Here are those stars btw.

But the "memory palace" is a pretty old technique, isn't it? I don't remember Holmes ever using it in the literature (at least not the Conan-Doyle stories) but it's cropped up in a few other places, not as way for expressing a character's genius but as a technique characters use for organizing facts and thought.

Special Agent Pendergast uses the memory palace method as a deductive aid in the Preston/Child novels, but he has to go into a deep form of meditation following a round of intense study of the facts. The character "Jonesy" used one in Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher".

I think the technique itself goes back to ancient Greece.

The writers of Sherlock even tried to introduce a sociopathic villain with his own mind palace, as an equal to Sherlock, but this Charles Augustus Magnussen character (obviously inspired by the titular villain from "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton") from was just another sign that the series had become an in-joke bloated, fan-service pandering caricature of what it used to be. The Magnussen character didn't really convey being an equal to Holmes, he was just an egregiously creepy, repulsive blackmailing media magnate who engaged in sub-Hannibal Lectorish behavior like licking peoples' faces.

BHWW, after years of my friends trying to get me to watch Sherlock, I finally did, and it was THAT episode. I was shocked at how bad Sherlock is. You cap an untouchable person in front of a circle of police helicopters (!!??), get "exiled(!?!!!!???!!?!?!?!??!!!???)" for it and then called back (!!!!???!?!%#$@#$) because the Master..., er, sorry, because Moriarty?

WTF Britian!?

They wont even look me in the eye when I mention the show now.

I finally watched Sherlock last month and it was definitely bad but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit as comedy, because I had already been well exposed to the grossest parts of the Sherlock fanfiction community and that changes the whole experience.