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

[Kurtis Trent]

Since they've decided trying to drive up something resembling interest the social media account for this thing keeps attempting to post stuff that'll interest people. But as it's clearly thrown together they spat this out 12/03

https://twitter.com/TheWatch/status/1370482269912195075

As the comments note it might have been substantially more appropriate to make a tribute of some kind to Terry Pratchett given it's the date he died.

this is just pathetic
Imagine tweeting like this (ironically sums up all their failed attempts at comedy):

I honestly don't want Terry's name near this bullshit.

 

[Next Task]

this is just pathetic
Imagine tweeting like this (ironically sums up all their failed attempts at comedy):
View attachment 2001966

I honestly don't want Terry's name near this bullshit.

A few times, I've read a reviewer's opinion on a film or show and known I could never take seriously anything they ever said on the topic again. One was heralding Mommy Dearest as a legitimately good movie. Another was saying You Only Live Twice was the second best Bond movie ever.

The latest was someone who said that if you liked Pratchett's work then you'd enjoy this adaptation. Boom, credibility annihilated.

 

[Valstrax]

"This edible ain't shi-"

 

[Cyclonus]

Sam Vimes reaction after watching the first episode:

 

[Kurtis Trent]

this shit isn't cancelled yet?

I forced myself to watch two episodes and it amazes me how the cast members have zero chemistry.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Whenever this thread bumps, my first reaction upon seeing the title is thinking "Oh right... that show existed..."
Amazing how utterly irrelevant it is. Not even youtubers making fun of it.

 

[Polyboros2]

Whenever this thread bumps, my first reaction upon seeing the title is thinking "Oh right... that show existed..."
Amazing how utterly irrelevant it is. Not even youtubers making fun of it.

I did a solid minute of googling like a month ago and figured it had either ended it's season or gone on hiatus. Until proven otherwise, I'm just assuming they never showed A'tuin and my girl was spared this.

 

[Cyclonus]

I was actually worried that the universal disdain for this crap might bring about a Streisand effect and people who never heard of Discworld would watch it just to see what all the fuss is about. Happily this doesn't seem to be the case. Hopefully it'll fade into obscurity.

 

[Narr Then]

I'd forgotten all about this, thank fuck.

Now I'm wondering if it's worth downloading to watch on a day when I feel like being pissed off at the world.

That Troll Bridge mini episode was ace tho

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

So I was looking up some Discworld stuff and noticed this recent thread on Reddit;

r/discworld - What could go wrong with The Watch? Its the perfect series to just recreate faithfully. It tells tell a comedically sharp and politically/morally relevant story... oh

407 votes and 48 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

And my first through was "that's a lot of anger for a recent thread. The fuck is happening?"
BBC IPlayer started airing this shit last week.

Their Twitter feed continues to be hilarity with the added traffic.

 

[knightlautrec]

This shitty video was recommended to me and me, stupidly, thought it would be mostly about how you should leave Prachett the fuck alone cuz he's DEAD but nah. More twat waffling about troon shit and how dwarves are trans and Monsterous Regiment is trans which makes me think they didn't read the books at all at this point. They were all girls. Regardless of dressing like men - it was a play on what actually happened in the Napoleonic wars. Women dressed as men to join as young boys to be with their sweethearts.

This shit is infuriating. Leave the dude alone. He's gone. And no - dwarves aren't trans allegories but the fact they hilariously think they 'women with beards' are stand ins for ugly fucking troons will never not be funny.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

This shitty video was recommended to me and me, stupidly, thought it would be mostly about how you should leave Prachett the fuck alone cuz he's DEAD but nah. More twat waffling about troon shit and how dwarves are trans and Monsterous Regiment is trans which makes me think they didn't read the books at all at this point. They were all girls. Regardless of dressing like men - it was a play on what actually happened in the Napoleonic wars. Women dressed as men to join as young boys to be with their sweethearts.

This shit is infuriating. Leave the dude alone. He's gone. And no - dwarves aren't trans allegories but the fact they hilariously think they 'women with beards' are stand ins for ugly fucking troons will never not be funny.

That's spectacularly bad. While mediocre throughout the degree to which they manage to miss the point is impressive, starting at 15:25. The video's narrator claims the character in question only needs to live as a man because they are trans. The text itself says that he is doing so because funnily enough it is easier to return to his son as a retired male war hero rather than the mother who abandoned him who can not explain the massive gap in her life between the abandoning and now.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

You know what gives me comfort?

That whenever this thread bumps and I read the title, my reaction is just "oh right, this thing exists. I totally forgot."
Goes to show you how little of an impact it had, how utterly irrelevant it is on the face of pop culture. Thank god, this shitty, utterly braindead, low-budget shitshow is just something that... exists. And nothing more.

This garbage isn't even worthy of getting mad over.

 

[Boston Brand]

Damnit, every time this thread pops up, I hope its because they finally caved and cancelled this shit.

 

[Emperor Julian]

On reflection dwarfs are definatly used in the subtext to represent transgenderism. Especially in fifth elephant with Dee but like most good writting it has applicability to anyone whose sense of self is surpressed/repressed people in general. Partly why I was so disapointed in the watch was the way it was tailor made for woke shit and they still fucked it up.

 

[glass_houses]

Monsterous Regiment is trans which makes me think they didn't read the books at all at this point. They were all girls. Regardless of dressing like men - it was a play on what actually happened in the Napoleonic wars. Women dressed as men to join as young boys to be with their sweethearts.

One of the many things infuriating things about the tranny revolution is the absolute trashing and utter destruction of women's achievement. Woman did a Thing? Well, women aren't supposed to do Things because they're weak and oppressed and any act of fighting back is masculine, therefore she's a he and a trans pioneer. So ultimately, women can do and have done nothing.

Fuck's sake.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Damnit, every time this thread pops up, I hope its because they finally caved and cancelled this shit.

For what it's worth, it seems to not have been renewed for another season. It had shit audience numbers, it had shit reviews on RT and any other portal, it has shit word-of-mouth.

Really, the best thing they can do is *not* cancel it. Cause it'll mean a bunch of assholes shovel more money into a fire.

One of the many things infuriating things about the tranny revolution is the absolute trashing and utter destruction of women's achievement. Woman did a Thing? Well, women aren't supposed to do Things because they're weak and oppressed and any act of fighting back is masculine, therefore she's a he and a trans pioneer. So ultimately, women can do and have done nothing.

Fuck's sake.

Modern identity politics are just a weird inversion of utterly repulsive chauvinism when you think about it.

Instead of deriving a woman's value from the man that she's married to and who she defers to, her value in modern identity politics is derived from ramshackling herself to the cult of IdPol and defering to it.

And this ideology you need to defer to will tell you that no matter what you do, you're always just a victim to the whims of a society that no women has, ever had or ever will have any power to shape or influence. An ideology that infantilizes women to absurd levels:
It preaches that women are inherently unable to take responsibility for their own actions, it's always society that needs to accomodate unreasonable behaviour by ignoring or outright cheering for it. In this ideology, women have no agency or accountability whatsoever, and are constantly at odds with this cruel patriarchical world that was tailor made to hold them down. If you're a guy, your penis will afford you every luxury and power you can dream of, but damn if you don't have a dick, then you're a 1920s silent movie damsel in distress that can do nothing but cry and faint.

Most ironic of all, every area that acts as an open space for women is now being invaded by autogynophiliac men, who take everything away from you. Your records in sports, your sanctuaries, your retreats. They'll invade your locker rooms, your toilets, your most private locations where you're the most vulnerable. FFS, you might even be in jail and get raped by a guy who got into a female prison just by scribbling "she/her" on his driver's license. If you have reasonable political demands that focus on the biological needs of women, you get shouted down with cries of "not all women have uteruses". Your entire existence, your entire being, everything you are, everything concerning your female identity is abstracted down to "long hair, makeup and a dress".
If you protest to any of this, you're labelled a TERF

And bear in mind, all this shit is supposed to be "empowering".

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

You know what gives me comfort?

That whenever this thread bumps and I read the title, my reaction is just "oh right, this thing exists. I totally forgot."
Goes to show you how little of an impact it had, how utterly irrelevant it is on the face of pop culture. Thank god, this shitty, utterly braindead, low-budget shitshow is just something that... exists. And nothing more.

You're more optimistic than me. They ended it on a cliffhanger, I'd put money that Simon Allen has the script written and some of the scenes may already be filmed for season 2. I am just hoping it has bombed so badly they opt to write that off as a loss rather than waste time slots on more seasons.
By the by they are staggering its release in the UK. It went to IPlayer first and just started airing on BBC 2 on the 12th. It hasn't helped.

Damnit, every time this thread pops up, I hope its because they finally caved and cancelled this shit.

I continue to fear a new season announced.

On reflection dwarfs are definatly used in the subtext to represent transgenderism. Especially in fifth elephant with Dee but like most good writting it has applicability to anyone whose sense of self is surpressed/repressed people in general. Partly why I was so disapointed in the watch was the way it was tailor made for woke shit and they still fucked it up.

The point is with Pratchett writing it was never explicitly representing something even if some equivalents fit more than others. Dwarven culture could be many oppressive religions, societies etc. Specifically tying it to something is an oversimplification and also dates the work. See this shitty series.

For what it's worth, it seems to not have been renewed for another season. It had shit audience numbers, it had shit reviews on RT and any other portal, it has shit word-of-mouth.

Really, the best thing they can do is *not* cancel it. Cause it'll mean a bunch of assholes shovel more money into a fire.

I honestly do think it's gotten what it deserved, as you say escalation of cancellation won't help. The majority of those who hate it online aren't even posting the sort of shit that lets journalists write articles about how people hate it are only doing so because of transphobia or racism. Discworld was already a fairly woke property and good. The Watch wanted to be taking an outdated property and making it progressive as seen in Simon Allen's dripping with smugness remarks and instead what it did was acquire a very small group of fans who'll move on within a month and piss off a fairly progressive core base who loath this remake now because it's a combination of shitty writing and stereotypes, lazy lifting from what's currently in and the occasional good lines or plot stolen wholesale from the existing books with minimal acknowledgement.

 

[Game master arino]

‘Gender critical’ trolls told author Neil Gaiman his books were transphobic. It backfired, badly​

‘Gender critical’ trolls told author Neil Gaiman his books were transphobic. It backfired, badly

Fantasy author Neil Gaiman has spent the past week dragging anti-trans campaigners trying to co-opt Terry Pratchett’s legacy, like the hero he is. The American Gods creator, 60, regularly affirms his trans-inclusive views, and last year joined more than 1,800 literary figures in pledging his...

www.pinknews.co.uk

'Gender critical' trolls told author Neil Gaiman his books were trans…

archived 19 Aug 2021 08:16:37 UTC

archive.md

The article is about Neil but half of it is actually about terry.

The American Gods creator, 60, regularly affirms his trans-inclusive views, and last year joined more than 1,800 literary figures in pledging his support for trans and non-binary people.

He refused to stay silent when Rhianna Pratchett, the daughter of his longtime friend Terry Pratchett, was forced to shut down the so-called “gender critical” people trying to claim that her father would be anti-trans if he was alive today.
“Terry was wise and Terry was kind. Terry understood that people were complicated, contradictory and, always people, and that people can and do change,” Gaiman tweeted.
“As Rhiannon Pratchett says, he would have had no time for this nonsense. (See also: Equal Rites, Monstrous Regiment, Feet of Clay),” he added, citing three of Pratchett’s works with strong trans themes.
A flood of Discworld fans echoed Gaiman, citing multiple examples of trans-inclusivity in Pratchett’s life and works.

Yet a number of anti-trans commenters stubbornly refused to accept Pratchett’s own words or those of his loved ones, insisting it was impossible to know the author’s opinion on the modern trans rights movement as he died six years ago.

Tweeting in reply to Gaiman and Rhianna Pratchett, one anti-trans person insisted they knew better what “Terry would want [for] his daughter”. The sheer lunacy of this tweet was not lost on Gaiman, who quickly replied so that Rhianna didn’t have to.

“There’s a special magic to sending a ‘would he want his daughter’ tweet like this to two people, one of whom is *actually* his daughter…” he noted incredulously.
Several trans Discworld fans came forward to share touching anecdotes of meeting Terry Pratchett, a man who extended kindness to everyone, regardless of gender identity.


One commenter described meeting Pratchett at a book signing before her transition. Ever perceptive, the author picked up on her subtle hesitation over her name and responded with grace and tact.

“That’s the Terry I knew and learned from,” Gaiman replied, amplifying her tweet.

Neil Gaiman accused of transphobia in The Sandman​

At this point some anti-trans commenters turned their attack on Neil Gaiman himself, trying to discredit him by highlighting supposed transphobia in his seminal graphic novel The Sandman.

They pointed to A Game of You, the fifth volume of his series, which shows the trans character Wanda Mann being rejected by the moon goddess because of her chromosomes.

“This you Neil? Bit terfy, isn’t it?” they asked.

Gaiman acknowledged that there were indeed transphobic characters in his work – but that doesn’t mean you’re supposed to sympathise with them. “With respect, I’m not sure you understand how literature works,” he said.
He also highlighted another rebuttal to the claims of The Sandman being anti-trans: a scene that shows Wanda being recognised and accepted as a woman by Death of the Endless, the highest power of all. In this final moment, Wanda is described as “perfect,” “authentic” and “happy” – and undeniably female.

The arc’s main human protagonist, Barbie, is also sympathetic towards Wanda, crossing out Wanda’s deadname on her tombstone and writing her friend’s chosen name with lipstick.

“Spoilers, sweetie,” Gaiman commented cheekily.

Despite this people still tried to contradict the author on his own work, insisting that transphobia was the true message of The Sandman – and again, Gaiman was having none of it.
Predictably this didn’t stop the anti-trans commenters from desperately trying to rewrite Gaiman’s work or Pratchett’s, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

When one fan asked Gaiman why he bothered, the author understandably replied: “I think it’s time to deploy the mute button. Or give them a day to get bored and go shout at someone else. Or both.”

Meanwhile, Neil Gaiman is focusing his energies where it matters. The author has committed to casting non-binary and Black actors in the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman, saying he gives “zero f**ks about people who don’t understand/haven’t read Sandman whining” about it.

Minor note of autism: when you highlight articles on pink news the highlight color is rainbow.

This shitty video was recommended to me and me, stupidly, thought it would be mostly about how you should leave Prachett the fuck alone cuz he's DEAD but nah. More twat waffling about troon shit and how dwarves are trans and Monsterous Regiment is trans which makes me think they didn't read the books at all at this point. They were all girls. Regardless of dressing like men - it was a play on what actually happened in the Napoleonic wars. Women dressed as men to join as young boys to be with their sweethearts.

This shit is infuriating. Leave the dude alone. He's gone. And no - dwarves aren't trans allegories but the fact they hilariously think they 'women with beards' are stand ins for ugly fucking troons will never not be funny.

I spotted a cow crossover. The first comment is from mothers basement, youtubes number one anime grifter.

He generally attaches himself to whatever shit is trending to make money. So I guess that means discworld is what soyboys are into this week. Do you guys think monstrous regiment is pro trans? I did not interpret the passages shaun showed in the video that way but I never read that one, just going postal, pyramids and the death books.

 

[Goodbye Horses]

Do you guys think monstrous regiment is pro trans?

It's not. None of the female characters actually want to be male, they're all forced into pretending by circumstance. All but one of them stops pretending to be male by the end of the book and the one that doesn't stop only keeps it up because she thinks her estranged son will accept her as a father more easily than he would as a mother.