#space-time continuum

Trying to apply @impatient14 ’s space-time continuum idea on the ’possibly-raggedy-theory’ (which is originally @raggedyblue’s brilliant idea; here’s my meta series about it: X), I would suggest the following:

The event when Sherlock enters his EMP - the null point in his space-time continuum - is caused by an overdose of drugs, and this point in time occurs ’off-screen’ on one of the days following John’s wedding.

The past light cone would cover ASiP to TSoT.

The future light cone would cover HLV to the last episode of S4.

Within the closest part of the past light-cone, Sherlock has been reading all the posts on John’s blog, and what we see in the show up until TSoT is Sherlock reminiscing real and imagined past events inside his own mind. They all have a causal influence on the null point (O), but not all of them have necessarily occurred in other people’s reality. 

We’re seeing the whole show from Sherlock’s point of view. But he’s trying to look at the events from John’s perspective, in order to better understand John. He imagines, for example, John waking up from a nightmare or John attending a session with his therapist or John having a chat with Mycroft.

Within the future light-cone, there lies a huge amount of hypothetical ’time-strands’ of possible future events. But the null point (O) when Sherlock loses contact with John’s and the other characters’ reality has a causal influence on these future time strands. What we see in HLV-TFP is Sherlock’s drug-induced scenarios where he, inside his comatose but still working brain, tries to follow one of these hypothetical time strands to see where it leads.

In his dream-like state, Sherlock believes that he experiences real events within real light cones, but within his imagination there’s no real materia, so physical realities and limits like the speed of light are no obstacle.

But to an outside observer (like John) time behaves differently. Throughout Sherlock’s perhaps year-long experience, John might only experience a short time when Sherlock lies comatose in hospital, perhaps weeks, and apparently with not much hope of survival.

The time-strand Sherlock has followed in HLV-TFP, however, might end up being a circular time-line, because Sherlock has only his own experience to draw from to make scenarios, and his real-life experience stopped at O. Sherlock can’t possibly predict his real-life future, even though he believes he can; he just doesn’t possess the data of future events, and therefore the higher up the future light cone that his mind travels, the more absurd becomes the result. There are far too many possible variables to take into account for this ‘modeling’ to be a good idea. So this time-strand winds up where we started from, with Sherlock and John eternally solving crimes together, eternally beeing ‘just friends’. And a Ghost!Mary telling him that this is just fine. At the end of the show as we know it for now (TFP), there’s apparently no progression.

What could make Sherlock Holmes ‘come alive’?

The issue of progression in time is, in my opinion, what needs to be solved by a potential S5. For now, this show only ends up where it started; Sherlock goes directly from the absurd, surrealistic events at the prison of Sherrinford to a ’normal’ but never-ending story of crime-solving at 221B. And in the last scene of TFP, time seems to be frozen:

At the end of S4 we can see no progression, only ’business as usual’, in spite of all the things Sherlock has learned about ’emotional context’ after John’s wedding. Continuing the story further, however, based on Sherlock’s new insights, could break this circular timeline. S5 would have the potential to transfer Sherlock and John from the eternal, crime-solving stereotyped friends, to a couple of characters that have an actual, believable life together. But this would require Sherlock waking up from his current state of surrealism. 

In ACD canon it may be difficult to follow an actual story arc, but at least Holmes and Watson grow older. In the latter part of Conan Doyle’s stories, we’re told that Holmes retired and moved alone to Sussex Downs to calmly indulge in bee-keeping, while Watson seemingly remained in London. The very last story, though - His Last Bow (LAST) - ends differently. With the villain securely tied up in the back seat, the now older Holmes and Watson leave the scene together in a car. Holmes talks about an impending ‘East Wind’ that will change everything, and now they’re traveling together into the future in a modern (for their time) vehicle of transport to cash in a check for five hundred pounds. ACD didn’t spell it out, but this to me gives a hint of potential.

But how could Sherlock re-enter the same space-time continuum as John? In short, my assumption here is that in John’s ’reality’, HLV-TFP mark a slowly progressing time strand in John’s space-time continuum where Sherlock is hospitalized after an OD of drugs. He’s comatose and in a serious condition between life and death. He needs, of course, to stay alive and wake up from this. But then what? What could he do to change this reality into something new? 

What John doesn’t know is that Sherlock’s brain is still working frantically, trying to run scenarios of a hypothetical future in his extended mind palace (EMP). To Sherlock all this appears ’real’ while to us, the onlookers, it seems surreal and increasingly absurd. But the only benefit this serious condition has for Sherlock is an opportunity for self-reflection. In his EMP, he can learn things about himself and his feelings for John, even if he gets all his predictions of the future events essentially wrong. But the things Sherlock (and by extension the audience) experiences within his EMP have a symbolic and metaphoric value to him (us). Even if they’re not ’real’ to other characters, they represent a reality which Sherlock - if he survives to wake up to it - can act upon and influence, very much like a living, breathing person.

One important thing of symbolic value for Sherlock is the change in his view of love, intimacy and emotions. In HLV-TLD Love is represented by Lady Smallwood. @sagestreet has described it beautifully in this meta (X). She’s a new character who isn’t even mentioned before HLV, which to me indicates that in this alternate reality, Sherlock has started to look more closely at Love and what it might actually mean to him. At first he (and Mycroft, representing Sherlock’s brain) is very suspiscious and accuses Lady Smallwood of being a killer and a traitor. But at the end of TLD Mycroft considers to actually meet up with her for a drink. ;) Likewise, at the end of TLD Sherlock realises that he must comfort John with a hug rather than with words - Sentiment is important. 

And at the end of TFP he learns that in order to help John, he needs to embrace his crazy sister (who probably represents another, long neglected, part of himself) and start to communicate with her through feelings (= the violin).

The null point from a meta level perspective

But even in a space-time continuum as experienced by Sherlock, why should we place ”O”, the null point of the observer, exactly where I suggest here (immediately after TSoT)? There are many other good and valid ideas about EMP starting points floating around, for example that it would occur when Mary shoots Sherlock in HLV. Or much earlier when he jumps from Barts in TRF. Or even from the very start of the Pilot or at least from ASiP. So what would be particularly convincing about this one? We have no chance of knowing, of course, but I’ll try to argue my case below.

Placing the null point directly after the wedding and making Sherlock’s  transition into EMP self-inflicted by drugs gives the whole show structure a different centre of gravity, because it enhances the importance of Sherlock’s heartbreak as a game turner. Instead of being shot in the chest by an assassin, the real cause of Sherlock entering his EMP becomes his own emotional reaction to John marrying another - adding the prospect of John having a child with them. Which would have started after Sherlock’s deduction about Mary’s pregnancy at the end of TSoT:

That would have ‘sealed the deal’ for Sherlock, wouldn’t it? Whatever would happen with John’s marriage, his responsabilities as a father would weigh heavy on John, limiting whatever spare time he’d have for Sherlock in his life to a mere minimum. The last nail in the coffin… And that’s a far more interesting reason than a gun shot in my opinion, because Sherlock will have to deal with this emotional conundrum in a different way than how he usually solves puzzles. The drugs reason would also be far more canon consistent - as I suggested in this meta long ago (X) - since this is what happens at the end of SIGN, when Watson declares his intention to marry Mary Morstan:

“The division seems rather unfair,”I remarked. “You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?”

“For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it.

@victorianpining has elegantly described in this episode (X) of the video series ’TJLC Explained’ how, in many ways, BBC Sherlock has picked up on Billy Wilder’s adaptation, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (TPLoSH). In this film from the 1970:s the real reason behind Holmes’ drug use is strongly hinted at: his frustration over his own desire for Watson.

Also: Assuming an impending S5 and a five-act structure to the show, like @garkgatiss has suggested in this excellent meta (X), each series of BBC sherlock would represent one act. And the midpoint of the show would fall somewhere in the middle of TSoT (perhaps around Sherlock’s speech about the stag night? ;)) Thus the two halves of the show could be folded nicely around this point in TSoT, with 7,5 episodes before and 7,5 episodes after. But what about TAB? The ’Christmas Special’ was said to be separate from the rest of the show, but this wasn’t true, was it? There were ’moden’ scenes in TAB which seemed to be caused by events in HLV, which means TAB would follow logically after it in Sherlock’s space-time continuum. So if we add TAB to the equation, the midpoint would instead fall between TSoT and HLV, with 8 episodes before and 8 after.

A ‘Watsonian’ perspective?

Another possible start for EMP - thus an alternative null point - has been suggested to be the moment when Sherlock jumps from Barts’ hospital in TRF to fake his own suicide (or even the moment when he decides to do this). This could of course be seen as a crucial point; a causal event when Sherlock took a decision that would later perjudicate his whole relationship with John, resulting in John marrying Mary Morstan. But from John’s perspective I think it’s important to remember that he didn’t ’move on’ to marry Mary Morstan immediately after Sherlock jumped and (apparently) died in front of him - however cruel this may have been. No, John finally felt it necessary to ’move on’ because Sherlock stayed ’dead’ for two years, letting John grieve him without even a hint that he was alive. If Sherlock had told John at least shortly afterwards what he was doing and why, I believe much could have been forgiven. And I think this is obvious, both from John’s blog posts and from TEH:

JOHN: One Word, Sherlock. That is all I would have needed. One word to let me know that you were alive.

I’d rather see ’The Fall’ when Sherlock jumps from Barts’ rooftop as a symbol of Sherlock’s ’fall from grace’ in John’s eyes - and probably also in Sherlock’s own eyes. In the scene with the boiling kettle, Moriarty seems to be the ’tempter’ with the apple, and he claims to owe Sherlock ”a fall” - an obvious symbolic reference to the biblical ”Fall of Man” when Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. (I won’t go much further into this here, but maybe Sherlock later on gaining insight about his emotional self and his feelings for John could count as a forbidden, original ‘sin’, that would threaten to break his self-imposed celibacy? The ‘headless nun’ with the intellect stored in the fridge of 221B? Knowledge is power...)

But The Fall, however, was not a crucial point in time when John decided to marry a woman. It was Sherlock’s continued behaviour (= his absence) for a prolonged time period that made that decision necessary in John’s view. So John’s decision - even after Sherlock’s return - to ’move on’ is probably not caused by a single, crucial event, but rather by Sherlock’s whole treatment of John; his (apparent) idea that John was safer and better off without Sherlock, and not capable of confronting a dangerous enemy like Moriarty at Sherlock’s side. Why does John proceed with his wedding plans with Mary even after Sherlock has come back to his life? Because his trust is broken. John can’t risk revealing his true feelings to someone who keeps shutting him out and keeps exposing him to cruel jokes, trying to coax him into confessing things that have no apparent reciprocation.

A ‘Holmesian’ perspective!

But the important thing is, in my opinion, that we’re probably not seeing this show from John’s perspective; we’re seeing it from Sherlock’s point of view. And in Sherlock’s eyes, John marrying Mary, together with the revelation that they’re expecting a child together, would be a far more crucial event than him jumping from Barts. If this null point in time of the observer occurs shortly after Sherlock goes home alone to his ‘solitary confinement’, starts taking drugs while reading John’s blog and in a couple of days loses consciousness due to an OD, then everything we see after that, up until TFP, will only have happened in his head - within a hypothetical light cone of possible future events.

And Mary shooting Sherlock in the heart in HLV would also be merely a symbol of what she did to him by marrying John and (apparently) getting pregnant with him; a metaphor produced by Sherlock’s brain scenario within his potential future light cone.

But I suspect the shot was never real; hence the weird sliding flower pot at the actual moment, and this later image of Mary dressed as a bride with a gun, and even later Moriarty dressed as a bride in TAB - an ’abominable bride’ symbolising Sherlock’s heartbreak. So I don’t think Mary did shoot him; she didn’t have to, because Sentiment was enough to tip Sherlock over the allegorical rooftop. If Moriarty was somehow behind Mary marrying John, he really managed to ’burn Sherlock’s heart out’.

Everything we see before this crucial point in time might be Sherlock’s recollection of past events, inspired by reading John’s blog and projected within his light cone of past time. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everything we see really happened, though; it might be mixed up with little fantasies of Sherlock’s, where he embellished and dramatized the ‘real’ events in scenarios where he could play the hero. And perhaps a very James Bond-like hero at that, based on all the movies John had made him watch, according to both John’s blog (X) and Sherlock’s website (X). Because Sherlock is trying to see everything through John’s eyes, and he thinks John at least used to hero-worship him. 

It might be within this light cone of the past that we see Sherlock do all the things that do make logical sense, yes. But already here we also see him do fantastical, exaggerated things that rather seem taken from action movies. Like short-cutting a taxi by climbing rooftops in ASiP. Or battling a veiled villain, knocking them out and getting rid of them in the short time-window when John went to the grocery’s in TBB. Or traveling to Karachi in no-time to single-handedly save Irene Adler from a bunch of armed terrorists in ASiB. Or the scene where he’s being tortured while his brother is watching in TEH. There’s lots of questionable stuff happening in ASiP-TSoT - much more so than what ever happened in canon.

For this theory to be confirmed, however, we need to finally see the scene when Sherlock takes an overdose after the wedding - or at least be told that it did happen. And this is what S5 could reveal. For now, this is mostly speculation.

OK, so this is basically how I view this show, trying to place it within the concept of time-space continuum proposed by @impatient14. I might not have grasped the terms of this concept properly, but in my view it seems to fit with my points above - please correct me if I’m wrong.

To me it would make sense if the increasing surrealism of the show from HLV to TFP were basically due to three things:

Sherlock’s serious health condition; he’s near death, with the implications this has for his brain activity.

He has lost contact with reality almost completely; he’s operating within a hypothetical, drug-induced universe with its very own natural laws and space-time continuum.

He’s biased by strong emotions; heartbreak, guilt and self-loathing, which makes him draw some incorrect conclusions based on misconceptions about John.

Recurring events - a circular time strand

I’m certainly not the only one who has noticed how the story line seems to fold into itself as this show progresses, and how new versions of things we’ve already seen before seem to come back. In fact, it’s not at all difficult to make a long list of the events and elements that are repeated in BBC Sherlock (X). ’The wheel turns, and nothing is ever new’, as Sherlock says in ASiB. That line originates from canon, by the way; Holmes utters something similar in VALL: 

“Everything comes in circles – even Professor Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden force of the London criminals, to whom he sold his brains and his organization on a fifteen per cent commission. The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It’s all been done before, and will be again.” 

Actually, I think the concept of recurring events was already incorporated into Doyle’s stories. But the time line still at least made some logical sense - roughly. ;-) 

In any case, what we see in BBC Sherlock - especially S4 - is not how time works for a human being living in the real world. Even if some things sometimes seem to repeat themselves in our lives, and even if our time sometimes appear to pass faster and other times slower, we don’t usually experience our lifetime as circular or even spiral, do we? These things might occur in a dream world, though; in a space-time continuum constructed inside someone’s brain. 

In @impatient14’s meta, Sherlock’s statements in TST and TLD are quoted, where he claims he could totally predict the future if he only had enough data:

The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics.

An advanced grasp of the mathematics of probability mapped onto a thorough apprehension of human psychology and the known dispositions of any given individual can reduce the number of variables considerably. I myself know of at least fifty-eight techniques to refine this seemingly infinite array of randomly generated possibilities down to the smallest number of feasible variables.

I correctly anticipated the responses of people I know well to scenarios I devised? Can’t everyone do that?

And already at the end of ASiP, Sherlock claimed something similar:

The thing is, though: while these things in theory may be totally cool in Sherlock’s imagination, where his own brain controls everything, in our real, physical world it’s still impossible. 

No human being is omnipotent or omniscient. But inside his drug-influenced brain, Sherlock might like to believe that this is his super-power. It’s not credible though, that someone could foresee events with the precision that Sherlock predicts them in TLD, because there are simply too many “feasible variables” to keep track on. No one can collect that much data. But if you recycle old, already collected data, you might come up with some new combinations of it. Just look at the world Sherlock dreamed up in S4! This is not a realistic future based on correct predictions; it’s a dystopic future where no one is happy and everything is bleak and depressing, but it’s also absurd and surrealistic. Because the person doing the modelling is only human; he’s biased by his own emotions and bad experiences.

John’s blog as a “second opinion”

If we assume that the null point indeed occurs shortly after John’s wedding, that also coincides with the point in time when John’s blog stops updating. Up till that point, we have been able to read John’s own version of the events as a kind of ’second opinion’ - like the one you get from a second doctor. :)

As I see it, John’s blog is the litteral ‘Watsonian perspective’; the blog, rather than the show, is the equivalent of Watson’s stories published in the Strand Magazine. And the blog posts have also been fairly consistent with the order of the events in the show. When we read John’s blog, it’s not difficult to form a coherent plot line in our heads from it. All in all, even with all their fantastic ’adventures’ described, I think the blog is a fairly logical recollection of events, and the conclusions of the crime cases do make sense - at least to the point we can expect from a fictional story. The problem is, hovewer, that the real-life blog stops updating mid-show, directly after TSoT, which is rather illogical. What happened there? This fact would only make sense to me within the context of what we can see in the show, if the stopping has an in-story reason. But in TST (which bears the name of an old blog post!) the blogging has seemingly continued. In TST we can see several cases described on John’s blog which never actually appear on the stopped version online.

The discrepancy between John’s blog and the weird references to it in S4 is particularly interesting, I believe. Since these S4 blogposts are never confirmed by the real, online blog, it gives food for the suspicion that they are all made up by Sherlock’s brain. And why do people, like nurse Cornish in TLD, talk about the blog as if it were Sherlock’s rather than John’s? Because Sherlock is the author of the very last post on the online version (X); he obviously hacked John’s blog after the wedding and took over it, while John was occupied with his "sex holiday” with Mary. Sherlock’s excuse was to publish some wedding photos, but neither them nor Sherlock’s claims about having solved the cases of The Bloody Guardsman and The Mayfly Man seem to impress John. In his comments to Sherlock’s hacked wedding post, John does not confirm that Sherlock solved these two cases. Instead, he tells Sherlock to stop.

From Sherlock’s perspective, reading John’s blogposts as well as his readers’ comments, would have been a great support for Sherlock’s memory; he could have used them as inspiration and incentive to re-live the events in his mind to try to better understand John. One interesting thing with the blog is that the order in time of the posts seems to fit with the order in which the events can be seen in the show. There are cases written on the blog that aren’t presented in the show, or even referred to, but most of the cases that John describes on the blog also figure in the show - either as full-blown plot lines or referred to by Sherlock and other characters. All in all, I think John’s blog represents a fairly coherent story arc, up until his wedding in TSoT when it suddenly stops.

But if this marks the null point when Sherlock loses contact with reality, Sherlock’s perspective might begin to differ more and more from John’s perspective, right? The order of certain events in Sherlock’s EMP might also be altered, if his mind no longer needs to experience them in a coherent order. Which might explain, for example, why he recycles a case - The Six Thatchers - that already has been described by John on the blog years ago (X), but in S4 it’s casted with almost entirely new ’actors’. Please note that the original case of The Six Thatchers is never referenced in the show. It doesn’t contribute to ’our’ (Sherlock’s) story, nor does it have the potential to alter it in any way. It could be said to have no causal influence on Sherlock’s null point, nor on his light-cone of future events. But the case could still be stored somewhere in Sherlock’s subconcious, right?

Causality and non-causality

In Wikipedia’s explanation of the space-time continuum, there’s also a part (see ’Relativity of simultaneity’, X) that explains how different observers’ experiences of the order of events could differ, depending on the speed with which they travel, provided that these events have no causal influence over each other. In the presentation of the light cones, these events are space-related rather than time-related, and are said to occur ‘elsewhere’. If an observer approaches the speed of light, they can even experience these not-causally-connected events in a reversed order, due to their own altered frame of reference:

Not that Sherlock physically can travel with the speed of light, of course, but inside his imagination this would not be a problem, because his thoughts can travel very fast, so following physical laws is not required.

An interesting thing about the Thatcher case is that in TST:s recycled version, Sherlock seems to have inserted the case in a new setting into his EMP, fitting it into a time strand with a causal chain of events within his light cone of possible future. Because this time the Thatcher case definitely has an impact on the events that follow. The smashed Thatcher busts lead Sherlock to the memory stick, which in turn leads him to Mary and him and John to Morocco, a story which ultimately leads to Vivian Norbury and to Mary’s death. All these events are now causally linked in Sherlock’s EMP.

John’s version of their time together is more ‘down-to-earth’, though, even if John sometimes appear to be a slightly unreliable narrator. It’s an ‘alternate historical source’, if you like. The blog is still useful, in my opinion, to confirm the ‘authenticity’ of different events in the show. Thanks to the blog, we can find evidence that John’s wedding truly occurred, and that Mary really exists, because Sherlock has posted documentation - wedding photos - on John’s blog, and Mary has made several comments on the blog. (We don’t actually have Mary’s pregnancy confirmed by herself on the blog; when Sherlock mansplains that she needs to avoid seafood alludes to it in a comment, she merely tells him to shut up). 

But the show represents, I believe, Sherlock’s own perspective. While reading the blog he also, of course, would add his own memories to the experiences. If Sherlock was affected by drugs already while reading, that could explain all of the weird scenes in ASiP - TSoT mentioned above, which don’t appear very realistic and aren’t mentioned on the blog.

This explanation - with or without the space-time continuum - is of course not something I’m sure of, it’s merely a hypothesis. Anyone is welcome to try to debunk it. :) But this far I haven’t been able to find any convincing evidence against it. The fact that Sherlock’s OD would have occurred ’off stage’ is not a problem in my opinion, because

a) this method of reasoning backwards to reach a solution which is not shown in the story but still most likely has ocurred, is very much Sherlock Holmes’ MO already in canon and

b) his OD is talked about a lot in TAB, and still we never actually see it happen.

As far as I can see, all the ingredients are there, but the time sequence in which they occur is twisted and folded in on itself:

Sherlock’s ‘week of solitary confinement’ before his OD (described by Mycroft in TAB) happens in TLD, when Sherlock isolates himself at 221B taking drugs 

Sherlock’s OD happens in TAB

Sherlock being taken to hospital happens in HLV

Hints of different life-threatening health problems and hospital equipment are sprinkled all over S4, but they don’t have a logically satisfactory context

Maybe this could be explained because in Sherlock’s mind, these events are not causally linked - they occur ‘elsewhere’. He hasn’t yet fully recognised what he’s been doing to himself and the real reason why. This realisation remains for the next series to explore, along with Sherlock’s solution to get out of the situation. In the mean time, he’s woven them into his alternate inner universe with a hypothetical time strand where they are not causally linked.

Predictions...

... are of course very difficult to make for BBC Sherlock - especially since the show makers still refuse to give us any details as to whether we’ll even have a fifth series and when, in that case. And there are so many ‘feasible variables’ to take into account. So maybe it’s more interesting to see what we might draw from canon? Doyle treated his audience very much the same, when he killed off Sherlock Holmes and remained silent about his future for a decade. But, as I mentioned earlier, there are differences. The plot line we’ve seen this far in BBC Sherlock seems to go on and on in circles, frozen in time, with our two eternal friends “sitting arguing in a scruffy flat”, where we could imagine that ‘it’s always 1895′:

But ACD canon’s ending was far more open-ended and took place at the beginning of a new century. In LAST we learn that Holmes and Watson have indeed aged and at least Holmes, who supposedly no longer lives at 221B, has retired to Sussex Downs and written a handbook about beekeeping. Except for this last case, where he very much acts as a Bond-like action hero still going strong. As a double agent in disguise, Holmes effectively fools and wrestles down his opponent, saves his country from enemy attacks and then he steps into a modern car with Watson at the wheel, and they travel together into the future. I so wish that Sidney Paget had made an illustration of this, but we are left to our own deductions about it... ;-). Instead, I’ll post this picture of Claridge’s Hotel, London, where Holmes told Martha Hudson in LAST that he was now staying:

Claridge’s is a famous, still existing, five-star hotel not very far from Baker Street and - ironically - equally close to the subway station Bond Street. :-) From the video on their website (X) we can indulge in any fantasy about Holmes spending a couple of nights in this glamorous luxury hotel with his Watson (maybe a prompt for a fan fiction?): There is nowhere quite like Claridge’s. The hotel began life in 1856 and soon attracted royal notice. During the 1920s it became an English institution; an art deco landmark, loved by movie stars and statesmen, fashion designers and global dignitaries. 

As for BBC Sherlock, I think the dystopic, circular plot line needs to be broken in S5, even if we won’t reach the speed of light; John and Sherlock literally need to run out from Rathbone place. Even if the plot line didn’t advance in S4, there still has been a lot of character development, at least for Sherlock. If we’ll indeed have a S5, I expect Sherlock to be able to now act on his new insights and experiences in the physical world, even if it turns out that some of them only took place inside his own head. I do expect some true progression of the plot line in S5, I do expect to see a similar character development in John and that certain predominant issues with this show - like heteronormativity - will finally be properly addressed.

Well, hereby endeth the monster post. Thanks to anyone patient enough to have followed my ramblings this far! :) Tagging some people who might be interested.

Before I start I want to give you a little background about why I started looking into this. It was because of this:

I did a short meta about this picture called TRF is a Red Herring,  which I still stand by, but the matrix that represents Minkoswki’s Metric, or the matrix that represents the Space-Time Continuum, got me thinking. It is possible that the entire notebook is a red herring, but it is possible that only pieces of it are, or everything but one thing is. 

With how hard we’ve been speculating about time, I felt this clue was worth a closer look, given it is one of the only pieces of evidence given to us about time.

So without further ado, a brief introduction to The Space-Time Continuum.

The Space- Time Continuum (theorized by Hermann Minkoswki) is the idea that time and space exist in a four dimensional model, where space takes up three of the dimensions (x, y, & z) and time takes up the fourth (t). It is extremely difficult to visualize four dimensions, especially when accounting for motion of an object. As an example, imagine bouncing a ball down the t (time) axis. You wouldn’t say the ball has a position of (x,y, z) at this time (t), you’d say the ball exists at (x,y,z,t). At any given point, you could see the ball bounce along x, y, or z (space) axis, but the trajectory of the ball is at a curve, it exists all at once in space-time. 

If the table is the time axis (t), and each position of the ball is another variable in space (x,y,z) , we wouldn’t separate the time from space because they exist all together in one space-time. 

When you add in an observer to the space-time continuum, the model starts to look something like this:

From the prospective of the observer (which is important for our application to Sherlock), we have a subdivision of the space-time continuum which breaks an event into four disjointed sets. The Light cone, The Absolute Future, The Absolute Past, and Elsewhere (Sard. R.D).

The light cone is the most complicated thing that I’ll need to explain, but unfortunately it is also the most important. So, take each thing slowly, digest it, then move on. I will have to work up to the definition of Light Cone through other definitions. 

First, A Vector. A vector is a quantity that has both direction and magnitude (meaning an object that has mathematical size, i.e. it’s a number), helpful in determining the position of one point in space relative to another. So basically (for our purposes), a vector is the numerical sum of the physical position of a particular event, in relation to other events, as they occur in the same space. 

A Null Vector is a vector that has a magnitude equal to zero, which means it can have either NO direction or ANY direction. Which essentially means its an event that can go nowhere or anywhere.

Finally, The Light Cone of an event is composed of ALL the Null Vectors of that event. However, when we factor in time, as in, we choose a time for the event to occur, The Null Vectors are classified thusly: 

Zero vectors, Future-directed Null Vectors, and Past- Directed Null Vectors. But we also introduce something called Timelike Vectors which are broken into two types: future-directed timelike vectors whose first component is positive, (tip of vector located in absolute future in the figure above) and past-directed timelike vectors whose first component is negative (absolute past). A timelike vector connects two events that are causally connected, (ex. Sherlock receives the deerstalker as a present. Sherlock throws the deerstalker across the room. Two events, casually connected)

To oversimplify this a bit, this is all a long winded way of accounting for the point in time when the event occurs (zero), and the events that occurred before (past) and the events that will occur after (future). The absolute values in the timelike vectors are the total sum of all future and past events. The Absolute Future and The Absolute Past.

So, what is Elsewhere? Elsewhere, the fourth component of a broken down event from an observers point of view, is composed of something called spacelike vectors, which are represented by the idea that separated events are connected by vectors requiring faster-than-light travel, and so cannot possibly influence each other. Basically, a spacelike vector connects two events that are causally disconnected. An example would be John reads the newspaper in the morning and John chins the chief in the evening.

So with those four attributes, Light Cone, Absolute Future, Absolute Past, and Elsewhere, we have the space-time continuum of an event as witnessed by an observer. The Light Cone being the point zero for the event and the events that occur just before and just after, The Absolute Future being the sum of all future events from point zero, The Absolute Past being the sum of all past events from point zero, and Elsewhere, all of the events within this space-time continuum that cannot be directly connected to the event taking place at point zero.

With me so far?

So, what is the event we are dissecting here and who is the observer? Well, we are dissecting the same event thats been dissected over and over since the moment it aired. The Fall. And the observer? You may think it’s John, but its actually Sherlock. Everything is about Sherlock.

This is a good place for me to stop and remind everyone about the lovely idea of Extended Mind Palace, which is theory that at some point in Sherlock’s timeline he entered his Mind Palace to calculate the potential outcome of whatever decision he wants to make. 

He tells us he believes himself capable of telling the future this way in The Six Thatchers:

SHERLOCK (TST): The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics.

SHERLOCK (TST): An advanced grasp of the mathematics of probability mapped onto a thorough apprehension of human psychology and the known dispositions of any given individual can reduce the number of variables considerably. I myself know of at least fifty-eight techniques to refine this seemingly infinite array of randomly generated possibilities down to the smallest number of feasible variables.

And he alludes to everything we are seeing being a construct of his mind in The Lying Detective:

SHERLOCK (looking towards the ceiling): Really? I correctly anticipated the responses of people I know well to scenarios I devised? Can’t everyone do that?

The origination point of when EMP begins varies from person to person, and sometimes from day to day if you’re talking to me, but for the sake of this meta, I will say that the origination point of Sherlock’s EMP would be in The Reichenbach Falls before he meets Moriarty on the roof. That would mean everything we’ve seen since then has been a mind palace exercise of Sherlock’s. 

Now, lets put some of the definitions we learned to use and apply them to the show. 

For the null vectors, Sherlock has the option to go in NO direction (i.e- do nothing) or ANY direction. As we know, we didn’t see Sherlock choose to do nothing. We saw him make a choice out of many- He chose ANY direction over than NO direction. He said so himself in The Empty Hearse.

SHERLOCK: I calculated that there were thirteen possibilities once I’d invited Moriarty onto the roof. I wanted to avoid dying if at all possible. (x)

Notice the phrasing there. Sherlock calculated the possibilities once he had already invited Moriarty on to the roof, but not when he actually stepped out onto the roof, which would mean that we saw at the end of TRF, is most likely a mind palace sequence. Remember, the point of the MP exercise is for Sherlock to figure out how to defeat Moriarty, while avoiding dying himself. 

The future-directed null vectors of the fall after he goes in ANY direction are thus: Faking his suicide in a number of ways (TEH), Letting John in and trust him with his feelings so they can defeat the baddie together (TSoT), or kill Moriarty point blank- say, shooting him in the head (HLV). 

Here is where things get even more interesting and we get to read a little into Eistein’s Theory of Relativity. (Interesting side note: Minkowski was Einstein’s mentor/teacher and Einstein extrapolated his theory from the work Minkowski already had done on the theory of the space-time continuum) 

Einstein rejected the idea that time was linear. 

“Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent “now” objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence…for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.“

We have struggled as a fandom to understand the countless references to time, clocks, and watches and I think this is why. Time is so very difficult to understand because it does not operate singularly. It exists all at once, or at least, that is what Einstein’s theory purposes. 

So, going back to Sherlock, After His Last Vow, we got The Abominable Bride and Sherlock was, “A man out of his time.” 

Sure, this is just a nice piece of prose, but it is also literal. Sherlock ran through the null vectors of choosing ANY direction and it didn’t work. He has to start over. Cue, TAB and all of its parallels to the entirety of BBC’s Sherlock. It’s a clean slate. You’ll notice that in this clean-slate version, he has himself do all three of the failed future-directed null vectors- He jumps, but he also defeats Moriarty, but he only does so with John by his side. The Absolute Future. TAB really is a stand alone episode, serving to wipe the slate clean but also drive home the parallels and symbolism that we are supposed to be picking up on through the show. Series 4 looks like at TAB roadmap because Sherlock was successful in TAB and he is applying what knowlege he gained from it, to the current null vector.

Now we get to The Six Thatchers, where Sherlock is now considered to back to Null Vector Zero, or the point where he must choose between ANY direction and NO direction. He chose ANY direction before, so this time he chooses NO direction. He does nothing. He waits for Moriarty to come to him. Targets wait.

Now, since time is not linear and it occurs concurrently within Sherlock’s mind, a mind that is now far too deep within itself:

(TAB)

MYCROFT HOLMES : You’re in deep, Sherlock, deeper than you ever intended to be. Did you make a list? HOLMES: Of what? MYCROFT HOLMES: Everything. We will need a list. MYCROFT HOLMES: Good boy. HOLMES: No. I haven’t finished yet. MYCROFT HOLMES: Moriarty may beg to differ. (Holmes sighs sharply.) HOLMES: He’s trying to distract me, to derail me.

(TLD)

SHERLOCK(TLD): I’m at the bottom of a pit and I’m still falling and … (he shakes his head and clenches his eyes closed) … I’m never climbing out. 

Sherlock’s mind is breaking down with every string he pulls at in the web of his own mind. And since time is not linear, time begins to fold in on itself within Sherlock’s mind. That’s why we have so many reused lines and cases, blatant parallels to people and things that have already happened. The Absolute Past is being layered onto the current projection of Sherlock’s future. This List is a very good collection of that. 

What’s interesting too, is that due to the events of TST and TLD, we are sufficiently distracted or derailed from the Moriarty story line. When you think about it, Sherlock’s plan to wait for Moriarty DOES work. Eurus comes to him, makes the first move, seeks him out. She targets John, but because its not real, it was only a tranquilizer gun and John survives. They run through the jigsaw house, Sherlock’s mind becoming more and more fractured and further displaced from reality the deeper he goes- but he does defeat the bad guy. How? Love. Familial love. Perhaps this is a nod to Sherlock figuring out about Mycroft’s involvement with Moriarty…

Now, you may be asking yourself, what about Mary? She just never existed? No. She didn’t. She was a construct, a parallel to Sherlock that Sherlock’s mind created to work through his feelings for John. That is why her story line never made sense and it’s why she had to die. She doesn’t exist. Sherlock can’t wake up with a loose thread in the reality he created. All of the plot holes in Series Four and even going back to His last Vow can be explained by the slow degradation of Sherlock’s mind, but also by him just ignoring the things that he doesn’t find important in the grand scheme. He has to delete somethings. These pieces of data can be considered the spacelike vectors and the Elsewhere attributes of the space-time continuum. There are both the things that are casually disconnected to the event and the things are impossible to connect to the event. Mary was important, though. She was the part of Sherlock that was secretive and had a dark past- and he got rid of her. Foreshadowing his intention to share and be honest with someone in the future. We see his more openness after Mary’s death in The Lying Detective. Sherlock is raw in that episode, very emotionally vulnerable. The hug was- well, it was exquisite. Here, have another look, you know you want to…

Where was I? Sorry…I blacked out…

So, if we know that time does not exist in a straight line, but can fold and twist, stretch out and fold again, we can then understand that throughout the third and fourth Series, Sherlock has pushed time out as if it were a straight line, twisting the details and facts of the events in space, while simultaneously folding time over on itself. In his own complicated and convoluted way, he is working his way back to the beginning. Back to the original Zero- Null Vector point. His confrontation with Moriarty in The Reichenbach Falls. 

Think back to where he was then. He had John as his colleague, his “helpmate”, his best friend. That is where they are again in Sherlock’s EMP exercise, so we can expect for him to wake up soon and apply the knowledge he learned. 

What did he learn?

That he needs John by his side; that he can’t take Moriarty on alone. Doing so will lead to literal or emotional death.  He learned that if he and John are together and not emotionally distant, Moriarty won’t have a chance to send in a Wind Monster to shoot John with a tranquilizer dart. He learned that murdering Moriarty was out of the question and he also learned that his brother is most likely involved with Moriarty. Finally, and most importantly, he learned that John loves him and he learned the true depths of his love for John.

So, I hope you were able to follow along. I do have a science background, but I am not a mathematician or physicist. Any and all corrections are welcome! All transcripts were from Ariane DeVere. Thank you!!