My History with Sherlock Holmes

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. I've got health stuff going on right now, which is why I haven't posted anything in almost a month. Today though, I wanted to talk about my history with the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, as well as the concept of a private consulting detective working in London, England in the late 1800's. Let's get into it.

This all started because I hadn't read a Sherlock Holmes story since high school, so my mom picked up Sherlock Holmes: The Novels from Indigo Books for me. This is a collection of all four original Sherlock Holmes novels, only one of which I'd read before. I actually just finished A Study in Scarlet last night. It was good, but I'll talk about it more when I actually review the collection itself. So where does my history with Holmes begin?

So, believe it or not, my history with Sherlock Holmes begins with Star Trek: The Next Generation. I know, shocking right? In the season 1 episode, "Lonely Among Us", Picard mentions Sherlock Holmes to Data during a briefing on the mysterious systems malfunctions the Enterprise is experiencing. Next thing you know, Data has read and studied every Holmes story in existence, and Sherlock Holmes became his personality for the rest of the episode. Of course, I had this episode on VHS so I watched it a lot.

My introduction to the setting of the Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as the character of Professor Moriarty was the TNG season 2 episode, "Elementary, Dear Data". I didn't have it on VHS, so I only watched it whenever it came on TV in reruns. 

 

Naturally, around this time, The Great Mouse Detective came out on VHS and my grandparents bought it for me to watch at their place. So that was my first introduction to a spin-off or homage to the character. I have this movie on VHS and DVD, but it's been a while since I watched it last.

I'm pretty sure that I watched The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, another spin-off of the classic stories, when it was airing on YTV, but I honestly don't remember much about it. It's been 30 years since I saw the show. I do remember seeing the commercials for it while watching other shows on YTV.

The first time I read an actual Sherlock Holmes story was when I was given the Great Illustrated Classics hardcover version of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which my Nana got for me at a garage sale sometime in the late '90s. Of course I was familiar with fictional private detectives because I read the Hardy Boys books, a couple of Nancy Drew books, and there were a few TV shows that borrowed the concept, such as Dog City, which was produced by Jim Henson Productions, Batman: The Animated Series (with Holmes being an inspiration for Batman to begin with), and others that I'm probably not even thinking of.

Sometime when I was in grade six, during the 1998-1999 school year, I found this paperback edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes at my school library, and I read it. It's been 26 or 27 years since I read it, but I do remember enjoying it.

At some point before I started high school, I received this Aladdin Classics paperback copy of the third Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, for either my birthday or Christmas and I ended up reading it for an independent novel study in grade nine because my school participated in Take Your Kids to Work Day, but neither of my parents were working at the time, and I didn't have any other family members who lived close enough that I could go to work with for the day. So, I stayed home and worked on the independent novel study for The Hound of the Baskervilles, which I'd already been reading at the time.

A few years later, I picked up Detective Comics #572, which was published in 1987, from the back issue bin of a local hobby store and it happened to be the 50th Anniversary of the comic book series (and of DC Comics itself) issue. The reason I mention this comic is because one of the chapters is a Sherlock Holmes story connected to the case that Batman, Robin, the Elongated Man, and Slam Bradley were working on. Which is pretty cool.

I have never seen any of the classic Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone, or very few other screen adaptations of the character. Mostly because there weren't that much coming out when I was growing up, and when there was, I was either too young, or it was on when I didn't have a TV in my room. However, in early 2010 I went to see the 2009 movie starring Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law as Watson with my best friend, Brad. I enjoyed it, but I ended up not going to see the sequel in 2011 or 2012. And like he did with Iron Man a year earlier, RDJ brought a bit of nuance to the screen version of Holmes that we very rarely get when adapting any book to the big screen.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I finished reading A Study in Scarlet for the very first time last night. Having been published in 1887 in a magazine called Beeton's Christmas Annual, and in 1888 as a novel, I've never seen a copy of it before. Hence why I never picked it up. I mean the Sherlock Holmes books, be it the novels or short story collections, are some of the most often reprinted/re-published books in literature, so it's not like it was out of print at any time during my childhood. It's just Nana found The Hound of the Baskervilles and not the other three novels, or the other short story collections. 

It's still nice to have all four Sherlock Holmes novels to be able to read. Two weeks ago, I got the urge to read some Sherlock Holmes stories, and since I wasn't able to really go out due to my recent health issues, my mom said she'd pick up the book for me. Originally I was gonna go for the Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Collection, but it's a big hardcover, and I have a difficult time holding big hardcovers for any length of time, even when I'm completely healthy, so I went with the smaller, lighter, paperback of the four novels.

I think that's gonna be it for me for today. I'm not sure when I'll be back. I have a comic book review that I wanna do later this week or next week, and then I think I'm gonna take the rest of December off and January off, except for my full review of Sherlock Holmes: The Novels when I'm finished reading it. We'll see though. Until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.