Discworld – Page 11

#Pratchat27 Notes and Errata

8 January 2020 by Ben Leave a Comment

Theses are the show notes and errata for episode 27, “Leshp Miserablés“, featuring guest Craig Hildebrand-Burke, discussing the 1997 Discworld novel Jingo.

The O.C. is a 1990s teen drama we’ve previously mentioned in #Pratchat23, “The Music of the Nitt“. It starred the other Ben McKenzie.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” – meaning there’s not a hidden meaning in everything, no matter how obvious the phallic imagery may seem – is a phrase often attributed to German psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. It’s almost certain he never said it, though.
Cthulhu is the ancient, god-like being created by H. P. Lovecraft, giving the name “Cthulhu Mythos” to the universe of linked cosmic horror stories written by Lovecraft and others. They feature Cylcopean architecture with non-Euclidean angles, civilisations of horrific beings that pre-dated humans on Earth, and other elements of cosmic horror. We previously talked about Cthulhu in #Pratchat10, “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Broomstick“, as Moving Pictures also features Cthulhu-like horrors. (Bel-Shahamroth, featured in The Colour of Magic, also draws inspiration from the works of Lovecraft, as well as earlier sword and sorcery writing.)
The tradition of a “Speaker’s Corner“, where anyone can stand on a soapbox and give their opinion, originates in Hyde Park London and dates back to at least the 19th century. The original Speaker’s Corner in Melbourne was at Birrarung Marr, on the banks of the Yarra River; it’s now held on the lawns outside the State Library and known as the Speaker’s Forum. Sydney’s Speaker’s Corner is at the Domain.
Blackadder Goes Forth was the fourth and final season of satirical historical comedy Blackadder created by Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis, though the later seasons were written by Curtis with Ben Elton. They star Atkinson as various members of the Blackadder family throughout history, always accompanied by his dogsbody (or general servant) Baldrick (played by Pratchett audiobook reader and star of Time Team, Toby Robinson). In Goes Forth, Edmund Blackadder is a Captain in the British Army on the Western Front of World War I. General Melchett (Stephen Fry) is their blustering Commanding Officer, who has no idea of their hardships and frequently orders them into danger from far behind the front.
You can find out more about the Mary Rose at the official web site.
The L-Space web was the primary web site hosting documents created on the newsgroup alt.fan.pratchett, including the Annotated Pratchett File (or APF). It still exists, though new annotations and notes now appear on the L-Space Wiki.
Pratchett spoke about “white knowledge” in several interviews, especially those given while publicising The Folklore of Discworld. He meant the phrase as an analogue to “white noise”, and defined it as knowledge you acquire without knowing how or where from.
Go Back to Where You Came From is an SBS reality television series which took groups of six Australians with “differing views” on asylum seekers and had them take the hazardous journey undertaken by refugees in reverse – sailing on small, seemingly fragile boats from Australia to nearby countries, and visiting refugee camps and other locations.
Tax avoidance is the (usually) legal avoidance of paying taxes, employed most successfully by the largest companies, who are allowed to offset profits with losses from previous years, depreciation of major assets (like fleets of airlines or electrical infrastructure), or income shifting (assigning income disproportionately to subsidiaries in countries with the lowest tax rates).
While the militarisation of police in the US is well-documented – many forces there have military-style assault rifles, some have tanks, and quite a few have been trained by ex-military forces personnel – it’s a more recent phenomenon here in Australia. After a year or so of discussion, Victoria Police announced in December 2019 it was buying 300 AR-15 assault rifles for use in “active armed offender” situations, though they have promised the guns will not be carried in public.
Terry Pratchett was awarded no fewer than ten honorary doctorates. They come mostly from universities in the United Kingdom, the first being from the University of Warwick in 1999. He also had one from Dublin University in 2008, and his last – awarded in May 2014, less than a year before his death – was from the University of South Australia. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Dublin and South Australia, which more-or-less just meant he occasionally gave a guest lecture.
Andy Serkis is an English actor who rose to fame through his motion capture performance as Gollum in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. He has since established himself as a influential voice in motion capture, both as an actor and director.
In the 2006 television adaptation of Hogfather, Nobby was played by Nicholas Tennant, who also played the Head Librarian in part one of the adaptation of The Colour of Magic.
The honorific “effendi” began life as a title in the Ottoman Empire, roughly equivalent to “sir”; it was derived from the Ancient Greek word authentēs, which means “lord”. It is still in use as an honorific in Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, though it’s not quite used the way it is presented in most Western fiction.
The attempt on Prince Khufurah’s life has many parallels with the assassination of JFK: he is in a procession along a route lined by onlookers; the shooter was in a tall building thought to be empty; there is a second shooter elsewhere (in our world behind a grassy knoll, rather than a gnoll); and the idea that the first gunman could have shot JFK in the manner that killed him is sometimes mocked by conspiracy theorists claiming that it would require “a magic bullet”. The initial investigation determined that Lee Harvey Oswald – himself murdered while in police custody – was working alone; a later investigation determined that there was indeed a second shooter, though it agreed that Oswald’s bullet was the one that killed the President.
The “Zapruder film” is the most famous footage of the assassination of President Kennedy. It was filmed by local clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder on a home-movie camera; he developed three copies of his film and gave two to the US Secret Service, and it was used in both major investigations of the assassination.
Leonardo Da Vinci secured the patronage of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, in around 1482, and was commissioned to build a huge bronze statue of a horse. A full-size clay model was made and exhibited to much acclaim, but the 80 tons of bronze intended for the statue was instead used to build cannons for a war against the French, and the statue was never completed. After the seizure of Milan by Louis XII, the clay model was used for target practice by French troops and destroyed. Some accounts say the Duke was impressed with Leonardo’s ingenuity and hired him to design weaponry, which may explain why his notebooks include many things that are definitely weapons, including a huge crossbow, guns with multiple barrels and armoured vehicles (including one with scythes to cut down enemy troops, illustrated complete with victims of the blades).
Hachikō was an Akita dog whose master, Hidesaburō Ueno, was a professor at the University of Tokyo. Ueno lived in Shibuya and Hachikō would come to Shibuya train station every day to meet him on his way home. Uneo died while at work in May 1925, but Hachikō continued visiting the station hoping to meet his master every day until his own death nearly ten years later. Hachikō became famous in 1932 when a newspaper wrote an article about him, and a statue was erected in his honour in 1934. The original statue was recycled during World War II, but a new statue by the original sculptor’s son was erected outside Shibuya Station in 1948. It’s still there, and the nearest entrance is now named after Hachikō. There are similar statues in Hachikō’s hometown Ōdate at the train station and the Akita Museum. In 2015, 80 years after his death, a new statue of Ueno meeting an excited Hachikō was unveiled at the University of Tokyo.
The film Lawrence of Arabia follows the exploits of real-life British officer T. E. Lawrence, who during World War I was sent to find out if the Syrian Prince Faisal had any chance of aiding in the war against Turkey. The film has been a source of controversy over its perceived historical inaccuracies, though it won many awards and propelled its star, Peter O’Toole, to great fame.
Embassies – the permanent homes of major “diplomatic missions” to other states – are not generally considered “foreign soil”, or “extra-territorial”, but fall under the jurisdiction of local governments. But they do get a bunch of privileges under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations established in 1961 which includes exemption from many local laws. And it turns out to be true that citizens and authorities of the local country cannot enter without permission – even to put out a fire!
Heartbeat was a British police drama which ran for 18 years between 1992 and 2010, based on the “Constable” novels by Nicholas Rhea (a pseudonym for ex-cop Peter N Walker). It was set in mid to late 1960s in fictional Yorkshire village of Aidensfield. It originally centred around PC Nick Rowan (Nick Berry) and his wife, Dr Kate Rowan (Niamh Cusack), but after a few years both left the program and characters took the limelight. The only characters to remain throughout were Yes Minister’s Derek Fowlds as Nick’s Sergeant, Blaketon, who later retires and takes over the local pub, and older fellow PC Alf Ventriss (William Simons), who was a commando in World War II and whose wife was mentioned frequently but never appeared on screen. We never even find out her first name!
There are many examples of the “battle butler” in fiction. Aside from Willikins, there’s Alfred Pennyworth (Batman), Jarvis (The Avengers comics), Oddjob (Goldfinger), Cadbury (Richie Rich, especially in the film), Kato (The Green Hornet) and Mr Butler (Artemis Fowl).
The “white saviour” narrative is a common trope, especially in film, where a white protagonist saves non-white people from disaster or war, usually by leading them or making them “more civilised”. Lawrence of Arabia is one of the earliest major examples, but there are many, many others.
The Watchmen television series, which was first released in 2019, serves as a sequel to the 1987 comic book series Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The comic is celebrated as a deconstruction of the superhero genre, and features a number of second-generation costumed vigilantes investigating a global conspiracy that seems to mean them harm. The television series, whose show runner is Damon Lindelof of Lost and The Leftovers fame, is set 34 years after the events of the original comics.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is an 1870 novel by French author Jules Verne. It follows marine biologist Pierre Arronax and his companions Conseil and Ned as they investigate a mysterious sea creature which is attacking and sinking ships. The creature turns out to be the Nautilus, a miraculous and hyper-advanced submarine invented and commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo. The story is great, but Ben recommends you stick to adaptations as the book is “approximately 50% lists of fish Arronax sees out the window”.
The only major appearances of the nation of Klatch are in Sourcery and Jingo, but other nations of the Klatchian continent make major appearances in Pyramids (Djelibeybi and Ephebe), Eric (Tsort and the Tezuman Empire) and Small Gods (Omnia and Ephebe). Various others, including Howondaland, crop up in references throughout the books.
The Crown is a 2016 Netflix series chronicling the history of Queen Elizabeth II of England, beginning with her marriage to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Each season covers a different period of her reign, and so the main characters change and are re-cast over time. Elizabeth has so far been played by Claire Foy and Olivia Colman. The fourth season, coming in 2020, will bring the narrative through to the 1980s.
The “trousers of time” were actually first mentioned in Guards! Guards!. Inspiration for the phrase seems to have come from the 1960s radio sketch comedy I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, which featured a parody of Doctor Who titled “Professor Prune and the Electric Time Trousers”. The band Bangers has a track named “Trousers of Time” on their album Bird, which it seems must be a Discworld reference, since the first line is “I feel like I woke up in the wrong leg / Of the trousers of time”. “Trousers of Time” are also an item available in the videogame The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; the wording may be a Pratchett reference, but it’s more directly based on a previous game in the series, Ocarina of Time.
The dis-organiser is an astonishingly accurate prediction of modern smartphones’ “Intelligent Assistants“, which interpret spoken commands and automate tasks. One of those is “predictive appointments”, in which they suggest appointments for your calendar based on the content of your emails and other clues.
“Shaddap You Face” was a single by Italian-American-Australian performer Joe Dolce. Released in 1980, the song is about a young Italian migrant living in Melbourne, and is based on the language used by Dolce’s Italian grandparents. The chorus is the character’s mother telling him to cheer up, since “things are not so bad”. It was a number one hit in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and several European countries – though not, it should be noted, in Italy.
The Discworld Tacticus is probably based on several Roundworld people: his name comes from two Greek military writers, Aeneas Tacticus (4th century BCE) and Aelianus Tacitus (2nd century BCE), but also likely references Publius Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman historian from around the second century CE whose work is used extensively to teach Latin in schools. Tacticus’ advice on war seems more inspired by Sun Tzu, Chinese author of The Art of War from around the 6th century BCE.
For more on the names and genius of camels, see Pyramids.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was famously assassinated in Sarajevo on the 28th of June, 1914. He was shot by Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year-old assassin armed by the Black Hand, a group of Serbian nationalists (Bosnia and Herzegovina was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian empire). This lead to hostilities between Austria and Serbia and eventually to World War I.
We note that while The Joye of Snackes certainly represents one kind of danger of magical knowledge passing into print, it was likely printed using engraved plates, as movable type doesn’t properly come to Ankh-Morpork until The Truth.
We previously tried to cast Lady Sybil in episode 7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch“.
Miranda Hart is an English comedian and actor best known for her BBC sitcom Miranda and medical drama Call the Midwife. You might also know her from Hyperdrive, Not Going Out and various other British film and television comedies. She’ll next be seen playing Miss Bates in a new feature film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, directed by Autumn de Wilde.

#PratchatNALC Notes and Errata

25 July 2021 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the notes and errata for our bonus live episode “Twice as Alive“, revisiting #Pratchat1 and the 1993 Discworld novel Men at Arms.

The episode title is a reference to the teaser at the start of #Pratchat1, in which both guest Cal Wilson and Liz declared that they didn’t think of werewolves as undead, but rather “twice as alive”.
The Lost Con was intended “as an 8 hour taster for the non-virtual convention in Sydney next year” – the Australian Discworld convention, Nullus Anxietas 7a (NA7a). The Lost Con was free to all members of the 2022 convention, whether full or supporting, and ran from 4 PM to midnight on Saturday, July 3rd – the original weekend planned for NA7a, which was last year postponed from 2021 to 2022. The move was prudent – Sydney is currently experiencing a serious outbreak of the Delta strain of COVID-19 and has been in lockdown since 26 June, with several stages of local restrictions imposed before that. This is the first major lockdown experienced by Sydney since the nation-wide lockdown in early 2020. From your hosts in Melbourne – we really hope you can get out of it faster than we did last year. Our thoughts are with you all.
The theme of Nullus Anxietas 7a will be “Ankh-Morpork: Citie of One Thousand Surprises”. (The theme of NA7 was “Going Postal”.)
We discussed the vote for the first book preview episode in #Pratchat0, “And the Winner is…“, and in Liz’s blog post “Let’s Start From The Very Beginning (but not actually)“.
#Pratchat1, “Boots Theory“, was released on the 7Ath of November, 2017 – three years and eight months ago in real time, or 237 years ago in COVID time, at release of this podcast.
Members of The Lost Con Zoom chat were split over whose pronunciations they preferred. The folks from Discworld Monthly informed us that according to Stephen Briggs, there were definitely disagreements over pronunciation for the audiobooks. You can find his guides for some pronunciation in the front of some of his play adaptations; for example in Jingo he specifies that Angua’s name should be pronounced with a hard “g”, but either “Angwa” or “Ang-you-ah” is listed as acceptable.
One of the perils of not actually having time to re-read the book (or even re-listen to the entire previous episode) is that we forget little details. Like the fact that Carrot does indeed pick up the gonne, and after a brief look smashes it against a wall, destroying it. As he says when Vimes warns him not to touch it: “Why not? It’s only a device.” Of note: he leaves the broken bits in the clocktower of the Assassin’s Guild.
The western roleplaying videogame with the spittoons that Ben mentions is West of Loathing, a spin-off from the online game Kingdom of Loathing.
You can read more about the Yarra river in the episode notes for #Pratchat1.
Liz’s Detritus pun, which Ben didn’t pick up on at the time, was “inflammation of the d’être“, as in raison d’être, a French term meaning “reason to be”. It’s commonly used by English speakers as an alternate way of referring to something so important if gives them a reason to be alive. Note that in French it’s not really pronounced in such a way that makes the pun work, but English speakers often say it that way.
Detritus’ brain-cooling helmet makes later appearances in Jingo (where it breaks down trying to keep his brain cool in the desert) and The Truth, where he switches it on in order to think clearly about how to deal with William de Worde asking journalistic questions.
The two-player roleplaying game Ben is discussing is Tin Star Games’ Partners, released in digital form in 2021 following a successful Kickstarter campaign.
We discussed Feet of Clay in #Pratchat24, “Arsenic and Old Clays“, released in October 2019.
We discussed Jingo in #Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés“, released in January 2020.
Hitchcock and Scully are the two rusted-on detectives who serve in the 99th precinct of the New York Police Department on the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, portrayed by Dirk Blocker and Joel McKinnon Miller respectively. They are notoriously incompetent, unhealthy and lazy, concerned primarily with snacks and other food. Originally supporting characters, they became a staple of the show and feature in the opening credits as of season six, the second episode of which (titled “Hitchcock & Scully”) explored their backstory as hotshot detectives in the 1980s.
The Ankh-Morpork Archives, Vol. 2 was published on the 29th of October, 2020, collecting material from the Discworld’s Ankh-Morpork City Watch Diary 1999, the Discworld Fools’ Guild Yearbook and Diary 2001, the Discworld (Reformed) Vampyres’ Diary 2003 and Lu-Tze’s Yearbook of Enlightenment 2008. Ben is right that the City Watch diary, published in September 1998, came out after Jingo (November 1997) and before The Fifth Elephant (November 1999).
We discussed The Fifth Elephant in #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King“, released in February 2021.
Asimov is one of Liz’s cats, who along with her other cat Huxley and Ben’s cat Kaos are collectively known as the “Pratcats”. Huxley and Kaos are relative newcomers, but Asimov has been around since the beginning; as well as hearing his bell jingling in the background of many episodes, he was featured as a guest on #Pratchat22, “The Cat in the Prat“.
The cult in Guards! Guards! are the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night (not to be mistaken for the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee). We discussed their similarity with incels and other “alt-right” groups in #Pratchat7A (see the next point).
We discussed Guards! Guards! in #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch“, released in June 2018 and The Truth in #Pratchat42, “The Truth, the Printing Press and Every -ing“, released in April 2021. The other book in which there’s a plot to dispose Vetinari is Feet of Clay, which as mentioned above was discussed in #Pratchat24.
As per the excerpt from #Pratchat1, our original suggestion was that Vetinari become a vampire, but we have previously discussed the idea of a zombie Vetinari…though we’re not entirely sure when! Possibly it was in #Pratchat30, “Looking Widdershins“, which is also where we first discussed the possibility of Moist Von Lipwig being groomed as the next Patrician (as suggested by listener Luke Jimenez).
The “critical Black Mass” joke in The Light Fantastic, as discussed in #Pratchat44, “Cosmic Turtle Soup“, refers to a collection of “books that leak magic”.
Ben and Liz both discuss their Pratchett origin stories in #Pratchat9, “And the Winner is…“. Liz realised her first was not in fact The Fifth Elephant just after recording #Pratchat7A, as discussed near the start of #Pratchat9, “Upscalator to Heaven“.
We discussed the Johnny Maxwell books in 2020: Only You Can Save Mankind in #Pratchat28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You“, released in February; Johnny and the Dead in Pratchat34, “Only You Can Save Deadkind“, released in August; and Johnny and the Bomb in Pratchat37, “The Shopping Trolley Problem“, released in November.
Early versions of “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” go back to as early as 1913, in press releases in various American magazines from a lobby group aligned with gun manufacturer Colt. These were designed to counter growing public concern about the availability of cheap mass-produced firearms, especially pistols, and the resulting escalation in deaths by shooting, which even back then were leading to calls for more regulation and control of guns. While earlier versions included things like “it’s not the gun, it’s the man behind the gun”, the current version is the most recognisable, and seems to have first arisen in the 1950s or 1960s. It’s nonsense, of course; no-one ever suggested that a gun could kill someone on its own. The point of the phrase is to make guns themselves seem neutral, neither good nor evil, but also to paint the perpetrators of gun deaths as obsessed murderers: killers who will use any means necessary, whether they have a gun or not. This ignores the fact that guns are deadlier than other weapons, and indeed the fact that guns even are weapons, i.e. devices designed only to harm living creatures. If you want to know more, the phrase is also the title of a very useful 2016 book on the subject: “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People” and Other Myths About Guns and Gun Control, by Dennis A. Henigan.
The gonne influences Vimes by telling him that All that you hate, all that is wrong, I can put right, and Vimes finds it difficult to resist. He also remembers it pulling its trigger by itself, dragging his finger along with it, and only ends up putting it down and not shooting the villain because Carrot orders him to attention.

These are the show notes and errata for episode 7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch“, featuring guest Aimee Nichols, discussing the 1989 Discworld novel Guards! Guards!

The episode title is a pun on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the 2003 mystery novel by British writer Mark Haddon. The book’s title is in turn a quote from the 1892 Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of Silver Blaze”, referring to one of Holmes’ unseen adventures.
Get Smart was a sitcom created by Mel Brooks in 1965, starring Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86. Smart and the other main characters worked for spy agency CONTROL, thwarting various ridiculous villains – especially members of the rival agency of evil spies, KAOS. Despite being highly trained in espionage and combat, Max frequently exasperated his professional and romantic partner Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon) and their boss the Chief of CONTROL (Edward Platt). One of the classic sitcoms of the ’60s, it contributed many famous catchphrases to popular culture in its original run of five seasons, which ended in 1970. It’s since been repeated many times, and spawned two film sequels, The Nude Bomb (1980) and Get Smart Again (1989); a short-lived revival/sequel series in 1995; and a surprisingly good film remake in 2008 starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway.
Monty Python’s Argument Clinic sketch is…well, if you haven’t seen it, you should just watch it.
“Incels” are so-called “involuntary celibates” – an online community of men who believe they have been unfairly denied sex by women. Jia Tolentino’s piece “The Rage of the Incels” for The New Yorker is a good introduction, but go gently – it’s unpleasant territory.
“Thatcherism” is descriptive of the politics of the Conservative party of the United Kingdom, particularly under party leader and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, from 1975 to 1990. They were a marked change from the period of the “post-War consensus”, in which the two major parties broadly agreed on things like state regulation and ownership of industries. Thatcher changed all that: she and her allies believed in much more economically-motivated conservatism, Victorian-style “family values” and British nationalism. Their beliefs under her Prime Ministership have left a huge mark on politics in the UK and around the world (not least in Australia).
In case you’re one of the sixteen people who didn’t see James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar, the Na’vi are 10-foot tall blue cat people from the planet Pandora. Like many other species on their planet, including the dragon-like Banshees, the Na’vi have a long braid-like organ on the back of their head which connects to their brain. They are able to link these to other creatures to form a neural bond which…well, it’s not really explained what it does exactly, but it seems like mind control: the animals have to be forced to do it the first time, after which they become compliant, which is gross. It’s also established that connecting braids is a significant part of how the Na’vi conduct, erm, the kind of thing that happens at Mrs Palm’s, so make of that what you will.
Anne McCaffrey’s beloved book series, Dragonriders of Pern, is another alien-dragons-with-riders story, but on Pern the riders form a psychic bond with their dragons at the time of hatching, and the bond goes both ways. The first of the 23 novels in the series – some written or co-written by McCaffrey’s son Tom – is Dragonflight.
Lord of the Flies is William Golding’s 1954 novel about a group of schoolboys who must fend for themselves on a remote island after a plane crash. They initially form a functional society but eventually fall into tribalism and a violent struggle for power, and “Piggy”, the nerd of the book – whose glasses were the boys’ primary means of lighting fires – is murdered by one of the other boys, crushed to death under a large stone. It’s considered a classic, but Ben hated it so much in high school that he wrote a limerick about it. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was such a fan that she read it multiple times and started the (now-dormant) group “I studied Lord of the Flies In High School – and loved every minute” in the heady early days of Facebook.
Whizzer and Chips was one of the many anthology comics magazines popular in the UK until the 1990s. Such comics were full of one or two page strips featuring a variety of recurring characters. Whizzer and Chips employed the gimmick of being two separate comics – Whizzer and Chips – published together. The characters (mostly kids) in each comic formed a gang, and there was a rivalry between the two. (Ben considered himself a Whizz-Kid, but liked most of the strips in both.) Big Comic was a similar comic magazine that reprinted strips from other smaller comics.
“The Trio” were the major antagonists in the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, comprising long-time supporting character Jonathan, Warren who had appeared in the previous season, and new character Andrew (though actor Tom Lenk had appeared earlier in a separate role as a background vampire henchman). Each was a geek with a different area of expertise in magic or technology; they decided to join forces and take over Sunnydale. Warren was the properly evil one Liz mentions, who dominated and manipulated the other two.
In the Channel 4 sit-com Black Books, Dylan Moran played misanthropic drunkard Bernard Black, owner of the eponymous bookshop. In the first episode, Bernard offers the optimistic but anxious accountant Manny (Bill Bailey) a job and a place to live above the shop, but he has forgotten this by the next morning. Thankfully for comedy audiences everywhere, Bernard’s friend Fran (Tamsin Grieg) forces him to let Manny stay, giving us one of the great odd couples of modern television.
“To Protect and Serve” was originally the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department. Its popularity from appearing in Hollywood productions has led it to be adopted by many other police departments around the world.
Nobby doesn’t actually appear in the Going Postal telemovie – Aimee and Ben are remembering Nicholas Tennant, who played him in Hogfather, where Constables Nobbs and Visit appear in the toy shop where Death is playing Hogfather. He really does look perfect! (It’s not easy to find screen grabs, but we found a good one in this Czech film review.) Nicholas Tennant went on to appear in The Colour of Magic as the Librarian (both pre- and post-transformation).
The Dungeons & Dragons image Ben is thinking of is the cover of the original 1978 Players Handbook (they left the apostrophe out on purpose), painted by David A. Trampier, who passed away in 2014. This article at The Dice Are A Lie talks about his life and the illustration in question.
Rowan Atkinson played the mostly silent, oddly child-like weirdo Mr Bean on television in Mr. Bean between 1990 and 1995, and Mr. Bean: The Animated Series from 2002 to 2004 and 2015 to 2019. He also stars in the feature films Bean (1997) and Mr. Bean’s Holiday (2007). Mr Bean’s adventures in renovation can be seen in the “Painting His House” clip on the official Mr Bean YouTube channel. (The feasibility of his method of painting was investigated in the Mythbusters episode “Mind Control” in 2006.)
Guards! Guards! is indeed the first appearance of Ankh-Morpork’s finest Arthur Daley-esque dodgy entrepreneur, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, referred to by Vimes as just “Throat”.
“How do you solve a problem like Maria?” is the main refrain from the song “Maria”, one of many well-known songs from the hit stage and screen musical The Sound of Music. It’s sung by a convent of Austrian nuns about the protagonist Maria, a younger wannabe nun whose frivolous ways lead them to send her away to be a governess, giving her time to decide if the convent is really where she wants to be. (Spoiler alert: it’s not.) The whole thing is based on the memoir of the real-life Maria von Trapp, The Story of the von Trapp Family Singers.
The origin and debunking of the “bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly” story are explained well by Australian science writer Dr Karl Kruszelnicki in this “Greatest Moments in Science” piece.
The Golden State Killer is a serial killer, rapist and burglar who committed the bulk of his crimes in the ’70s and ’80s. In the wake of Michelle McNamara’s true crime book I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, the case received renewed interest. The killer was finally apprehended when police used a free public ancestry website to compare an old DNA sample to the site’s catalogue, narrowing down the pool of suspects to a single lineage.
Aimee is correct: this is also Detritus the troll’s first appearance. Lots of good first-time cameos in this book!
Vimes’s “Dirty Harry moment” mirrors the monologue from the original 1971 film in which Inspector Harry Callahan tells a bank robber he’s lost track of how many bullets he’s fired, and claims his .44 Magnum is “the most powerful handgun in the world, and could blow your head clean off”. The full dialogue is on the Wikipedia page for the film. As noted in the APF, the dragon’s name, Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, ends with two “fours”, echoing the gun Callahan has in the movie. He’s a clever one that Pratchett. (“Go ahead, make my day, punk” is from Sudden Impact, the third Dirty Harry sequel after Magnum Force and The Enforcer.)
The reference to 1942’s Casablanca – a classic war-time romance, whatever Liz might say – comes about 30 pages earlier, when Vimes thinks “Of all the cities in all the world it could have flown into … it’s flown into mine…”. This echoes the words of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick, who runs an American-style cafe in Casablanca, Morocco, just before the United States entered World War II. After his ex-girlfriend Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) appears in his cafe with her husband, a Czech resistance leader wanted by the Nazis, Rick says: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
Liz’s suggestion for a new Sunshine Sanctuary references the 2001 comedy film Zoolander, in which “really, really good looking” but not very smart supermodel Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) wants to create the “Derek Zoolander Centre for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too”. He’s later shown a model of the proposed school, which he rejects; you can watch that scene here.
Best in Show (2001) was the second of Christopher Guest’s largely improvised mockumentary films, following Waiting for Guffman. It features Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Michael McKean, Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch and many of Guest’s other frequent collaborators as the administrators and competitors in a dog show in Philadelphia.
Danny the Pekingese – or more formally, “Yakee A Dangerous Liaison” – was the “Best in Show” winner at the 2003 Crufts, the most prestigious dog show in the UK. He was also featured in the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed, produced by Passionate Productions, which investigated the health and care issues faces by pedigree animals, and highlighted the possibility of him overheating as one of many issues faces by his breed.
Pugs are believed to have been bred in China, and first introduced into Europe in the 16th century. Thanks to a few famous personages of the day having their portraits painted with their pugs you can indeed see how different they looked back then; a good example is the self-portrait of artist William Hogarth and his pug, Trump. (Trump appears in many of Hogarth’s paintings, and has his own Wikipedia article.)
Sorry Ben, but a “slug horn” is not a real thing. While Professor Horace Slughorn is the replacement Potions Master coaxed out of retirement and back to Hogwarts by Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when he refers to a “slug horn” Pratchett is referencing Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, which features the lines “I saw them and I knew them all. And yet / Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set”.
Aliens from the same species as E.T., the alien protagonist of the Spielberg film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, appear in the galactic senate in George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. This was to fulfil a promise Lucas made to Spielberg after Star Wars toys, including a child wearing a Halloween Yoda mask, were featured in E.T.
Torchwood: Children of Earth was a special five-day television event in which the members of the alien-hunting Torchwood Institute – an adult and previously very camp spin-off from Doctor Who – were plunged into a serious battle with factions of their own government over the response to alien invaders. It’s by far the best season of the show and completely different in tone, so you could probably get away with watching it in isolation if you’re prepared to do a little googling about the main characters’ backstories.
Sergeant Colon’s chant echoes the classic unionist refrain “The workers, united, will never be defeated”, which may have been inspired by “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!”, a piano composition by American composer Frederic Rzewski, which itself was based on songs sung by the people of Chile in the early days of their struggle against the oppressive regime of Augusto Pinochet.
In Luc Besson’s film The Fifth Element, Leeloo is a newly-created adult human, made by aliens as an “ultimate weapon” in the fight against ultimate evil – but she has no knowledge of humanity, and learning of their history of violence nearly causes her to give in in despair. (She’s also a prominent example of the “born sexy yesterday” stereotype.)
Rape Culture is a term that has been around since the ’70s to describe the normalisation of behaviours that both blame victims and downplay the severity of sexual assault. It’s impossible to explain succinctly, and many good articles have been written on the topic, including this one on the Huffington Post and this from Vox. It is worth mentioning, especially given the context of us including this in the show notes, many of the articles we went through while looking for resources specifically frame it in the context of women in relationship to men – e.g. “A Primer For Fathers”. Well intentioned, yes, but still a shame that a personal connection is seen as necessary in order to start viewing women as people.
We were going to explain Liz’s Orient Express reference, but it gives away the ending to a murder mystery, so we’re going to go without spoilers. You can read or watch Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express to find out!
Kanban is a scheduling system originally designed for manufacturing, invented for Toyota in Japan in the 1940s. Today it’s mostly used for “agile” or “just-in-time” development of software – terms we hope you never need to understand, so we won’t attempt to describe them. Kanban isn’t generally used for plotting novels, but if you look it up and try, let us know how you go!
Scrivener is writing software for complex long works, sometimes used by screenwriters and often by PhD candidates. Ben’s limited experience with it has taught him an important lesson he wishes to pass on: do not use it in conjunction with Dropbox, because the two do not play well together.
Anoia, “Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers”, is a deity mentioned in the later Discworld novels Going Postal, Making Money and Wintersmith, as well as The Compleat Ankh-Morpork.
Maid Marian and Her Merry Men is, as you might guess from the title, a non-traditional retelling of the legend of Robin Hood created by Tony Robinson in which Marian is the real hero. Robin is a cowardly tailor from Kensington who accidentally ends up the public face of Marian’s “vicious band of freedom fighters”, which also features Barrington the Rasta (played by Red Dwarf’s Danny John-Jules), the not-at-all-ironically named Little Ron, and enormous dimwit Rabies. It ran for four series between 1989 and 1994.
Tony Robinson’s storytelling series were Tales from Fat Tulip’s Garden and its sequel Fat Tulip Too, Odysseus: The Greatest Hero of Them All (which covered The Iliad and The Odyssey) and Blood and Honey (covering a variety of stories from the Old Testament). His Pratchett audio books – which include every Discworld novel, as well as the Bromeliad trilogy, the Johnny Maxwell books, The Carpet People, Dodger and, well, most of them – are all abridged versions.
The unabridged Discworld audiobooks were originally read by Nigel Planer (of The Young Ones fame) until long-time Pratchett collaborator Stephen Briggs took over from The Fifth Elephant. Briggs also read Eric (which hadn’t been part of Planer’s earlier series), while the unabridged Equal Rites and Wyrd Sisters are read by actor Celia Imrie, best known for her comedy work with Victoria Wood and for roles in Bridget Jones’ Diary, Calendar Girls and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Unabridged versions of non-Discworld Pratchetts are often read by Briggs, but some have had other narrators, like the Johnny Maxwell series read by Richard Mitchley, and The Long Earth books read by Michael Fenton Stevens.

#Pratchat43 Notes and Errata

8 May 2021 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the episode notes and errata for episode 43, “Big Wee Hag: Far Fra’ Home“, featuring guest Dr Sally Evans, discussing the 32nd Discworld novel, and the second to feature Tiffany Aching, 2004’s A Hat Full of Sky.

The episode title is a parody of the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe film, Spider-Man: Far From Home, released in 2019. Tom Holland starred as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, who tries to leave his superhero life behind when he goes on a school trip to Europe. It…doesn’t work out.
Bonus episode note: Ben’s working title for this episode was “I’m Gonna Be the Big Man Who’s Hivering to You”, a reference to Scottish band The Proclaimers biggest hit, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)“, from their 1988 album Sunshine on Leith. It was initially only a big hit in the UK, Australia and New Zealand (it reached number 1 in the charts down under), but had a second lease on life in the US when it was featured on the soundtrack to the 1996 film Benny & Joon. The second verse includes the lines “And if I haver/Then I know I’m gonna be/I’m gonna be the man who’s haverin’ to you”; Ben always thought “haver” was Scots slang for vomiting (the preceding lines are about getting drunk), but actually it means to speak nonsense, especially when flirting or complimenting someone. So also something you do when drunk.
Red Dwarf is a British science fiction sitcom, created Rob Grant and Doug Naylor for the BBC. It stars Craig Charles as David Lister, the lowest ranked crew member of the deep space mining ship Red Dwarf, who is placed in suspended animation for refusing to hand over a cat he smuggled on board. He wakes up to find that a radiation leak has killed the rest of the crew and that Holly, the ship’s now-senile computer (Norman Lovett and later Hattie Hayridge), kept him in stasis for three million years. He is joined by a descendant of his cat, evolved into humanoid lifeform known simply as Cat (Danny John-Jules); his hated bunkmate, Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie), who died and is now a hologram computer-simulation; and later Kryten (Robert Llewellyn), a domestic service android. It originally ran for eight series on the BBC between 1988 and 1999, and was resureccted by UK digital channel Dave in 2009 for a mini-series, “Back to Earth”, and three more series and a telemovie between 2012 and 2020. In the early years of The BBC series, Grant and Naylor – under the pseudonym Grant Naylor – wrote two Red Dwarf novels, essentially a revised version of storylines from the first few series without the limitations of a television effects budget.
Ben Elton was a star of the 1980s alternative comedy scene, who later gained success as a television personality, sitcom writer (he joined Blackadder from the second series) and comic novelist. His science fiction novels include Stark (1989; also adapted for television in 1993), This Other Eden (1993) and Blind Faith (2007).
The Last Continent was first published in May 1998, and Jingo in November 1997, so Sally’s guess is right on the money. We discussed those books in #Pratchat29, “Great Rimward Land” and #Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés” respectively.
We’ve spoken before about Enid Blyton and Liz’s feelings on loving an author whose work we can now see contains a lot of problematic stuff. Her school story books included the “Naughtiest Girl” series, starring spoiled rich girl Elizabeth Allen, who is sent away to a progressive boarding school when her bad behaviour at home causes her governess to quit. They started with The Naughtiest Girl in the School in 1940, and followed by three more in the 1940s. Six more, beginning with The Naughtiest Girl Keeps a Secret, were written by Anne Digby between 1999 and 2001. She also wrote the “St Claire’s” books about twins Pat and Isabel O’Sullivan, who go to the titular boarding school. The original series consisted of five novels written between 1941 and 1945, beginning with The Twins at St. Claire’s. As with the Naughtiest Girl books, they were later continued by another author, with Pamela Cox writing two more books in 2000 and another in 2008.
The Baby-Sitter’s Club was a series of novels by Ann M. Martin (and later several ghostwriters) chronicling the adventures of four teenage girls – Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia and Stacey – who run a babysitting service in their (fictional) home town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut, later joined by many other characters. The original series was published between 1986 and 1999, and included 131 books, of which the first 35 were written by Martin herself. There were also a huge number of specials and spin-offs, including the popular Baby-Sitter’s Club: Mysteries series. The main series was adapted for television in 1990, and ran for 13 episodes; a new series was released on Netflix in 2020, with a second season expected in 2021. There are quite a few Baby-Sitter’s Club podcasts re-reading the books; if you’ve listened to any, we’d love to hear which ones you rate!
The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories is a series of mystery novels starring fictional teenage detective Nancy Drew, beginning with the 1930 book The Secret of the Old Clock. Nancy herself was originally 16, headstrong, impulsive and sometimes violent, but in later books – and revisions of the earlier ones – she was changed to be nicer. The series was created by publisher Edward Stratemeyer and ghostwritten by various authors as “Carolyn Keene”, with around 175 books published between 1930 and 2003. This setup was the same strategy Stratemeyer used for his earlier Hardy Boys mystery books. There have been several screen adaptations, including several short “B-films” in the late 1930s, a 1970s The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries crossover series for television (considered by some the most faithful adaptation), a 1995 television series which updated Nancy as a 21-year-old criminology student, the 2007 feature film Nancy Drew, and most recently, the film Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase and the unrelated television series, a modern re-imagining titled Nancy Drew, in 2019. There’s still plenty of life in this investigator!
Tom Swift Jr was, it turns out, another series of ghostwritten children’s books created by Edward Stratemeyer! They were a continuation of the original Tom Swift series, in which the younger Tom’s father was the main character, though many supporting characters appear in both. The original series was written under the pseudonym Victor Appleton, and the Tom Swift Jr books under Victor Appleton II. In all there are over 100 Tom Swift books, beginning with the original series of forty books published between 1910 and 1941, and the 33 original Tom Swift Jr books, published between 1954 and 1971. (These are the ones Ben read as a kid.)
We previously discussed Just William and the William Brown books, and Pratchett’s love for them, way back in #Pratchat6, “A Load of Old Tosh” (and especially in the notes for that episode). Written by Richmal Crompton between 1922 and 1969 (with the last one published after Crompton’s death in 1969), each book is a collection of short stories chronicling unruly schoolboy William’s various adventures. He is always eleven years old, but the stories are always set in the present day – i.e. the time at which they were written. So as well as scrumping for apples, William – along with his band of friends and accomplices, the “Outlaws” – also “Does His Bit” during the years of the Second World War, pretends to be on television and discovers the wonders of the National Health Service in the late 1950s, and get confused by a bunch of hippie spiritualists at the end of the 1960s.
Paul Jennings is an Australian author best known for his collections of short stories, often with fantasy elements and always containing a twist. His most famous books are the first nine volumes of these, published between 1985 and 1998, with titles like Unreal!, Uncanny!, Unbelievable! and Unmentionable! (Ben still has his copies of the first five or so.) He’s also written a large number of children’s chapter books, picture books and novels, some in collaboration with another famous Australian author, Morris Gleitzman. Based on the popularity of his short stories, the Australian Children’s Television Foundation created Round the Twist, a television show adapting stories from a variety of Jennings’ books. It revolved around the Twist family – widowed father and sculptor Tony, teenage twins Pete and Linda, and youngster Bronson – who move into an old lighthouse, where all kinds of weird stuff happens to them. It ran for four series between 1990 and 2001, moving from Channel 7 to the ABC, though with lots of cast changes as the child actors grew up. It was a massive hit in Australia and the UK, remembered for its theme song as much as the show itself.
Paul Jenning’s memoir is Untwisted, published in 2020. The title is a play on his most famous books, and the TV series they inspired.
Primary school happens at roughly the same age in most places, but the way the years are numbered are quite different. It’s not even consistent between Australian states! But it is common across Australia for children to enter year 1 (also galled grade 1, or first grade) in the year they will turn 6, usually after a year of pre-school that goes by various names (kindergarten, prep, reception etc). Most states consider high school to run from years 1 to 6 (when most children are 12 years old), and high school from years 7 to 12 (most students turning 18 in their final year). So in year 11, most Australian students would be in their second last year of primary school, year 5.
We’ve often talked about British author Diana Wynne-Jones; see #Pratchat17, #Pratchat26 and #Pratchat30 for more about Howl’s Moving Castle, plus #Pratchat22, #Pratchat31 and #Pratchat37, where we discuss her other books, especially the Chrestomanci series. In the original Howl novel, protagonist Sophie is the eldest of three sisters who all work in their father’s hat shop. Sophie, aware of the fairy tale conventions of the world she lives in, expects to live a boring life compared to that of her sisters. The middle child Lettie, the most beautiful, becomes an apprentice pastry chef, while the youngest and smartest, Martha, becomes apprentice to Mrs Fairfax, a witch who would probably get along very well with Nanny Ogg. They do indeed have some adventures of their own, but we won’t spoil those for you here.
Anges Nitt is a young witch who first appears in Lords and Ladies (see #Pratchat17, “Midsummer (Elf) Murders“) as a member of a goth-like “coven” who meddle in the powers of fairies. While a minor character in that book, she nonetheless catches the eye of Granny and Nanny as one with true talent. In Maskerade (#Pratchat23, “The Music of the Nitt“), she has gone to Ankh-Morpork to become an opera singer, and the elder two witches just happen to be going there anyway, and of course they wouldn’t dream of telling her she should come home and take up witchcraft. By the time of Carpe Jugulum (#Pratchat36, “Home Alone, But Vampires“) Agnes is more-or-less the third witch in Granny and Nanny’s trio, though she doesn’t appear to be officially being taught or apprenticed by either of them. She has however taken over the cottage in Mad Groat which once belonged to Magrat and Magrat’s mentor, the research witch Goody Whimper.
Tiffany’s “see me” trick is described in Chapter 1 like this: “It felt as if she was stepping out of her body, but still had a sort of ghost body that could walk around.”
On “hiver” being a reference to acne or pimples, the closest word is probably “hives” – itchy, swollen and often red areas of skin, usually caused by an allergic reaction. They can indeed sometimes resemble acne, though they’re not often mistaken for each other.
Liz makes a reference to the horror film It Follows (2014, dir. David Robert Mitchell), in which college student Jaime (Maika Monroe) is pursued by a supernatural creature which wants to kill her – a curse passed on to her by a boy she sleeps with. A key unnerving thing about the creature is that it can appear as any person, but only the victim of the curse can see it.
Queen Elizabeth first met Prince Philip in 1939, when she was 13 and he was 18. They were engaged in 1947, at ages 21 and 26.
The Uffington White Horse, briefly mentioned by Pratchett in his author’s note, is the oldest such “hill figure” in Britain, dated as being around 2,500 to 3,300 years old. Though called a horse for around 1,000 years (the oldest written history of any hill figure in the UK), there’s some debate over whether it was originally meant to be a horse. It’s made of crushed chalk, laid in trenches dug into the hill, and needs to be regularly maintained or it becomes difficult to see. The Uffington White Horse inspired many other similar horse figures around the UK, though the others are all much newer; the oldest is the Westbury White Horse in Pratchett’s home county of Wiltshire, which can’t be reliably traced back before the late 18th century.
The “beetle” in Disney’s Mulan (1998, dir. Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook) is actually a lucky cricket named Cri-Kee, bought by Mulan’s grandmother to give her luck in her visit to see a Matchmaker. After that goes horribly, she tries to release him, but he sticks around, becoming a sidekick to her family’s guardian spirit, the dragon Mushu. You’ll be pleased to know he doesn’t explode during the film, but survives to feature in the direct-to-video sequel. He doesn’t appear in the 2020 live-action remake, but an archer character named Cricket does appear as a reference to him.
Anne Geddes is an Australian photographer who rose to fame in the 1980s and 1990s with her photographs of cherubic babies involving elaborate props and costumes. These were incredibly popular, and her photos sold millions of greeting cards, calendars and coffee table books. She lived in New Zealand for much of the height of her fame, and in 2004 was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit by the Queen for services to photography, though she also has a history of philanthropy. Since 2015, though, she’s made much less work – with social media all but killing the calendar and greeting card market, like many artists Geddes has turned to Patreon to continue making a living.
Mr Sheen is the tiny, bald-headed and bespectacled mascot of the Mr Sheen household cleaner, invented in Australia in the 1950s. It was the first aerosol-based cleaner to be sold in Australia, and continues to be popular in Australia and several other countries. His theme song was quite memorable, too, and remained largely unchanged for decades.
Black Books is a British sitcom created by and starring Irish comedian Dylan Moran. Moran plays Bernard Black, a misanthropic, drunk bookshop owner, who in the first episode hires an optimistic and naive assistant, Manny (played by one of Ben’s all-time favourite comedians, Bill Bailey). Together with their friend Fran (Tamsin Greig) they have various misadventures. The show won wide following and ran for three series between 2000 and 2004, broadcast on Channel 4. In the third episode, “Grapes of Wrath”, Kevin Eldon plays a distinctly creepy Cleaner hired by Manny to tidy up the shop. This YouTube clip of his first appearance will give you the idea…
The “hive mind of mushrooms” Liz mentions is known as a Mycorrhizal network. Some species of fungus grow large structures underground, connecting to other forms of plant life, transferring nutrients and water and possibly information of a sort between trees, leading to the nickname the “Wood Wide Web”. See this Science article from 2019 for more.
On Roundworld the Doctrine of Signatures dates back to ancient Greek and Roman physicians, but was popularised in the 15th to 17th centuries, especially via Jakob Böhme in his book The Signature of All Things. It’s perhaps most obvious in the common names of many (supposedly) medicinal plants, including eyebright, lungwort and birthwort (thought to resemble the uterus, and unfortunately a carcinogen). Modern thinking suggests that those medicines that do work were probably attributed a physical similarity after the fact. In any case you have to squint pretty hard to see the doctrine at work…
We’ve previously talked about shape-changing teenagers the Animorphs and their foes, the parasitic alien Yeerks, in #Pratchat19, #Pratchat25 and #Pratchat35. They are the stars of several related series of books written for teens by K. A. Applegate (a psuedonym for Katherine Applegate and her husband Michael Grant),and published by Scholastic between 1996 and 2001.
The Body Keeps the Score is an influential 2015 book written by Dutch psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, about the causes and possible treatments for trauma.
The “Cloak of Billowing” appears in the 2017 sourcebook Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Its only magical ability is to “billow dramatically” on command.
Tree of Life is an Australian chain of “boho fashion” stores cultivating a “carefree hippie ethos”. It began in the early 90s in Balmain, Sydney, and was started by John and Wendy Borthwick, followers of the Indian spiritual leader, Meher Baba. ISHKA is a similar store started by Michael Sklovsky in Melbourne in the early 1970s, initially selling both Michael’s own craft as well as items sourced from overseas. Both sell a variety of clothing, knick-knacks and accessories made in India, Nepal, Thailand and other countries in the Middle East and Asia. While both brands have statements on their websites outlining a strong ethical stance, it’s unclear how they maintain this, and they do not seem to use any standard FairTrade practices (e.g. labelling goods with details of their supply chains).
Sigmund Freud believed that the reason we don’t remember our births is that it was too traumatic (and sexual, because, you know, Freud). But while that’s been debunked, it is definitely true that humans have “infantile amnesia” – an inability to remember facts and personal events from our first few years of life. We still don’t have a definitive explanation, but it does seem likely to be related to the enhanced rate of brain development that goes on at that time.
While the experience of phantom limbs – the sensation of feeling from a limb one no longer has – is common in amputees (even non-human ones), it’s not a “syndrome”. Ben is using the word incorrectly.
In Equal Rites (discussed in #Pratchat25, “Eskist Attitudes“) a wizard passes on his staff to the eighth son of an eighth son…who is actually a daughter. The child, Esk, is sent to apprentice with Granny Weatherwax, who eventually realises that regardless of gender, wizard magic and witch magic are not the same. Granny takes Esk to Ankh-Morpork to convince the Unseen University to take on their first co-educational pupil. Nonetheless, Annagramma – and Mrs Earwig herself – are perhaps exhibiting some internalised misogyny when they say that witchcraft should be done in the wizard manner to be “proper”, since the two traditions are still largely split along gender lines. (This is a theme that will be revisited in later Tiffany books.)
We previously mentioned the Country Women’s Association (CWA) while discussing the short story “The Sea and Little Fishes” in #Pratchat39, “All the Fun of the…Fish?“
Ben is conflating two folk tales in his explanation of the third wish. The talking fish is from “The Fisherman and His (Greedy) Wife”, (catalogued in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index as type ATU 555), and importantly they don’t have a limited number of wishes, nor do they undo them with a final one; instead the fisherman is pushed to ask for grander and grander things until they go too far, and the wishes are undone with a crack of thunder and no explanation. The story with the sausage on the nose is “The Ridiculous Wishes” (ATU 705A), in which a poor woodcutter is given three wishes; his wife urges him to wait and think about the wishes, but while hungry that night he idly wishes for sausages. His wife is understandably upset, but when they argue he unthinkingly wishes the sausages were attached to her nose; in the end they must use the third wish to undo the second, leaving them only with the sausages.
While it’s clear that Granny has experience of the Black Desert, this book is the only time we see her actually go there. Her conversations with Death in Witches Abroad and Carpe Jugulum occur in the real world, and her metaphysical struggles in those books occur in the weird mirror dimension and inside her own mind.
Willow is a 1988 fantasy film produced by George Lucas, written by Bob Dolman and directed by Ron Howard. It stars Warwick Davis as Willow Ulfgood, a farmer and aspiring sorcerer of the Nelwyn people. He and his family find a Daikini (i.e. human) child set adrift on a river, which unknown to them is part of a prophecy that will dethrone the evil sorcerer-queen Bavmorda (played by Jean Marsh). Along the way Willow and his friends recruits the Daikini mercenary Madmartigan (Val Kilmer) and have various fantastic misadventures. While the film wasn’t a big box office success, it won a firm place in the heart of nerds everywhere. A television series returning to the world of the film is coming to Disney+ in 2022, with Davis reprising his role as Willow.
We previously explained the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the screen meme, in #Pratchat36, “Home Alone, But Vampires“. It’s taken from the film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019, dir. Quentin Tarantino), in which DiCaprio’s character, actor Rick Dalton, points at a movie screen when he sees himself.
Yes, we goofed: Tiffany does not keep Granny’s old hat; she keeps the one she bought from Zakzak Stronginthearm, though it is also temporary. Granny shows her the new hat she is constructing to make the point that witch’s hats aren’t permanent.
The Secret of Monkey Island is the classic 1990 graphic adventure videogame created for LucasArts by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. A comedy (and one of Ben’s favourite games), the player takes on the role of Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who wants to become a “mighty pirate” during the golden age of piracy. Pratchett was certainly playing videogames by this time and it was such an influential and popular game its hard to imagine he wouldn’t have played it. In the game, he meets the “Amazing, Adventurous, Acrobating, and Exceedingly Well-Known, Fabulous, Flying Fettucini Brothers”, Bill and Alfredo. While it’s clear some of their appearance is just an act, it’s not specified if they changed their names as Ben misremembers. In the 1992 sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, there’s also a reference to the “Linguini Brothers”.
The Monster Book of Monsters, a magical school textbook for third year Care of Magical Creatures students, first appears in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, published in 1999. That’s five years earlier than the LIBER IMMANIS MONSTRORUM in this book, though surely bonus points are awarded for the Latin.
The historical John Snow (1813 – 1858) was an English doctor who is famous for his work in epidemiology and anaesthesia. In a time before germ theory was accepted and understood in Europe, he was skeptical of the prevailing “miasma theory”, and as well as disabling a pump to prevent further cholera infections, also mapped cases to help determine how they were spreading. His work was influential enough to inspire the John Snow Society, who hold an annual “Pumphandle Lecture” at which a pump handle is symbolically removed and replaced. His work also influenced the design and use of public drinking fountains, and you can hear more about that in episode 188 of the podcast 99% Invisible, “Fountain Drinks“.
Modern vaccines use a variety of methods to create an active agent which appears to the body to be a specific virus or bacteria. This allows the body to develop an effective immune response to the real thing, without having to actually contract the disease. The precursor to vaccination was variolation, which goes back at least 1,000 years when it was first used in China. This is deliberate infection with a small dose of the actual disease, originally smallpox, with hope of achieving immunity after a mild illness, and it was used up until the 18th century. Modern vaccine agents do not use a live sample of the actual disease, but instead an agent created in a number of ways. These methods include material from dead or irradiated pathogens (known as “ghosts”), modified or naturally occurring viruses which are very similar to the dangerous one but do not harm the host (as in the case of cowpox being used to in smallpox vaccines), or most recently RNA vaccines, which use messenger RNA to more directly help the body create appropriate proteins that can act as antibodies.
Wittgenstein’s Ladder was described by the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein () in 1921. In his own words (or at least, in an English translation of his own words): “My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)”
You can see Prince Philip’s self-designed Land Rover hearse in this BBC article.
You probably already know we love The Mummy, the 1999 film starring Brendan Fraser as adventurer Rick O’Connell, and – most relevant to this discussion – Rachel Weisz as librarian and historian Evie Carnahan. We’ve previous talked about it in #Pratchat11, #Pratchat19, #PratchatNA7, #Pratchat21, #Pratchat23, #Pratchat36 and #Pratchat42. And yes, we are seriously considering a short spin-off series of podcasts discussing those films.
On the subject of Esk being based on Rhianna Pratchett, less than a week after this episode was released, Rhianna Pratchett replied to a tweet asking what her Dad’s favourite of his books was, and for her own favourite. She replied that the witches and Tiffany books were among her faves, as was Nation (Terry’s own choice), and further that Equal Rites was the first of his books that she read – probably why it was dedicated to her! She confirmed that Esk is based (in part) on her in reply to a follow up tweet, in which she said that there was “more than a little” of her in the character… We’ve included the relevant tweets below.

Dad thought Nation was his best book and it’s one of my favs too. I’m a huge fan of the Witches series in particular (Equal Rites was the first book of his I read) particularly Witches Abroad, Carpe Jugulum and the Tiffany Aching tales. https://t.co/jWdENxQLJt
— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) May 12, 2021

More than a little 😉
— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) May 12, 2021

#Pratchat12 Notes and Errata

8 October 2018 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the show notes and errata for episode 12, “Brooms, Boats and Pumpkinmobiles“, featuring guest Jackie Tang, discussing the 1991 Discworld novel Witches Abroad.

“Voodoo” is a popular culture distillation of several religions, but especially Haitian and Louisiana Vodun, themselves derived from West African Vodun and influenced by many other traditions, including Christianity. Some rituals involve summoning spirits known as lwa or loa, intermediaries between the physical world and the creator deity (Bondye, Mawu or others depending on the tradition). Famous loa include Baron Samedi, a loa of the dead, and Papa Legba, who exists at the crossroads between the material and spiritual worlds.
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a 19th century Russian writer. His works are social commentary, mostly in the form of farce and satire. The Government Inspector is his best known novel, but he is mostly remembered for his many short stories including Diary of a Madman, The Nose, The Overcoat and The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich. (His name is pronounced GO-gl, which is more or less the only way we don’t try to say Mrs Gogol’s name during the podcast.)
Of the Discworld books we’ve covered so far, Wyrd Sisters, Sourcery and Moving Pictures all begin with a death. Pyramids, Men at Arms and Reaper Man all have deaths close to the beginning that are vital (if you’ll excuse the term) to their plots.
The prose poem Desiderata was written by American writer Max Ehrman in 1927, though it didn’t become widely known until the early 1970s. You’ve almost certainly read or heard at least one of the verses. The poem’s copyright status has been a matter of contention over the years, in part because it was printed unattributed in a church leaflet accompanied by the church’s founding date, leading some to believe it was much older and therefore in the public domain. As a result the Annotated Pratchett File has a copyright notice asserting Erhman’s authorship rather than any quotes, but by contrast you can read the whole thing on Wikipedia. The word “Desiderata” is Latin, the plural form of “desideratum”: a thing wished for, or – you guessed it – desirable. It is indeed the source of the English word “desire”.
We ruined our browser history so you wouldn’t have to: Echidna penises are indeed unusual. They are very long for their body size, and with not three but four prongs, more like those seen in reptiles than other mammals. They only use two of the prongs at a time, though. (Hedgehog penises are less weird, but also quite long for their tiny size.)
Shrek (2001) is a DreamWorks animated film, loosely based on the 1990 picture book by William Steig. The title character is an ugly green ogre who sets out to rescue Princess Fiona from a dragon for Lord Farquaad, so that he will stop exiling fairytale creatures from the kingdom of Duloc in Shrek’s swamp. A bit like Lily, Farquaad is obsessed with making his kingdom “the fairest of them all”, but he has a hatred for fairytale creatures (the reasons for which are explored in the Broadway musical adaptation of the film). Shrek was massively popular and has spawned three sequels, a spin-off, numerous short films and two television series. A fourth sequel is in development.
Lawrence Sterne, 18th century English novelist and clergyman, is best known as the author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. His other novel is the travelogue mentioned by Jackie, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy.
Ravenloft is a gothic horror themed plane of existence known as “the Demiplane of Dread”, consisting of various separate “Domains of Dread”, each ruled by a “Dreadlord” (okay, we get it, it’s full of dread) and inspired by different horror stories. The Dracula inspired one is Barovia, a village in an isolated valley. It shares much of its DNA with Überwald and the village visited by the witches in Witches Abroad. The domains are influenced by the mysterious, unseen “Dark Powers”.
Nanny’s “die flabberghast” is a reference to Die Fledermaus (“the bat”), a famous operetta by Austrian composer Johann Strauss. The opera relates the story of a Viennese man, Gabriel von Eisenstein, who is persuaded to avoid a minor prison sentence for a day to attend a masked ball. This is a plot by Gabriel’s friend Falke, who has also secretly invited Gabriel’s maid, his wife, and the governor of the prison where Eisenstein should be. Falke wants to pay Gabriel back for a prank in which, after a previous ball, he left a drunk Falke in the middle of town in his bat costume, causing him much ridicule – hence the title of the operetta, which is sometimes called The Revenge of the Bat in English. Die Fledermaus is also a character in the animated TV version of superhero parody The Tick; a parody of Batman, Fledermaus has a similar costume (except with a more realistic, ghost bat inspired face – weird nose, huge ears etc) and no superpowers, but is supremely vain and cowardly.
Maverick is a 1994 film, based on a 1950s television series, starring Mel Gibson as Bret Maverick, a con man participating in a high-stakes poker game aboard a riverboat. It also starred James Garner (who played the title role in the original series), Jodie Foster and Alfred Molina, and was the second-last film for famous B-movie star Doug McClure, who appeared alongside many other old school Western actors.
Mahjong is a Chinese game, usually for four players, which uses a set of 144 or more tiles. Most of the tiles are “simples”, numbered 1 to 9 in three suits: dots (or circles), bamboo, and characters (or wan). There are also a smaller number of “honours” tiles – winds and dragons – and eight unique bonus tiles, the flowers and/or seasons. The tiles begin the game organised into face-down stacks, and based on a dice roll players begin with thirteen randomly selected tiles. During the game, players take turns to discard a tile they do not want and draw one from a wall. To win, a player must collect and declare (by calling “Mahjong”) a named sets of tiles which meets a minimum number of points, decided by the players in advance. Players can also steal a discarded tile to form a smaller set which allows them to take their turn early, possibly forcing one or more other players to lose a turn. The winner’s points are tallied over multiple games, usually sixteen for four players, and the player with the highest score at the end of the games wins.
For more about the practice of painting lawns green – and the politics of lawn management in places like Los Angeles – we recommend Lawn Order, an episode of the podcast 99% Invisible.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written by L Frank Baum in 1900. It was a massive success and Baum went on to write thirteen sequels, the last one being Glinda of Oz in 1920. As Liz mentions, in the first book visitors are made to wear green-tinted glasses – only the external walls are actually green. Later books however describe the city as green without any mention of the glasses.
The television series Once Upon A Time (2011-2018) and comic book series Fables (2002-2015) are both based on the premise that fairytale characters and creatures are stranded in the real world. In Once Upon A Time, the characters are exiled to the American town of Storybrooke as part of a plot by the evil queen Regina, aided by Rumpelstiltskin. The town’s residents cannot remember who they are, or notice that they have lived unchanging lives without aging for nearly three decades, but the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming escaped the curse and may be able to undo it. In Fables, the characters flee their home realms to a burrough of New York they nickname Fabletown to escape a mysterious and powerful evil force known as “the Adversary”. Those who can pose as humans, while those who cannot – talking animals and monsters – are forced to live on a remote farm in upstate New York, protected by magic. Rivalries and politics have not been left behind, however, and must often be solved by sheriff “Bigby” Wolf and deputy mayor Snow White.
Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) is best remembered for writing nearly four thousand fairytales (!), including The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling and loads more you have definitely heard. He was also famously played by Danny Kaye in the not-at-all biographical musical film, Hans Christian Andersen, in 1952.
“Moistened bint” is how Dennis, the anarcho-communist peasant, refers to the Lady in the Lake, aka one of the “strange women lying in ponds distributing swords”, in the 1975 comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (We’ve mentioned it before, and probably will again.) Also, in case you haven’t seen it: 8-year-old Saga Vanacek recently pulled a 1,500 year old sword out of a lake. Like the rest of the Internet, we hope she will be our new King now.
The late Anthony Bourdain was a beloved American celebrity chef, author and documentarian, well known for his various television shows in which he travelled the world sampling all kinds of local cuisines. He frequently spotlighted foods and cooks ignored by other such programs, including immigrants and street food vendors, so we’re confident he would have ignored the banquet halls of Lily’s palace and headed straight for Mrs Pleasant’s kitchen or the market where Mrs Gogol’s tent was pitched.
“When I say run” is an oft-repeated line of the Doctor across most of their incarnations. The earliest version is perhaps from the Second Doctor’s first story, 1966’s The Power of the Daleks, in which he says to his companion Ben Jackson: “When I say run, run like a rabbit…RUN!” We found a YouTube compilation of every instance of the Doctor telling people to run, but be warned – it runs for twenty minutes!
A “bodice ripper” is a romance novel with sex scenes, set in an historical period. It’s a much-beloved genre which continues to enjoy great success, and not just with famous pulp romance publishing house Mills & Boon. If you’re keen to investigate further, we suggest hitting up the web site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books for reviews. SBTB uses a comprehensive system of tags, and Greebo-as-sexy-corsair fans might enjoy the “Fantasy/Fairytale Romance” genre, “Pirate” archetype and/or “Were/Shifter” theme.
Andrew Lloyd-Weber’s 1981 musical Cats was adapted from T. S. Elliot’s 1939 poetry collection, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. No, we don’t know why he did that either. In the musical, a tribe of cats called the Jellicles meet for their annual Ball, at which their leader, Old Deuteronomy, will name one of them to ascend to the heaven like “Heaviside layer” and be reborn. He is briefly kidnapped, but otherwise the entire musical consists of the cats breaking the fourth wall to explain their ways to the humans watching. It’s as weird as it sounds, but it’s also the fourth-longest running musical ever to appear on Broadway and the sixth-longest in the West End, and continues to be produced around the world.
Red Dwarf is a British sit-com created by Doug Naylor and Rob Grant which premiered on the BBC in 1988. It follows the adventures of David Lister (played by Craig Charles), a 22nd century slob working in the lowest-ranking job aboard the mining spaceship Red Dwarf. When he brings a cat on board against regulations, he is placed in stasis as punishment, and is thus the only survivor of a major radiation leak. He is awakened three million years later by the ship’s computer to discover an entire humanoid civilisation had evolved from his cat, leaving behind a single survivor known only as “Cat”: a vain creature obsessed with fashion, sleep and sex. Cat, played by Danny John-Jules, is one of only two characters to appear in every episode of the show, which after a long hiatus returned in 2009 on UK digital channel Dave. A thirteenth series is coming in 2019.
There are videos of cats eating sushi, but really, you should definitely look at pictures of cats dressed up as if they are sushi.
In the French folktale “Bluebeard” (not “Bluebeard’s Bride”, though see below) a young woman is married to a wealthy widowed nobleman and given free run of his enormous mansion – except for one room which she must never enter. She eventually does look in the room while Bluebeard is away, only to discover he had murdered his previous wives. Bluebeard knows thanks to a magical key and returns, but the bride is saved by her brothers who show up and kill him, leaving her to inherit his fortune. The story lends its name to the ATU 312 classification of folk tales, described as “the brother rescues his sister”. Bluebeard also appears as a major character in the comic Fables, where he is depicted as a pirate. The roleplaying game Bluebeard’s Bride from Magpie Games explores the tale further by having the players collectively play the bride, wandering through Bluebeard’s house alone.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a popular though heavily criticised personality test based largely on Carl Jung’s ideas of dominant psychological functions. It uses a series of questions to sort a person into one of sixteen personality types organised along four axes: extroversion/introversion, thinking/feeling, sensing/intuition and judging/perceiving. The test was created during World War II by mother and daughter Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, self-taught psychometrists who initially used it to help place women in appropriate jobs as they entered the wartime workforce. After several earlier versions, the first “MBTI Manual” was published in 1962 and became heavily used in the corporate world, though it is not widely accepted in psychological circles. It’s enduring legacy is that we all have that one friend obsessed with sorting everyone they know into their Myers-Briggs type.
The name Lily takes in Genua is “Lady Lilith de Tempscire”, taken from the French temps, weather, and scire, beeswax or candlewax. In the course of looking this up, we discovered that the French use a different word for the kind of wax you use on skis: fart. It’s probably just as well that modern skis are made from materials that do not generally require waxing to achieve good speed on snow.
Remus Lupin is the third of the ill-fated Defence Against the Dark Arts tutors at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to appear in the Harry Potter books and films. His name is something of a spoiler: Remus is one of the two twins of Roman myth who were raised by wolves, the other being Romulus, the founder of Rome (from whom it supposedly takes its name). Lupin is another form of the Latin word lupine, which as we’ve previously discussed means wolf. You’ll never guess what dark secret Remus Lupin is hiding…though as far as we can tell, he’s always had that name, despite not being born with his…affliction.
For more on Hyacinth Bucket, see the show notes for #Pratchat11, “At Bill’s Door“, about Reaper Man.
We talk more about the time-skip in Lancre when discussing Wyrd Sisters in #Pratchat4, “Enter Three Wytches“.
Let Them Eat Cake was a 1999 BBC sit-com starring Jennifer Saunders as Colombine, the Comtesse de Vache, a scheming noblewoman in pre-revolutionary France, and Dawn French as her loyal and nymphomaniacal servant, Lisette. It ran for one series of six episodes, and is rare in being a series which starred Saunders and French, but was not created or written by them.
Ares, Greek god of war, was one of the most prominent antagonists featured in the television Xenaverse of Xena: Warrior Princess and its predecessor, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. He was played by New Zealand actor Kevin Smith, who sadly passed away in 2002. Google him in his usual Ares gear and we think you’ll agree he’s a perfect for for Greebo, though makeup and costume would need to give him some scars and scuff up his leather.
The Craft is a 1996 supernatural horror movie about four high school girls who form a coven, two of whom are played by Fairuza Balk (whose first film role was as Dorothy in Return to Oz) and Neve Campbell (best known for her starring role in the television drama Party of Five). They gain the ability to cast all manner of spells through the worship of a god named “Manon”, blending old-school Puritan ideas of Satanic witchcraft with more modern Wicca. Magrat clearly hasn’t seen the film, or she wouldn’t be so keen on using magic to fix all of her problems! A remake was announced in 2016, but has so far failed to materialise.

#Pratchat10 Notes and Errata

8 August 2018 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the show notes and errata for episode 10, “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Broomstick“, featuring guest Dan Golding, discussing the 1990 book Truckers – the first of the Bromeliad trilogy.

The episode title riffs on Roy Scheider’s famous line in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster movie Jaws. Out on the sea in shark hunter Quint’s small fishing vessel, the Orca, police chief Marcus Brody unexpectedly gets a close-up look at the killer shark while throwing bait overboard. Brody backs away into the cabin, stunned, and tells Quint: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” The line was ad-libbed by Schneider during shooting. The scene was extended in the final cut to give more of a pause between the shark’s appearance and the one-liner, as test audiences were still screaming and missed the gag. You can watch this part of the scene on YouTube.
To hear Dan talk about Star Wars music, check out the five Star Wars episodes of Art of the Score (the original film actually gets three episodes!), or watch the video he made for the ABC explaining why the theme is so great.
The previous book that kicked off with Death overseeing the passing of a previously unmet character was Sourcery, in which Ipslore the Red dies but tricks Death, passing his soul into his staff. We almost get this sort of beginning in Pyramids, but Pteppic’s father only dies after the school days flashback section of the book, and again in Guards! Guards!, though Gaskin dies before the book starts and we instead join Vimes after the funeral.
In the real world, cellulose is an organic compound vital to the structure of cells in green plants, while celluloid (eventually a trademark name) was the first kind of thermoplastic, made from cellulose nitrate, used to replace ivory in billiard balls (as discussed in episode one) and widely as a filmstock before the development of safer, cheaper and easier to make acetate film in the 1950s.
Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino in which multiple (fictional) plots to kill nazi leaders during World War II converge on a Paris cinema at the premiere of a new propaganda film.
Liz refers to the 1903 film Electrocuting an Elephant, produced by the Edison Film Company, in which Topsy the circus elephant, who had killed several people, was executed via electrocution on Coney Island. The film was distributed but thankfully doesn’t seem to have been as popular as the company’s other films, though it still exists. It’s sometimes claimed to have been funded by Thomas Edison in an effort to discredit Nicola Tesla’s alternating current as unsafe during the War of the Currents, but the timeline of events makes that unlikely.
“Play it again, Sam” is probably the most famous mis-quote in cinema history, and is not from the 1942 film Casablanca. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) supposedly says it to the piano player in his bar, but what he actually says is “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By’.”
Listener Ian Banks let us know on Twitter that Victor’s arrangement with his income is a nod to the character Grimsdike from Richard Gordon’s Doctor novels, who receives a generous stipend as long as he’s a medical student. The series began with 1952’s Doctor in the House, lasted for 18 books, and was adapted many times for film and television. The early television versions in the 70s were adapted by members of Monty Python and the Goodies, including actual doctors Graham Chapman and Graeme Garden.
Victor’s single exam question may be a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When the Arthurian knights reach the ominous Bridge of Death, its keeper tells them they must answer his three questions before they can cross his bridge. His first question: “What…is your name?”
You can see the dance from 1951’s Royal Wedding on YouTube here – or, if you like to know how the sausage-inna-bun is made, you can watch this version that shows what Astaire’s experience on set was like.
Disney’s Snow White was released in 1937, but as Dan pointed out in a bit that hit our cutting room floor, Steamboat Willie – the first appearance of Mickey Mouse, and the first animated film with synchronised sound – was released almost a decade earlier in 1928.
Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), directed by animator and cartoonist Winsor McCay, wasn’t the first animated film, but was the first to use several important animation techniques including keyframes and animation loops. It was originally used by McCay as part of a live vaudeville act in which he commanded Gertie to perform tricks, but was eventually released with a live action introduction. Gertie was also the first animated dinosaur on film. You can watch it on YouTube here (we’ve skipped the live part).
Also cut for time: Dan mentioned that other pioneers of anthropomorphic animation included Felix the Cat and the singing, swaying trees of early Merry Melodies.
George Méliès was a French film director whose most famous work is probably A Trip to the Moon (1902), based loosely on two of Jules Verne’s novels and widely considered the world’s first science fiction film. You can watch the hand-painted colour version on YouTube here.
Dan’s version of the book is the Collector’s Library edition, and you can see its beautiful cover at the Discworld Emporium. Liz has the modern paperback (also available at the Discworld Emporium), but you can see Josh Kirby’s full original cover illustration – as featured on Ben’s early paperback – at this Cultured Vultures review of the book. The original hardcover with the Superman/Ben-Hur styled title can be found in this Gizmodo collection of the best Discworld covers.
Wikimedia has a great photo of the Han dynasty seismograph from 132 CE. Well…a recreation of it, anyway. No-one’s quite sure how the internal mechanism worked but historical records indicate it was accurate.
The “Odium” is a pun on Odeon Cinemas, a chain of movie theatres in the UK, Ireland and Norway, the first one opening in 1928. The name comes from the Ancient Greek word for various buildings built for musical purposes. (The Rhoxie, the Seriph of Al-Khali’s fabulous palace featured in Sourcery, is mentioned as a possible better name; both are references to the famous Roxie Theatre in San Francisco, the longest continually-operating movie theatre in the US.)
The roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu was first released in 1981 (seven years after Dungeons & Dragons), and is named after a Lovecraft short story. It’s currently in its seventh edition.
The Necronomicon by the “Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred is a fictional book of evil magic mentioned in many of Lovecraft’s stories. Its contents mainly concern the “Great Old Ones”, ancient cosmic beings beyond the understanding of mortal minds, and ways in which to summon them. Doing so is always a terrible idea.
The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets are a nerdy Canadian rock band whose lyrics are largely inspired by the work of H. P. Lovecraft. Their albums include faux-soundtrack Spaceship Zero, rock opera The Shadow Out of Tim (a loose retelling of one of Lovecraft’s last stories, The Shadow Out of Time) and of course The Dukes of Alhazred. You can find them all on the Thickets’ BandCamp page.
Multiple online sources cite the origin of “that’s not a thing” as a 2001 episode of That 70’s Show (“Donna’s Panties”) or a 2003 episode of Friends (“The One Where Rachel’s Sister Babysits”). Moving Pictures predates both by more than a decade.
Several fan-invented rulesets exist for Cripple Mr Onion; Andrew C. Millard and Terry Tao invented one for a deck with eight suits (a standard poker deck plus an Italian/Tarot suited deck) and posted it to newsgroups in the 1990s, where Pterry apparently approved. Those rules were later adapted by Stephen Briggs into a version using only a complete tarot deck, published as an appendix in Turtle Recall, the fourth revision of The Discworld Companion.
North by Northwest (1959) starred Cary Grant as Roger O Thornhill, an advertising executive who is mistaken for a spy, and Eva Marie Saint as Eve Kendall, a mysterious woman he meets as he tries to evade capture. In addition to the middle initial, the opening sequence of Thornhill dictating a memo to a secretary while they travel through New York is also supposedly a dig at David O Selznick, who reportedly did this frequently. (It’s worth mentioning that Selznick had produced his final film, A Farewell to Arms, two years earlier, and had not produced a Hitchcock film since 1947’s The Paradine Case.)
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is a 1958 science fiction film about a wealthy heiress who grows to a height of 50 feet after an encounter with a giant alien. It was remade for HBO in 1992 by Christopher Guest with Darryl Hanna in the lead role.
Aldous Huxley’s 1931 novel Brave New World imagines a 26th century America in which the human population has been genetically engineered into castes; the more intelligent castes are kept peaceful and compliant through various entertainments, including the happiness-inducing drug soma, and “feelies” – films that induce physical sensations through metal knobs grasped by viewers.
The “Penfield Mood Organ” appears in the opening pages of the 1968 Philip K Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the basis for the film Blade Runner. By dialling a number a person’s mood can be set to any one of hundreds of specific states, including 481, “awareness of the manifold possibilities open to me in the future”, and 888, “the desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on it”.
“If it bleeds, we can kill it” is a famous line of dialogue from the 1987 sci-fi action film Predator, delivered by paramilitary team leader Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) after his team finds the bright green blood of the alien hunter who’s been killing them off.
Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is the direct sequel to Frankenstein (1931), both starring Boris Karloff as “The Monster” and directed by James Whale. At the conclusion of the second film, the Monster is rejected by the Bride made for him; he tells the Bride and her creator “we belong dead” before he tearfully destroys the lab, killing all three.
There have been a lot of King Kong films, but Dan recommends the 1933 original, which he informed us birthed leitmotif in Hollywood film music! Ben once wrote an absolutely scathing review of the 2005 Peter Jackson remake featuring Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody, but Dan reckons 2017’s Kong: Skull Island starring Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson and John Goodman is actually pretty good, if very self-aware.
The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment company, its assets now owned by The Rank Group. It’s famous logo and filmed intro sequence, known as “Gongman”, is a buff shirtless man hitting a huge gong. Four different performers struck the gong in Rank’s heyday, most filming it at least twice to replace deteriorating film stock. The gong itself was a prop made of papier-mâché; the sound of a (much smaller) Chau gong or tam-tam was recorded separately.
Rankin/Bass Productions, by contrast, was an American production company best known for it’s stop-motion animated holiday programs, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Frosty the Snowman (1969), though we especially recommend Mad Monster Party? (1967), which features Boris Karloff’s only performance in a musical.
Sir Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is the only male actor to have won three Best Actor Oscars. For our universe’s sake, we thank Sir Daniel for retiring from the acting life. However if Liz’s theory is correct, Katherine Hepburn was a greater threat to reality, having won four Best Actress Oscars.
Jurassic Park (and, later, Jurassic World) is built on Isla Nublar (Spanish for “Clouded Island”), a fictional island off the coast of Costa Rica. “Site B”, featured in the sequels The Lost World and Jurassic Park III, is located on another island further west, Isla Sorna (which is sort of Spanish for “Sarcasm Island”).
“Jumping the shark” has become a modern euphemism for the moment when a television series or other long work of popular culture loses its relevance and starts going downhill. The phrase is a reference to the 1977 Happy Days episode “Hollywood: Part 3” in which Arthur “the Fonz” Fonzarelli literally jumps a shark on waterskis, considered the point where the show left behind its relatable roots. (It’s worth noting that Happy Days continued for seven more years after this stunt.)
119 twelve-minute films of The Hazards of Helen were released between November 1914 and February 1917. They initially starred Helen Holmes, though she left to form her own company with her husband after 26 of the films, remaining one of the most famous silent era serial stars. Holmes was replaced by Elsie McLeod for about six months before Rose Wenger Gibson (credited as Helen Gibson) took over; Gibson filmed the final 70 and became as famous as Holmes. All the Helens did most of their own stunts, though Gibson made a name for herself as the first female stunt performer in Hollywood before moving into acting, and continued to appear in Hollywood films until the 1950s. You can watch clips from Leap from the Water Tower starring Holmes and The Governor’s Special starring Gibson at the Internet Archive.
Beyond the Valley of the Trolls is a reference to Russ Meyer’s 1970 exploitation film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. It was the first of several written with Meyer by famous film critic Roger Ebert.
The other parody film names we mention are references to the Marx Brothers films A Night at the Opera, Duck Soup and A Day at the Races (two of which are also the titles of Queen albums). There are plenty of Marx Brothers references in Pratchett’s work, so it seems likely he was a fan.
According to the IMDb, Ennio Morricone has composed music for over 500 films. He probably remains most famous for his work in Westerns, especially The Good the Bad and the Ugly, but has worked in many different styles. His soundtrack for Space: 1999 was for an Italian theatrical film edited together from three episodes of the original UK television series; the Space: 1999 television theme (and most of the incidental music) was composed by Barry Gray.

#Pratchat4 Notes and Errata

8 February 2018 by Ben Leave a Comment

Theses are the show notes and errata for episode 4, “Enter Three Wytches“, featuring guest Ell Squires (aka Clara Cupcakes) discussing the 1988 Discworld novel Wyrd Sisters.

Footrot Flats is as much remembered for the 1986 animated movie Footrot Flats: The Dog’s ~~Tail~~ Tale, which was a box office smash in New Zealand and Australia and gave the world Dave Dobbyn’s number one hit single “Slice of Heaven”.
Alice in The Vicar of Dibley was portrayed by Emma Chambers, also known for her role as Honey in Notting Hill. Sadly, Emma died at the age of 53 only a couple of weeks after this episode was released, on February 21st 2018.
Maggie Smith famously played Hogwarts professor Minerva McGonagall in all eight Harry Potter films, while Tilda Swinton was the villainous White Witch in three films based on C S Lewis’ Narnia books. Anjelica Huston played the Grand High Witch in 1990’s film version of Roald Dahl’s The Witches. Miriam Margoyles is also a Hogwarts alumnus, playing Professor Pomona Sprout in two of the Potter films.
Willow meets the disappointingly non-magical “Daughters of Gaea” in the season four Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Hush” – previously mentioned in our second episode!
While we couldn’t confirm the existence of a town named Fuck, there are places in the UK named Marsh Gibbon, Lickfold, Great Snoring, Crapstone and Shitterton. There is a town named Fucking in Lower Austria; their street signs were stolen so often by English-speaking tourists they had to start bolting them down.
“The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All”, usually referred to as “The Hedgehog Song“, is the infamous folk song sung by Nanny Ogg whenever she’s had a few. Wyrd Sisters is the first time it is mentioned.
For those playing at home, the name of the demon summoned in Nanny Ogg’s wash basin is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz. The Superman character Ben mentions is Mister Mxyzptlk, an “imp from the fifth dimension”. Ben did not pronounce his name correctly either.
The woman who gives Poirot his pin in the television series is Mme. Vergine Mesnard, who appears in only one Poirot case, set at a very early point in his career, when he was still a policeman in Belgium. She does not give him a pin in the original short story.
If you’re interested in the story behind Dutton’s remarks about African gangs, here’s a good article from The Big Smoke Australia. (“The Big Smoke” is Australian slang for city.)
Our musings about the Librarian disagree with fan consensus, which is that his status as a member of the Unseen University faculty means he must be a wizard (and, quite possibly, the Wizard Formerly Known As Horace Worblehat). We’re sticking with our assessment for now, but we may revisit this in future episodes.
You can hear examples of the “real Shakespearean accent“, known as the Original Pronunciation (OP), in this video from the Open University featuring father and son duo David and Ben Crystal.
History records that Rasputin survived being poisoned and shot, but was then shot again before his body was dumped in the river. He didn’t get out. (Anastasia trumps history, of course.)

#Pratchat14 Notes and Errata

8 December 2018 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the show notes and errata for episode 14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-wide Vacation“, featuring guest Joel Martin discussing the 1990 novel Good Omens.

A note on this episode’s title: we’ve opted to parody a parody in order to name a discussion of a parody. (Does that make it a parodyox?) The film in question is National Lampoon’s Vacation, which was released in 1983 – the same year The Colour of Magic was published! (Though you might argue our title is closer to the sequel, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, from 1985.)
The Morning Bell is recorded live at the Brunswick Street Bookstore. Liz has been a guest a few times, most recently on episode 46 (February 2017), while Ben has been on just the once, for episode 63 (November 2017).
Joel is director of Melbourne’s new speculative fiction writing festival Speculate, returning in 2019 for its second year; Liz and Ben were guests the first time around and will be again in 2019. You can see both of them in the short film made for the 2018 festival here, or visit specfic.com.au to find out more about what’s in store for 2019.
Liz’s comment about eye anatomy refers to the fact that as well as the structures found in regular human eyes which are sensitive to light – rods for dim light, and cones for bright light and (normal) colour vision – wizards also have octagons, which can detect octarine. This suggests that there is a genetic (or otherwise biological) component to being a wizard, and since Rincewind can see octarine, it seems inarguable that he really is a wizard.
Time Team began in 1994, making it much younger than The Black Adder, the first of the four series of Blackadder sit-coms, which was produced in 1983 (there’s that year again!). It also comes slightly later than Tony Robinson’s abridged audiobooks, the first of which – The Colour of Magic, of course – was first released on cassette in 1993. The unabridged versions, initially read by Nigel Planer, are harder to pin down, but seem to have begun a little later in 1997.
The ethos that “every issue could be someone’s first” is said to be the reason that Marvel comics had so much dialogue explaining stuff the characters already knew – often with accompanying editor’s notes (the asterisked, comic book equivalent of a footnote) pointing the reader to the previous issue in which the thing being explained took place!
ABBA is a Swedish pop group comprising two couples: Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus, and Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad (the band’s name is an acronym of their first names). They shot to world-wide fame in 1974 after winning the Eurovision Song Contest, but the band and their marriages broke up by 1982, as their staggering popularity caused their personal lives to suffer. They remain incredibly popular in Australia and around the world, with their music being adapted into the hit musical Mama Mia! and its filmic sequel. They announced in April that they had recorded their first new music in more than 35 years, and the new single, “I Still Have Faith in You”, is due to be released this month (December 2018)!
Japanese avant-garde artist, peace activist, musician and filmmaker Yoko Ono was long blamed by disappointed fans for the break-up of The Beatles in 1969 because of her marriage to John Lennon. These days this is generally recognised as a grossly unfair and simplistic explanation, but her name is still synonymous with the idea of an outside relationship catalysing the end of a creative partnership.
In cosmology, the steady state model is an alternative to the now generally accepted Big Bang theory. It states that the universe would continue to expand forever, but remain in a “steady state” of density as new matter is constantly created. By contrast, in the Big Bang model, the amount of matter is fixed, and the universe becomes less dense as it expands, so the expansion will slow down either to the point where it reverses and matter contracts into another singularity – the Big Crunch – or keep going long enough for all the stars to burn out and leave nothing behind but black holes – the Big Freeze. Feel free to write your own pun versions of these for Great A’Tuin, but they’ll probably be more depressing than Pratchett’s originals.
The story about translating Pratchett’s puns appears in various editions of The Discworld Companion, and definitely in the most recent (as of this writing), Turtle Recall. Ruurd Groot, who translated Pratchett into Dutch, ended up tweaking an alternate name for the Big Bang theory so that it could be interpreted as “the Making Love Outwards Model”, a name Terry loved!
As Ben mentions, the film Krull is one of a crop of cheap Star Wars rip-offs, and it was released the same year as Return of the Jedi – 1983 again! Critics were not kind to Krull, and it was a huge financial flop (the massive budget blowout caused by huge alterations to the sets didn’t help), but it’s found a cult audience of fans who appreciate its weird mix of fantasy, swashbuckling and sci-fi, outlandish ideas, and ambitious production, as well as early film roles for Robbie Coltrane and Liam Neeson. (Ben had a lot more to say about it, but the episode was already running long!)
Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known as the author of Tarzan, John Carter of Mars and The Land That Time Forgot, also wrote the Pellucidar series of novels set inside a hollow Earth full of dinosaurs and psychic pterodacyl-men. The first book, At the Earth’s Core, was adapted into another favourite film from Ben’s youth, starring Doug McClure and Peter Cushing.
You too can enjoy the video posted to Twitter of “Inside Earth Girl“.
The Monty Python sketch starring John Cleese and a hovercraft full of eels (mentioned only) is usually referred to as “Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook”. It first appeared in the twelfth episode of the second series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus in 1970, and was adapted as part of the film And Now for Something Completely Different the following year.
While continuity among Discworld books is generally pretty good, Terry’s “don’t worry about it too much” attitude has produced a surprisingly difficult to pin down chronology – in no small part because of the time travel magic employed by Granny Weatherwax halfway through Wyrd Sisters. The most widely-accepted timeline puts the events of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic about two years before those in Equal Rites, three years before Mort, nine years before Sourcery, twelve years before Pyramids and twenty-one years before Guards! Guards!. Assuming Rincewind is 33 when we first meet him, which seems the most likely age, this means he is 41 when he is cast into the Dungeon Dimensions in Sourcery, and that three years pass on the Disc before he escapes in Eric!, though it’s unclear how much he’d have aged in that time. By the time we’ll meet him again in Interesting Times, the timeline has him wandering the Disc for another six years, making him at least 47, and possibly as old as 50 – but still considerably younger than David Jason, who was 68 when he played Rincewind at the beginning of his adventures in The Colour of Magic.
The Great Fire of London started in a bakery in Pudding Lane and destroyed most of the City of London over four days in September 1666, burning down over 13,000 houses and hundreds of larger structures, including St Paul’s Cathedral. Many older buildings survived the fire, including the Tower of London and several pubs and churches.
The idea of going on holiday goes back at least as far as the Roman Empire, where wealthy citizens would travel for as long as two years at a time. The more modern version dates back to the “Grand Tours” undertaken by wealthy young European men from the 17th century onwards. By the late 19th century, the innovations of the industrial revolution like steam trains and ocean liners made travel for pleasure more affordable for workers, but just like the other things he brought from the Agatean Empire, Twoflower’s brand of tourism seems a twentieth century idea, rooted in the culture of the 1950s and 60s.
It’s amazing we didn’t mention this, but Rincewind appears without his signature pointy hat. Well…he has one, of some sort, but he quickly loses it and it’s clearly not the one with “WIZZARD” written on it sequins which is later so dear to him. (It might also seem odd that someone with such a talent for languages is unable to spell his own job description in his mother tongue, but then again spelling on the Discworld is at best described as “informal”.)
Elric VIII, 428th Emperor of Melniboné – Elric of Melniboné for short – is the most famous creation of fantasy author Michael Moorcock. Physically frail and sickly, Elric is an anti-hero, reluctant ruler of his people and the only one among them to have a conscience. He is also an incarnation of the Eternal Champion, a doomed pawn in the battle between the cosmic forces of Law and Chaos across the multiverse. Early in his adventures he finds the magical black sword Stormbringer – a clear inspiration for Kring – which gives him strength, but consumes the souls of others – including many of those for whom Elric cares most.
To clarify Ben’s description of who’s keeping Twoflower alive, the Boy Emperor of the Agatean Empire sent the message asking for protection for Twoflower; the message calling for his assassination is from the Emperor’s Vizier. Both of them appear briefly in the fourth Discworld novel, Mort.
Pratchett had published three novels – and numerous short stories – prior to The Colour of Magic. The Carpet People (1971), for younger audiences, was originally written when he was 17; he later revised it, describing it as a collaboration with his younger self. The Dark Side of the Sun (1976) and Strata (1981) are comedy sci-fi novels, and contain the first appearances of a disc-shaped world – no turtle though! – and Hogswatch.
A mimic is one of a number of classic monsters from Dungeons & Dragons which appears as something innocuous – in the mimic’s case, it can change shape to resemble an inanimate object, most commonly a treasure chest. It first appeared in the original edition of the Monster Manual in 1977, and so was almost certainly an inspiration for the Luggage.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994, dir. Frank Darabont) is an award-winning film based on a novella by Stephen King. It stars Tim Robbins as a banker who is wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, and forced to use his accountancy skills to aid the corrupt prison warden’s money laundering scheme.
The Kanes mentioned by Joel are Solomon Kane, a Puritan witch hunter created by Robert E Howard, and Kane, Karl Edward Wagner’s reimagining of the Biblical Caine, red-headed son of Adam and his first wife Lilith who is cursed by God to walk the Earth for eternity as punishment for committing the first murder. Neither are traditional sword and sorcery heroes, and Wagner’s Kane has much in common with Moorcock’s Elric. As far as we can tell, there’s no-one named Kane on the Discworld.
If you want to know more about the Winchester Mystery House, episode 162 of the 99% Invisible podcast is a great place to start.
Australian spiders – and other deadly venomous animals like snakes and jellyfish, in Australia and elsewhere – probably got so deadly because they need to guarantee a kill when they use their venom. As in so many areas of evolution, there’d be an arms race between predator and prey, forcing venom to become more and more deadly over time. And that’s a race we humans aren’t even in, since we’re so rarely killed by venomous creatures that we’ve not evolved any kind of immunity to them. Evolution thus overcompensated on its potency, because it’s better to expend more energy than strictly necessary on creating super venom to make sure 100% of predators or prey to die, than it is to make a weaker venom which might leave some victims alive, meaning they leave the creature hungry, and also gives the victim a chance to pass on their resistance to their offspring. The BBC article “Why some animals have venoms so lethal, they can’t use them” by Josh Gabbatiss from 2016 is a great exploration of all of these ideas.
Ralph Bakshi’s Fire and Ice was a collaboration between Bakshi and fantasy artist Frank Frazzetta, best known for his comic book, book cover and album cover art – including a version of Conan the Barbarian which redefined the character from the 1960s on. The film used the rotoscoping technique, in which actors were filmed and then traced to lend realistic movement to the animated characters; Bakshi also used this technique for his other films, Wizards and Lord of the Rings. Fire and Ice was released in – surprise! – 1983.
The other movie that Ben thought Joel was talking about was The Flight of Dragons, a Rankin/Bass production based on a book by Peter Dickinson, which deals largely with the question of whether magic and science are compatible. It was released in 1982, though, so clearly it was the wrong film.
The Doctor Who story with people who are naked under their holograms is the 2013 Christmas special The Time of the Doctor, in which the Church of the Papal Mainframe requests that visitors do not wear clothes while visiting. It’s the final story for Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor, and occurs soon after the events of the fiftieth anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor.
Pete’s Dragon is a 1977 live-action Disney musical in which a young boy, Pete, escapes an abusive foster family with the help of Elliott, a friendly, animated fire-breathing green dragon who can make himself invisible. He befriends a lighthouse keeper and his daughter while pursued by his cruel foster parents, and a travelling snake oil salesman plots to capture Elliott and use his organs for potions that might actually work. It was remade in 2016, though in the new version Pete is orphaned in a car crash in the woods and survives there for six years with Elliott’s help before being found by a park ranger. The new one has a fancy CGI dragon that probably resembles Twoflower’s, but no songs.
Death by the Books is a fortnightly podcast about mystery, crime and other someone-dies books. In episode 9, Death by Pratchett, hosts Kirsti and Lianne out themselves as massive fans of you know who. It’s a great introduction to Pratchett and the Discworld as a whole, and they might cover some of the individual books in the future – after all, someone dies in most of them… They’re also on Twitter at @deathbythebooks.
Zweiblumen is, in fact, German, and literally translates as “Two Flowers”. (Twoflower would be “Zweiblume”, but presumably Pratchett thought Zweiblumen sounded better.)
Rincewind is clearly channelling an inspiration particle when he says “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into,” though as usual the particles have got it slightly wrong: the famous catchphrase of Hardy, the larger half of comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, was actually “this is another nice mess you’ve gotten us into”, though the confusion is understandable since they titled one of their films Another Fine Mess.
CW’s The Flash, now in its fifth season, is itself a spin-off of Arrow, both shows based on superhero characters from DC Comics. Along with later addition Supergirl, they started out with just the one main superhero character but have since brought many fan favourites from the comics to the small screen, albeit often with a twist. Case in point: the Elongated Man, who shows up in The Flash’s fourth season, is a lesser known superhero with stretching powers, though the television version draws more on Jim Carrey’s performance in The Mask than anything from the comics.
A “backronym” is a phrase crafted to turn a specific word into an acronym, as opposed to a real acronym in which the phrase comes first. They are often associated with words that are not normally acronyms, e.g. “Something Posing As Meat” is a backronym for Spam.
In Greek mythology, Tethys is a Titan, a daughter of Uranus and Gaia, and – as is the way with Greek myths – sister and wife of the sea Titan Oceanus. One of the moons of Saturn is named for her, which makes more sense when we recall that Saturn is the Roman equivalent of Kronos, one of Tethys’ brother Titans.
Waterworld is a famously terribly 1995 post-apocalyptic action film starring Kevin Costner as the Mariner, a mutant uniquely suited to life on a future Earth drowned under the melted polar ice caps. A trader played by Kim Coates offers the Mariner a paper page from a book as a valuable commodity, repeating the word “paper” over and over; the scene has been parodied and recreated many times as one of many things people find ridiculous about the film.
The contestants from each district in The Hunger Games novels by Suzanne Collins (and their film adaptations) are given lavish quarters before being forced to fight each other to the death; the winner is also treated to a luxurious lifestyle when the games are over.
When he says we never meet wizards who aren’t inept, Ben means as major protagonists; The Light Fantastic contains numerous wizards who are extremely ept, but most of them are out to kill Rincewind (and each other). Ipslore the Red in Sourcery is likewise an antagonist, and few of the faculty of Unseen University in that book are trustworthy.

#Pratchat16 Notes and Errata

8 February 2019 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the show notes and errata for episode 16, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Vorbis“, featuring guest, the Reverend Doctor Avril Hannah-Jones, discussing the thirteen Discworld novel, 1992’s Small Goods.

The episode title plays on the song “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”, probably more famous these days for being punned in popular culture than for the song itself! The best known version was recorded by the Hollies in 1969, though it’s also been recorded by Neil Diamond. A charity version featuring many UK artists was the UK number one Christmas single in 2012, supporting charities associated with the Hillsborough disaster – a disaster at a football stadium in 1989, where nearly 100 people were killed after a gate was opened and allowed more fans into a section of the grounds that was already dangerously crowded. The charity supported victims and their families through a new investigation into who was responsible, following the failure to prosecute police officers in charge of security and safety during the match.
The film Highlander (dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1986) stars Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod, the titular highlander, who discovers he is one of the immortals – seemingly ordinary humans who cannot die unless decapitated, and who are drawn to fight each other, stealing the magical power of other immortals whom they defeat until only one remains to collect “the Prize”. As well as being very 1980s, it has a killer soundtrack by Queen, songs from which can be found on their 1986 album It’s a Kind of Magic.
We’re pretty sure the cake Liz is thinking of is Breudher, a delicious buttery Sri Lankan cake with a Dutch influence.
Teen Power Inc. is a series of thirty books written by Australian author Emily Rodda (and others), first published in the 1990s. They feature six teenaged protagonists who create the titular agency to make some extra cash, and end up solving various mysteries. The series was republished in the US in the mid 2000s as The Raven Hill Mysteries.
Johnson and Friends (1990) was an Australian television program for children under 5 about Johnson, a stuffed elephant, and the other toys who live under the bed of a young boy and come to life when he’s asleep. It predates Toy Story by five years, but the “secret life of toys” genre has a much longer history than that anyway.
We’ll leave you to work out the coarse pun in Brother Nhumrod’s name for yourself, but the Biblical Nimrod was a king, a “mighty hunter”, and a great-grandson of Noah mentioned in the Books of Genesis, Chronicles and Micah. Tradition says he was leader of the kings who built the Tower of Babel, though this is not written in the Bible. Because of this folly, Dante placed him in the Circle of Treachery in Hell. “Nimrod” has also become an insult meaning a dim-witted person, popularised by Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, who use it as a taunt for Elmer Fudd, presumably mocking him for not being a “mighty hunter”.
A Royal Commission is a type of formal public inquiry carried out in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2012 and began in 2013. It investigated evidence of widespread protection of child abusers in a variety of community, sporting, religious and other institutions throughout Australia. The commission heard evidence from tens of thousands of people and handed down its final report in 2017.
After his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2007, rumours circulated that Sir Terry had “found God”. He answered with this piece in The Daily Mail, in which he revealed he was “brought up traditionally Church of England, which is to say that while churchgoing did not figure in my family’s plans for the Sabbath practically all the Ten Commandments were obeyed by instinct and a general air of reason, and kindness and decency prevailed.” He went on to say that while religion was never really discussed at home, and he was never a believer, he never disliked it.
The phrase “robbing Peter to pay Paul” – meaning to move debt from one place to another, rather than paying it off – is a pretty old phrase. Big thanks to listener Zoe, who linked us to entries from the Oxford and Brewer’s Dictionaries of Phrase and Fable. They tell us that the phrase has been around since at least the 14th century, and that the names were likely picked just because they were alliterative, though the phrase later acquired connections to the Saints.
The 2003 American musical Avenue Q explores adult concepts in a world inspired by Sesame Street – a city neighbourhood where humans, puppet people and furry monsters live side-by-side. The original production won three major Tony Awards. The song “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” features the neighbourhood – including their superintendent Gary Coleman (“yes, that Gary Coleman“) – agreeing to the premise of the title.
“White privilege” is the concept that in many Western cultures, people with white skin have a number of privileges they may not even be aware of, that are not extended to people of colour. At a basic level it manifests as a cultural idea of white as default or normal, but – like all forms of privilege – it also influences social status, freedom and opportunity. While it has been written about in some form since the 1930s, and given its current name in the mid 60s, it was brought to mainstream attention with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014.
To “drink the Kool-Aid” is to have succumbed to belief in an extreme dogma, without understanding the consequences. The phrase is a reference to the Jonestown Massacre, in which cult leader Jim Jones had his followers drink cordial (which may or may not have been Kool-Aid brand – this is still being disputed) poisoned with cyanide and prescription drugs.
Seafurrers: The Ships’ Cats Who Lapped and Mapped the World by Philippa Sandall was published in 2018. We highly recommend checking out the Seafurrers blog – maintained by Bart the cat – for even more tales of nautical cats! It has several entries describing the exploits of Trim, who accompanied English explorer Matthew Flinders. And yes, despite what the current Australian government might think or spend 7 million dollars on, James Cook never circumnavigated Australia.
Jonah was commanded by God to delivery a prophecy to the city of Nineveh, warning them they must repent for their wicked ways, but Jonah instead tries to flee from God on a ship. When a clearly unnatural storm brews, the sailors work out by casting lots that Jonah is to blame; he offers to be thrown overboard, but they refuse until it becomes clear there’s no other way to survive the storm. Jonah is saved from drowning by a giant fish, which swallows him whole; he prays to God and after three days is vomited up on shore, and this time obeys God’s command to prophesy to Nineveh. He gets his nose bent out of shape when God shows the city mercy following their repentance, so God teaches him a lesson by growing a plant to give him shade in the desert, then having a worm bite the plant to kill it.
Whistle Down the Wind, which premiered in 1996, was Lloyd Webber’s 14th major stage musical, and the second musical adaptation of the 1961 British film of the same name, directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Hayley Mills. (You might know her from several Disney films of the 1960s, including Pollyanna and The Parent Trap.) The film was based on the 1959 novel by Mills’ mother, Mary Hayley Bell. Mills was nominated for a BAFTA for her performance. Elizabeth’s recollection of the play she saw at the age of 7 is…vaguely correct. In the parts that matter.
Prosperity theology is the belief that God rewards an individual for their faith – often expressed through donations to the church – with blessings of material wealth and miracles of healing. In the United States its popularity dates back to the 1940s and 1950s, but it really rose to prominence through televangelism in the 1960s to 1980s with influential figures like Oral Roberts (yes, that’s his real name) and Jim Bakker. It was adopted more widely by some Pentecostal and Charismatic churches and spread worldwide in the 1990s and 2000s, by which time it was estimated more than 15% of American Christians believed in some form of prosperity theology. It is criticised by many Christians for, among other things, a reliance on non-traditional interpretations of the Bible.
Philip K Dick’s 1956 short story The Minority Report was originally published in the magazine Fantastic Universe. The 2002 film starring Tom Cruise changes many things about the original story, including the ending. A sequel television series, in which one of the precogs helps a detective solve crimes about a decade after the events of the film, aired on Fox in 2015 but was cancelled after one season of ten episodes.
While Ben remembers both names correctly, he fails to remember that Constable Washpot is Constable Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets. “Washpot” is a somewhat derogatory nickname given to him by other members of the Watch. He goes on rounds with his friend Smite-the-Ungodly-with-Cunning-Arguments.
Many religions believe that only people who meet certain criteria will enter Heaven – various Christian denominations require the faithful to be baptised, for example. But the most famous example of a very small number who will be saved are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are often said to believe that only 144,000 people will enter Heaven. This is based on a fairly literal interpretation of chapter 14 of the Book of Revelation, but while they do indeed believe only 144,000 people will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, the other faithful will live on in an Earthly paradise of God’s making. Which is just as well, as there are now more than 20 million members of the church worldwide.
Liz’s talk about “the gourd” is a reference to Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the 1979 film in which Brian Cohen (played by Graham Chapman), a man born at the same time as Jesus Christ, is mistaken for the Messiah. His followers willingly drink a Kool-Aid of their own devising and despite his protests interpret his every act as holy, seizing on things he drops as relics – including, briefly, “the Holy Gourd of Jerusalem”.
“Fake news” traditionally referred to deliberately misleading or fabricated information spread in the form of seemingly legitimate journalism. The phrase was co-opted by Donald Trump (among others) to describe any news story or media outlet which he dislikes, regardless of their accuracy. This increasingly popular usage caused the British Parliament to abandon use of the term in official documents. “Fake News” was selected as Collins’ Dictionary’s word of the year for 2017, though they disputed Trump’s claim that he invented it.
Steptoe and Son and Open All Hours are British sit-coms about a scrap merchant and his son, and a gormless shop keeper, respectively. Neither are really that close a match for Didactylos and Urn’s discussions of the philosophy market, but the sentiment is in there.
The educational programming language Logo was invented in 1967 by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon, and intended to teach principles of the functional language LISP. Robot turtles pre-date Logo by nearly 20 years, but the language is credited with the popularity of turtle graphics and turtles equipped with pens. The first Logo turtle was named “Irving”.
Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 depicts a future dystopia in which books are banned and squads of “firemen” are sent to burn any that are found. The title refers to the temperature at which book paper catches fire. At the novel’s conclusion, the protagonist – a disillusioned fireman named Guy Montag – meets a resistance group whose members each preserve a work of literature by memorising the entire text, reciting it on request.
There are many examples of lost works throughout the history of literature. Shakespeare supposedly wrote many plays which have not survived, most famously Love’s Labors Won, though its existence is disputed. Jane Austen left behind several unfinished works, including the novels Sandition and The Watsons. Emily Bronte had supposedly begun work on a second novel after Wuthering Heights, but no evidence of it has ever been found. On a similar note, all of Sir Terry’s unfinished works and notes were destroyed, as per the instructions in his will, by having his hard drives crushed under an antique steam roller.
Up until the late 1970s it was common practice for the BBC to junk archive recordings of old programs, as pre-digital storage took up a lot of space and it was not common to rebroadcast old material. As a result, nearly 100 episodes of Doctor Who made between 1966 and 1969 are missing, though audio recordings do exist. Copies have occasionally been located outside of the UK, and since 2013 there have been persistent rumours that most of the missing episodes had been located by a fan, but they have yet to materialise…
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016, dir. Gareth Edwards) was the first of the Star Wars anthology films – new stories set in the universe established by George Lucas’ films, but not part of the main “Skywalker saga” series. It is set immediately before the original Star Wars (aka Episode IV: A New Hope), and shows how a small team of rebel soldiers steal the plans for the Galactic Empire’s weapon of mass destruction, the first Death Star. In the third of the original Star Wars films, Return of the Jedi, the Empire has built a second Death Star; rebel leader Mon Mothma famously proclaims that “many Bothans died” to steal its plans.
A hagiography is a biography of a saint or other important spiritual person.
The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals held after World War II in which many high-ranking Nazi officers were tried for war crimes, including their participation in the Holocaust. It had a major effect on international law, including the creation of the International Criminal Court in 2002.
“Spirits of place” are local gods or spirits who watch over a specific place. They are a staple of many religions and folk beliefs, but are probably best known from classical Roman religion, where they were known as genius loci. They are also popular in fiction; Ben’s favourite examples are the gods of the River Thames and its tributaries in Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London and its sequels.
The modern Santa Claus is mostly derived from the English figure Father Christmas and the Dutch character Sinterklaas, as well as tales of the historical Saint Nicholas. Nicholas was a bishop in the Greek city of Myra in the fourth century CE. As well as the lesser known exploits cited by Avril, he is said to have secretly given gifts to the faithful, the aspect most associated with Santa. There are also theories that Santa Claus co-opts pagan beliefs and the Germanic god Wodan, but we’ll leave those ideas for Hogfather.
UHF (1989; dir. Jay Levey) – known outside America as The Vidiot from UHF – was “Weird Al” Yankovic’s first and only feature film. He plays George Newman, a man whose overactive imagination gets him fired from many jobs, but when he ends up in charge of a low-budget local television station his bizarre program ideas make the channel a hit. It features a slew of film and television parodies, and co-starred Fran Drescher (The Nanny) and Michael Richards (Seinfeld).
The Peter Capaldi moment discussed by Avril and Ben is his speech from 2015’s The Zygon Inversion, written by Peter Harness and Steven Moffat. He and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart both say “this is not a game”, and at a key moment the Doctor offers the villain forgiveness. The podcast Doctor Who and the Episodes of Death – on which Ben and Avril have both been guests – uses an excerpt from the speech in its introduction. You can watch the whole speech on YouTube here.
On the social media platform Twitter, whose logo is a stylised bird, new user accounts are represented by an icon of an egg.
“Doublethink” describes the act of holding two contradictory ideas at the same time. It was coined by George Orwell as part of the government-created language Nuspeak, which he invented for his dystopian novel 1984.
Richard Dawkins is an ethologist and popular science writer, especially on the subject of evolution. His 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker explains and gives evidence for biological evolution. In the last decade or two Dawkins has spent as much time criticising religion as explaining science, and is considered a major influence on several atheist movements, but has been criticised for making inflammatory remarks, especially via Twitter. In 2018, a study regarding scientists’ attitudes – including those about religion and atheism – interviewed 137 UK scientists, and though no specific questions were asked about Dawkins, 48 participants mentioned him, most because they disliked him. He wrote Unweaving the Rainbow in 1998, before his anti-religious obsession really took over.
“Bin Chicken” is the most popular (and cruel) nickname given to the Australian White Ibis, the reasons for which are chronicled in “AUSTRALIAN SONG ABOUT BIRDS” by Christian Van Vuuren, co-creator of the web series Bondi Hipsters and television comedy Soul Mates. This Gizmodo article presents a rather more positive view.
Aside from Lester del Rey’s short story “The Pipes of Pan”, first published in the magazine Unknown Fantasy Fiction in 1940, early examples of gods requiring human belief to survive in fiction include Lord Dunsany’s short story Poseidon from 1941, Belgian author Jean Ray’s 1943 novel Malpertuis, and even Gilbert and Sullivan’s first opera, “Thespis”, written in 1871. More recent examples include Douglas Adams’ The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and The Sandman.
The original Clash of the Titans from 1981, directed by Desmond Davis, was the last film to feature stop-motion animation by famous movie magician Ray Harryhausen. It retells the Greek myth of Perseus (played by Harry Hamlin, later to star in the first season of Veronica Mars), the hero who slew Medusa and the Kraken (or Cetus, in the original myth), and features the Greek gods (including Laurence Olivier as Zeus and Maggie Smith as Thetis) playing a game very similar to the one seen in The Colour of Magic. The 3D 2010 remake stars Sam Worthington as Perseus, Liam Neeson as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as Hades, and is surprisingly not awful. The sequel Wrath of the Titans (2012) specifically deals with the waning of the gods thanks to a lack of belief.
The Absent-Minded Professor (1961; dir. Robert Stevenson) is a Disney romantic comedy based loosely on the short story “A Situation of Gravity” by Samuel W. Taylor. It stars Fred MacMurray as Professor Ned Brainard (no, really), a brilliant but forgetful scientist who invents a substance which absorbs energy when it strikes a hard surface, allowing it to bounce higher and higher, which Prof Brainard calls “flubber”. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it was remade by Disney in 1997 as Flubber starring Robin Williams. The original was so popular it became the first ever Disney film to have a sequel: 1963’s Son of Flubber. The title of the film lends it’s name to the stock character of an academically gifted (or obsessed) individual who neglects the more practical and/or emotional parts of life.

#Pratchat17 Notes and Errata

8 March 2019 by Ben Leave a Comment

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.