"Sir, there’s been a break in" / "Not our division"

 (Sherlock Meta by intellectualfangirl)

I love this moment. Not just because it’s pretty hilarious; I think this reveals much of what you need to know about Sally Donovan and Gregory Lestrade.

Let’s look at Sally: she’s shown in motion, opening a door and delivering her line at the same time. She creates action, she sets events into motion, and she’s bent on justice. Sure, she functions as the giver of news here, but there’s an implication in what she says: there’s been a break-in and she wants to do something about it. Additionally, she doesn’t wait until Greg has acknowledged her presence: she knows that she is dealing with a pressing matter, so propriety is not her first priority. However, she still adheres to some etiquette (addressing Greg as sir), indicating that she respects him. Now look at her clothing choices: Sally wants to get shit done, and she wears what she wants while she does so. She wears feminine, practical clothing: there’s a beautiful necklace around her neck, and her shirt has this gorgeous pattern that I originally thought was lace-inspired. Still, it’s all stuff she can move in. But her clothing is much less whimsical than Molly’s, for example: notice the geometric lines of the necklace and the practical watch she wears on her left wrist.

Now look at Greg: Greg reacts to things. He’s clearly busy, and finding a moment to put his feet up and have a bit to eat (is that a scone? or in the tradition of stereotypical cops everywhere, is that a doughnut? we may never know)…and to have some coffee, of course. As he speaks, frustrated, harried, crumbs fall from his mouth (which really makes the humour of this moment, in my opinion). Paperwork is scattered on his desk, but besides an inexplicable paperweight/ornament and the cushy chair, the office looks rather utilitarian. Greg’s feet are on the desk in the classic “power pose,” but in his case the position serves to display his shoes, which don’t quite seem to match his already rather rumpled suit (well, rumpled by television standards). Is he wearing brown or black? I can’t really tell, but he’s not the natty dresser Sherlock is, that’s for certain.

She’s the newer member of the force, he’s the greying veteran. He’s in a traditional position of power (both by his pose, his job, and his status as white, male, and older), while she’s somewhat of an intruder (or she could be seen as one). But Sally is the more active one—he’s so clearly exhausted. And when you look at their interactions beyond this scene, it’s so clear that he respects her, and she respects him, and they have a very effective working relationship—they might even be called friendly, if not friends. And I like to think that Sally, Sally who could so easily ignore him or mock him or just do her job and nothing more, I think Sally is responsible for that.

This has been a Sally Donovan and Greg Lestrade (but mostly Sally Donovan) appreciation post.

In Defense of Sally Donovan

 (Sherlock Meta by wellingtongoose)

Anonymous asked: How can you even defend Sally? She is such a b*tch to Sherlock! If I called someone a freak at work I would be fired. She totally deserves everything she gets.*

wellingtongoose: In reference to  my metas:  Heroines in Sherlock or Nuclear Meltdown at the Met 2, which are both mostly about Sally.

I personally find hatred for Sally Donovan on the Sherlock fandom disturbing and also incredibly illogical. Many people have condemned Sally for being “unprofessional” towards Sherlock and yet few have thought to use the same yardstick to measure Sherlock.

For a moment, let’s put aside the blinding vitriol and actually take a look at Sherlock, not Sally. Here is man, who to all intent and purposes, sets himself up as a professional. He holds an expert body of knowledge that gives him power over his clients. In the same way doctors have an expert body of knowledge that gives we us great influence over our patients.

How does Sherlock treat his clients, the people he is nominally trying to help? He treats them with disdain. Instead of attempting to reassure the client in ASIB, he rants off a list of the man’s very personal attributes to a complete stranger, right in front of the client and then condescendingly tells the man not to worry. In THoB, not only does he refuse to take Henry Knight seriously, he is completely dismissive of his very real fears.

How does he treat the people he works with? Sherlock consistently forgets to share information with John or withholds information deliberately so he can test out a pet theory. He runs off at regular intervals leaving John in the lurch and also has little consideration for John’s personal life, which Sherlock seems to think should be put on hold for him. I have no doubt that Sherlock values John as his friend, companion and blogger, but John definitely deserves to be treated better.

As for Lestrade and the CID – Sherlock has shown consistent contempt for the police and police procedure. There is a reason why you must not contaminate crime scenes or withhold evidence from the police. The evidence gathered is not admissible in a court of law. Sherlock might solve the case – but he’s made securing a conviction very difficult/almost impossible. The police have these rules so that they can actually lock the criminals away and secure justice for the victim and their families (Nuclear Meltdown at the Met)

Sherlock consistently refuses to behave professionally in the course of his professional duties.

In contrast, we do not see Sally treating crime victims or her colleagues with the same unprofessional attitude that Sherlock does.

Yes, Sally was unprofessional; I’m not saying that she is blameless. However we don’t know what has been said between Sherlock and Sally in the past and therefore we do not have a context for the comment. Given Sherlock’s willingness to drag Sally’s private life into their conversation right in front of her colleagues I would say their feud was ugly on both sides.

Sally definitely needs to improve on her professional attitude to Sherlock, but Sherlock needs to improve his attitude to everyone, including John and Mrs Hudson.

But Sherlock isn’t a real person - he’s a flawed protagonist and audiences find that appealing. For example: I love watching House because he says all the things I would never dare to say to my patients.

Sherlock has the emotional sensitivity of a tabloid newspaper but that’s what makes him Sherlock, and sets the BBC adaptation apart from Elementary/ITV Granada versions.

We can’t judge Sherlock for his bad behaviour, his flaws are central to the show. Therefore it’s decidedly unfair and equally fruitless to judge Sally for her reactions to him.

Sally represents how the average person would treat Sherlock (but not how they should treat anyone) and it accentuates the amazing patience, loyalty, dedication and personal sacrifices of John, Mrs Hudson and even Lestrade.

 *this is not the full text of the ask, I had to edit it because of the vocabulary used.

If you want to read my analysis of Sally’s actions during TRF: Nuclear Meltdown at the Met 2

The Hidden Heroines of Sherlock -Molly and Sally

 (Sherlock Meta by wellingtongoose)

Moffat and Gatiss have (intentionally or otherwise) given us great examples of strong, independent professional women. We just have to look at beyond the obvious.

This isn’t a discussion about sexism in Sherlock. It’s a short piece about Molly and Sally as professional women. I am putting Sally and Molly into their realistic professional contexts. This also allows us to extrapolate outside of the short space of time we see these characters on screen.

We can get an idea of how hard it is to become a Detective Sergeant, how competent and decisive Molly has to be  in order to be a doctor.

It is written for fun - not for academia so I would like to ask everyone to not take my conclusions too seriously!



Bending over Backwards for Good Reason

Many people have pointed out that the women in Sherlock are defined by their relationships to men. I would like to correct this because the women in Sherlock are defined by their relationships to Sherlock and John who happen to be men.

If we look closely at BBC Sherlock we will see some good examples of where Moffat/Gatiss have bent over backwards to create female characters were none existed before in ACD canon. They didn’t need to any of this, but they chose to do so.

Yes, the female characters do not get a lot of screen time but the show isn’t entitled Sally or Molly or Mrs Hudson, its called Sherlock. We expect to have the majority of screen time devoted to Sherlock, John and crime solving. The producers have a strict time frame in which to tell very complex stories. The complexity and sheer genius of the plotlines are what the audience loves, but it takes a great deal of screen time to fully explain everything. Therefore none essential scenes that don’t involve crime solve often get cut. However Moffat/Gatiss have persevered and attempted to include their female characters where appropriate.

The male characters are also defined by their relationship to Sherlock. DI Lestrade is only in the picture because he utilises Sherlock in his cases. Mycroft is primarily defined in the show as Sherlock’s brother. Yes, he has an exciting life off screen but so do Irene, Molly, Sally and Sarah!

Molly Hooper



For everyone who takes one look at Molly Hooper and classes her as bumbling blonde idiot, I recommend you reconsider just what Molly had to go through be in the position she has now.

Although it is never specifically stated in the program, we can deduce that Molly Hooper is a pathologist. She does post-mortems (quote Christmas party in A Scandal in Belgravia) and only qualified pathologists are allowed to do these in the UK. Morgue technicians are not even allowed to assist. She spends much of her time in a lab (hence her lab coat) and also has unrestricted access to a highly controlled area, the morgue.

For anyone who wants to read an in depth meta I wrote about Molly’s career -  please click here.

* All pathologists in the UK are qualified doctors. Molly would have had to go through 5/6 years of medical school and then work gruelling hours as junior doctor on the wards for another 4 years before getting a highly competitive training post as a pathologist.

* To become a trainee, the Royal College of Pathologists looks for people with a great deal of research experience as pathologists are expected to work in the forefront of medical research. They also look for people with great analytical skills and who are also meticulous in their methods.

* Pathologists work unsociable hours on call like any other medical specialty. Molly is in the morgue at all times of the day and night. Pathologists need to bear quite intense pressure at work particularly when they are drafted into doing forensic autopsies, which are highly rigorous and one mistake can render any evidence unusable in court.

* If you are sticking with Mycroft’s assertion of Miss Hooper then it is more likely she is a surgeon doing a pathology project than a morgue technician (they are definitely not allowed to do post mortems).

If Molly Hooper has managed to climb the career ladder to her current station as a trainee pathologist, she must have demonstrated a great deal of intelligence and diligence. I am a medical student, and I can honestly say making it through the world of medicine is hard, particularly for women. It takes strength of character and a certain resilience to just make it through the first two years as a junior doctor.

If we look beyond what she says to Sherlock, we can see just by her career that she is a professional woman with a very demanding job.

We know she is a more than able doctor because she has a speciality training post at one of the most famous hospitals in the UK. Barts and the London Foundation trust (of which St. Bartholomew’s hospital is a part) has a prestigious history and excellent modern facilities for healthcare and research. Getting a training post in a central London Hospital is very hard; I have met many brilliant doctors who have been turned down.

We don’t see Molly making tough decisions on call or leading a team. I have no proof that the writers have thought about this. However Molly is a doctor and these abilities are inherent to the job - you either learn them very quickly or you quit. Given that Molly is still here, I’m happy to assume she has the qualities of an able doctor.

Love is Liberating



I think fans are very upset by the way she is portrayed in her conversations with Sherlock. They see her uncertainty and lovestruck awe and believe she is not capable of anything else.

Sherlock is not a colleague or a patient. He is Molly’s love interest. Just because she behaves somewhat whimsically around Sherlock does not mean she is not capable of holding down a very stressful, high-octane professional job. Her reactions towards Sherlock are not a reflection of how she would treat patients or colleagues. Just because she defers to Sherlock does not mean she is unable to lead a medical team and make unimaginably tough decisions.

Being a doctor is incredibly stressful, not just because your job involves life and death but also because you have to keep up a professional face. Patients expect us to be calm, capable and decisive at all times but we are human beings.  We don’t want to be like that in our personal lives, sometimes it’s nice to just let our guard down and display our insecurities.

The Molly we see interacting with Sherlock is not the capable professional woman, she is deliberately letting go of her façade because she wants to be that love struck teenage girl again. She is stunned, flabbergasted and thrown off balance by him, but in a way she likes that. When you have to be in complete control of your emotions all the time during your professional work, it is nice to meet someone you simply can’t fathom and having a giant crush on them is great way to actually get in contact with your emotions. In her interactions with Sherlock, Molly allows herself to feel the joy, sorrow, surprise and heart-ache of someone who is in love and that isn’t a luxury doctors can indulge in most of the time.

Considering these facts does Molly Hooper sound like a weak woman to you? If you still think so perhaps you would like to tell the next female doctor you meet just how weak you think she is.

Sally Donovan



Sally Donovan is an even more remarkable woman than Molly Hooper. She is holding her own in a profession that is dominated by men (more so than medicine). However, not only is she holding her own, she is also highly successful.

The CID (criminal investigations department) is often the most competitive division of any police force. The CID of the Metropolitan Police is severely oversubscribed each year. CID officers are required to have had at least two years as a uniformed officer before applying to transfer to the branch and receive further training when they do so. The initial training program lasts for another two years and hopefuls must pass a written exam before they gain the title of Detective Constable.

Just to be a considered as an applicant you need to show “exceptional” skills and a “truly committed” work record.

Detective Sergeant is a whole new level above this. I have been told by Constables in the police force that making Sergeant is extremely hard right now. Firstly there is the hurdle of the written exam which is no trifling matter. Most constables take over a year to revise for this exam and there is always a high failure rate. However passing the exam is not enough, DS positions in most police forces are oversubscribed, with 10 applicants to 1 place in the Met.

Making it to the rank of DS is no mean feat. For many policemen this is the pinnacle of their career but Sally has achieved this position at a relatively young age. We only see her as a subordinate officer because her boss is constantly on the scene. On other cases DS Sally would be in charge of a group of DCs and work as the team leader.

Many fans have also complained that Sally behaves very unprofessionally and is “mean to Sherlock”. Before we utterly condemn her, lets take a look at Sherlock’s behaviour.

He deliberately sets himself up as a professional and places himself in a position of power over his clients. However unlike Sally, who behaves professionally towards victims, Sherlock treats his clients very badly. He belittles their concerns, voices insulting personal observations and completely disregards the emotional trauma they have faced.

Sherlock consistently treats his friends and family in the same way. John and Mycroft have learned to tolerate Sherlock, but the questions is: why should we tolerate such behaviour?

Sherlock’s behaviour is unacceptable and despite Sally’s unprofessional way of doing so, she really is one of the few people who actually challenge him about this. Just because Sherlock is more intelligent than most people does not give him the right to treat the rest of humanity with contempt.

We have no evidence that Sally behaves inappropriately to anyone else apart from Sherlock. I completely agree that as a police officer Sally should not become embroiled in petty arguments, but Sherlock is not a criminal, victim or member of the public. He also takes every possible opportunity to insult and belittle Lestrade’s team. Sherlock treats the police with pure contempt and refuses to work as part of their team.

If we are going to condemn Sally and Anderson for being unprofessional and petty, we will have to first deal with the enormous problem of Sherlock’s behaviour.

The Heroine

Many fans are blinded by Sally’s dislike of Sherlock but Moffat/Gatiss have written her as a very courageous character with strong moral convictions.

A more detailed version of why Sally is a heroine in Nuclear Fallout at the Met - Part 2

It took a great deal of bravery to take her suspicions about Sherlock to the Chief Inspector. Many fans have seen this as a deliberate attempt to undermine Greg Lestrade, but where in the series have we seen any personal animosity between Lestrade and Donovan? They have a good working relationship. Yes, they fundamentally disagree about Sherlock’s involvement, but Sally still supports her boss when Lestrade has made his decision. No one on Lestrade’s team has refused to work with Sherlock despite the occasional petty insult flying around.

I work in hospital and despite what you might think, there is a strict hierarchy. You never go over the head of your direct boss – ever. Whistle-blowers are rendered almost unemployable by the culture of “loyalty” that exists in medicine.

Whistle-blowers (which is exactly what Sally has become) are actively persecuted in the police as well as the NHS. Doctors who report their superior’s mistakes (in order to improve patient care) are often sacked by the trust, and usually cannot find employment elsewhere. This is not a way to advance your career in medicine or the police, it is good way to end it, permanently.

I imagine there is a much stronger feeling of “loyalty” permeates in the police force, where there is actually a chain of command. Taking her suspicions to the Chief Inspector is tantamount to career suicide. Remember at this point, Sally couldn’t know that Sherlock would be utterly disgraced in public. Not only could her actions poison her relationship with Lestrade but when word gets out she won’t be wanted on any CID team. She is also taking a big risk going to the Chief Inspector because he might despise her for going against her boss. He certainly would not hold a favourable view of her even after she exposed the “Sherlock disaster”.

She had plenty of opportunities to object to Sherlock’s presence officially by going to the standards regulations, but she has chosen to tolerate his presence out of respect for Lestrade’s decisions. Bringing an untrained civilian onto crimes scenes is high unorthodox and potentially criminal. This is why Lestrade never informed his superior Gregson (Gregsons didn’t even know Sherlock existed when Sally informed him). When the inevitable investigation/enquiry gets under way Sally is as liable to face disciplinary action as Lestrade. Sally can’t be so ignorant as to not know this.

Sally isn’t stupid, anybody would be duped by Moriarty’s plans. She discovered that there might be a possibility that Sherlock is behind this heinous crime and she did complain directly to her superior, which is the right thing to do. However he wouldn’t listen, so she has to go over his head, which I will reiterate is an incredibly brave thing to do. I have seen doctors in similar situations who have kept silent and stood by whilst the problems continued to preserve their own careers.

I think Sally really believed that Sherlock needed to be investigated, not that he was completely guilty. She wasn’t calling for his immediate incarceration, she wanted to have him formally questioned and she was right in doing so. It is basic police procedure to question all potential suspects.

We have to understand that what Sally exposed is a disaster for the entire Met Police Force, her division and her own career. Many people have suggested that Sally would be promoted to the Lestrade’s position but this is simply not how it is done in the UK.

A scandal of this magnitude would result in a huge number of high profile cases being retried. A full independent police investigation will be held, having repercussions for all the police forces around the country. The Gregson’s entire CID division will be tarred by the fallout from this and Sally is not going to escape the damage. She actively participated in cases with Sherlock for (I presume) several years and failed to raise the issue of an unauthorised civilian with the correct authorities when she had the chance.

At best she will be severely reprimanded for misconduct and her prospects for promotion will be completely destroyed.

She can also be sacked for gross misconduct - once this happens in the police force you will never be employed by any other division. This is end of your policing career.

Finally she can actually be charged with criminal offences - they may not be serious enough to result in a jail term if convicted but all formal charges are recorded in the criminal records database (CRB). All employers do CRB checks on their staff and have the right to refuse positions to people based on their criminal record. If Sally ends up in this position, not only is her professional career ended but she will have difficulty finding jobs elsewhere.

I do not believe as a serving police officer that Sally is ignorant of the consequences of her expose of Sherlock.

Sally knew that she was potentially destroying her career but I think she wanted to do the right thing even if it meant sacrificing everything that she holds dear.

Conclusion

I greatly admire Molly and Sally. These are two professional women who have successfully carved careers for themselves in very male dominated worlds. They don’t always fulfil what many people believe to be the feminist idea of a “strong woman” in popular imagination: tough, emotionally suppressed and male but that is not the point of “gender equality”. Women should be treated with the same dignity and respect accord to men but it doesn’t mean we have to be like men. How does taking on traditionally “male” attributes contribute to gaining respect for women?

I personally subscribe to cultural feminism ideology. The recognition of “undervalued female attributes” and that women are different to men and fundamentally equal.

For a discussion on why I do not think BBC Sherlock should be labelled “sexist”. Please refer to this post.

Sally Donovan

 (Sherlock Meta by thecutteralicia)

This is a very good meta.

Here’s the thing I appreciate about Sally Donovan as a female WOC character in particular: she is not there to serve Sherlock. I think a lot of fans get blinded by the fact that she doesn’t like him (and presumably he doesn’t like her very much). Yet not liking Sherlock doesn’t make a character a villain. In fact, the series goes out of its way to make Donovan’s dislike of Sherlock justifiable.

In terms of Reichenbach, as the evidence room scene shows, Donovan doesn’t frame Sherlock. She’s not a one dimensional harpy or the bad cop trying to pin the crime on him to get him out of her way; instead, we see her ruminating over the case and the evidence because there’s something missing that’s nagging at her. She’s had her doubts about Sherlock for a long time, and with the abduction case regarding the ambassador’s children her suspicions finally come to the forefront. As the audience we of course know that Donovan’s wrong, yet the series shows us how it’s completely understandable how she, as a police sergeant, came to that conclusion. She’s also not portrayed as gleeful or happy about her suspicions. In fact, she only goes over Lestrade’s head when it appears to her that he won’t do anything about questioning Sherlock in the case.



The first time we meet her, she insults Sherlock and he insults her back. They proceed to have a frosty relationship for the rest of the series, where they’re far from friends and clearly don’t particularly like working with each other, but they tolerate each other. I like that because I find it realistic. The insults they exchanged weren’t the finest moment for either character, but they said them and moved on. There was no condescending scene of forgiveness or apology (I imagine Sally would tell Sherlock to shove it where the sun don’t shine anyway).

(And as a personal aside, how cool is it also to see a professional black woman on TV with natural hair?)

I just want to know why you like Sally Donovan

 (Sherlock Meta by sylviatietjens)

Anonymous asked: Hello! I just wanted to know why you like Sally Donovan. I thought people didn't like her because she kept calling Sherlock a freak and putting him down. And she asked John to keep away from him. She also accused Sherlock of being fake in the last episode of series 2. I didn't like her at all because of all of this but I just wanted to know why you liked her just in case I've been missing something. Thanks!

sylviatietjens:

I love Sally.

What you have to remember is that Sally does not have the access to Sherlock’s character that the audience has. Prior to season 3 (and even during it), Sherlock rarely exhibits kindness and consideration to anyone but John, and even that is often subtle. To everyone else, he comes across as rude, arrogant and unfeeling.

Sally is a professional. She holds a high position in Scotland Yard, which is something that she would have worked very hard for, particularly considering that she is a woman of colour (and there’s a lot of institutionalised sexism and racism in the police force). Then an amateur (Sherlock has a degree in chemistry, he’s not a qualified police officer) comes along and is given control even though it’s not his job. Whilst doing so, he behaves in an insulting and intrusive manner by making completely unnecessary commentary about her sex life in a professional setting (“I assume she scrubbed your floors, going by the state of her knees”) and belittles professionals for their efforts.

Then let’s look at telling John to keep away and series 2. Sherlock has told people that he is a sociopath. We have seen him in various suspicious situations (e.g. having the suitcase in his possession, which he said would be in the possession of the murderer [of course he obtained it from the dump, but Sally had no reason to know or presume that]), and there was no logical explanation to the girl screaming upon entering the room other than Sherlock having been involved. Sally is paid to look at the facts and analyse them, and presuming Sherlock to be guilty was the most logical analysis. I’d also be the first to warn someone to stay away from a self-confessed sociopath with an appearance of psychopathy who knows an awful lot about murder, assists on cases for free (“He likes it. He gets off on it.”) and appears to have no friends by choice.

Sally is very good at what she does. If she wasn’t, Lestrade wouldn’t put so much faith in her. As to the calling Sherlock ‘freak’, of course I don’t agree with that, but I don’t condemn her for it, either. Sherlock, after all, has done much worse, e.g. prioritising his curiosity over human lives (see the conversation between him and Jeff Hope outside 221b in A Study in Pink) and was probably the initial antagonist going by their comparative behaviour around other characters. Besides, she’s a character mostly defined by her professionalism, and ‘freak’ just doesn’t fit in with that. It feels like a quick means to get the audience to side against her even though she’s arguably a morally better person than Sherlock is.

Sally is not perfect, no. But she is intelligent, sensible, hard-working and logical, and aren’t those the precise traits for which we value Sherlock? In fact, doesn’t she often exhibit them to a greater degree than Sherlock?

Smiling Sally

 (Sherlock Meta by consultingpiskies)

Q: Am I the only one who finds it strange to see Donovan actually smiling for once, instead of looking grumpily constipated?

A: No. It’s not strange to see Sally smiling. Because she loves her job, and she’s good at it, and she and Lestrade are finally going to bust a gang of criminals after working on the case for more than 15 months. Of course she’d be smiling. (And oh Vinette, what an absolutely radiant smile you have. Really your face is just perfect.)

But you know why if might feel strange? Because prior to The Sign of Three, we have NEVER seen Sally outside the context of being an antagonist for Sherlock. We see her interact with Sherlock (and John) at crime scenes, and we see her question Sherlock’s motivations. I’m not going to even get into who started it or who’s more at fault (because it’s not the point), but it’s obvious that their animosity didn’t start during A Study in Pink when Sally called him a freak and Sherlock publicly aired her affair with Anderson. That was a spat in an ongoing feud. And guess what? Sally is completely justified in being grumpy about a privileged, white man ignoring police procedure. But here’s the thing. We want to root for Sherlock, and more importantly, the writers want you to root for Sherlock, so Sally gets pigeonholed into grumpy, disenfranchised woman who just doesn’t get Sherlock’s brilliance.

But the opening minutes of The Sign of Three? This is Sally Donovan through an independent lens. And we get to see her as competent, snarky, determined, and joyous. Because she is a person and not just a device for us to view Sherlock’s greatness through. And people get to be three dimensional. Thompson has written some pretty shitty things about WoC on this show, but I will be forever grateful for this gift of Sally.

Sherlock, Sally and Otherness

 (Sherlock Meta by pennypaperbrain)

I keep thinking about this subject. Recently there have been fandom discussions about race and exclusion, with a lot of good points made. What a lot of us would like most is a world where it is just as likely that we’d have Vinette Robinson playing Sherlock Holmes, and Benedict Cumberbatch playing Sgt Donovan. We don’t have such a world, although people are working to change the status quo.

Still, there’s something about Sally that consistently interests me, without me having to consciously decide that today I am going to find a female character to identify with. Far more meaningfully than any of the show’s villains are, Sally is Sherlock’s polar opposite – to the extent that the extremity of their defensive posturing reveals a common humanity. I doubt this symbolism was intended by the show runners, but it works for me.

On the surface, the show presents us with the idea that Sally is ordinary and Sherlock is extraordinary, and we’re invited to identify with Sherlock (we all want to be the special hero, and apparently that means being a white man). But scratching the surface makes the tension between them look much more interesting. Their first encounter neatly sets up the antagonism: Sally thinks Sherlock’s extraordinariness makes him irresponsible and possibly dangerous; Sherlock thinks Sally’s ordinariness make her a pettifogging irritant.

Where do these attitudes come from? There is of course the immediate context of a crime scene (and to some extent each of them is right) but the attitudes on display are more deeply rooted in these characters’ experience of being outsiders, and the different level and kind of risk involved for each of them.

Sally is a black woman in the Met. We don’t see this onscreen, but it would be remarkable if she hadn’t spent her career fending off, and fighting not to internalize, sexism and racism. She must know all about being seen as Other, and all about the price that you risk paying for it. Being ‘ordinary’ is both a survival skill (she’s just one of the lads, so why pick on her) and a triumph (her foremothers might have been slaves in this land, but here she is administering the law). Then along comes Sherlock, laden with every privilege you can think of, but under the impression that Sally’s ordinariness (aka protective colouration) is nothing but a brainless reflex that gets in his way.

Fitting in can be a life or death question for immigrants and minorities, but Sherlock acts like it’s just a default state for idiots. With his flamboyant performance of Otherness, he’s flaunting what Sally cannot afford (whether or not she wants it – and in the name of survival she’s probably suppressed that question so far that it never gets asked) and abusing her for not having it. It’s no surprise her defensive reaction is to lash out with ‘I never wanted that anyway; it’s shitty and weird’. Hence Sally’s whole vicious routine with ‘freak’.

She’s identifying the fact that Sherlock is doing something wrong/unfair, but (being ordinary) she doesn’t go digging around inside herself for the full extent of the pain, and instead settles on an approximation of the truth: that Sherlock is just an arsehole. This is why I love Vinette Robinson’s performance. The equivalent character in the pilot was quite neutral, but Robinson creates space for interpretations of her character that are far more interesting than what I suspect the script intended, i.e. a convenient foil for Sherlock.

When Sally calls Sherlock a freak, she’s indirectly treating him as human in a way nobody else but John does. In calling him to account for his behaviour, she implies that he should be judged by human standards, and therefore is human. The people who accept the idea of Sherlock as a trans-human phenomenon, good or bad, don’t do that. And I just like any on-screen woman who responds to an arrogant man with a variant of ‘fuck off’!

Like John, if less sympathetically, Sally has on some level picked up the elements of pretence, pain and falseness in Sherlock’s persona. His embrace of Otherness and her avoidance of it have the same roots; fear/experience of being outcast. Sally has chosen one strategy  - assimilation – probably because the historical and to an extent the contemporary risks of doing otherwise for a black woman are just too high. Sherlock chosen another – defiance – in part because the character is clearly fuelled by some kind of internal fire that exceeds the norm, but also because he’s got the resources to pull it off and live.

They both have to decide: who and what can I be, and how much will it cost me? Sally has more to lose and is in a more vulnerable position. Sherlock is less personally well-adapted to bear the cost of compromise. They make opposite choices, Sally for stability and Sherlock for risk. Can either of them bear the spectacle of unmade choice that the other represents?

I rather think Sally may have offered her friendship to Sherlock on that basis – ‘Hey, we both stick out a bit round here, don’t we?’ – once, and got slapped down for her troubles. Hence her very personal resentment. These two know each others’ weaknesses intimately, because each one represents the other’s silent fears.

Also, Sherlock, emotionally stunted muppet that he is (and I say this as an adoring fan) can’t behave sensibly for shit. He runs off from everyone useful towards Moriarty who – ooh, ego-stroke – is just like him. Far more interesting!

Unfortunately, BBC Moriarty is actually a cardboard man. Assuming the script writers didn’t just cock him up (another question entirely) he chooses to present himself as a grab bag of cliches about mad  genius with no consistent substance. He is ultimately a massive distraction, if a compelling one.

In my interpretation of the underlying narrative structure, just as Sherlock’s match is not the overtly fannish Moriarty but the steadily supportive John, his nemesis is not the overtly hostile Moriarty but the righteously affronted Sally. Sherlock’s relationship with the Met has always been weird. Moriarty turned up and raised the stakes but there was always going to be a day when the highly bureaucratic Met asked itself ‘What’s this guy actually doing?’ Whenever that day came it wasn’t going to be Lestrade, who is too dependent on Sherlock, or Anderson, who is too blindly hostile, who decided the way the wind blew, but Sally, with her scrupulous moral authority. You don’t even have to step far outside convention for that: even in heavily patriarchal society women are sometimes given a sort of mysticised safety-valve authority as oracles, i.e. moral arbiters outside normal structures.

Sherlock’s downfall pivots on Sally. If he had made intelligent use of what common ground he might have with her, she might have been speaking up for him. Instead, he used their differing outsider statuses as a weapon against her, a means of trying to prove that unlike her he’s brave enough to be overtly different, ignoring why Sally might have made the choices she has and anything else he might have learnt from her. In return, in defence, she shuts her heart and mind to what is genuinely extraordinary about Sherlock, denies him the way he refused to see her, and gives her blessing to his demise.

That’s my interpretation of their relationship, possibly blending canon and supposition by this point, but your mileage may vary.

And P.S.… what if Sally was like Sherlock? Imagine a working class black British woman with Sherlock’s mind, a woman given all the depth of characterisation which  Irene does not have screen time for. What would happen to her? I honestly don’t know (though I really want that story, a modern update of Woolf’s Shakespeare’s sister with hopefully a less bleak ending). She would be broken in innumerable extra ways, but the question is how, and how far she would fix herself, and what the result would be, and how much she would illuminate.

Somewhere, in the back of Sally’s mind, I think she’s longing for this woman too.

 ***

This ramble was inspired by discussion around some Sally fic:

Monochrome by aderyn

Sally and the Genius by me