#sifr

JOHN : Uh, flight double oh seven. SHERLOCK : What did you say? JOHN: You’re right. SHERLOCK: No, no, no, after that. What did you say after that? JOHN: Double oh seven. Flight double oh seven. SHERLOCK : Double oh seven, double oh seven, double oh seven, double oh seven … something ... something connected to double oh seven ... What? Double oh seven, double oh seven, what, what, something, what? MYCROFT: Bond Air is go.

Double oh seven is the flight number for a project Mycroft organizes in ASIB to fool ominous terrorists which never appear on screen anyway. It’s the second time such a ‘neat plan’ of Mycroft Holmes is intended to get executed. A year prior the British government ran a similar project with the Germans that lead to a plane crash in Dusseldorf. One passenger though missed the flight. He was found lying dead in the boot of a car … just like Sherlock himself lies drugged in the boot of a car, several episodes later, in TLD. One could say that the German project in Dusseldorf had been the rehearsal of flight number DOUBLE OH SEVEN ... ‘the flight of the dead’. 

There is another episode in Sherlock BBC, TSOT, that circles round a rehearsal. First a rehearsal is mentioned in connection with John’s and Mary’s wedding. The second time the rehearsal is related to the two unsolved cases Sherlock presents to the wedding guests in his best man speech … The Bloody Guardsman and The Mayfly Man. Only when Sherlock realizes that both cases are actually linked with one another, he is able to solve them (Changing of the Guard). It turns out that the attempted murder of Private Bainbridge had actually been the rehearsal for the ‘clever plan’ of Jonathan Small to murder Major Sholto

Interestingly the number of Major Sholto’s room sounds quite similar to the number of the ‘flight of the dead’ …. it is 207 … spoken: TWO OH SEVEN

DOUBLE OH SEVEN  &  TWO OH SEVEN

When it happens in Sherlock BBC that cases in two different episodes are linked by similar sounding (though not the same) numbers … twins, one might say, and yet not twins at all … and when additionally two similar procedures are applied regarding those two cases - a rehearsal for a neat/clever plan …. then it is a good idea to burrow a little bit deeper into that matter. 

A flight with the number 007 - a flight of the dead, in every sense of the word - has sadly existed in real life. I don’t know if anyone has mentiond that in earlier posts, back then after S2 had aired. At least, I can’t remember having read about it. The flight with the number ‘double oh seven’ was the South Korean passenger plane that crashed in the Sea of Japan and led to the death of 269 people.

On 1 September 1983, a South Korean passenger plane, a Boeing 747 with the flight number 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter aircraft. Flight 007 was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but deviated from its original planned route and flew through Soviet prohibited airspace about the time of a U.S. aerial reconnaissance mission. The Soviet Air Forces treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding U.S. spy plane, and destroyed it with air-to-air missiles, after firing warning shots which were likely not seen by the Korean pilots. Flight 007 eventually crashed in the sea west of Sakhalin in the Sea of Japan. (x)

What a horrible occurrence. And yes, the ‘Korean elections’ Mycroft mentions in TGG, come to mind as well. 

OH … 0 ... ZERO

Another interesting point is the meaning of ‘double oh′ in itself … 00. The numer ‘0′ is called ‘zero’. I simply have to add a short, very compromised, history of ‘zero’ becaus it’s so fascinating. 

The concept of zero arose around the third century in India. From there it spread to China and the Middle East. Soon it became part of the Arabic number system, which is based upon the Indian system. The Persian mathematician, Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi, suggested that a little circle should be used in calculations if no number appeared in the tens place. The Arabs called this circle "sifr," or "empty.". (By the way, Al-Khowarizmi also developed that, which is now known as algorithm, which is a corrupted, Latin translation of his name.) 

Zero found its way to Europe through the Moorish conquest of Spain and was further developed by Italian mathematician Fibonacci. This development was highly popular among merchants. But Christian leaders in Europe did not support the use of zero. They saw it as satanic. "God was in everything that was. Everything that was not, was of the devil," they said. The use of zero was even outlawed and banned but the merchants contiued to use it illegally and secretly. The Arabic word for zero, "sifr", brought about the word "cipher", which not only means a numeric character, but also came to mean "code".  (x x)

Sifr … cipher … zero … 0 … is ‘CODE’

And 00 most likely is ‘double code’. Because the ciphers always come in pairs ...

Only the cipher can tell us 

The world (this story) is run on codes and ciphers 

Deciphering this is the key 

So these numbers – it’s a cipher

And each pair of numers is a word

Always in pairs

Numbers come with partners

And here we are again … back at the ‘user manual’ for Sherlock BBC … The Blind Banker.

 But inevitably something else comes to mind as well … the sound of Sherlock’s surprised ….. double oh ….. in ASIP!

When he realizes that the case is ….  DOUBLE OH … PINK!  

DOUBLE  CODE  PINK! 

Sifr, cipher, 0, zero … a number forbidden, outlawed, even deemed satanic by the Vatican …. and the creators of Sherlock BBC decided to use exactly this number for their code … twin-ciphers … for …. PINK! 

DOUBLE OH … another ‘vaticn cameo’ hiding in plain sight in Sherlock BBC?

More VATICAN CAMEOS  &   A CHRISTMAS TALE  which seems to be the biggest of all the ‘vatican cameos’.

And also this one The Roads we walk have demons beneath  because of the ecclesial thread which runs through Sherlock BBC.

PAIRS … TWINS … DOUBLE OHs … a summary and some musings about it.

.

I leave you to your own deductions. Thanks @callie-ariane​ for the scripts.