Sherlock Holmes is one of the most vivid and iconic fictional
characters in literary history. The eccentric detective appeared in four novels
and numerous short stories penned by the paranormal researcher Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle between 1887 and 1927. At one point Doyle killed off Holmes and then used
a plot device in which Holmes retrospectively faked his own death to bring him
back to life. This was because his readers put so much pressure on him. The
most famous Sherlock Holmes story is The
Hound of the Baskervilles which was published in 1901. It is a murder
mystery involving a legend of a supernatural man-eating dog that is reputed to
haunt Dartmoor in Devon . The story
has been adapted into numerous films and television programmes. Many are not
set in the Victorian and Edwardian periods which the books emerged in, but are
instead contemporary to the time when the adaptations are made; including what
I consider the best which was released in 1939 and starred Basil Rathbone as
the eponymous character. The latest adaptation of the story is also
contemporary. Sherlock is a series made
by the BBC and, despite being set in modern Britain ,
is carefully faithful to Doyle's template.
The Hounds of
Baskerville is the second episode of the second season of Sherlock and is loosely based on The Hound of the Baskervilles. What's
fascinating about it is that it includes conspiratorial factors in the plot. As
in the book, a young man from Devon approaches Holmes
and asks him to investigate a death on Dartmoor , possibly
caused by a supernatural dog. When he was a child he witnessed his father being
killed and eaten by a huge canine monster, much bigger than any other dog he'd ever
seen. Since then he had suffered a mental breakdown and was undergoing therapy
with a Dr Stapleton; the name of the villain in the novel, in the TV series she
is a female psychiatrist and only plays a secondary role. The young man
suspects that his father's death might be linked to a nearby secret government
laboratory, similar to Porton Down, called Baskerville. Local people have heard
rumours that the government is breeding huge genetically modified dogs covertly
to be used in warfare. Holmes is famous for being extremely deductive and observant.
He can work out a person's entire life story almost at the moment he meets them
by cold-reading the tiniest detail. His brother Mycroft Holmes is also a top Westminster
official, and so by impersonating him Holmes manages to blag his way inside
Baskerville. Mycroft is both helper and obstacle because has also sent
Inspector Lestrade to Devon to keep an eye on his errant
brother. Holmes and Dr Watson soon discover the truth of what is going on. There
are no real giant dogs in Baskerville, but there is an experiment to develop
gas that induces confusion and terrifying hallucinations. The idea is to use
this as a weapon of war to disorientate and demoralize enemy soldiers on a
battlefield. This is being tested on Dartmoor and the
young man's father was murdered by one of the scientists there because he was a
test subject in the experimental programme and threatened to go public. The
fictional project is codenamed H.O.U.N.D., the initials of the scientists who developed
it; and it has real life counterparts, such as MK Ultra. Obviously Holmes and
Watson eventually unmask the antagonist and solve the case. It's interesting
that the BBC would bring this element into their latest adaptation; it would
not be very difficult to recreate The
Hound of the Baskervilles in its original storyline for the Sherlock series. The Hounds of Baskerville can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sherlock-2-DVD-Benedict-Cumberbatch/dp/B005UL537Y.
See here for more
details: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/programme-199-podcast-neil-sanders.html.
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