Talk:The Riddle of the Sphinx (Inside No. 9)

Sources

• Shennan

Confused by the plot summary

Hi all,

Not having watched the episode, I'm a bit confused by the plot summary. I don't quite understand why Tyler not only seems to accept Charlotte/Nina's death, but is actively promoting it. After all, she is his daughter, and such a gambit seems a bit much if he's only after his revenge.

Or is it because Charlotte is not his biological daughter? In that case, it would still come across as extremely callous.

Could someone shed some light in the plot summary? --Syzygy (talk) 07:11, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@Syzygy: "Extremely callous" puts it mildly; Tyler is diabolical. Charlotte's death is necessary for him to have complete control over Squires. Given that Squires has left his "confession" in the crossword (something Tyler knew he would be unable to resist), Nina/Charlotte's death will surely land him in prison. The only option open to Squires is thus to kill himself, and Tyler is all too happy to help by providing the bullet. Tyler's callousness towards Nina/Charlotte is perhaps partially explained by his feeling that he had to give up his career (and life) in order to raise "his" children, only to find out that they weren't his children, and were yet another reminder of the man who ruined his life. It's not a simple plot, but simple plots aren't exactly standard for Inside No. 9! Josh Milburn (talk) 20:03, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

RIPNHS nina in Production section

Apologies to J Milburn for undoing his revert of this edit - the only reason I did so was because the rationale for the revert is directly invalidated by WP:SPOILERS. My concern is this passage is very hard to understand without additional information that could easily be given - currently, the "second nina" seems to refer to one of the clues listed above, which is incorrect, and without this there's no indication how a middle name for Pemberton's character allows it to be part of the plot. As a minimum RIPNHS should be idenfied as the nina in question to remove this confusion; I think even greater clarity is achieved by stipulating that it alludes to Squires' death. This also makes the sentence much closer to the description of the given reference: 'The final nina that is seen in the episode, RIP NHS, we spotted at the last minute. We thought: “Well, that’s so close to the initials of Nigel Squires, who has just killed himself” that we had to use it[...]' U-Mos (talk) 08:29, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

WP:SPOILER does not say what you think it says, and it certainly does not "directly invalidate" the reason I gave for reverting your edits. The content that you added is already discussed elsewhere -- indeed, at least two other sections -- and so no one is trying to remove content because it spoils the plot. Instead, there is an editorial question about where in the article it is appropriate to provide details about the plot. Reflecting very long-standing practice, when I wrote the article, I tried to avoid unnecessary details about the episode's ending outside of the plot section. (Though such details were unavoidable in some sections!) So no more accusations about my claims being "directly invalidated" by our guidelines on spoilers, please. I have added the nina to the article without going into too many details. How do you feel about that? Josh Milburn (talk) 08:45, 26 January 2021 (UTC)