Although Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman couldn't make it to Comic Con this year, producers still managed to wow fans with a first look at the "Sherlock" Christmas special.
The video introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson looking like the original charaters in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. It also featured Mrs. Hudson looking and acting like her 21st century version.
Both Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss admitted that they had a hard time building up the women in this Victorian-era version of the show. They had to be "honest to the era" while still maintaining the interesting women power in the BBC show's usual 21st century timeline.
"We built Mrs. Hudson into an incredibly exotic creature with a past," Gatiss explained to the Comic Con audience. "There isn't a Molly Hooper. We forgot we f*cking invented Molly. What were we going to do? It was an unbelievably sexist era, you can't pretend it wasn't there. How did we put female characters into the era in a way that absolutely make sense?"
Moffat added that he knows "clearly what stories we're doing and where each episode will go, what the shattering, emotionally draining cliffhangers will be."
"I have to build up the faint illusion of hope that we might not be so evil as to sucker punch you into emotional devastation," he added with a laugh.
Meanwhile, Indiewire reported that the "Sherlock" Christmas special might just reach "select theaters" as well as air on Masterpeice and PBS. The producers also "aim" to make the showing time for the UK and US closer together, to avoid piracy and illegal streaming of the Emmy Award winning series.
The EPs started stirring fans' curiosity for the standalone episode when the BBC's official Twitter page uploaded a photo of Cumberbatch and Freeman in their Victorian-era garb.
Watch the sneak peek at the "Sherlock" Christmas special here!
