey I am able to assume that it is the third largest form of media for the variations as only 12 people said that they heard of one book called ‘The House of Silk’ and 6 people have read this book, one person has also said ‘The beekeeper's apprentice’ although they have not read the book itself, several other people have vaguely put ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ which is both a film and a book series meaning I have to discount these results despite me placing (TV),(book),(film) with the variations I included in the question. Despite this I have looked into several book variations, ‘The Last Sherlock Holmes story’, ‘The House of Silk’ and ‘The day they met’. I chose these books because they all show something different and were all interesting to me. ‘The House of Silk’ which was published in 2011, is supposedly the first pastiche that was authorized by Arthur Conan Doyle's estate. This specific book starts off with a Preface stating that Holmes has died and Watson is now writing about two additional cases which he previously hasn't written about as ‘They became inextricably tangled up...meaning that they could not be separated.’ These cases are ‘The man in the flat cap’ and ‘The house of silk’. The manuscripts from these cases are also not to be looked at for 100 years after they have been written. The addition of these two new cases makes this book a variation of the canon, along with the fact the new cases are not retellings of the original canon and yet still contain some of the main characters of the canon such as Lestrade and Moriatry, who works with Watson to get Holmes out of prison despite being one of Holmes most well known enemies. ’The Last Sherlock Holmes Story’ which was published in 1978, starts with a foreword stating that Watson had died and is written in a way to suggest these were all real events but also refers to ‘Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories’ implying Watson did not write any of Holmes cases but instead told them to Doyle who wrote and published them instead, it is later confirmed in the story that Doyle was the writer for these cases and then after Holmes died he started to make them up, this didn't bother Watson as by this point most of the public already thought Holmes was a fictional character. Doyle being the author in this book and the original author can bring about discussions on alternate reality/universe, this will be talked about in a later on.This is the only one of the sources I have looked at that involves Doyle in the actual story, this makes it both unique and an adaptation of the original canon. The book involves Holmes attempting to solve the Jack the Ripper killings, which ends in him actually being the killer and making up his nemesis Moriarty, who he thought was the killer and is then framing him as the killer. I find this very interesting because it involves so many different new elements and twists to the story and is presented in such a different way to the other works that it feels as though it is something that has actually been found and published. Alternate reality or universe discussions can be started by the presence of Doyle in this book as it suggests it could have really happened, the stories were published long enough ago that this theory cannot definitively be disproved as there is no one that can say these events didn't actually happen, much like how people have theorised that BBCs Sherlock is now participating in an alternate reality game in which they have tried to mimic the same outburst ‘The Final Problem’ had when it was first released but these are still only theories. ‘The Day They Met’ which was published in 2015, is my favourite book variation out of the three as it contains ‘50 New Ways the World's Most Legendary Partnership Might Have Begun’, these 50 ways range from meeting in the 21st century when Watson tries to get Holmes to donate some of his blood, to the 20th century when both Holmes and Watson first meet to join the army but don't and then meet again under the original circumstances, to the 19th century when Holmes ends up in the same cab as Watson as he tries to catch a criminal. These are all intended to retell the original meeting of the pair from ‘A Study in Scarlet’ and show that the pair are destined to meet no matter the time or place. This is also provides a really good basis for other adaptations to be made, using one of the ways they met to then shape and retell the events after they met. Following on from these books there are also several independent works of fiction that either retell the original canon, add to the canon, or just use the characters and relationships already established by the canon. There are at least 130,000 of these works available and are written by the fans of either the original canon or a variation, typically the writer would either state what they used as the base for their work or it would be presumed from the time period it was written in and characters used, for example a modern style of writing and the involvement of the character Molly Hooper would suggest that it is based from BBC’s Sherlock whereas if it were a modern style of writing but Watson was referred to by using female pronouns it can be presumed that it is based from Elementary. These works also place the characters of Holmes and Watson in a variety of different situations that expand on elements from the variations, such as several of these works combine the characters of Watson and Moriarty which mainly comes from the BBC version showing Watson to be Moriarty for a short amount of time in the last episode of its first season.

Other forms of media have also been used to share different variations of Holmes, such as the radio variation which aired from 1939 to 1947 and had Rathbone portray Holmes once again.There has also been several comic books and cartoons depicting the detective and his cases along several games involving Holmes. These games include board games and video games that have the player help Holmes solve a case or mystery.

Along with the different variations of the canon there are also many references to the canon in other works, much like how the show House isn't directly taken from the canon but is inspired by it. For example the in Doctor Who there are several references to Holmes over the years, from the Doctor meeting Holmes to the eleventh Doctor briefly impersonating Holmes and the villain of this episode stating ‘Dr. Doyle is almost certainly basing his fantastical tales on your own exploits’ to Madame Vestra and her partner Jenny. The Two episodes of Scooby Doo which entail the gang being followed by Holmes ghost until they discover it was actually someone posing as his ghost to try and get away with a crime they have caused. There are also several parody works of the canon, the most notable being The Hillywood Show’s Sherlock parody which is a parody of the BBC series, the parody music video also contains one of the producers of the series which makes it the most notable parody. Since at least the release of the third episode of the fourth season of BBC Sherlock there has been a twitter account, ContackSH, which has been continually posting along with a matching account, ContactJHW, these continue some of the story of the series but also change some details from the series and have been known to go off on cases together and both accounts post images when they go on these cases. Despite this no one knows who runs these accounts or why they are still running them almost a year after the episode aired, along with this the second account was created on the 12th of January 2017, two days after the official BBC account was taken over by Sherlock Holmes, but the first account was supposedly created on the 4th of August 2012, five years prior to Sherlock Holmes even supposedly getting a twitter account although the user could have just easily changed there name on twitter. Although this can feed back into the alternate reality game theory involving the BBC series and their fans.

I have mentioned several pieces of information that I have obtained through my survey, this survey has also provided me with a general amount of information on the fandom surrounding Sherlock Holmes. The majority of the responses from my survey are from females and are from individuals who are age 16-20, my survey is completely anonymous and was placed on a website which needs parental permission to access if the user is under 18, they are also predominantly from either the UK or USA. Just over a 3/4th have read atleast some of the original canon and the top three heard of variations are BBC Sherlock, Elementary and the RDJ Sherlock Holmes films, whereas the top three watched variations are BBC Sherlock, RDJ Sherlock Holmes films and House. Almost all the responders are aware of the cult following Sherlock Holmes has and believe that BBC Sherlock has the largest following because it is both set and filmed in modern times. The vast majority of people believe that their are so many different variations because the original canon are timeless stories that have the classic murder mystery element to them which people will always love and the majority of people have said that their favourite variation is BBC Sherlocks.

The final question of my survey asks ‘What do you want to see in an adaptation?’ Which an overwhelming majority of people have said that they would like an openly gay Holmes/Holmes and Watson, which many believe to have been hinted at in ‘The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’ and many were hoping it to be shown in BBC Sherlock as it is set and filmed in the 21st century a time where being openly gay is less taboo than when ‘TPLoSH’ was set and released. Another was that many people wanted their to be a female Holmes and Watson, it is unsure whether they don't like the portrayal of the female Watson in Elementary, if they have even seen or know about Elementary or if they would just like both characters to be female, from further research that I have learnt about a Female version of Holmes and Watson that is currently trying to be produced and the pilot was submitted to Amazon studios in order to make the original series. The final answer that many people gave is that they would like to see some adaptations of some later lesser known cannon stories such as ‘The Three Garridebs’, the main reason there are few adaptations of these later stories have still got some form of copyright placed on them whereas Doyle's earlier works have actually no copyright on them which makes it easier to develop from these works than the copyrighted ones. The last copyright expires in 2022, meaning that the earliest some variation of these canon stories could be released is 2023.

Over the 130 years since Arthur Conan Doyle first released his character of Sherlock Holmes on to the public, he has taken a life of his own. The many different variations he has been included in is just an example of how such a classic character can easily be shaped to fit in with a different time. Hopefully time will once again change the classic character and continue his story for years to come.

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Sorry its so long and its all in one post but the last i checked tumblr was having trouble with links so I decided to put this somewhere else and share a link to it. Any way thanks for reading, and thanks again if you helped by taking my survey almost two years ago.I also got a B on this, just in case you wanted to know.

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