MovieChat Forums > Time After Time (1979) Discussion > Sherlock Holmes?

Sherlock Holmes?

posted 12 years ago by johnjohn7799
8 replies | jump to latest

Why did HG gave it as his name? from hi point of view, if the character name is known in 1979 USA he risked to be takend for a loonie -- and of course was.

Or is Sherlock a common English name?

[–] sisterdebmac 12 years ago

My guess is that it was the first thing that popped into his head and he didn't think Doyle's little pulp novels would still be known a hundred years on.
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[–] westal_sage 12 years ago

Yep sister has it right.

[–] jschillig 11 years ago

Right in one. He'd been running into all sorts of situations where people aren't familiar with aspects of his culture...it's just his luck that he picks one of the aspects of his culture that HAS survived to the twentieth century. (And beyond, I'm glad to say as a Holmes fan.)

I don't think the novel had this wrinkle. Maybe Nicholas Meyer was bringing his longtime love of the Holmes stories into this? (He did, after all, write The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. And slipped a Holmes quote into Star Trek VI.)

[–] sisterdebmac 11 years ago

That's a good point, it could've been an in-joke. I mean, Holmes has always been popular, but never more than now.
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[–] cincy-2 11 years ago

The use of the name "Sherlock Holmes" by Stevenson in the movie is an anachronism. Jack The Ripper was active in London in the autumn of 1888. At that time, only one Sherlock Holmes story had been published ("A Study in Scarlet" in the Christmas edition of Beeton's Annual, December 1887) and although reasonably successful, was still largely unknown to most of the British public in late 1888, the time when The Ripper stole the Time Machine for his escape. "Sherlock Holmes" as a synonym for "detective" didn't really begin until after the series of wildly popular short stories started to appear in The Strand magazine, beginning in 1891.

[–] Lunchbox-3 10 years ago

I thought that the movie told us it was 1893 at the start, not 1888, although that might not make sense with the Ripper killings in progress at the start of the film. The Ripper does not use the Holmes alias though it is H.G. who does that.

[–] hachmom-1 10 years ago

If I remember correctly it isn't the 1888 ripper murders that are referenced and 1893 sounds right as a date.

If it is 1893 then Doyle has just published the Final Problem, Holmes is "dead" and Wells really has no reason to believe they would be known 90 some years in the future. Plus, yes in joke.

It is not our abilities that show who we truly are...it is our choices

[–] melnar1 8 years ago

Why did HG gave it as his name?

It was quite an important part of the plot, inserted so that the police would not be inclined to believe his story. Had he used some other fictitious name, they might have believed him, and therefore acted accordingly, and there would have been a whole other story line from that point.