The Watch (BBC America's Discworld Adaptation)

Comes across more like he's feeling underappreciated for the essential service he provides. Particularly in episode 3. What's not ironically...levitacious? about that.

Perhaps he's playing the long game, since Carcer's benefactors are very probably the Auditors. Interfering without actually interfering.

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!

Oof, that whole description is... off-putting. Perhaps especially the bits about Angua and Death, two characters who I would particularly like to see handled well. :/

My Games & Writing

Based on the first 3 episodes, I like some of the changes, while others vary from vaguely frustrating to almost enough to make me give up on it.

Vimes - he is almost but not quite acceptable to me. Enough of the core is there that I can see him as essentially the same person, but something in him just feels wrong.

Sybil - I very much like what they turned her into. The same steel in her backbone as the original, but expressed in a different way.

Carrot - Close, but he doesn't have that "Everybody naturally likes him" feel that he needs. They really missed the mark when he went into the Drum to try to break up a fight.

Angua - Wrong feel, but not enough to bother me.

Detritus - Not dumb enough, insufficiently indestructable.

No Colon or Nobbs - How dare they leave out the two best watchmen!

Cheery - Going from proudly female bearded dwarf to this just feels far to wrong.

Ventinari - So far, she just doesn't feel like the subtle manipulative bastard that she needs to be. There is still time to redeem the character, but I have my doubts.

Dr. Crucis - Meh. The character was never that big of a deal to me to begin with, so the only change that actually sticks out is the change to female which is largely irrelevant to me.

Throat - 100% In Name Only. Why bother to use the name for someone with basically no connection to the original.

Carcer - Another In Name Only. Of course, unless they had some vague plan to adapt Night Watch, he wouldn't be otherwise needed so this gets a big "Whatever" from me.

The goblins - I can accept making them disguised humans for budgetary reasons, but I don't have to like it.

The overall setting - Given how steampunkish the books later became, I am OK with starting it there, though some of the details are less than ideal.

Assassains Guild - I don't really like the change from "Stylish well educated killers just doing a job" to "Pack of random pyschopaths".

I did like the choice to sing an old Dwarvish Folk Song for the audition.

I read this and immediately thought "yeah, he should've gone in and after a bit of noise, Angua should've checked on him and everyone is all happy now". Like the direction for Carrot is obvious (steal the scene from Wyrd Sisters), and they didn't do it.

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I know!!

Edited by crazysamaritan on Jan 17th 2021 at 12:58:15 PM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Pretty sure that Carrot running into a tavern and throwing the combatants around to stop the brawl is something directly out of the books. Only difference is that it was dwarfs doing the fighting in the novel, whereas here it needed to involve (human) alchemists as an early clue to the villains' Slab deal.

It did happen in the books, and among the people that Carrot threw out was Detritus (who, in the book, is nigh invulnerable).

Edited by C105 on Jan 20th 2021 at 10:18:36 AM

Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.

There was also another occasion where he shamed the Dwarves into stopping fighting I seem to remember. Unless that was the same bit (punched out Detritus and then talked to the dwarves?) It's a bit vague in my memory.

"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."

Pretty sure those were two separate occasions. The bar fight ended with everyone unconscious, and Carrot meticulously reporting all the crimes committed in the past two minutes (36 counts of Making An Affray, 56 of Riotous Behaviour, 41 of Obstructing an Officer of the Watch in the Execution of his Duty, 13 of Assault with a Deadly Weapon and 6 cases of Malicious Lingering) before passing out himself.

Yeah, Carrot stopping the dwarfs fighting was a separate occasion, but I think it happened in Men at arms (with Angua as a befuddled witness).

Unrelated,: I just discovered this tweet from Neil Gaiman, which shows that he does not miss any opportunity to take a jab at this series.

Edited by C105 on Jan 20th 2021 at 1:48:25 PM

Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.

Just dissapointed that Death is just kinda randomly lost this episode.

Well, I will say I enjoyed the dancing scene.

"Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri, quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes."

Episode 4 started rather well, with some pieces of dialogue taken straight out of the book and Carrot behaving closer to his book counterpart. But the ending strayed away from that again, with Vetinari apparently wanting to control the dragon themselves (although that may be another Gambit of them).
I don't quite understand either why they renamed the Auditors since for once it does not seem to be a case of In Name Only (and offered a rather cool scene by the way).

Cheery is a likeable character, but probably the member of the Watch who is the farthest from her book characterisation.

Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.

My biggest criticism of the show so far is that Death mostly seems to just be hanging around not really doing much of anything. I'm glad Episode 5 uses him more sparingly, and in his actual role as death instead of just shooting the breeze.

Vimes' interactions with Vetinari are easily my favorite part of the show.

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!

I give up, Vetinari is whatever gender you want.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Cheery - Going from proudly female bearded dwarf to this just feels far to wrong.

Wait, what? I didn't get far enough in the discworld novels to actually read the the Arc this show is based on, which is part of why I didn't mention Cheery in my original comment here, since for all I knew they could have been trans in the source material (the other reason being that I hadn't caught their name in this show until recently).

At first I liked this character, since they're NBD LGBT (though I'd like to note that the fact we even have the term "NBD gay" is itself symptomatic of a problem, I mean imagine if we referred to female characters who avert Smurfette Principle as "NBD female") and because they seem to always have exactly the right tools and skills at hand, but after reading up on the original Cheery this one seems like a complete mockery of her character arc. The original Cheery's arc was about accepting your body, whereas the entire essence of being Trans is a rejection of it.

Since they did the same thing to Vetinari, both for no obvious reason, I have a sneaking suspicion this might have something to do with the Mysterious Nasty Thing that happened behind the scenes that everyone's been talking about.

Edited by Napoleon_Blownapart on Feb 8th 2021 at 4:58:02 AM

Actually, Guards! Guards! is one of the earliest stories in the franchise. During the writing of that book, PTerry was still planning on Carrot being The Hero of the Watch and Commander Vimes as The Mentor.

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The entire dwarf race is an allusion to Jewish and transgender people, and a parody of Tolkien's dwarves. The female dwarves have rejected the masculine labels and a few of them go so far as shaving their beards. Not because they're afraid of a supernatural force but because that's dwarf culture. Every mountain had bearded dwarves and you had two dwarf parents. Negotiating what another dwarf had under their beard and armour and weapons is a running gag in at least one book. Openly declaring themselves to be female was the climax of Cheery's Character Development when she was introduced.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Feb 8th 2021 at 8:51:20 AM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I had said at the beginning that there were enough bits left of Pratchett floating on top of the sludge for me to be interested in what they were going to do next. After episodes 5 and 6 (have not seen episode 7 yet) it seems to me that the Pratchett bits have sunk to the bottom. The number of In Name Only characters keeps piling up (including the Summoning Dark), the subtlety of Cheery's character arc is gone (to put it mildly) and the writers seem to consider that Adaptational Angst Upgrade is the only way to make a character interesting (as if they needed that to be interesting).

I will probably watch this through the end, but as an average series that occasionally references Pratchett.

Incidentally, the Trope page about this series seems to have been cut. Does anybody know if there was a reason for that?

Edited by C105 on Feb 9th 2021 at 9:47:56 PM

Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.

Probably cut for not having enough pre-release information for a page, it could probably be made now that the show's out.

You can remake the page yourself if you want. Surprised no one has done it yet..

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

That is correct. Courtesy link: Series.The Watch

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Can I just say that the idea of Carrot being a "dwarf by adoption" makes no freaking sense? I mean if a white couple adopt a black baby, that doesn't make them "white by adoption," just a black person raised by white people.

It's a recurrent and really important element in the Discworld series that the Dwarves aren't human and don't have human values. They have their own cultural and belief systems and "being a dwarf" is simultaneously a species thing and a cultural thing. Carrot is not biologically a dwarf, but he is culturally a dwarf, and many of the dwarves barely see a difference between the two concepts.

The closest equivalent is if a baby from Nigeria was adopted by a couple from Sweden. The baby might not be ethnically Swedish, but it would certainly grow up culturally Swedish, for example. But there, they'd all still be human which is why the comparison doesn't work properly.

Note: using white and black in that manner, as a way to refer to culture and not ethnicity, is a really inaccurate and problematic way to refer to things. White culture doesn't exist, but Polish or Swedish or British or Belgian culture does exist. The same as that a black person from the US doesn't have the same culture as a black person from Swaziland.

Edited by Zendervai on Feb 13th 2021 at 4:43:19 AM

Not Three Laws compliant.

Thanks to whoever created the trope page!

Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.

ah, that makes sense. thanks.

No problem. It is a bit of an oblique element from the books that isn't really explained that well after it first shows up.

Not Three Laws compliant.

Culturally he is a dwarf. Mind you, Discworld has nine different kinds of problems with representation and culture as part of the parody. The average Discworldian is aggressively ignorant, insensitive, and prejudiced as a matter of course.

I also think you may note that it not making "sense" is part of the parody as Carrot being a human who acts like a dwarf confuses the hell out of everyone else too. But it begs the question, "Is Carrot entitled to think of himself as a dwarf or is being raised in the culture not enough?"

As far as everyone who looks at him goes, he's a human. Carrot doesn't think like a human, though. He also is effectively exiled because he's not biologically dwarvish. So he has to adjust to a new world where his appearance does not reflect his insides.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 14th 2021 at 1:56:59 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.