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#Pratchat92 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 92, “Sand of the Scrounge Wizard”, discussing the 1996 computer game Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!?, with guest Kat Clay.

Iconographic Evidence

Listener Michael recommended this review of Discworld II by YouTuber MitchManix.

We’ll add a few choice screenshots here! Watch this space.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title – inspired by a gag made by Kat – is a riff on the title of the first Leisure Suit Larry game, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, from 1987. Inspired by their earlier text-based game Softporn Adventure, Leisure Suit Larry is a series of “adult” graphic adventure games from Sierra Entertainment. The Larry games are very 1980s style sex comedies, mostly starring Larry Laffer – a middle-aged, balding virgin whose big quest is to usually to seduce a woman. (Though to be fair, it does turn into sort of a love story by the end of the original trilogy.) There are ten games in the series, the most recent from 2020, though only the first six were designed by the series’ original creator, Al Lowe. The original has also been remade and re-released several times.
  • We mention the animated Discworld adaptations a couple of times, by which we mean the two from Cosgrove Hall. These were Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music, originally broadcast in 1997 and 1998 – so after the release of Discworld 2. Of note: an interview with Terry about these adaptations from the time, for MelodyMaker magazine, has been doing the rounds on social media. He was very happy with them! This was also around the time Hollywood was trying to make Mort, an adaptation he was much less enthusiastic about. But it seems that when it came to adaptations, he most loved the plays – he said he loved the thought of people rehearsing lines from his books!
  • Death’s Domain (1999) was the fourth official “Discworld Mapp” to be published, following The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (1993), The Discworld Mapp (1995), and A Tourist Guide to Lancre (1998). All of the maps were devised by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs; Steven Player illustrated the first two, while the Lancre map and Death’s Domain were illustrated by Paul Kidby. The last two maps reportedly didn’t sell as well as the ones of the Disc itself and its most famous city, and are no longer in print.
  • The “Paul Kidby pictures” Kat mentions are probably from The Pratchett Portfolio, a short collection of Kidby sketches and illustrations of Discworld characters, accompanied by brief notes from Terry. It was published as a large format but slim softcover in 1996. Another option might be the follow-up, The Art of Discworld, from 2004, which was a larger hardcover volume containing many more images, and sporting his original version of “The Mona Ogg” on the cover. For more on Kidby’s artwork, see #Pratchat88, “They’re All Good Dragons, Bront”, about Kidby’s much more recent book Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
  • The Scarlet Stiletto Awards are an annual competition for short crime fiction written by Australian women, launched by Sisters in Crime in 1991. At the 2018 awards, Kat’s story “Lady Loveday Investigates” (available on her website) won three awards: the Kerry Greenwood Malice Domestic Award, the Sun Bookshop Third Prize, and the Athenaeum Library Body in the Library runner-up prize.
  • “Dark academia” is an aesthetic and niche storytelling genre which emerged over the last decade, though its often traced back to The Secret History, Donna Tartt’s 1992 novel about murder and turmoil amongst students at university in New England. It mixes an idealised, old-fashioned version of higher education with goth-adjacent themes of finding beauty in darkness. Common touchstones include libraries, books, gothic architecture, tweed, pencil skirts and other 1930s fashion. If you thought Rupert Giles was the sexiest character in Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, then dark academia might be for you! The aesthetic is not without its critics, who point out that it romanticises a Eurocentric and elitist idea of education.
  • When Kat mentions a rubber chicken, she is almost certainly thinking of the infamous “rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle” that appears in the 1990 LucasArts adventure game, The Secret of Monkey Island. (See the list of adventure games below for more.) Sadly no rubber chickens appear in any of the three Discworld adventure games.
  • Discworld II was released shortly after the publication of Hogfather, but given when it was written and developed, it’s likely the team had only limited access to notes about any books after Maskerade. This might explain why some of the portrayals don’t quite match the books, especially when it comes to Hex (written as HEX in the game) and Ponder Stibbons.
  • Liz’s comment about “going up and down stairs for 15,000 years” is a reference to the length of time Rincewind spent navigating some locations – most notably Unseen University – in the first Discworld game.
  • Thanks to listener David Llewellyn, who points out that the cartbomb in the Fool’s Guild is a parody of the opening sequence of Lethal Weapon 3, in which loose cannon cop Riggs (Mel Gibson) decides not to wait for the bomb squad when he and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) discover a car bomb in a car park. While trying to defuse the bomb, Riggs asks Murtaugh if he’ll miss this kind of thing when he retires, which Rincewind echoes in his line about missing this sort of thing “when they stop making games like this”. When he inevitably cuts the wrong wire, Riggs tells Murtaugh “Grab the cat.” The whole building explodes just as they escape. Lethal Weapon 3 came out in 1992, four years before Discworld II, so folks playing it at the time would likely have recognised it. But it’s not nearly as well known now as the other films referenced, like The Mask or Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
  • For more about Abiotic Factor, The Bard’s Tale, The Outer Worlds 2 and Disco Elysium, see the list of “other videogames” below.
  • Monty Python’s Life of Brian was the third feature film from Eric Idle’s comedy troupe, Monty Python. Set around 33 CE, it tells the story of Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman), a man born in the stable next door to Jesus Christ. As an adult living in Roman-occupied Judea, Brian falls in love with the revolutionary Judith Iscariot (Sue Jones-Davies) and has a series of misadventures, including being mistaken for the Messiah. At the film’s end, he is captured and crucified by the Romans, but the people he thought would help him instead celebrate his sacrifice. As he despairs, a victim on the cross next door (Eric Idle) leads the crucified in the song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” to cheer them all up. It has remained a popular song ever since.
  • While the game only briefly explains why Windle is having a deathday party, the manual explains that wizards can see Death and know when they will die. Like most of the manual, this is essentially done via a remix of text and jokes from the novels, reproduced below. (The footnote is one about Rincewind failing to have achieved even the first of the eight levels of wizardry.)

There exists a special relationship between all wizards and Death, as they can not only see him but also know the exact time of their death. Amazingly, some part of this bleeds off onto Rincewind, despite the readily apparent fact that Rincewind is not really a wizard*. Rincewind can see Death, but does not accurately know the time of his own death. He suspects, however, that it will be a fraction of a second after almost everything he does. Death and Rincewind have always had an interesting relationship: Death has often offered to reap Rincewind’s soul as he was passing by, just to save time, and Rincewind has very politely run away.

Discword II: Missing, Presumed…!? manual, page 4-5
  • Don Bluth is an American animator. He worked with Disney in the 1950s and 1970s before creative differences on The Fox and the Hound led to him founding his own animation studio, Don Bluth Productions. Their best-known films include The Secret of NIMH (1982) – a book adaptation with some similarities to The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents – The Land Before Time (1988), All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), Anastasia (1997), Titan A.E. (2000), and An American Tail (see below).
  • An American Tail (1986) is the story of a young Russian-Jewish mouse, Fievel Mousekewitz, and his adventures in New York when he is separated from his family while emigrating to America in 1885. It was a co-production between Amblin Entertainment and Bluth’s Sullivan Bluth Studios. Don Bluth directed and co-produced the film, which stars a mix of famous and little-known actors. It was a hit, followed by three sequels (albeit two direct-to-video) and a television series.
  • Dragon’s Lair (1983) was the first of several LaserDisc arcade games animated by Don Bluth’s company. The machines played scenes from a LaserDisc, with the outcome of each scene determined by what we would call a “quick time event” today – a precisely timed joystick movement or button press. In Dragon’s Lair the player controlled the knight Dirk the Daring, who must overcome various obstacles to rescue the Princess Daphne from the dragon Singe. It was a hit at the time for looking much better than other games – and for the daringly revealing outfit worn by Daphne – but by the time the sequel was released years later, it was seen as out-dated. A live-action movie adaptation of Dragon’s Lair has been in the works since around 2020.
  • King’s Quest is a series of graphic adventure games from Sierra, created by Roberta Williams, beginning in 1984 with King’s Quest, later renamed King’s Quest I: Quest for the Crown. The series follows the royal family of the fairytale Kingdom of Daventry, beginning with Graham, a knight who becomes King by the end of the first game. Graphic adventures of the time hadn’t earned the nickname of “point and click”, and the first four in the series still used typed text commands to interact with items, characters and scenery. They were popular though, and King’s Quest was followed by multiple sequels alongside other series like Quest for Glory (originally Hero’s Quest), Space Quest and even Police Quest. The change in art style Kat mentions is probably the switch from high-resolution but still traditionally pixel-ish art in King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992), to the smoother cel-animation style of King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994) – though they predate Discworld and Discworld II by a few years, so they don’t look quite as good as Discworld II. Both of these games’ protagonists were women. For more on the specific King’s Quest games Kat mentioned, see the list of games below.
  • The 7th Guest was released in 1993 (three years before Discworld II), and was one of a number of games – including Myst and various other early 3D and “talkie” adventures – that helped drive the switch from floppy disks to CD-ROMs in the 1990s. The main attraction for The 7th Guest was the full-motion video and sound, rather than its puzzles. (For more on this generation of games, see the list below.)
  • The silver cord is a term used for a few different concepts related to ideas of a soul or higher self, all linked to the idea of “astral projection” – being able to project one’s consciousness outside of the physical body. The Western, Christian-influenced version of this goes back to at least the 1920s, but it borrows largely from other traditions, including Ancient Egyptian ideas of the soul, and Hindu spiritual practices. It gets a bit more complicated than Ben describes: the silver cord is said to connect the physical body not to the soul itself, but to the “subtle body” – a sort of intermediate presence, which is partly physical, and partly spiritual. The soul uses the subtle body to travel outside of the physical one. The name “silver cord” is usually consider to be a Biblical allusion, specifically to Ecclesiastes 12:6-7, which refers to “the silver cord” being severed, along with the “golden bowl” being broken and various other things being destroyed before the spirit returns to God. The meaning of the verse is unclear, though many scholars think it is a metaphor for the human body, with “silver cord” referring to the spinal cord.
  • There’s no definitive origin for the cinema term Dutch angle, but the technique is also known as a “Dutch tilt”, alongside other names. Its usage goes back to the early twentieth century, when it was often used in Germany – leading to the theory that “Dutch” should more properly be “Deutsch”. In English language cinema it was popularised by Alfred Hitchcock, among others, but has been used by many filmmakers since to heighten tension or to portray madness, disorientation, or things being otherwise “out of joint”. This is thought to align (more or less) with other uses of the term “Dutch” in British English, dating back to the trade rivalry between the two countries.
  • OSR (Old School Renaissance, or Old School Revival) roleplaying is difficult to precisely describe as not everyone agrees on what it means. This is partly because it emerged in many online forums at once, in large part as a response to the release of the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons in the year 2000. At its core, it’s a philosophy or style of play that seeks to emulate what people liked about editions of D&D and similar games from the 70s and 80s. But not everyone agrees on what those elements are – indeed, some would argue that the Renaissance and the Revival are two distinct movements, and even those may be further broken down into different traditions. As a result, there are many “OSR” games which work quite differently, as well as “NSR” (New School Revival) games that seek to marry the good of the old with more recent game design philosophies. But a few things commonly cited as being important to OSR roleplaying include:
    • Player skill over character skill – the character’s capabilities are less important than the player’s skill at devising plausible solutions for the obstacles in their way.
    • High danger, or lethality – in many OSR games player characters are much more likely to die or suffer serious losses or injury than in other kinds of roleplaying games. This is both because of the rules (it may be very easy to roll enough damage to kill a character outright, for example), and because the expected setup is that dungeons and similar adventuring environments are full of deadly hazards, traps and creatures.
    • Rulings over rules – OSR games usually have simpler rules which don’t try to account for everything players might try to do. Instead, the “referee” is expected to make up rulings on the fly for how to resolve situations.
    • Compatibility – though specific rules might vary considerably, many OSR and NSR games are designed to be compatible with older and newer published adventures, without requiring a great deal of translation or conversion.
  • The manual gives the official names of the dialogue icons as “Greeting” (the smile), “Question” (the question mark), “Sarcasm” (the Jack-in-the-Box), “Muse” (the candle in the thought balloon) and one Ben forgot to mention: “Goodbye”.
  • A branching narrative is a story in which decisions made by the audience (usually a single player or reader) result in a different version of the story, often including different endings. While this is now common in videogames, it was invented in print media first. The most famous versions are the Choose Your Own Adventure books, created by Edward Packer in the US in the 1970s, and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks created by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson in the UK in the early 1980s. Not all videogames have branching narratives – many require them to experience the events of the game in a fixed order (a “linear narrative”), or at best all the same events but in slightly different orders.
  • Discworld versions of the wandering shop appear most prominently in The Light Fantastic (see #Pratchat44, “Cosmic Turtle Soup”) and Soul Music (see #Pratchat19, “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got Rocks In”).
  • As far as Ben can tell, no, Terry Pratchett does not appear in the final crowd scene in Discworld II. As mentioned, he does appear in a similar scene in the first game – and is part of an Easter egg that can get Rincewind to say a very cheeky line of dialogue.

More notes coming soon!

Videogames

As in our episode about the previous game, we mention plenty of videogames in this episode. We’ve split these into two lists below.

Adventure games

We mentioned these text and graphic adventure games, in order of release:

  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Infocom 1984) – a text-based adventure game in which the player takes on the role of Arthur Dent. (We will assume someone listening to a Terry Pratchett podcast is at least familiar with the premise of The Hitchhiker’s Guide.) It broadly follows the plot of the Hitchhiker’s story, but with many new and changed details to provide puzzles the player won’t know how to solve. It was co-written by Douglas Adams himself, and is infamously difficult – though there are harder text adventures! Versions have been made available for free online by the BBC, and the a 30th Anniversary version of the game is still available.
  • King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (Sierra Entertainment 1988) – this game casts the player as Princess Rosella, who must help a fairy in order to save the life of her father King Graham, the protagonist of the first two games. (For more on the series as a whole, see the errata and notes section above.)
  • King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (Sierra Entertainment 1990) – King Graham returns to a starring role when an evil wizard, seeking revenge for Graham’s sons actions in King’s Quest III, takes the rest of his family captive. This was the first King’s Quest game without text-based commands.
  • The Secret of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1990) – a comedy adventure game created primarily by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. The story follows Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who comes to Melêe Island to seek his fortune and become “a mighty pirate”. Along the way he falls in love with the island’s governor, Elaine Marley, and earns the wrath of the evil ghost pirate LeChuck. It is still one of the most popular adventure games of all time. Remastered as the “Special Edition” with more modern cartoony art in 2009.
  • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (LucasArts 1991) – the sequel to The Secret of Monkey Island is set some years later, when an older Guybrush is finding it harder to live off the glory of his exploits from the first game. He goes searching for a fabled treasure, but is followed by LeChuck, now a zombie. Monkey Island 2 has some notably harder puzzles than its predecessor, and like the first Discworld game, involved a lot of going back and forth between locations to solve puzzles. It does have something in common with Discworld II, though: a great musical number involving skeletons! It was popular, but its unconventional ending left fans a bit confused, and the third and fourth games were made without the original creative team. This one was also remastered as a “Special Edition” in 2010, and its ending was revisited in Ron Gilbert’s surprise sequel, Return to Monkey Island, in 2022.
  • Gobliiins (Coktel Vision 1991) – the first in a series of French fantasy adventure games in which the player controls a variable number of goblins; the number of “i”s in the title of the game indicates how many goblins you will control.
  • King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (Sierra Entertainment 1992) – this game picks up at the end of King’s Quest V, when the newly rescued Prince Alexander meets and falls in love with Princess Cassima. He goes on a quest to find her in the Land of Green Isles, travelling between several islands each themed after a different kind of mythology. Notably for its open world design, and for having many optional puzzles which, if completed, provided a more satisfying ending.
  • Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (LucasArts 1992) – the first Indiana Jones game to feature an original story. While primarily an adventure game, the player can choose one of three modes early on: the Team Path has the player control both Indy and his new partner, Sophia Hapgood; the Wits Path has Indy solve more difficult puzzles alone; and the Fists Path focuses on fighting, which is present but optional in the other two modes.
  • The 7th Guest (Trilobyte 1993) – more an interactive movie than an adventure game, this was one of the first CD-only games. It made extensive use of full-motion video in a horror story set in a haunted mansion.
  • Myst (Cyan 1993) – a hugely influential 3D puzzle game, another of the early CD-only games. It was was one of the best-selling games for about a decade. The player finds a book titled Myst, which magically transports them to a mysterious island of the same name.
  • King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (Sierra Entertainment 1994) – the first King’s Quest game with multiple player characters. Just before Princess Rosella’s wedding, an evil witch transforms her into a troll, and transports her and Queen Valanice – in her first starring role – to a far away kingdom. The game takes place across six chapters (not unlike the acts of Discworld II), with the player alternating between the protagonists, who are split up until late in the game. They must find a way to break the curse and get back home.
  • The Dig (LucasArts 1995) – based on a plot by Steven Spielberg about a group of astronauts exploring an alien world, this science fiction adventure game was also notoriously difficult.
  • Toonstruck (Burst Studios 1996) – a hugely expensive game blending full motion video with cel animation, and an all-star cast. Christopher Lloyd plays Drew Blanc, a frustrated animator drawn into the cartoon world of his saccharine children’s show, with his weirder, less child-friendly creation as a sidekick.
  • Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail (7th Level 1996) – though Ben remembers this as not being much of adventure game, that’s how it was sold. The mini-games were definitely the highlight when he tried playing it back in the day, though!
  • The Curse of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1997) – the third Monkey Island game more or less ignores the ending of the second one, and features Guybrush escaping from LeChuck – now a fiery demon – only to accidentally curse Elaine and turn her into a golden statue, and she is stolen by pirates. This game features cel-style animation similar to Discworld 2.
  • Grim Fandango (LucasArts 1998) – LucasArts’ first 3D animated adventure game, written and directed by Tim Schafer. The player controls Manuel “Manny” Calavera, a junior travel agent to the newly deceased in an Aztec-inspired, 1950s retro afterlife. While trying to avoid getting fired from his job, Manny unwittingly discovers corruption and conspiracy in the Department of Death.
  • Escape from Monkey Island (LucasArts 2000) – the first Monkey Island game in 3D sees Guybrush Threepwood and Elaine Marley, now married, return home to find Elaine has been declared dead. Guybrush works to restore her position as governor, this time opposed by Australian property developer Ozzie Mandrill (a parody of Rupert Murdoch) and the surprise return of LeChuck. This sequel leaned heavily on concepts from and references to the earlier games, and wasn’t super well-received. (Not everyone was convinced the 3D models were an improvement on the previous art styles, either.)
  • Bye Sweet Carole (Little Sewing Machine 2025) – a horror adventure game in cel-animation style, in which the player tries to unravel the mystery of her missing friend Carole in early twentieth century England.
  • The Drifter (Powerhoof 2025) – an Australian game about a drifter who returns to the city for a funeral, only to be caught up in a supernatural mystery.

Other videogames

These games are from other genres, though as with all classification of art, the line isn’t always clear! Some of these certainly have adventure-like elements, but in general the focus isn’t on solving puzzles to progress through a story.

  • Abiotic Factor (Deep Field Games 2025) – a dark comedy horror survival game, set in an underground bunker in outback Australia belonging to Gate, a super-science organisation similar to
  • The Bard’s Tale (Interplay 1985) – a classic roleplaying game that plays with the standard tropes of Dungeons & Dragons style adventure. Followed by a long string of sequels and remakes.
  • The Outer Worlds 2 (Obsidian 2025) – a satirical action roleplaying game on capitalism and consumerism, set in a retro-futuristic alternate history where monopolies were never reigned in, and a star system colonised by humans is thus run by a handful of megacorporations.
  • Disco Elysium (ZA/UM 2019) – an award-winning roleplaying game set in which the player is an amnesiac alcoholic cop investigating a murder in the weird Eastern Europe-inspired dystopia of Revachol.
  • Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive 2025) – a turn-based action roleplaying game in which the player controls the members of Expedition 33. They are the latest to try and reach “the Paintress” – a mysterious figure on a distant island who every year paints a decreasing number which causes everyone that age or older to evaporate. Ben likes to describe it as “sad beautiful French Final Fantasy”.
  • Elden Ring (FromSoftware 2022) – an action roleplaying game set in an open world of warring demigods, inspired in part by Norse mythology, and with a story by George R R Martin. It’s part of a sub-genre of “souls-like” games that stem from FromSoftware’s earlier game Dark Souls. Souls-like games generally have challenging combat that relies on player skill and timing, frequent character death, and other aspects that give them a reputation for being very difficult. Kat wrote a blog about finishing Elden Ring in August 2025: “I was wrong about Elden Ring. Here’s why…”

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat92 – Sand of the Scrounge Wizard

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Writer and game designer Kat Clay joins Liz and Ben to point and click on Rincewind once more, as we discuss the 1996 graphic adventure game Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!? from Perfect Entertainment.

When the wizard Windle Poons dies, no-one comes to collect his soul – and this isn’t the first time Death has been derelict in his duty. Something must be done, and the Archchancellor knows just the man for the job: so-called wizard and veteran videogame protagonist, Rincewind! Can he – that is to say, you – navigate an ever more fiendish chain of elaborate tasks to summon Death, and persuade him to go back to work? Or will the Disc be doomed to immortality?

The first Discworld point-and-click graphic adventure, released in 1995, was a hit. So of course Perfect Entertainment – the merged form of Teeny Weeny Games and Perfect 10 Productions – returned just one year later with a sequel. While not quite as well known as the original, Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!? (or Discworld II: Mortality Bytes in the US) once again features Eric Idle as Rincewind, a cast of thousands (voiced by three), and a plot constructed from bits of Discworld novels (mostly Reaper Man and Mort). It also features an original song written and performed by Idle, a brand new visual style, and more fourth wall breaks than you can shake a Suffrajester at. The team, headed by Angela Sutherland and Gregg Barnett, would go on to produce one more Discworld game: Discworld Noir, a brand new story with an original protagonist. But like its stablemates, Discworld 2 is currently out of publication.

Have you played Discworld 2? Did you find it easier than the first one? Was it written with an awareness that women play videogames? Do you prefer the cel-animation look of this game, or the cartoony pixels of the first one? Does it feel more like the Discworld, or a spin-off from Monty Python? And for subscribers especially, would you like to watch Ben stream these games and play along? Join our online conversation by using your fingers with the social media platform, and then clicking on the hashtag #Pratchat92.

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Guest Kat Clay (she/her) is a writer of fiction and tabletop roleplaying games from Melbourne, Australia. Her writing is mostly horror, and has included short stories, game reviews, novellas and hopefully an upcoming full-length novel. Kat won a Silver ENNIE award for her Call of Cthulhu adventure, The Well of All Fear, and her recent modern-day Cthulhu adventure, Resort, won Best Scenario at the 2025 Australian Industry Roleplaying Awards. You can find out more about Kat, and read some of her work, at katclay.com. You can also find her on social media, including Bluesky as @katclay.com, and buy her adventures via DriveThruRPG – where they’re all bestsellers!

You can find episode notes and errata on our web site.

Next month we’re getting schooled in legends and lore via Pratchett’s collaboration with Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore of Discworld! We’ll be looking at the third edition, which references all the novels up to Raising Steam. Send us your questions via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com), or send us a magpie via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat93.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

#Pratchat17 – Midsummer (Elf) Murders

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In our seventeenth episode we join everyone’s favourite dysfunctional coven – and guest, writer Nadia Bailey – as we return to Lancre for Terry Pratchett’s 1992 Discworld novel, Lords and Ladies!

The Lancre coven have returned from their trip abroad, but despite the impending royal wedding of Magrat and King Verence, all is not well in the Ramtops: it’s circle time, when the walls between worlds are thin, and in the witches’ absence someone has been toying with powers beyond their understanding. As usual Granny Weatherwax thinks she can sort everything out herself: facing down a young witch wannabe and keeping the Gentry at bay. But Granny is off her game. Is it the arrival of an old flame? Or is her time as a witch of Lancre nearly up? She’ll need Nanny and Magrat’s help to see off the threat of the Lords and Ladies…

Bringing us back to the witches after only one book away, Lords and Ladies is a particularly Pratchett take on the ancient Celtic stories that inspired modern ideas of fairies and elves. One of the few novels to cross the streams between the witches and wizards, it also gives us more of a glimpse into Esme Weatherwax’s past, hints at the future of witchcraft (and royalty) in Lancre, and introduces the infamous “Trousers of Time”. Is this your favourite witches novel? What do you think of the parallel universes, other dimensions and alternate timelines it describes? And is this the best take on elves since Tolkien? We’d love to hear from you! Use the hashtag #Pratchat17 on social media to join the conversation.

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Guest Nadia Bailey is an author, journalist and critic whose work has appeared in The Australian, The Age, The Lifted Brow and many others. The Book of Barb, an unofficial celebration of the surprisingly popular supporting character from the first season of Netflix “kids on bikes” drama Stranger Things, was her first book; it was followed by The Stranger Things Field Guide in December 2018. In between Nadia wrote The World’s Best BFFs, a book of profiles of celebrity best friends. All three are published by Smith Street Books. You can find Nadia online at nadiabailey.com, and she tweets at @animalorchestra.

You can find full show notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Don’t forget that you can see Liz and Ben at both Speculate 2019 on March 15 and 16, and at Nullus Anxietas 7, the Australian Discworld Convention, on April 13 and 14! Plus Ben’s new show, You Chose Poorly, plays at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival from April 1-7.

Next month, to tie in with our appearance at Speculate, we’ll be leaving the Discworld and blasting off into outer space as we discuss one of Pratchett’s early sci-fi novels, The Dark Side of the Sun, with writer Will Kostakis! We’ll likely be recording around the time of Speculate 2019, so get your questions in via social media before March 15th using the hashtag #Pratchat18.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

#Pratchat17 Notes and Errata

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These are the show notes and errata for episode 17, “Midsummer (Elf) Murders” with guest author Nadia Bailey discussing the fourteenth Discworld novel, 1992’s Lords and Ladies.

  • The episode title references the long-running, much beloved and extremely twee crime drama Midsomer Murders, which debuted on ITV in 1997 and is still running, 21 series later. It’s based on the Chief Inspector Barnaby books by Caroline Graham in which first Tom Barnaby, and later his cousin John Barnaby, solve murders in the fictional, sleepy English county of Midsomer, which after 124 episodes is now often joked to be the murder capital of Great Britain.
  • There are two examples of Steven Moffat writing women who marry men who follow them around in Doctor Who – first in his most famous episode, Blink, and then in the Christmas special The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe. There are similar behaviours in his other work, going all the way back to Press Gang.
  • We previously mentioned The Craft in our Witches Abroad episode, but it’s worth mentioning here that one of its stars, Fairuza Balk, made her major screen debut in another film referenced this episode: Return to Oz (see below).
  • The Last Unicorn (1982) is an adaptation of the 1968 fantasy novel by American writer Peter S. Beagle, and has a pretty star-studded voice cast including René Auberjonois, Alan Arkin (who plays the incompetent magician Schmendrick), Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow (who plays the titular unicorn), Angela Lansbury and Death himself, Christopher Lee! It has music written by Jimmy Webb, including songs performed by the band America.
  • Narnia is a fantasy world invented by English writer C S Lewis in his Chronicles of Narnia books. The White Queen first appears in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), where it is revealed she has trapped Narnia in an endless Winter. Her origins are explored in the prequel The Magician’s Nephew (1955).
  • The Tuatha Dé Danann (TOO-a day DONNan; Ben butchers this and is very sorry) are the gods of ancient Celtic Ireland. They reside in Tír na nÓg, often translated into English as the “Otherworld”, which could be accessed (among other ways) via “passage tombs” under the earth – much like the Long Man’s barrow. They have some things in common with elves, but a closer analogue are the aos sí (“ays SHEE”) or Sidhe (“SHEE”, as popularised by William Butler Yeats and, much later, the fantasy roleplaying game Changeling: The Dreaming). The Sidhe appear in both Irish and Scottish mythology, and take many forms and roles – “banshee” is an English form of bean sidhe, for example. They are often said to live in another world (or underground in barrows, or across the sea – it’s mythology after all), but this is not usually considered to be Tír na nÓg.
  • If the plot of Maurice Sendak’s award-winning Outside Over There (1981) sounds familiar, that might be because it served as partial inspiration for Jim Henson’s Labyrinth (1986) – Sendak is thanked in the credits. The book forms part of a “trilogy” following a child’s psychological development, following his better-known books In the Night Kitchen and Where the Wild Things Are.
  • The very long dining table appears not only in Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) but also in a whole host of films, TV shows and other media. TV Tropes calls this cliche “table space“.
  • This is indeed the first appearance of “millennium hand and shrimp“, later used by the beggar Foul Ole Ron (from Soul Music onwards) and bag lady Mrs Tachyon (in the Johnny Maxwell books). Terry apparently generated it using a gibberish computer program, into which he fed a Chinese takeaway menu and the lyrics of the They Might Be Giants song, “Particle Man”, one line of which is “Millennium hand and an aeon hand”. (Ben was very excited to discover while researching this episode that Terry, like Ben, was a big TMBG fan!)
  • A lot has been written on mental health in academia; a good place to start if you’re interested might be this Guardian series on the subject, which spans three years.
  • Howl’s Moving Castle, originally a 1986 fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones, was fairly loosely adapted into an animated film by Studio Ghibli in 2004. Both are wonderful.
  • Return to Oz is a 1985 sequel to The Wizard of Oz, loosely adapting two of the later Oz books by Frank L Baum. As mentioned above it stars Fairuza Balk as Dorothy Gale, who after returning from her trip to Oz is seen as mad by her guardians and is sent for psychiatric treatment – including turn-of-the-century style electro-shock therapy. While it was not a big success at the time it has become a cult hit, in no small part because of its creepy imagery and for-the-time amazing practical and stop-motion effects. (The film also inspired the final track on the eponymous debut album, which uses Dorothy’s experiences as a metaphor to describe drug use in the queer community.)
  • The “Jesus picture” meme is also known as “potato Jesus“, and you’ve almost certainly seen it.
  • The game Jason Ogg plays with his Binky-iron horseshoe is not quoits, but…er…horseshoes. They both involve tossing a round object at a peg, but quoits is specifically played with circular “quoits”, these days usually made from rope or rubber.
  • Sailor Moon is a Japanese manga aimed at teenage girls, which launched in 1991. It’s best known in English speaking countries via the 1995 anime adaptation, which ran for 200 episodes. It follows the adventures of Tokyo middle-school student Usagi Tsukino, who is given the power to transform into “Sailor Moon”, a soldier with magical powers who is destined to save the Earth. Sailor Moon’s main love interest is “Tuxedo Mask”, a hero whose disguise is…er…a tuxedo and a mask. However the high school student who transforms into him is for a long time unaware of his secret identity, so they can only meet when in costume. Sailor Moon remains hugely popular, especially in cosplay circles, where you will often see the whole gang of “sailor scouts”.
  • If you’ve seen the 1987 film The Princess Bride (based on the 1973 novel by William Goldman), you can revisit the “to the pain” speech on YouTube here. It really is quite similar to the Elf Queen’s threat to Esme, but it’s worth noting that in the film the speech is given by the hero! (If you haven’t seen The Princess Bride, the scene is quite near the end of the film and is a bit of a spoiler.)
  • The Doctor Who story with the Morris Dancers is 1971’s The Daemons, starring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor and Katy Manning as Jo Grant. It also features a white witch named Olive Hawthorne as a supporting character, and she has quite a few things in common with a certain ex-member of the Lancre coven…
  • We previously mentioned Get Smart in our Guards! Guards! episode, but the specific running joke mentioned here is Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, encountering an enormous version of something and remarking: “Why, that’s the second biggest [thing] I’ve ever seen!” This joke is also used in one of Ben’s favourite videogames, The Secret of Monkey Island, in a scene he recently recreated in his Instagram feed.
  • Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, often cited as his first tragedy. It’s a graphically violent story about (fictional) Roman general Titus, who angers the Goth queen Tamora, setting off a vicious cycle of revenge. If you’re going to look it up, we’d just like to give you a content warning for murder, torture, mutilation and rape. It’s…not gentle.
  • The Tempest was one of Shakespeare’s last plays, and tells the story of the sorcerer Prospero and his daughter Miranda, who have lived on an isolated island ever since Prospero was deposed as the Duke of Milan. The play begins with a tempest summoned by Prospero to wreck a ship carrying he betrayers onto his island, but it’s not a revenge story; it’s usually classified these days as a romance.
  • The club started by Reg Shoe for the “vitally challenged”, and first seen in Reaper Man, is the Fresh Start Club, not the “Second Chance Club” as Ben misremembers.
  • Much Ado About Nothing is one of Shakespeare’s best-known comedies; while the central plot is serious – a villain slandering a young woman, Hero, to ruin her wedding to the dashing Claudio – it is feisty verbal fencers Benedick and Beatrice, who are tricked into revealing their mutual love, who always steal the show. Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 version starred him as Benedick and Emma Thompson – to whom he was still married at the time – as Beatrice, and is a traditional but wonderful adaptation with grand music and a cast including Denzel Washington, Imelda Staunton, Keanu Reeves, Robert Sean Leonard, Richard Briers, Michael Keaton, Ben Elton, Brian Blessed and – in her film debut – Kate Beckinsale. Joss Whedon’s black and white 2013 film has a contemporary setting and stars faces familiar to fans of Whedon’s work: Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof as Beatrice and Benedick, plus Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg, Reed Diamond, Fran Kranz, Sean Maher, and Jillian Morgese.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog is a blue, super-fast hedgehog and Sega’s biggest videogame franchise, starring in a tonne of games beginning with 1991’s Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Mega Drive (aka the Sega Genesis), and also appearing in a short-lived animated television series, also called Sonic the Hedgehog, which ran from 1993 to 1994. In case Liz’s pun on his name is too blue (sorry) for you, he was also briefly spoofed in one of Ben’s favourite childhood shows, Tony Robinson’s Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, as “Chronic the Hedgehog”.
  • Pet Sematary is one of Steven King’s most famous novels, published in 1983. It involves an ancient burial ground, hidden behind the children’s “pet sematary”, where the dead don’t stay buried. It was adapted into a successful film in 1989, and a new adaptation comes out this year.
  • The Milgram Experiment, named for psychologist Stanley Milgram, was a 1961 social experiment supposedly showing that ordinary people will obey an authority figure even when instructed to do things beyond their personal ethical boundaries. The experiment was considered unethical, and prompted significant changes in the way psychological testing was approved. In 2012 the validity of the original study was called into question when evidence was uncovered suggesting Milgram had manipulated or misrepresented the results.