Terry Pratchett's "The Watch" - A diverse and inclusive steampunk BBC series inspired by the Discworld Novels

[ddlloo]

The 'woke' crowd apparently can't do subtle. Pratchett's novels were chock full of progressive commentary, where he went out of his way to show the humanity in everyone and everything, regardless of how many fangs it had. He was legitimately an expert of showing the reality of class struggles, the stupidity and self harm of bigotry born of ignorance, and how there was a place in the world for every oddball wierdo. It would be so EASY to do an adaption based on the characters of The Watch, as written and described in the books, while showcasing progressive values. But no, their STARTING point has to be shove shit into the faces of fans and make sure they KNOW that this show is going to go out of its way to hit you over the head with their agenda. They could do that AND REMAIN LARGELY FAITHFUL TO THE BOOKS simply by hamming up some of the themes, there's simply no need to make all these bullshit changes. Show more of the class divide between the have's and have nots, really examine Cheery's character and her self identity, show the damage Carrot's ignorance can cause even if he is filled with good intentions, take a sidestep to the Unseen University where women aren't allowed to join because... reasons... show just how crippling Vimes' addictions were (hell make him addicted to not-fentanyl instead of booze if you really want some current day awareness raising). There are so many avenues you could focus on if you want to show some progressive values and make people think without having to change nearly a single fucking thing.

These changes are just so blatant and on the nose, and it hits so much harder than anything else these types of people have wrecked because of just how unnecessary it was to make the changes in order to reach their goal of shoving their agenda in everyone's face. I could have easily stomached them focusing more heavily on certain progressive values intrinsic to the Discworld than Pratchett did, as long as they actually tried to honor not just his work but also his fans.

 

[frozenrunner]

Give up on anything from the U.K. They literally have racial quotas in all their film and TV projects. Niggers will always be forced into everything they do, even if it's a period piece. (Hollywood does this too, but it's not a formal requirement. Yet.)

Good writers can sometime work within such absurd confines to create great stuff in spite of them. But even they can't work magic.

 

[Death Grip]

In my eyes they have essentially gobbed on Pratchett's grave.
Not cool, BBC, not cool.

 

[Judge Holden]

Oh fuck I think I accidentally just figured out one of the major plotlines.

Given the emphasis on "CRIME IS LEGAL" in the pitch and the presence of characters like Doctor Cruces, coupled with niggo sybil's random "IMMA VIGILLANTE FREEDOM FIGHTER!" schtick, its going to be about the evil white ankh morpork aristocracy stealing and murdering from the underclasses via the assassins/thieves guilds* with Sybil being their one true defender and the diverse members of the watch rallying to her side after she inspires them to #resist

Im not even kidding. Next to carrot unlearning his toxic white masculinity I guarantee this is going to be one of the main elements of this shitshow.

*which will probably be rolled into a singular "Crime Guild"

 

[TungstenCarbide]

Cheery's arc in Clay Feet was basically learning how to be unabashedly female while being perceived as male. Wanna bet that the character in the series is meant to be 'cis' while having an 'unusual' look? They pulled this shit for the LWord reboot (a 'cis lesbian' played by a trans actor), I think that now this is the new step of wokeness for cinema and tv series.

 

[Judge Holden]

By the way chaps, did any of you watch that "totes dark and edgy and mature" wokewashed Christmas Carol the BBC put on this Christmas?

According to an associate of mine who watched it for me, and backed up by a search of spoilers/synopsis online the plot points included...and I am not joking with any of this...

- Ebeneezer Scrooge being a rapist who forced strong and brave black woman Mrs Cratchit to whore herself out to him in exchange for him funding Tiny Tim's operation
- Mrs Cratchit using her black kween magic to curse scrooge with the ghosts
- Scrooge being revealed to have been whored out to the boarding school headmaster as a child by his father until his stunning and brave big sister came in guns blazing....literally with a fucking pistol....and rescued him from being an evil old white man's cocksleeve
- Scrooge never being redeemed or forgiven because he is an evil old white man which he meekly accepts having faced up to his toxic masculinity
- Mrs Cratchit apparently resolving to become a magical defender of ethnic women from evil white men who abuse them.

The reason I share this with you all is because I want yall to realise....there is absolutely no depth of shittly written cringetastic insultingly pathetic horseshit the BBC will not delve if they think they can get asspats from woke media people.

So gird yourself for this shit to be truly unspeakably bad....because god help us shit aint looking good even at this early stage

 

[RadicalCentrist]

So gird yourself for this shit to be truly unspeakably bad....because god help us shit aint looking good even at this early stage

Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves!

Great to say the TV licensing fees are being put to good use!

 

[Judge Holden]

Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves!

Great to say the TV licensing fees are being put to good use!

Thankfully I am a firm believer in the oldest of english traditions and thus need not pay for the license...

 

[DrunkenDozing]

Well great. I loved the Discworld books, especially the Vines ones. I havent read them all but I was hoping too. Now I wont. Thanks. Fuck you woketards. I cant wait to hear some normie talk about Discworld now as I resist the urge to strangle them. Another thing fucking ruined.

Edit:Goddamn it, I know. I'll continue to read the books. I just woke up to read this shit and knee-jerk posted. I wont delete it cause I try not to do that. I really do wonder why if they even keep the name if they are going to change so much. All it does is alienate the original fans... which I thought was the point of keeping the original franchise name (a la 2016 Ghostbusters).

Hey. What's the over/under on Angua's werewolf form in this series going from four legged in the books to being a flat out furry here? My guess is theyll ruin Carrots chadness by having him yiff her.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

Well great. I loved the Discworld books, especially the Vines ones. I havent read them all but I was hoping too. Now I wont. Thanks. Fuck you woketards. I cant wait to hear some normie talk about Discworld now as I resist the urge to strangle them. Another thing fucking ruined.

My man, they haven't burned the books. Go read them. Support the actual, good work and make it clear that this fucking Frankenstein's monster of pandering, shallow pablum isn't what people want.

 

[neverendingmidi]

My man, they haven't burned the books. Go read them. Support the actual, good work and make it clear that this fucking Frankenstein's monster of pandering, shallow pablum isn't what people want.

Yeah. This is easy to disregard. There's literally no reason to watch it if it's this butchered.

I enjoyed the movies of Hogfather and Going Postal (haven't watch the Color of Magic), but there were levels and jokes that were missing just from being translated to a visual medium from written. This looks like it's less related to the original source than the "Gulliver's Travel" movie with Jack Black. That movie didn't make the book terrible, anymore than this series makes Pratchett's books terrible.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Got a lot to say about it and not enough horrifying tag to describe my reaction.

1. City where crime has been legalized... So basically a city like San Fransisco?

2. Again, all women are made abysmally ugly while Carrot is still a chad.

3. I always seen Pratchett as being a bit based, with a lot of calling out things as racism of low expectations, value of tradition, pragmatism being a good thing, being yourself rather than stick to "women need to be manly/feminine". I doubt any of these will follow to the show.

4. Nothing is sacred anymore.

 

[Dom Cruise]

If you want to understand some of the raw horror from fans, I will try to simplify it.

Imagine a fantasy book series that, stories and concepts and whatever aside, went out of its way to offer sympathetic and progressive narratives regarding gender, religion, sexuality, race, and identity, in a time when doing so was neither trendy nor popular in the literature sphere.

Imagine it having done all this without dipping into dumbass proto-SJW dogma and maintaining a constant theme of "everyone is human*, for better and for worse, no matter what they look like and what they identify as" and never putting anyone on a plinth nor damning them as uniquely flawed, thus ensuring the stories never age into cringy irrelevence once such faddy demagoguery comes in and out of fashion.

Now imagine literally all of this unceremoniously thrown in the shredder, with the most generic corporate-woke schlock of currentyear shoved in its place against all logic and sanity, because those involved with the production for all their claimed progressiveness and inclusivity didnt give two shits about anything other than burying everything in wokewashing sludge that serves only to beef up their diversity credentials, and will be forgotten forever within weeks of the show finishing

*for want of a better word

This is one thing that I've thought about is it's not really progressivism itself that is the problem, it's the modern incarnation of it.

I remember when progressivism meant treating everyone with dignity and respect, which is all well and good, but that's far from what modern "woke" culture is.

It's as if people's intelligence is being sapped out of their minds.

Give up on anything from the U.K. They literally have racial quotas in all their film and TV projects. Niggers will always be forced into everything they do, even if it's a period piece. (Hollywood does this too, but it's not a formal requirement. Yet.)

Good writers can sometime work within such absurd confines to create great stuff in spite of them. But even they can't work magic.

It's really disturbing how 20 years ago Harry Potter made UK culture cool to a generation of kids worldwide and now it seems literally on the verge of extinction.

 

[neverendingmidi]

Richard Dormer isn't a bad choice for Vimes, at least in looks. I've never seen him act though. Pity himand Carrot are the only ones who look right.

In my mind he was always a combination of Tommy Lee Jones from "The Fugitive" mixed with Clint Eastwood, but shorter and British.

 

[Ruin]

I thought desecrating people's graves was illegal.

 

[Entry Team To TOC]

Y'know I'm not seeing any of the fantasy in this. Where's Detritus? Cuddy? Igor? Nobby Nobbs for fucks sake? Theres no dwarfs, trolls, vampires, etc. Is Angua (and god the miscasting is painful. It would've been better to pick a stunningly gorgeous black woman if you wanted to swap rather than a crack addict looking white woman) even a werewolf? Cheery makes me cry, her arc was perfect in confronting others bigotry and recognizing one's own as written, I'm sure this versions will be horribly patronizing at best.

Oh Christ, I was too busy being astonished at how terrible the current cast reveals were I hadn't even noticed the omission of all those folks. I'm torn between not wanting them in this shitshow at all and seeing how badly they'd get wokified if they're included, especially considering they're all male. Which might be why they're not showcased at all in what's currently visible, even - I wouldn't be surprised, anyway.

I'm so sorry, Terry. You didn't deserve this butchery of your work.

 

[Jub-Jub]

Yeah....she apparently aint even a fucking dwarf. She is literally just a human troon in this who was "cast out for being non binary"

Should have cast it as Nobby Nobbs, someone so ugly with fucked up genetics nobody knows what species he is and needs a special human card.

Well - we had Colour of Magic, Hogfather (which is the best imo) and Going Postal.

There's also the tv series of Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters, although they are animated and not live action.

 

[Bender]

"A man is not dead while his name is still spoken."

GNU Terry Pratchett

 

[Kane Lives]

Should have cast it as Nobby Nobbs, someone so ugly with fucked up genetics nobody knows what species he is and needs a special human card.
There's also the tv series of Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters, although they are animated and not live action.

That midget from the Joker would have been my shoo in for Nobby Nobbs.

 

[Next Task]

These changes are just so blatant and on the nose, and it hits so much harder than anything else these types of people have wrecked because of just how unnecessary it was to make the changes in order to reach their goal of shoving their agenda in everyone's face. I could have easily stomached them focusing more heavily on certain progressive values intrinsic to the Discworld than Pratchett did, as long as they actually tried to honor not just his work but also his fans.

There's room for some of the characters to be black, or people of colour. Dibbler, Colon, a few of the other supporting characters, like some of the wizards - their ethnicity can be non-white and not change the story, especially as Pratchett himself has a footnote that basically says 'white and black don't have a problem in Discworld when they both have a problem with green.'

But not only making Lady Sybil black, but the man Vimes gets mistaken for when he goes back in time? That's not colour-blind casting, that's blind casting.

And then all the rest of it. There's a deep weight in my stomach that all the guesses about what they're going to do to Carrot, one of the best characters in the books, are going to be accurate - that as the strong straight white male he'll no longer be allowed to be the simple-but-not-stupid force for good and right that he is in the books. They're going to make him the 'normie from the country' that gets freaked out by big-city ways such as Cheery and Angua, aren't they, rather than have his generosity of spirit help everyone around him be better. He won't be a dwarf in a human's body, he'll just be an oaf and a dolt who needs the strong powerful womyn/troon/non-binaries to educate him to the realities of the new world.

By the looks of it, all the depth and warmth and humanity Pratchett imbued even characters like Colon and Nobby is going to be wiped away and replaced by on-the-nose wokeness and undisguised lectures about tolerance. As a concept, The Watch was a really intriguing one for a TV show; all that potential looks not only wasted, but actively stomped on, by this production.

I mean, seriously, what the fuck.