NT :: NotHere NJ

Come to think of it, maybe even pirates – no matter how lawless and independent they might appear – must sometimes be in need of a pilot, when sailing in unknown waters? :) In this meta I’ll go in-depth into the meaning of “pilot” and play around with some mirrors and metaphors, and I’ll also try to read them as code. Because I think we have a puzzle to solve in BBC Sherlock (as I said here). And I also believe there might be a signal message in TFP telling us to pay attention to code. 

As I mentioned in the discussions around the ‘golf-whiskey-x-ray’ message in TFP (X), a “pilot” can mean at least three different - although related - things: 

1. The most obvious meaning of the word is a person who flies an airplane, a.k.a. the “captain”. In an aircraft, the pilot and the captain is usually the same person. There might be one or two co-pilots as well, but the captain is the Pilot In Command. In TFP, the lonely little girl on the plane tries to wake up the pilot, who seems to be deeply asleep, but (for some reason) she calls him “the driver”. The four stripes on his shoulder epaulets tell us that this is the captain.

The plane is flying on auto-pilot at the moment, but the girl will need a real, living pilot to be able to land. This is one of the two aircraft pilots we’ve seen in BBC Sherlock this far, and his face is hidden, we never get to see it - who is he? I’ll get back to the substitution of “pilot” for “driver” later in this meta. 

The other pilot of this show is the one who in HLV was supposed to take Sherlock on a deadly mission to Eastern Europe. But the orders were changed, and instead she flied him back home again.

The pilot and the driver, the killer and the guide, drugs and the chemistry of love, getting killed/murdered and effectively falling in love …. ‘I AM SHER LOCKED’ is the key to Irene’s camera phone and ‘unlocking sherlock’ has been chosen as title for the special features of Series One. Coincidence?

“All the nice girls love a Sailor” or “Ship Ahoy!” - there’s more to that song than meets the eye: ‘it was published in 1909, with performer Hetty King on the front cover. Hetty King was the stage name of Winifred Emms, a well known male impersonator’ (X X)  I know there’s a whole meta on my blog about Hetty King and that song but I can’t find it because the tags still aren’t working properly. Maybe someone remembers the author and can provide a link? (@devoursjohnlock @tendergingergirl maybe one of yours?) 

Sumatra - the abandoned transport station underground that had been closed before it ever opened - located ‘right underneath the (Mind) Palace of Westminster’. 

And the name of the second station mentioned in this scene is ‘St. James Park’. 

In an episode where Sherlock has to solve a skip code which reads:  ‘Save souls now. John or James Watson. Saint or sinner. James or John. The more is less.’ … that particular name for the other Station - ‘St. James Park’ - is probably no coincidence either. (X)

Also (not my discovery, this has been mentioned before, but sadly no link either) the names on Sherlock’s screen in that short moment are displayed in mirror writing. It gives the impression as if someone is looking out of the screen on Sherlock and John, watching them. That the letters ‘CAM’ can be seen as well at the same time and in precisely this episode …. well ….

Yes, John is the pilot and the driver …. but what is it, that the John character inside Sherlock’s mind palace represents? If I had to make a guess, I would say he represents two things: friendship and love. The eternal best friend, the ’one fixed point in a changing age’, John, who is still stuck in 1895 … the ‘friend’ who finally (metaphorically) has to die in order to give birth to the ‘lover’. And Eurus (emotional Sherlock) shoots him by the end of TLD …. remember?

RUBBERTPLANT PRESENTS: MEME-ORY LANE 2018

13 lucky lucianos are hiding in this post. can you find them all?

happy fifth!

Laura Bailey herself explained that when she auditioned for the role, she was given no information about what the character looked like. It was only after she was hired and arrived for recording that she was shown concept art and discovered the character was a WOC. She was uncomfortable about the situation.

Meanwhile, Neil Druckmann revealed that they were already working on concept art of the character when they hired Laura Bailey. They finalized the character’s design as a WOC after they’d hired a white voice actress, so that was a conscious decision. He was also very flippant about the situation as a whole.

Newsflash. No man needs a bitch telling him to eat rabbit food and nagging him constantly.