In the original text of Sherlock Holmes: A Study In Scarlet, Sir Arthur Doyle opens up a brand new universe where crime is solved in many ways people couldn’t imagine at the time. The crime scene investigators still use these techniques in the modern day. It wouldn’t be possible without the creation of the fictional character, Sherlock Holmes.
For people who haven’t read this first installation of Sherlock Holmes, it starts out unexpectedly with Dr. John Watson as the narrator. This gives us a personal connection with Watson as he gives us a background of his life as we see things from his perspective. Watson had actually never met Holmes when he starts telling the story.
After an encounter with an old acquaintance of his, Stamford, he brings up that he is looking for a new flat. It just so happened that his acquaintance had a friend that was looking for the same thing, which is where Holmes first comes in the picture. Stamford gives Watson some background information on Holmes, such as the fact that his official profession is unknown and that he is eccentric, brilliant, and that his knowledge is specialized but diverse. After discussing their personal idiosyncrasies, Holmes and Watson make a decision to live together. This is where my favorite lines from Watson in Part I come to play; Watson is brutally honest while describing Holmes’s behaviors and knowledge.
After a while of living together, the first case is brought to the couple from a man named Gregson. He wants them to assist him and Inspector Lastrade in the case. There they sift through a crime scene with a cab’s marks in the road, footprints in the yard, a dead man who has been poisoned, and the word RACHE that is the German word for revenge in blood on the wall. A wedding ring falls off of the body when it is lifted which we learn about in the ever so confusing Part II. The dead man’s name is Enoch Drebber, he was from Cleveland.
Holmes explained to Watson how he determined the murderer’s age and height from his observations. In the middle of the investigation, Inspector Lastrade bursts into Holme’s and Watson’s flat announcing that Stangerson had been killed. But instead of a poisoning it was a stabbing. In Stangerson’s room was a box of the pills that Holmes says killed Drebber. Connecting the dots, Holmes announces that his investigation is complete. Later, Holmes called for a cab to pick him up, when he arrived, Holmes burst out that the man driving the cab, Jefferson Hope, was the murderer of Drebber and Stangerson. With the help of Watson and the detectives, the man was taken into custody.
Part II is rarely ever heard of; before I read it I don’t even know that there was a Part II! And I’ve read Study in Scarlet before! It takes us back in time to the manifest destiny in Salt Lake City to explain the story of John Ferrier, Lucy Ferrier, Brigham Young, Enoch Drebber, Joseph Stangerson and Jefferson Hope. Lucy saved from a near death experience by Jefferson Hope and slowly but surely falls deeply in love with him. Ferrier gave them his permission to marry when Hope returned from a few months’ journey.
Jefferson Hope arrived at their home in the middle of the night and Hope Lucy and John escaped into the mountains. In the unfortunate outcome, Hope went off to hunt for dinner but when he returned, the campsite Ferrier had been murdered and Lucy abducted for marriage. When Hope returns he was in for a surprise. In the Mormon town Lucy is pressured into marrying Drebber. Lucy died a month later from heartsickness. Hope promised that he would spend the rest of his life seeking revenge for the murderers. Drebber and Strangerson were a part of a group of Mormons that had broken away from the group in Salt Lake City. So he followed Drebber and Stangerson all over Europe. Until eventually the story returns to Holmes and Watson back in London.
It’s almost as if Part II was the interrogation and the back-story as to why Hope did what he had done. In the BBC version on this story, the episode is entitled “Study In Pink”. Since it is a story of course there has to be a lot of changes before it is turned into a television series. Some of these changes may be lacking taste but indeed may be important to tell the story the series director is trying to tell. First of all the setting takes place in regular modern day London unlike the story that takes place in the 1800s. It starts out not being narrated at all but instead just an opening title sequence of war images.
The entire opening scene where Watson meets Holmes is actually exactly how I imagined it while reading it. Although Watson didn’t meet Stamford at a bar he met him on a park bench. Holmes and Watson don’t actually agree to be roommates ever until toward the end of the episode, but in the story they talk for a little bit and agree to be roommates after not even knowing everything about each other. Another non-commonality is that in the book series, Watson gets married to Mary Morstan.
But in the BBC series, Watson often dates some women but remains in the end with Sherlock. So the director could be playing with the fact that Holmes and Watson are indeed gay or maybe somewhat curious. It is actually brought up a lot in “Study in Pink” whether they are gay or not. In the end of the BBC show Jefferson Hope actually kidnaps Sherlock Holmes and makes him go through the challenge of picking the good pill or the bad pill. This is just an added scene for the conclusion of the television show of course but it comes nowhere close to the text.
Even though Gatiss and Moffat (the writers of the BBC series) carried over the essential ideas, events and themes from the original story, we can see that their TV show is really different in many ways. Even though Sherlock’s attitude is sometimes excessive we still appreciate his rudeness because he is brilliant.
I actually think that the 1983 animated version with Peter O’Toole tells the story better than anyone else. More true to the original text that is. The setting is timed correctly and the characters are just as imagined. The only differences in the beginning that I noticed is that the story doesn’t start out with war stories or flashbacks from Watson but rather two Bobbies discovering that Drebber had been murdered. They don’t decide to live together; the story starts out with them knowing each other and already being roommates.
In this version Sherlock actually uses poor street children to get information on events and people. I really enjoyed watching this version especially because it actually takes us to America and tells the backstory of John Ferrier, Lucy Ferrier, Brigham Young, Enoch Drebber, Joseph Stangerson and Jefferson Hope. Like I said it stays very true to the original text. It isn’t as drawn out as the text and everyone enters the picture very suddenly in a flash back state of Jefferson Hope. Even though the target audience is of course kids because it is animated and it cuts corners around the nitty gritty, this has been my favorite rendition of the “Study In Scarlet”.
