Steve & Colm discuss Vimes’ final outing, as the Commander of the City Watch takes a jaunt to the country with his family. They discuss the risk of homogenisation during cultural integration, parse the plot to unpick its uneven attempts at narrative tension, and try to remember who was supposed to eat who in Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal.’
Tag Archives: city watch
Thud! – Ace of Clubs
Colm & Steve go back to the well on Pratchett going back to the well of Dwarf-Troll tensions. They discuss brilliant atmosphere building, less than brilliant plotting and whether Vimes still works as a protagonist post-Night Watch.
Night Watch – Mid Life Time Crisis
Colm and Steve tackle Night Watch, Terry Pratchett’s sprawling yet intimate time travel political thriller/character study. It’s Les Miz meets A Tale of Two Cities! It’s Demolition Man meets The Death of Stalin! It’s Vimes meets Vimes!
The Fifth Elephant – A Morporkian Werewolf in Uberwald
Colm and Steve watch Ridley Scott’s The Fifth Elephant with Harrison Ford as Vimes, Rutgar Hauer as Wolfgang and, eh, Imelda Staunton as Lady Margolotta. Well, not quite, but have a listen and you’ll see what we’re getting at here. We went to Uberwald expecting fat and uncovered a gem instead.
Jingo – Operation Desert Squirm
Radio Morpork returns from its post-Hogswatch slumbers and wakes up to war! Colm and Steve discuss how this book feels like a bit of an oddity within the Watch continuity, how Pratchett handles intra-human culture clash in a world previously known for inter-species conflict, and what their alternate selves are doing after they pick up a zoom recorder from an alternate dimension.
Feet of Clay – Go Ahead, Bake My Clay, Punk
Steve and Colm join the City Watch for their third outing, wherein there’s a conspiracy to oust the Patrician in favour of a puppet king… again. Is Pratchett re-visiting this plot a good thing? Listen and find out! You’ll also get a rambling discussion on trans-gender, trans-humanism and trans-legal justice (and Colm ranting about Oliver Cromwell a bit).
Click here or be subjected to a barrage of terrible heraldry puns!
Men At Arms – Affirmative Action Heroes
Colm and Steve return to the streets of Ankh-Morpork to discuss the second installment of the City Watch sub-series. Their bumper discussion takes in gun/gonne control, racism/speciesist discrimination, dog/wolf identity and dom/sub relationships.
Guards! Guards! – Enter the Dragon (and the Coppers)
Colm and Rose return from a long hiatus to discuss the first of the wildly popular City Watch series. Their rambling discussion takes in how ‘million to one’ odds are calculated, the possibility of Vetinari being a villian and what the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night has in common with modern Men’s Rights groups.
Click here for dragons and coppers and secret societies, oh my!
Radio Morpork 