The Watch - Tumblr Posts

jay's setting the bar too high 🥹

The thing that scares me the most about BBC America’s adaptation of The Watch is the possibility that Pratchett’s stance on police brutality will be diluted or distorted or even omitted entirely from the show. And I want to make it clear that this post isn’t specific to the current situation in America, it has applications in every single country.

This time, I’m not even going to talk about all those quotes from Night Watch, Thud! and Snuff on police brutality that always get trotted out; although they are profound and breathtaking, I actually don’t need to; because Pratchett’s views run much deeper than those quotes, and they are at the heart of every City Watch book.

I’m going to talk about Commander Vimes’s horror at being described as a “military man” during the war council in Jingo. He’s not a “military man”, he’s a policeman. He keeps the peace. I’m going to talk about the fact that despite fighting for his life with Carcer, a serial killer who has murdered policemen in cold blood, Vimes does everything in his power to bring him in alive and to see that he gets a fair, public trial, and that justice is done. And that coppers trained by Vimes are head-hunted by Watches in the other cities on the Sto Plains, and are prized for their principles and their integrity.

I’m going to talk about the fact that Lord Vetinari defunded the police. There is a clear Discworld precedent for defunding a police force that has gone wrong. Perhaps that was pure, cold, logical pragmatism, because the Thieves’ Guild was a cheaper solution, but I don’t think this is Vetinari’s only motivation. In Night Watch, we see a young Havelock Vetinari, with the weight of the world already on his shoulders, living under Lord Winder’s brutal, violent regime. He then lived under Mad Lord Snapcase, who would have kept the Particulars on if their headquarters hadn’t been destroyed. Vetinari was different, he decided not to keep on a corrupt organisation that wasn’t fit for purpose, and he only built it up again when he found the right man to command the Watch and was certain that it wouldn’t go back to the way it was before.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

That message is so clear in the books. And I just hope that they don’t use Sir Terry’s name to spread a different message, because that would be absolutely heartbreaking.

This MV wrecked me.

if it’s fate, we’ll meet again right? 

Exactly what I was thinking! If you liked the idea, people linked a coupla fanfics in the comments or whatever they're called here

I like to imagine that Sam Vimes, instead of dying properly, instead got minor godhood. All watchmen at some point thank him for his actions, his actions a ripple across the Disc. There's precedent in the Duchess of Borogravia, and in his arc. He keeps getting promotions, and hates each one. What higher status could he be unwillingly raised to than divinity, eternally watching the watchman?

Anyways, that's just a headcanon i've got

Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes.

Samuel Vimes, Night Watch; Terry Pratchett

BBC Studios is adapting Terry Pratchett’s iconic Discworld books for a six-part TV series

Tentatively titled The Watch

This show will reportedly be a six-episode series, with a current working title The Watch. That implies that it’ll be based off one of the most popular subsets of the overall series, featuring the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, which grows from a ramshackle group of a couple officers trying to get by to a full-fledged city police force over the course of the series.