Hey youtubers, it's Charlie, and the BBC just confirmed we're getting a 2015 Sherlock Christmas Special.
I know you all wanted there to get a Special this year but Benedict Cumberbatch
and Martin Freeman are way too busy.
But since we do have an actual date for whenever SetLock is going to be happening again
I'm gonna be doing some special Sherlock Bonus videos whenever we get to December, especially around the Doctor Who Christmas' Special,
So be sure to subscribe to get everything. December is gonna be like a month for Doctor Who and Sherlock. It'll be great.
So here's the details, Cumberbatch and Freeman will film the 2015 Christmas Special this
coming January, January 2015 that is. Later in 2015 they'll film three new episodes for series 4.
Those will air January 2016. So it's just like series 3. We get a Christmas Special
leading into a new series. It's going to be awesome.
So, yes it is a bummer that we won't be getting new episodes for almost a year and a half but do not forget
about SetLock. If you're not familiar with the term it defines a group of fans that patrol
the set of Sherlock when they're filming. It's the part of the fandom that camps out
and live tweets pictures and updates and Tumblr posts whenever actual production is happening.
If you really enjoy talking to other Sherlock fans, SetLock is more of like a World Cup
for you than the actual World Cup.
I'll be making special videos while SetLock is going on in addition to the stuff I'm doing
this December. So we'll have SetLock going on in January 2015 whenever they film the Christmas
Special and then again during the Spring and Summer whenever they're filming the actual episodes.
When they filmed Sherlock series 3 what ended up happening is they filmed two episodes
and then they had to go on a break and then come back and filmed the third episode much, much later in the year.
That was because Martin Freeman had to go back and finish filming The Hobbit. They came back in August to film that third
episode, His Last Vow, and it all worked out.
So don't be surprised if something like that happens again, but I think they'll try to
film all three episode back to back. It's way harder when they're doing television to just do a little bit and then go away
and try to bring everyone back from all over the world and try to do that last little bit.
It takes about 3 months for them to film, edit and finish
an episode, so they're going to have to finish all filming of Series 4 by the end of August if they're
going to make the January 1st airdate and be able to release a new episode every week.
That's been the schedule in the past, so I think that they're going to maintain that when we get to series 4.
They're just gonna air the first episode January 1st and then each week after that.
The only big change that's happened since series 3 is that they've shortened the international window
that people have to wait. So if you live in an outside country, you don't have to wait as long to see the episodes.
For example in the United States, instead of airing on BBC America like Doctor Who, Sherlock airs
on PBS. And for whatever reason, they still have to wait a few weeks to air episodes after
they air on BBC One.
So if you do want to watch Sherlock at the earliest possible time, you either have to
watch them on BBC One or in the iPlayer. That can be kind of tricky if you don't live
in the UK, but I'll explain some suggestions for non UK people whenever we get there. It's
like a year and a half away, so don't worry.
Now let's talk a little bit about what the story of the Christmas Special is gonna be because they
did use that Andrew Scott picture at the end of His Last Vow.
There's a couple of directions they could go, the series has jumped forward and backward
in time, teased alternate versions of scenes like the Rooftop Fall and it's even gone full
on Mind Palace where Sherlock plays out whole scenes just in his mind.
Plus we have remember the state we left things in at the end of His Last Vow.
Like Mycroft receding Sherlock's exile.
and how the previous Christmas Special dealt with the jump in time between series 2 and 3.
I am expecting the period of time between series 3 and series 4 to be about the same.
At the end of His Last Vow, Mary was pregnant with girl Sherlock, we'll just call her that
for now, Watson and Sherlock seemed like they were in a much more stable place emotionally,
and Sherlock himself seemed accepting of his survival odds on the black ops mission and Mycroft as well.
The understanding was that Sherlock probably was not gonna survive past six months.
I do suspect that Mycroft would have found a way to extract Sherlock again
just like he did at the beginning of Empty Hearse. I think if Sherlock had gone through with
the mission they gave him we would have seen the exact same type of scenario play out.
You know, Mycroft casually revealing himself as Sherlock gets ready to be tortured.
I think that Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are really good at teasing things and then yanking you
in other direction. Which is why they you know push Sherlock on the plane but then showed you Moriarty's face.
There are a couple of big things I think are gonna happen during the in-between time and the
series 4 Christmas Special will probably be just be like the series 3 Christmas Special,.
It won't pick up right there
on the tarmac, it's gonna jump forward in time a little bit. I think that the most obvious thing
that means it's that Mary would have had her baby already, she was pretty much ready to pop, on the tarmac, right there.
I do hope that Special ends up showing the baby and if we do see the birth, it will be done in flashback.
I feel like the naming of the baby will be something they'll include. They'll just end the Special at the point where
they can start that episode in series 4, where they're like this happy little family, you know like two people with two babies
like one really small one and one big grumpy one.
So what about the mystery of that Moriarty clip playing on screens all over London?
If they jump forward in time, they'll likely have generated a list of suspects that Sherlock
and Mycroft will be vetting. Probably mostly Sherlock. I loved seeing Mycroft out in the field during series 3 but that
was a huge deal. His character in the books would have never done that.
In the books, Mycroft seems more like the type of person that would never leave
his office or the Diogenes Club for anything. Even Sherlock. Gatiss' version of the character seems much friendlier
in contrast. If not friendly in general. At least when he's around Sherlock.
So I already did a series 4 predictions video talking about stories they might be able to do like Valley of Fear,
Lady Fances Carfax, Dying Detective and Red Headed League. Those could be the basis of
full episodes, but what's the story of the Christmas Special gonna to be?
Last Year's Special last year was just a short video, I don't really consider it an episode.
The BBC didn't reveal how long the Special would be, but it sounds like it will be somewhere
in between, just because they'll have to address the Moriarty clip and the baby.
I don't think they're gonna use it set up the main villain or any of the big stories they're gonna to do for each of the episodes
but I do have a few ideas on who that villain could be. The only thing that BBC has said officially is
it is someone or something that fans will never expect. And I do have a few theories about that.
Right away it makes me think they're gonna bring back Andrew Scott, full on, and he'll play the true
Moriarty and they'll just reveal that the Moriarty from series 1 and 2 was the brother.
In case you're confused about this, in the canon, Arthur Conan Doyle was not super great at coming up with new names for characters.
So Professor Moriarty, the arch villain of the books, had a brother named Colonel James Moriarty.
So why they were both named James Moriarty we have no idea. But one was Professor and one was Colonel.
It could've been because Doyle didn't care enough to come up with a better name or it could
was just an oversight. But if they do wanna to use him, Moffat and Gatiss have a spare
James Moriarty lying around in the canon.
So in case you haven't seen any of the interviews with Gatiss and Moffat, they draw on all Sherlock canon, or I guess you could say they canonize
things Sherlock. So it's not just the books.
Doctor Who fans will remember that Moffat did the same thing for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special,
He canonized the radio dramas, the Doctor Who radio dramas, whenever Paul McGann's 8th Doctor called
out a bunch of names of the radio characters during The Night of The Doctor mini episode.
It was really cool. So whenever you start theroy crafting about Sherlock's series 4,
make sure you think about all things Sherlock, not just the original books.
A couple of villains they could use, might be the true version of Colonel Moran,
so technically you could say he wasn't the real Colonel Moran. Then there's Henry Peter from
the Lady Carfax story, René Heron, Fantômas and Von Bork.
and just mix and match with villains. I know a lot of Doctor Who fans argue Moffat gets timey wimey
big villain characters. It's usually just the lesser characters that they mess around with.
But now it's your turn. Let me know in the comments what are you most excited to see in these new Sherlock episodes
and to let me know what your theories are on that Moriarty clip.
So I won't have time to do a Q&A for this so I'll just try and answer everyone in the comments if you have questions.
But I'll be doing a bunch of Sherlock in December when we get closer to the Doctor Who Christmas Special
and when the actors start filming the Sherlock Christmas Special in January.
So it'll be a lot of fun. Be sure to subscribe to get everything.
There is a whole lot Doctor Who coming though. Series 8 is premiering in August so get excited about that.
Right now click here to get my breakdown of the series 8 trailer and
click here to get all my Sherlock series 4 predictions.
Thank you so much for watching. I see you guys tonight. High-fives.