Sherlock: The Hounds of Baskerville
Jan. 11th, 2012 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clangerHmmm. Distinctly average, and rather let down for me by some little goofs.
Although these days I mainly nit-pick legal dramas, I still spot it when TV or film Gets The Military Wrong. Someone should have told whoever was responsible for casting that a British army officer would never wear a beard, they being the sole privilege of the Royal Navy (where, conversely, moustaches alone are never worn).* And although Corporal Lyons was formally correct to salute Watson when the latter identified himself as a captain, despite being in civvies, it was completely wrong for Watson to return the salute out of uniform. (The correct protocol - at least in the British forces - when someone junior to you and in uniform salutes you when you're not in uniform yourself is to politely nod in acknowledgement.)
For that matter, what was Watson doing with service ID? Isn't he meant to have been invalided out of the Army? I suppose it's possible he may have been on a short-service commission and transferred to the Reserves, which if nothing else would explain why he's still a captain in a corps where that's the entry rank and promotion to major would normally be automatic. Or of course he could have contrived to retain his ID, although that's rather naughty and makes it a little rich of him to raise eyebrows at Sherlock's purloining of Mycroft's handy access-all-areas pass.
Oh, and how exactly do mobile phones work in an underground bunker?
* Bonus nit-pick marks to anyone who knows who in the British Army are allowed to wear beards.
Although these days I mainly nit-pick legal dramas, I still spot it when TV or film Gets The Military Wrong. Someone should have told whoever was responsible for casting that a British army officer would never wear a beard, they being the sole privilege of the Royal Navy (where, conversely, moustaches alone are never worn).* And although Corporal Lyons was formally correct to salute Watson when the latter identified himself as a captain, despite being in civvies, it was completely wrong for Watson to return the salute out of uniform. (The correct protocol - at least in the British forces - when someone junior to you and in uniform salutes you when you're not in uniform yourself is to politely nod in acknowledgement.)
For that matter, what was Watson doing with service ID? Isn't he meant to have been invalided out of the Army? I suppose it's possible he may have been on a short-service commission and transferred to the Reserves, which if nothing else would explain why he's still a captain in a corps where that's the entry rank and promotion to major would normally be automatic. Or of course he could have contrived to retain his ID, although that's rather naughty and makes it a little rich of him to raise eyebrows at Sherlock's purloining of Mycroft's handy access-all-areas pass.
Oh, and how exactly do mobile phones work in an underground bunker?
* Bonus nit-pick marks to anyone who knows who in the British Army are allowed to wear beards.
