This past Sunday, I was finally able to watch "Sign of Three", albeit after all the other "dedicated" fans because I'm lame and don't get BBC. Needless to say, it was one of the most beautiful 90 minutes of my life. And I don't mean that as a cliched way of talking about how good the episode was. I truly mean that as a writer, as an introvert, and as a human being. There is something so incredibly human about the calculating and awkward genius that is Sherlock Holmes.
I won't bore you with the details of the episode. If you've seen it, you get it. If you haven't, stop reading this and get a Netflix subscription and a free hour and a half.
Honestly, I don't really know why I titled this as being about Sherlock. This is not about Sherlock. Not really. Even thought I can talk about how Benedict Cumberbatch's beautiful acting makes you forget that he looks like an otter, there are far more important matters at hand. This post is more about the idea of Sherlock Holmes: a pervasive figure of mystery. Since 1895, he's solved countless impossible cases, gone head to head with some of the most villainous masterminds, and most importantly, defied death. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle couldn't kill him off. Not permanently anyway. Sherlock Holmes has survived more than a hundred years of Western society not through cunning or bravery, but through the minds and hearts of audiences.
As a writer, this idea both intrigues and terrifies me: the truth that what Doyle wrote doesn't belong to him. It belongs to everyone. And no one. Certainly there's copyright and other things to create a sense of control, but no half-decent character really belongs to a writer. Fan culture is amazing that way. It sort of sets the characters free. They can evolve and adapt, molding themselves to be successful in whatever world or time they occupy. And that's something to remember, as writers, and really as people. The characters in the worlds we write, and in our day to day lives, aren't really ours. They don't belong to us, just as we don't belong to them. We simply share the same space for a period of time, and eventually that time will come to an end, and we will go on without one another, living or not. Doyle is long gone, but Sherlock Holmes is still here, still present, still himself, despite his many changes and despite never really existing at all.
It really is interesting how characters and the idea of characters can keep growing and adapting, with some parts of a creation remaining constant while others become something sometimes completely different. Sherlock is especially fascinating because there have been so many adaptations of the original work throughout the years--from Guy Ritchie's film to BBC's modern work to Elementary, just to name some of the most recent versions--and, when comparing these, you can see the parts that are still Doyle's and the parts that are purely the imagination and creation of the modern artists. Characters and plotlines really seem to be the property of the public, like you mentioned, once they are written down on paper and spread around--and no amount of copyrights will change this.
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