Hello! These are the show notes for the first episode of Dynamics of a Podcast, a podcast dedicated to Professor James Moriarty, Napoleon of Crime and archnemesis of Sherlock Holmes! We ask for your patience as we navigate the new experience of running our own podcast.

Your hosts

Madeline Quiñones is the person responsible for these shenanigans. Her only prior podcasting experience is the Featured Watson of the Week segment for the Watsonian Weekly, and this podcast kind of got started because of her webcomic, The Adventures of Professor Moriarty. Her first Moriarty was Vincent Price as Professor Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective, and her favorite Moriarty is Eric Porter (also Daniel Davis from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Richard Newman as clone!Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century). She loves the Professor because she was writing him in fanfiction and fell down a rabbit hole trying to get a grasp on his character, and she contends that he was involved in the events of “The Resident Patient.”

Dixie Parkinson is the co-host and most excellent video editor. Her fandom cred lies in having consumed almost all media — film, radio, print, and even video games — that includes the Master from Doctor Who. Her first Moriarty was Daniel Davis, and Eric Porter is also her favorite — along with Davis and Andrew Scott from BBC Sherlock. She loves the Professor because she has a thing for villains, especially villains who mirror the heroes, and she agrees with Granada that Moriarty was definitely behind “The Red-headed League.”

The man himself

“You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?” said he. 

“Never.” [This will never not be funny to Madeline. We will definitely be talking about the issue of Watson knowing or not knowing Moriarty in a later episode!]

“Aye, there’s the genius and the wonder of the thing!” he cried. “The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That’s what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life. Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and to the French republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches. But I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.” 

“What has he done, then?” 

“His career has been an extraordinary one. He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. [At this point, Madeline is “exhausted by the genetic BS.” “Evil is genetic” is an easy excuse for prejudice against the Irish at the time and also people of color.]  Dark rumors gathered round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and to come down to London, where he set up as an army coach. [Both hosts think this is probably how Moriarty met Moran.] So much is known to the world, but what I am telling you now is what I have myself discovered. 

“As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher criminal world of London so well as I do. For years past I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again and again in cases of the most varying sorts — forgery cases, robberies, murders — I have felt the presence of this force, and I have deduced its action in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally consulted. For years I have endeavored to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity. 

“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, [Dixie pointed out earlier, while talking about Daniel Davis, a very philosophical Moriarty, that Holmes does describe the Professor as a philosopher here in FINA.] an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed — the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught — never so much as suspected. This was the organization which I deduced, Watson, and which I devoted my whole energy to exposing and breaking up. 

“But the Professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get evidence which would convict in a court of law. You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal. My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill. But at last he made a trip — only a little, little trip — but it was more than he could afford when I was so close upon him.”

— “The Final Problem,” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It’s a brilliant introduction to the character. Lyndsay Faye has said that “The Final Problem” makes no sense, but that introduction is so brilliantly written, you just buy it. Madeline is willing to defend FINA as a story that can make sense, but she and Dixie agree that the intro is amazing.

Dixie points out that Moriarty is just a plot device created to kill Sherlock Holmes, but Doyle did such a good job creating him that Moriarty has endured all this time as Holmes’s archnemesis. Madeline points out that the Professor is the only bad guy in the canon to be developed over multiple stories — “Final Problem,” “Empty House,” and “Valley of Fear” each have something different to tell us about Moriarty. EMPT is important, not only because we learn Moriarty’s first name, which is the same as his brother’s in FINA, but because we learn that he had a best friend, Colonel Sebastian Moran. If we only had FINA, we could easily see Moriarty as a purely evil person, but if he has a best friend, he is a human being with a heart.

(At some point, there will be an episode about the real people who helped inspire the character, including Adam Worth, the real-life “Napoleon of Crime.”)

Tangents

• Holmes and Watson have been portrayed faithfully in terms of characterization and physical appearance plenty of times, but Moriarty rarely gets the same fidelity. To Madeline’s knowledge, only Eric Porter, Colin Jeavons (made-up for The Baker Street Boys), and Viktor Yevgrafov of the Soviet series actually look the way that Moriarty is supposed to look.
• How faithful is Daniel Davis’s Moriarty? Well, by the nature of what he is as a virtually-created character, he doesn’t have to be faithful, but there is an interesting parallel between the original Moriarty and the holodeck Moriarty. The original is created as a plot device to kill Holmes, and he is designed as Holmes’s intellectual equal in order to do so. Similarly, the holodeck version is brought to life by the computer under Geordi La Forge’s specification to be able to beat Data.
• If Holmes is the first superhero, then Moriarty is the first supervillain, and is probably the archetype for archnemesis supervillains.

It’s a wrap!

We are going to try to put these episodes out on a bi-monthly schedule. The next episode will be about Moriarty’s relationship with Holmes, canon discussion and fan theories. If you want to send us your thoughts, you can comment on this post or the YouTube video, tweet us at dynamicsofapod, or email us at dynamicsofapodcast@gmail.com, and we will be happy to include them on the show! Let us know what you think about the show so far (although please be kind)! And please be patient: we will get the hang of this. And thanks for listening!