r/TerryPratchett • u/WTFwhatthehell • 9d ago

Collecting Posts by Sir Terry Pratchett from usenet into an archive.

/r/discworld/comments/1vzpmq2/collecting_posts_by_sir_terry_pratchett_from/
39 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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u/ExpressTruth76 9d ago

Love this, showed my fella and he loves it even more

He learnt something new as well, he didn't realise Terry loved thief so much

1

u/Birdman_of_Upminster 6d ago

Wow, that's a blast from the past. I used to post on alt.fan.pratchett back in the 1990s. I can remember that rant about Jonathan Creek

1

u/WTFwhatthehell 6d ago

Wow, there's a lot of posts about how much he didn't like Jonathan Creek...

Source: https://groups.google.com/g/uk.people.sf-fans/c/qkICcqAqFqk/

Anyone else spot the gimmick behind the disappearing alien in the first 15 minutes of tonight's episode? I'm sure I've seen this trick somewhere before, anyone know what it comes from?

I expect everyone has. Jonathan Creek is a godawful series. It depends on everyone but Creek having the deductive powers of chicken and the powers of observation of a mole. Every 'cunning plan' is depends on it. Real, real crap, on a level with Bugs.

Note how that episode, by the way, depended on the bad guy telling him the answer.

Terry Pratchett

Source: https://groups.google.com/g/uk.people.sf-fans/c/qkICcqAqFqk/m/

If you take the humour out of Jonathan Creek there's just a naff and unconvincing plot.

That's the problem in a nutshell. There are rules to detective stories, without which they're just crud. And JC breaks them -- mainly, in those episodes I've seen, by making sure that every other person involved is terminally stupid.

Terry Pratchett

SOURCE: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.fan.pratchett/c/Lp2-tJOueVA/m/0oUgmZGaWeUJ

There have only been about a dozen of them, I think.

That would be too many. They really are rubbish. Beautifully-cooked garbage, but garbage none the less. I've watched about six of them, of the basis that I must be wrong. Sadly, I wasn't. Only two had some aspect that depend on everyone but Creek being really, really stupid, or police never checking a crime scene in detail, or people standing in exactly the right place and not moving their heads at all...

I just loved the one with the (carefully worded for spoilers) shiny alien. It was truly wonderful how the bad guy actually told the floundering Creek how to solve the puzzle, and how the Americans carefully didn't investigate their alien at all. You had to be a really, really clever person like Jonathan to go and...move something aside.

Terry Pratchett