Hi all! Madeline here. We’re going to try a new way of doing show notes. I still have no idea what I’m doing, so please bear with me!
Instead of doing a blow-by-blow recap, I’m just going to point out some of the highlights, this time, and link you to some of the stuff we talked about in the show.
Despite the fact that this episode was supposed to be about the canon Colonel Sebastian Moran, we took a quick detour at the start because Dixie had just finished watching Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows for the first time. This is one of the few times that Moran even shows up on the big screen, and one of the even fewer times he shows up in scenes together with Moriarty, so it felt relevant. This did send me off into a spiral about how adaptations and the fandom in general seem to not take seriously the friendship between these two men, despite their clearly being dark mirrors of Holmes and Watson. “Bosom friend” might sound funny to a modern reader, but it’s not a term to be taken lightly!
Colonel Moran of course first (and only, technically) shows up in “The Empty House” in September 1903. And though technically he “should” be the supporting character to Moriarty (as indeed he is in AGoS), he is actually the villain of EMPT. Also, his attempts to kill Holmes seem to be proof positive of his friendship with Moriarty: you don’t try to kill someone who killed someone you don’t like.
A lot of speculation goes down throughout this episode, since we just don’t know enough about this or that and sometimes the questions we ask we have to answer ourselves. Moran’s finances, his hunting ethics, his ethics in general, and what may have happened to him post-Adair trial all come up. There’s also a fair bit of talk about the Moran-focused short story I wrote for Tales of the Nefarious Villains of Sherlock Holmes by Belanger Books (we’ll have a link for the Kickstarter once that goes live — EDIT: and it has!).
There’s also a lot of interesting historical tidbits regarding Moran (who is way more grounded in real history than Moriarty) from the annotations in Out of the Abyss, the EMPT manuscript book by BSI Press. And there’s goodies from Corporals, Colonels and Commissionaires, another BSI Press book, this one about the British military in the 1800s, as well as some notable military characters in the Canon. Speaking of those goodies, if you want to read about Colonel Mancor, who may have been the proto-Moran, you can do so here at the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia. Last but not least, if you’re interested in “The Great Game” between Britain and Russia in Asia, there’s the book that I mentioned in the episode called Mapping the Great Game: Explorers, Spies and Maps in 19th-century Asia by Riaz Dean.
Oh, there’s also the point when Dixie and I fall apart over Watson’s description of Moran: “It was a tremendously virile and yet sinister face which was turned towards us.” Watson sure leaned into the phrenology while describing the Colonel, but it’s such a vivid description. What I personally take away from this is that if your Moran is not played by a total hottie, you’re doing it wrong!
There’s a lot more to the episode than I’m covering here, of course, so if you haven’t listened to it, please go do so right now! And stay tuned for part 2 of our Moran appreciation: Moran in adaptations. After that, we’ll return you to our regularly-scheduled Moriarty content!
Dynamics of a Podcast 