I'm not going to transcribe the whole thing, but I just wanted to put this out there which Steven Moffat said about series 3 of Sherlock in
this interview with IGN aired on 29 May 2012:
MOFFAT: Our MO in Sherlock is to make people wait, to make them suffer and wait, and then give them a real burst of ah... of quality really. It takes a long while to make the show as good as we make it. We couldn't keep that quality up and the intensity up over thirteen episodes or twenty-six episodes. We have to do a burst of high-impact television, but you know, one of the- part of the theatre of it is making people wait. You had to wait a year and a half the last time, I'm not guaranteeing you won't do the same thing this time.
INTERVIEWER: And at what part that- at what time in the process have you decided what stories to tell? Do you already have an idea what ones will be in season three or is that something that will come as time goes on?
MOFFAT: Oh, we've got a pretty good idea of what we're doing. We've discussed it, the three of us have sat and discussed it. Lots of grey areas, lots of big vaguenesses and absolute flexibility to make major changes in mind, though I do think we've got a really good framework for it.
We've got a good beginning, we've got a stormer of an end, and we've got a stunning development in the middle, which is what we're looking for.
INTERVIEW: Okay.
MOFFAT: We want, you know, three must-see films, not- I mean, we don't want an episode one and an episode two and an episode three. We want, you know, three must-see movies. And like this year, you know,
it will all build up shockingly to the last twenty minutes again.