The Bruce Partington Plans

Sherlock Holmes is urgently contacted by his brother Mycroft. Top secret submarine plans have been stolen and the man believed responsible, Cadogan West, found dead on a train track with some of the plans on his person. The most important parts of the plans of the plans are still missing. Mycroft needs Sherlock to find the missing plans before they land in the hands of a foreign power.

An interesting, intriguing mystery. A tale of espionage, murder and honour.

As always, Jeremy Brett is excellent as Sherlock Holmes and Edward Harwicke is great as Dr Watson. Good to see Charles Gray back as Mycroft. It's a pity he only appears in two Holmes episodes: he and Sherlock make a great combination and it's wonderful to think that there's someone Sherlock regards as more intelligent than himself.

As people may well know by now, I am a big fan of the Granada Sherlock Holmes series. As far as the episodes in The Return of Sherlock Holmes go, I still think The Devil's Foot is the standout of this particular series, but The Bruce-Partington Plans is one of those episodes that shows why I love the series as much as I do.

The pace is mostly solid, if dragging a tad once or twice. That said, the story is an interesting and well-told one, and is further helped by the thoughtful dialogue, the meticulous production values(one of the series' best assets), the wonderful music and the top notch acting of Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke and Charles Gray.

All in all, a great episode. 9/10 Bethany Cox

A young copyist is found dead beside the railway lines on the Underground with a massive head wound but little bleeding. He has no ticket but he does have plans for the Bruce-Partington submarine in his pocket. Is he a traitor? How did he board the train without a ticket? Who killed him and why, or was it an accident?

It's well that "The Bruce Partington Plans" is the finale of "The Return of Sherlock Holmes," which has such fine episodes as "The Man With The Twisted Lip," "The Abbe Grange" and "The Second Stain." And Freddie Jones' delightful performance in the otherwise lackluster "Wisteria Lodge." It's a worthy climax.

Brett by this time has developed that delivery problem that makes him sound like he suffers from a perpetual head cold, but it's not eggregious here.

The episode opens with the reintroduction of Charles Gray as Mycroft. I was never sold on Gray's Mycroft; Gray's been too common in movies and TV to be definitive in the way Brett, Burke, Hardwicke and Jeavons are. But he and Brett seem to enjoy acting together, which gives them that glow of brothers who aren't terribly close but who are always glad to see each other.

The story is one if Holmes' triumphs of detection. It's a bit of a shame Lestrade couldn't join us; no doubt Jeavons' schedule precluded it. Amanda Waring is affecting and she does her best with lines like, "if you could only save his honor," which rings so hollow in a more cynical age where honor is treated as a joke.

They do a good job to keep anyone who hasn't read the story guessing at the culprit, making even the ticket-seller at the station a suspicious character.

This is one of those Brett/Holmes stories so delicious one doesn't need to go back to ACD to enjoy it as it should be enjoyed. It's good (enough) as an adaptation and it stands up alone on its own merits.

BTW, the story contains one of ACD's greatest howlers, where Mycroft says the submarine is one of Britain's most closely guarded secrets but then is astounded his brother hasn't heard of it. But his brother is Sherlock Holmes the omniscient. My brother wasn't even Lestrade.

Apart from that, this is a beautiful story beautifully told, unlike some of the travesties like "The Six Napoleons," which should have been left untampered with (though, to be fair, tampering with "The Priory School" improved it).

A very nice episode, certainly. Conan Doyle seemed to get caught up on some plot elements, however. From "Scandal in Bohemia" to the present effort, we have people who have either carelessly or through victimization, lost some sort of item of worth, be it a photograph, a set of blueprints, or a letter, Holmes spends a goodly amount of time trying to recover these things. Of course, in most situations, there have been other crimes committed, even murder. Often the fate of the world hangs in the balance, as in the "Bruce Partington Plans. A body has been found by a railroad track with three pages of a major plan to build a submarine in his pocket. What is interesting is that he apparently didn't die in this setting but was moved there. This leads Holmes and Watson to deal with two things: recovering the document and figuring out what happened to this man. It's all about location and opportunity. This is a very well done mystery with lots of twists and turns and a not-so-simple solution.

I'm interested in Holmes because he changed the nature of narrative, a revolution every bit as significant as the invention of human rights. I'm interested as well because he reflects an odd battle we haven't settled and probably won't: the battle between those who believe in the supernatural and the other extreme, that all behavior and especially human behavior is rational. Its a fascinating war that we all see ourselves in somehow.

And I'm interested in Holmes because it is almost a perfect textbook case of the challenges of mapping the core notions of the literary to the cinematic. Well, other authors would be more interesting, but this one is so well known...

But I don't find the stories themselves that much fun. The much advertised Holmes method of deduction is often tossed and we have disguises, what today would be called footwork by the Baker Street irregulars, and traps. (This story has more actual deduction than most.) Of all the Holmes stories, the one feature that I love is the usually invisible brother, Mycroft. He's seven years senior and very much Holmes' superior in logic. He's as far from Holmes in talent as Holmes is from Watson, our designated ordinary man. He's obese and never leaves his comfortable chair at the Diogenes Club, where he entertains a stream of needy supplicants including his brother. Imagine Orson Welles.

He's an amazing character. He's in this story. He's not impressive or interesting here.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.