Yes. The first was a 60 min one. The second, the 90 minute one, was shot after "The Great Game" and the "Blind Banker". The original 60 min one is 0n the Season One DVDs. Ariane DeVere has made a PDF comparing them which you can download: from this page of transcripts. Mycroft doesn't appear in the original 60 min. pilot.
What Does 'Vatican Cameos' Mean? It was used in "A Scandal of Belgravia" (John responds by ducking) and in "The Sign of Three" (And is a code word or phrase to tell John something is wrong).
Two possible explanations have been put forth on this:
"The phrase first originated in World War 2. It was used when a non-military person, who was armed (gun or knife) entered a British military base. The phrase was a signal for everyone duck out of the line of fire." (this would explain how John knew it) — Source: The Urban Dictionary
But if the above is true, the military may have gotten it from The Hound of the Baskervilles (one of the original Arthur Conan Doyle novels) in which Holmes says,
"I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases". — Source: Online The Hound of the Baskervilles, Chapter 2 text (search for 'Vatican')
What was significant about John's blog getting stuck on 1,895?
This is a famous poem among those who have studied Sherlock Holmes for a long time
Sherlock Holmes, Doctor John Watson & the famous wallpaper
Benedict Cumberbatch & Martin Freeman
221B
Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears–
Only those things the heart believes are true.
A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive, And it is always eighteen ninety-five.
—Vincent Starrett, 1942
Is there a Sumatra Road in London as mentioned in "The Empty Hearse"? Is it near Parliament? Is there a disused tube station there? Does this relate to a rat?And were there mistakes in the types of cars/carriages used in the episode?
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of Sherlock's connection to the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet ready. There is a Sumatra Road in London, but it is nowhere near Parliament, it is in Hampstead Heath and there is a disused station there. For details see Hampstead & Highgate News.
And Stephen Rees's blog has details about
"Sherlock Holmes and the Lack of Perception" since "Sherlock apparently does not notice that the large squarish 'surface stock' used on the cut and cover District has become a small round tube train used on the bored tube Jubilee."
— We learned about the blog from Always 1895
Which character uses which kind of mobile phone in Season Three of Sherlock?
Where did Arthur Conan Doyle get the name 'Sherlock' from? 'Holmes'? 'Watson'? Mycroft?
"At first the detective was to be named either Sherringford or Sherrinford Holmes not Sherlock. Although it is believed that he settled on Sherlock entirely at random, some have speculated that ACD was aware of William Sherlock (1641-1707), the dean of St. Paul's, who had written A Practical Discourse Concerning Death. On the other hand, Sherlock was the name of a prominent landowning family in the Ireland of ACDs ancestors. Then too, ACD once said in an interview, 'I made 30 runs [at cricket] against a bowler by the name of Sherlock, and I always had a kindly feeling for the name.'" — from The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Sherlock Holmes by Dick Riley and Pam McAllister, page 22.
In all the above cases, 'Sherlock" was a family name, but the British have a habit of making family names into first or middle names.
Doyle was known to be fond of the writings of Oliver Wendall Holmes.
Doyle considered 'Ormond Sacker' as the name of the narrator. When he chose Watson, he may have been thinking of his friend James Watson of Edinburgh and that would explain why Watson's wife, Mary, in one of the stories, calls him 'James'.
Who is Redbeard? (Mentioned in "Sign of Three" and further information from "His Last Vow")
Mycroft tells John that before Sherlock decided to be a consulting detective, he wanted to be a pirate. One has no idea how old he was when he wanted to be a pirate, but the Mind Palace scene in "His Last Vow", implies that when he was about 8-10 years old, he had a dog which he named Redbeard (likely after the 16th century pirate who was also known as Barbarossa) and his dog had to be put down. In "The Sign of Three" Mycroft warns Sherlock about caring and getting involved and he mentions Redbeard then as if it had been a tramatic thing for Sherlock from caring too much.
Here is the reveal scene in "His Last Vow":
Will we see Sherlock again any time soon? A Christmas Special was mentioned at one time.
It was mentioned that the BBC would like to have something to run on Christmas but the production team doesn't think that is at all reasonable. There was once talk of maybe summer of 2015? Recent talk has all been of 2016. It all depends on when they have scripts written and then after that when they can get the principals in between their other projects. All the stars have to align in the heavens for them to get everyone together for an 11 day block to shoot half of an episode and then the rest of the 22 days to finish that one episode and then they have to do that again four more times to do three episodes for a fourth season/series. But before they can even arrange that they must have a finished script. Then two more of those. And they must all hope that nothing happens to the two Sherlock coats they have left because they may not be able to shoot outside at all without that other primary character: the coat.
What is meant by referring to the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories as the canon?.
The term canon was initially used to describe the Bible as opposed to the commentaries on the Bible. In 1911 Sherlock Holmes afficiendos (i.e. fans) started applying it to those Sherlock Holmes stores and the information they contained as opposed to other stories that claimed they were about Sherlock Holmes (by this time the first films had been made using the characters, for instance, plus adaptations for the stage: Arthur Conan Doyle was still alive and seemed to condone these adaptations; even later becoming part of a team that made a series of films). — source: the date 1911 comes from "One Fixed Point: “Sherlock,” Sherlock Holmes, and the British Imagination" By ELIZABETH MINKEL.
What was with John's mustache in "The Empty Hearse"?
Dr. John Watson was described in the original stories, and has almost always been portrayed, as having a mustache.
Where does the name 'William Sherlock Scott Holmes' come from?
I can find nothing that relates this name to anything at all in the Canon stories but there are a number of 'Sherlockians' who have picked up on it over the years without any basis to do so.
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Eight minutes were cut out of each episode of the first two seasons. But in the third season, the only cut we have detected in "The Empty Hearse" was for language. We have pages on some of the cuts in 
