Sherlock wants to make you smarter

Spoilers for "Snow Angels," episode 1.19.

Sherlock is clearly the best at putting little details together to figure out the big picture, but I like that he helps other people become better investigators.

Examples from this week's episode:

1. Sherlock and Joan go to the crime scene and see where the guard died. There's a bullet hole in the far wall, and Sherlock looks to Joan to explain what happened. She figures out that the guard was not dead when he fell. He fired once at someone who was standing by the wall and hit that person in the abdomen, judging by the height of the bullet hole and the blood stains.

2. Sherlock finds a strand of synthetic blonde hair at the robbery scene, so one of the thieves wore a wig. Later at the hospital, Detective Bell notices a strand of blonde hair on Elle's coat (but she has brown hair). He holds the strand under a lamp and it melts, so he knows it's synthetic. Then he arrests Elle to take her to the police station for questioning.

3. At the end of the episode, Sherlock is setting up a fake blood splatter on the floor of the apartment. He tells Joan to come back to the living room in ten minutes with a blindfold, and then the lesson will begin. Sherlock shows people his investigative methods while he is out on a case, but then he sets up simulations to practice methods, too.

More like Commumity

Spoilers for Season 4, episode 4 "Herstory of Dance."

Finally, Community feels like Community again, and not an imitation of itself.

This week's episode went back to the classic Community structure: a story on Greendale's campus that involves each character in a different capacity, and, of course, the show continues to play with sitcom tropes and its own recurring elements.

Abed

Abed understands how stories and characters work in TV shows, and he applies that understanding to figure out what's happening in the real world. That part of Abed wasn't strong this season until this episode. (Instead, we had an Abed that is tangentially connected to the plot. Delta Cubes! Delta! Cubes!) Abed thinks he should grow away from that dependency on TV understanding, but then he ends up in the Two Dates on the Same Night Trope. Community takes the plot device one step further: Abed has an accomplice to help him switch between dates, and it ends up being a woman who genuinely interests him. Instead of choosing between the dates, he chooses her.

Britta

Britta protests the sexist, old-fashioned Sadie Hawkins dance by organizing her own dance. She meant to celebrate Susan B. Anthony, but she misspeaks and says Sophie B. Hawkins instead. She brittas her idea but instead of admitting her mistake, Britta sticks to what she said and Pierce helps her bring Sophie B. Hawkins to the dance. Britta changes the term "britta" from meaning you messed up to meaning you succeeded.

Annie and Shirley

Annie and Shirley team up and compete in several episodes (starting with season 1, episode 20 "The Science of Illusion), and in "Herstory of Dance," they compete to find a date for Abed. Annie chooses a student who she thinks complements Abed's personality. Shirley chooses a young woman from her church, but we don't see anything to suggest Abed would be interested in her. Abed doesn't want to disappoint Annie or Shirley, so he agrees to both dates and knows he can treat the situation like a TV trope.

Troy

Troy is back to looking for wacky stuff to do, playing the Hobbes to Abed's Calvin. He helps Britta with her dance, but it seems like it is in a friend—and not boyfriend—capacity, which is good because their romantic relationship felt forced.

Jeff

Jeff starts out being mean to Britta and teases her for messing up the idea for her own dance. But by the end of the episode, he congratulates her for doing a good job. His change of attitude echoes back to season 1, where he thought he was stuck with an odd study group and then realized that these people are actually his best friends.

Pierce

Pierce finally shows his redeemable side when he tells Jeff that he shouldn't give Britta such a hard time. The first three episodes of this season had Pierce saying sexist and racist comments and being a constant annoyance. It left very little to like about him, but now that he interacts more with Jeff and Britta, we see the not-so-bad side of Pierce.

Magic should be difficult to learn

When the Harry Potter books came out, what I enjoyed about them the most was that the characters had to learn and study magic, even to do something simple like levitate a feather. The children come into their abilities at age eleven, but they can't automatically use magic to accomplish whatever they want.

It was completely different from the characters I grew up watching on TV, primarily Sabrina Spellman. Sabrina found out she was a witch when she turned 16. Yes, she had to learn certain things about magic, but most of the time she could point her finger, think of what she wanted to happen, and it would happen. Just like that. She studies for her witch license, but it's a part-time thing.

Compare that to the world of Harry Potter, where children spend seven years in full-time magic classes learning charms, potions, transfiguration, and a dozen other topics. Most magic requires a wand and a Latin spell, and the more advanced work also requires disciplined concentration.

I appreciate magic as a story element in the Harry Potter books because the characters earn their skills. But for Sabrina, magic felt easy, and the complications came from non-magic sources such as friends, high school social norms, and her own desires.

Dresden and Thomas: when two characters trust each other

In movies and TV shows, we can see what two characters are like when they're together. It doesn't matter if they're siblings, friends, a romantic couple, or enemies. Their interactions are on the screen. They have dialogue and body language. We have a lot of information to help us figure out what their relationship is like.

Relationships can be more difficult to convey in novels because we don't have all of those visual clues. The small details are in words, like the rest of the story, instead of in facial expressions and tone of voice. And yet, in the Dresden Files series, author Jim Butcher gives us a clear understanding of relationships between characters.

For example, take Harry Dresden and his brother Thomas. Going by the conversations Harry and Thomas have and the insight we gain from Harry's point of view, we have a pretty good understanding of their relationship. But we gain an even better understanding during scenes when Thomas and Harry face a threat together. That's when we see the high level of trust between Harry and Thomas.

I noticed this in White Night's fight scenes, but there are probably examples in earlier books too. Harry yells at Thomas to duck out of the way, and Thomas immediately drops to the ground. No hesitation and no doubt. Vice versa, Harry follows whatever instruction Thomas gives him. Communicating like that during dangerous situations works only with immediate responses, and immediate responses require a high level of trust. Otherwise, a delay on either Thomas's or Harry's part could mean death for one or both of them.

The way those moments are written, it feels natural that Harry and Thomas would trust each other like that, to the point that I didn't realize their high level of trust until I read past those scenes.

Part of the reason for the delayed realization is that we don't have visual cues. If I were watching that fight scene on a screen, I would have seen how quickly one man responded to the other, and it would have been obvious that they are used to fighting together and trust each other. But reading the scene in a book, we have to meet the author halfway. He gives us the details and we have to make connections to figure out what's happening.

Skyfall: A Bond Intro, Shakespeare Style

If you've read Romeo and Juliet, then you know that Shakespeare outlines the story in the prologue. Before the first scene even starts, you know the play is about two star-crossed lovers who die. Skyfall does something similar in its opening credits.

Spoilers for the movie below. Here's a video of the opening credits, for reference.

The opening titles give the audience a glimpse of what's coming in the movie, including plot points, locations, and themes.

Here a few examples, and you could analyze and dissect the opening titles to even greater detail.

Time - Image in opening credits - Connection to story
0:30 - Bond continues sinking in the water - Bond presumably drowns and MI6 pronounces him dead
1:00 - Fallen knives and guns form cemetery gravestones - The death of "the old ways" in espionage
1:15 - Zoom in on Bond's eye - Bond returns to London
1:31 - Shooting the shadows - Bond's tests before returning to fieldwork, M's idea about "working in the shadows"
2:18 - Dragon dance - Shanghai
2:47 - Black skull - The black skull image that flashed on M's hacked computer
2:50 - Cemetery - Exposed MI6 agents who were assassinated, the graves of Bond's parents at Skyfall estate
2:52 - Fall into a grave and then Bond is walking on the ground - Bond's "resurrection"
3:05 - Shooting at mirrors - Scene in the Shanghai skyscraper, mirrors in Skyfall house to distract Silva's men
3:21 - Blood stain on Bond's suit jacket - M lets Bond go back into the field even though he didn't pass the tests (he's a damaged/injured agent)
3:28 - Blood and fire falling over a large house - The final fight at the Skyfall estate where most of Silva's men die, M dies, and the house blows up

The opening titles do not obviously tell you what is going to happen in the story, but the imagery gives you a general sense of what's coming. I noticed how connected the opening credits were only after I finished watching the movie.

Blog Every Day (in) April snuck up on me again

Blog Every Day in April (BEDA) is here again! I keep forgetting it's a Thing, but then I saw Rohan's post.

The idea is simple: write a blog post every day in April, no matter what. I'll be sticking the my usual areas: TV, movies, novels, and storytelling in general.

If there are any specific topics you'd like me to write about, please leave them in the comments.

Who is Clara Oswald?

Since Clara appeared in "Asylum of the Daleks," people have been posting online with possible about who she is. Here are my theories and speculations about Clara. (Spoilers for "The Bells of St. John.")

1. We are seeing Clara out of order, as we did with River. 

"The Bells of St. John" is the first episode in Clara's timeline, from her point of view. She becomes an expert computer hacker. Then at some point in her future (but the Doctor's past), she ends up in the the Dalek Asylum. I'm not sure where "The Snowmen" and the little girl in the prequel fit in yet. Moffat is giving us jigsaw puzzle pieces and we have to figure out how they fit together.

2. Clara isn't real. 

The Doctor is traveling alone and having hallucinations. Clara appears in each one. In "The Wedding of River Song" (6.13), the Doctor says "My friends have always been the best of me." Clara embodies memorable qualities from previous companions:

• a mystery girl, like Amy
• flirts with the Doctor, like River
• dies and lives again, like Rory
• wrongly assumes the Doctor is looking for romance, like Donna—Clara calls the TARDIS a "snog box" and Donna's reaction to the Doctor asking her to travel with him was, "You're not mating with me, sunshine!"

Maybe we'll see elements adapted from Jack, Martha, and Rose in the coming episodes.

3. Clara is a Bizarro version of the Doctor, a Timelord gone wrong. 

She shares some characteristics with the Doctor, but through a distorted lens. Clara regenerates but always into the same body. She maintains a similar personality but has no memory of her past incarnations. She wants to travel but can't make herself leave.

4. Clara is one person, fragmented throughout time and space. 

We see multiple versions of the same person, all from the same source code (a computer analogy, for Clara's hacking skills). The bad guys in "The Bells of St. John" are in The Shard and they separated Clara's mind from her body. We've had scattering and fragmenting before—the cracks in series 5 and the Bad Wolf messages in series 1. This time, it's a scattered person.

Each version of Clara can live on her own, disconnected from the other Claras. That's why the Doctor remembers encounters with her, but she doesn't have any history with him. That's why she can keep dying and living. Different Claras, all human, and similar enough that the Doctor thinks she is the same person that he has met before.

What are your theories about Clara?