Bill Nye: A 21st Century Man's Worst Nightmare

     The nature of the updating of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most popular Sherlock tale is evident in the titles of these two adventures. Doyle’s original, The Hound of the Baskervilles, becomes The Hounds of Baskerville. The story, like the title, is changed just a bit. However, every shift or update successfully refers back to the original, linking the fears of the past to the fears of the present. As fear has evolved, old fears have been done away with, and require a revitalizing to make them scary again.

     Many gothic stories occur within the confines of a ruined castle or abbey. The original Hound story does not take place in a decaying building but instead accomplishes the same feat by occurring in a decaying landscape. The castle or abbey, stationed high in the mountains, is meant to serve as a place where the past, and the gothic, can run rampant. The moor accomplishes this by being isolated, mysterious, and unconquered.  Something similar to Hugo Baskeville’s exploits could be accomplished in a place like the moor. In fact, criminals are still fleeing into the moor (believable as of 1901) because the moor is a place where the long arm of the law gets snagged and cut on brambles or shrapnel.

     The moor is sufficiently isolated to allow the growth of the gothic, and in Doyle’s time an unconquered landscape was scary enough. Mysterious sounds, supernatural entities, and dangerous neighbors provided most of the fear in Doyle’s text. However, as modern society has progressed, old fears don’t shake us like they used to. Flashlights can be used to see in the dark. Shazam will tell you if that’s the howl of a death hound or merely the latest Justin Bieber chorus. A mysterious neighbor can be Facebooked until their intentions are made clear. Stuff that used to be scary just isn’t scary anymore. To regothic the gothic several changes had to be made.

     The original moor gets dark and scary at night, fog blocks your vision, there’s an escaped murderer on the loose, pits that’s will swallow you or your pony are scattered about, and there’s an undead dog on the loose. Flashlights eliminate a lot of the fear associated with night and fog. Escaped murderers rarely escape from modern prisoners, and are usually tracked down within hours. Google Maps and a developed road system means that no man need stray into the muck of the moor, and undead dogs are more attractive than scary. To bring the fear back to the moor the update laced the fog with drugs. Hidden mines replaced the pits scattered about the moor, a high security military installation doing questionable research makes the moor even more mysterious and serves as an updating of the prison at Dartmoor.

     The convict is mentioned in the updated tale only in passing and never shows up again. Relying on the military installation as an updated Dartmoor prison, the convict merges with a dangerous scientist to rehorrify our fear of escaped prisoners. The updated version relied heavily on science to horrify what was previously scary because of the supernatural. Supernatural isn’t scary to a modern society because we think we have a lot of the answers, science doesn’t support this theory or there’s no evidence of that monster, so it must not exist. That’s what makes science particularly scary, and particularly gothic. People in modern times trust science, its familiar, and we want to believe it. Science cure small pox and brought us the iPhone, when it’s turned into a malignant rather than benevolent agent, we’re scared. That’s why an evil scientist makes the perfect bad guy. Gas, and military agencies, and corporate greed, are all updates that play to our modern fears. A mutant hellhound is scary, but a hellhound that isn’t there at all is gothic.

     Holmes and Watson need updating because their dynamic is outdated. Crime fighting duos aren’t comprised of a genius and a fool anymore. Our world is built on teamwork between highly capable people who rely on each other to make a perfect team, a perfect team comprising of one man doesn’t exist. We have problems with someone who is that smart, so Holmes is given a diagnosis, this makes us feel okay about his perceived abnormality. Watson goes toe to toe with Holmes at times and we can see that Holmes is seriously flawed, and needs Watson to guide him through awkward social settings. Another factor that needed updating was how the story is presented to the audience. A modern audience isn’t happy enough sitting through the whole story in the dark. To update this the audience is allowed to look inside Holmes mind, and the story comes to a more conclusive and transparent ending than the original.

     Science is a huge factor in the update but the role of science in creating a scary dog was also present in the original. Phosphorous was used to make the hound appear more frightening, just like gas was used to make a normal dog appear hellish. Both bad guys were scientists, one a virologist and the other a lepidopterologist. A lot of cute throw backs were included like Holmes’ need for a stimulant, Sir Henry becoming Henry Knight, Holmes uncanny abilities to figure stuff out, and the introduction of the case (the visit from a distressed client, not the details).

     The Hound of the Baskervilles reveals a bit about what scared people during the 19^th century, and about the evolution of fear since that time. A lot of the fears of that time have been conquered and to make the story scary again, new fears, unconquered fears, have to be introduced. A lot of that updating can be done with the aid of science, which serves the same role as the supernatural did in the 19^th century. The dynamic between Watson and Holmes, as well as the ending, needed updating to offer a more balanced relationship, and a clear satisfying ending. This story doesn’t represent a new definition of the gothic anymore than The Hound of the Baskervilles represented the gothic in its day. This was just another tale gothic tale, not “the” gothic tale.  The Hound of the Baskervilles is as different but as gothic as The Yellow Wall-Paper. The updating doesn’t define or usher in a new era of the gothic. This story like the original is simply a single manifestation of the gothic.  

The Adventure of the Unraveled Thread (Which Watson Frequently Ties Himself Up With)

The source of fear in The Hound of the Baskervilles is mostly the concern over seemingly unexplainable events and the implications of these events. The characters are worried chiefly about the hound but also the moor, and its inhabitants. Watson and Holmes present really one way to deal with fear. Watson deals with fear by turning to the guidance of Holmes. Metaphorically this indicates the confused man, caught between supernatural explanations and logical ones, turning towards the almost supernatural scientific mind.

Throughout The Hound of the Baskervilles Watson is less critical of the supernatural interpretation of the hound presented by Mortimer. Mortimer and Watson, both men of science are swayed by the belief that this hound may not be just material. Mortimer brings the case to the attention of Holmes because there is not much that he can do. Holmes is skeptical at first and accepts the supernatural theory as another explanation, but certainly not the most plausible. The occupational men of science believing in the supernatural and the wanderer being the logical one may be a statement about who is capable of unraveling events when distanced from any prior biases: everyone. Early on Watson presents some ideas to Holmes, but we find out that these are either off base, partially true, or deduced by Holmes long before Watson.

In a cunning use of Watson, displaying how science based investigation sometimes uses people for its own purposes, Holmes sends Watson along with Sir Henry to Baskerville Hall. Throughout his stay Watson experiences unexplained events and he is left without a solid conclusion. Sir Henry and Watson are easily frightened by the events surrounding them, and are able to deal with the fear of the criminal by relying on a logical plan. Watson comments that their plan is exactly what Holmes would do. Sir Henry’s plan to deal with the fear around him is to turn to Watson. Watson’s plan to deal with fear is to turn to Holmes. This displays the chain of more supernaturally inclined characters turning towards more science minded individuals.

Throughout the text Watson repeatedly wishes that Holmes were present this indicates that fear cannot not be completely overcome without Holmes and his science. Watson is able to combat fear by turning to Holmes. Holmes is able to combat fear by using his abnormal mind. Combatting fear changed from something that just happened (Japanese), or something which was divinely caused (Early gothic), to something that had observable and often correctable causes.  Holmes represents this shift in the psyche that occurred between Walpole and Doyle. Holmes on one extreme can track every incident to its cause, Raymond: A Fragment is on the other extreme, where supernatural spur is reason enough. Watson stands someplace in the middle allowing the mind of the reader to benefit from both perspectives.

By placing the reader in Watson’s mind we can relate to the events that are occurring in the text and use some of that learned reason to combat fear. The events that occur to Watson are frightening, and unclear. If placed in Holmes head all the events would be clearly traceable, would lose their frightening effect and also the ability to teach how to deal with fear. The events are familiar in that they remind us of the unfamiliar in our own lives, but in Sherlock tales the threads can be unraveled which provides hope that the events in our life may also be unraveled.