[HBO] Dune: Prophecy

[Holman]

OK, here's a thread for the new HBO series DUNE: PROPHECY.

The first episode dropped last night. Impressions?

[Jaymann]

OK, here's a thread for the new HBO series DUNE: PROPHECY.

The first episode dropped last night. Impressions?

I will check it out. What era is it?

[Isgrimnur]

Set 10,000 years before the events of Dune, the series "follows sisters Valya and Tula Harkonnen as they combat forces that threaten the future of humanity, and establish the fabled sect known as the Bene Gesserit.

[Holman]

OK, here's a thread for the new HBO series DUNE: PROPHECY.

The first episode dropped last night. Impressions?

I will check it out. What era is it?

It's set about 10,000 years prior to Paul Atreides. The focus appears to be on the rise of the Bene Gesserit order as depicted in one of Brian Herbert's prequel novels.

The universe, politics, and family names are remarkably similar to those of Paul's time. This long stagnation is a theme of Frank Herbert's, but, geez, 10,000 years is a very long time for people not to change their clothing style.

[hepcat]

OK, here's a thread for the new HBO series DUNE: PROPHECY.

The first episode dropped last night. Impressions?

I will check it out. What era is it?

The 60's. So it's got a lot of scenes of the Bene Gesserit driving around in VW vans and talking about seeing the Stones and stuff.

[Isgrimnur]

I figured them more for Deadheads

[hepcat]

I'm hoping they start to solve crimes with a lovable sandworm named Kwisatz Doo

[Holman]

I'm hoping they start to solve crimes with a lovable sandworm named Kwisatz Doo

"Scoob-Hulud" was *right there*, man.

[hepcat]

Just restarted my Max sub for this. Going to watch it and then catch up on The Penguin (which I've heard good things about), Franchise and finish up Kite Man.

[Holman]

I just finished episode one of the show.

Impressions and reactions:

Spoiler:

They're trying very hard to capture the look and feel of Villeneuve's Dune, from the the sets to the cinematography to the sound design. There are points where it's clear that they don't have the same budget, but nothing looks bad.

The acting and writing are kind of uneven, with a good deal of awkward dialogue heavy on exposition and kludged-in references to things you'll know from other Dune-flavored products.

The two main Bene Gesserit leaders (Valya and her sister) are good actors, but even they are forced to lecture each other with exposition.

We've had discussions elsewhere of the cultural stagnation central to the Dune universe: 10,000 or more years of the same families and the same culture, etc. But there are points here where it really stands out, such as when a Salusa Secundus nightclub is playing the same club beats you heard in the 1990s.

The below are probably more a criticism of the Brian Herbert source material:

The BG seems to go from its formation (as the founding Reverend Mother is mentor to our main BG characters) to a hugely influential power across the whole Imperium in a single generation. By 30 years after the first RevMom's death, every Great House is begging for a BG truthsayer. It seems like this should have taken much longer.

Plus (although perhaps this will be addressed later), where do the BG's powers actually come from? Rather than a deep hidden history that extends into even our own prehistory (which is what I always assumed), they seem to have just developed very recently in show time.

The Fremen are already causing trouble for Spice production 10,000 years pre-Paul? That's a long time for a ruthless Imperium to just put up with an insurrection threatening the universe's most valuable resource.

And of course this means that Arrakis is the center of everything, even then, rather than being an economically necessary but culturally distant backwater.

The weird soldier/survivor from Arrakis is played by the same actor who played a weird soldier/survivor in RAISED BY WOLVES, and he does it with the same over-intense twitchy energy. He also possesses an occult ability to kill by making people burn with internal flames--even, apparently, people several planets away.

There is absolutely nothing analogous to this power in Frank Herbert's Duniverse. The character seems to believe that he has been given this power by "the gods." I will wait and see what the show does with this, but it's worth remembering that there is no indication whatsoever that any God or gods are real in Herbert's Dune.

[hepcat]

Alright, I've seen it.

I tend to agree with everything Holman writes about it.

My other thoughts?

Spoiler:

Frank Herbert plopped us right down in the center of a fully formed universe full of a history that had evolved over thousands of years. It showed reverence to that history, rarely "dumbing it down" or hand waving away large parts of it.

TV Dune does not.

First off, I was always under the impression that it took many generations for the Empire to form after the Butlerian Jihads. At least in a way that allowed it to span numerous worlds. They rid themselves of thinking machines after the war, thus setting themselves back thousands of years. They had to evolve a new technology to replace that which they were used to. A new technology that would replace EVERYTHING they had known. Mentats, space folding, the Bene Gesserit...all those things took a long time to create and perfect. Mainly because they were evolving humanity itself. And that's not something you can easily do.

But in TV Dune, a lot of this seems to take place in the span of 70 years or so.

Come on, man. EARN that history. Don't just wave a wand and say "oh, it exists now!" like they did with "the voice" (that pissed me off...."I taught myself how to control humans using my voice while watching Space Football! Cool, huh? Not sure how it works but <uses voice> that doesn't matter to you!")

As for the writing, it just seems like mediocre fan fiction written by someone who doesn't really understand Dune's intricate politics. They watched Game of Thrones and decided they could just crib from that. I mean, they literally started the show with a story about a young nobleman marrying a noblewoman to join two houses. Sound familiar? I'm looking at you, Joffrey.

Some members of the cast are amazing though. Mark Strong can do no wrong. Nor can Emily Watson...although I can't rhyme that one. Olivia Williams? Great too.

...then there's Travis Fimmel. I'm fascinated by Fimmel. I can't decide if he's a great actor or one of the worst. And those feelings change minute by minute while I'm watching him perform. All I keep thinking when he shows up in a show is "Is that Crispin Glover on sedatives?".

The rest of the cast was obviously pulled from a casting session for a CW show. The amount of pout posing is crushingly heavy.

Summary: It's not the Dune prequel I needed. Nor is it the one I wanted. But I'll watch it because I want to find out if Travis Fimmel's character is really just the same one from Raised by Wolves and HBO is bringing THAT show back secretly with this. The moment Mother shows up in the cross position while flying, I'll rescind every negative thing I've written about the show.

[Holman]

Also:

Spoiler:

Salusa Secundus (the Corrino emperor's homeworld) in this series appears to be a lush and well-populated paradise planet, while in Villeneuve's and Herbert's Dune S. Secundus is a harsh and unforgiving world. It has to be, because it produces Sardaukar toughness the same way Arrakis produces Fremen toughness. Indeed, the Sardaukar's toughness was said to be to base of the Corrino's rise to power.

In Villeneuve's Dune Part Two, we do see the Emperor, Irulan, and the Imperial court enjoying life on a comfortable green world, but it is never identified as S. Secundus. It really can't be, considering what we saw in Piter's visit to recruit Sardaukar on S.S. in Dune Part One. (One assumes that the Corrinos moved to more pleasant world after achieving power, but it has always been said in Dune that they maintain S.S. as a training ground for their strongest troops.)

There is even the fact that, in either novel 2 or novel 3, it is pointed out that the Atreides-led imperium has begun to terraform S.S. into a pleasant world in order to undermine the basic conditions that produce the Sardaukar.

Also, in the engagement party scene, we see a Baron Harkonnen (a thin and weaselly guy, not any Baron character we know) pitching the value of Whale Fur to the Emperor. But Whale Fur is known to Dune aficionados as a product of Caladan, the Atreides homeworld. Lest we perhaps assume that the Harkonnens controlled Caladan at some point, we have already been told half an hour earlier that the Harkonnen house has been exiled to a barren and unhospitable world some time before, and that our current BG protagonist feels the loss keenly.

Is the show not doing its own assigned homework?

[Zarathud]

Summary: It's not the Dune prequel I needed. Nor is it the one I wanted. But I'll watch it because I want to find out if Travis Fimmel's character is really just the same one from Raised by Wolves and HBO is bringing THAT show back secretly with this. The moment Mother shows up in the cross position while flying, I'll rescind every negative thing I've written about the show.

But you can't stand even the mention of the Dune prequels. I'm surprised you're even watching it, some of that Brian Herbert may stain your delicate eyeballs.

Spoiler:

The robots were the ones who colonized the galaxy. Humans just stole it from them, then replaced the thinking machines with guild navigators, Bene Gesserit and Mentats. The empire is by definition unearned -- it's stolen with the blood of millions.

[hepcat]

You’re misunderstanding what “earned” means in the context of what I wrote.

Spoiler:

Its unearned because TV Dune seems to just say “Okay, we’ve got all those things now” without explaining how, or even giving them a reasonable amount of time for those things to happen.

If this is all based off Brian’s stuff, then I’m not surprised the pacing for everything feels rushed and not well thought out.

Spoiler:

The robots were the ones who colonized the galaxy.

This is false. They did not. They enslaved humans on their planets but there's no mention in any of Frank Herbert's books that AI colonized other planets in any capacity.

I went into it knowing it was unlikely it would live up to the source material. I just didn’t want it to piss all over Frank Herbert’s work while also giving us an interesting story. It’s too early to see if they’ll make up for the things that already have annoyed me, but it definitely wasn’t off to a good start for me.

Also, my eyeballs aren’t delicate. They’re beautifully shaped with magnificent green flecks that highlight my gorgeous forehead.

[ImLawBoy]

This conversation has echos of the conversations we had when the first season of House of the Dragon came out. It seems like any time there's a chance to give a positive or a negative interpretation of something, the go to is negative for many people without giving the show the opportunity to develop and show otherwise. Maybe I'm too Pollyanna-ish, but with a series like this I think you need to give it time to develop. It reads like some have already decided it's not going to be that good.

And maybe it wont' be. I thought the first episode was pretty good. My Dune Lore consists of reading through Heretics of Dune as a teenager, seeing the Lynch movie in multiple formats, re-reading the original Dune before the new movies, and then watching the new movies. There's a lot of the background and subtleties of things that I don't remember because it's been so long since I read anything other than the first book. Still, the look and feel of the first episode was great. Sure, there was a lot of exposition, but I would expect that in a first episode of series where you can't assume the general audience (who maybe got their first feel for the Duneiverse with the recent movies) has much background knowledge.

Now, if this goes to form others will say that they're not condemning it yet and are willing to give it a chance, and I'll point out that almost all of the comments so far have been negative, which gives the impression that it's being condemned, etc. Time is a flat circle.

But I'll watch it because I want to find out if Travis Fimmel's character is really just the same one from Raised by Wolves and HBO is bringing THAT show back secretly with this. The moment Mother shows up in the cross position while flying, I'll rescind every negative thing I've written about the show.

You can't tell me he wasn't channeling Sol at the end there.

[hepcat]

You can't tell me he wasn't channeling Sol at the end there.

He was absolutely doing the same character.

This conversation has echos of the conversations we had when the first season of House of the Dragon came out. It seems like any time there's a chance to give a positive or a negative interpretation of something, the go to is negative for many people without giving the show the opportunity to develop and show otherwise.

I think you're being a bit unfair to those who don't immediately love shows. If you go back and read my critiques both here and for House of Dragons, you'll find that I added the caveat that it's still early and I'm hoping they get better. You absolutely should be able to critique something after one episode if the things in that one episode you find subpar. I'm criticizing what I've seen, not what I haven't.

[ImLawBoy]

This conversation has echos of the conversations we had when the first season of House of the Dragon came out. It seems like any time there's a chance to give a positive or a negative interpretation of something, the go to is negative for many people without giving the show the opportunity to develop and show otherwise.

I think you're being a bit unfair to those who don't immediately love shows. If you go back and read my critiques both here and for House of Dragons, you'll find that I added the caveat that it's still early and I'm hoping they get better. You absolutely should be able to critique something after one episode if the things in that one episode you find subpar. I'm criticizing what I've seen, not what I haven't.

Now, if this goes to form others will say that they're not condemning it yet and are willing to give it a chance, and I'll point out that almost all of the comments so far have been negative, which gives the impression that it's being condemned, etc. Time is a flat circle.

[hepcat]

I chose to ignore your clause which essentially states "any criticism of this show not accompanied by at least one bit of praise is considered wrong in perpetuity" you're a lawyer, so i expected it. :

[Holman]

I'm definitely going to give the show a chance.

It's fun to nerdpick one's favorite stuff, though, and the Dune world (as I have interpreted it and defined it in my headcanon, of course) is one of my favorites.

[El Guapo]

FWIW I did like the first episode. Really my only critique of the show appears to be more with the source material than the show (10,000 years of almost perfect stability is wildly implausible, but then I suppose this is giant sand worm territory).

[ImLawBoy]

To be clear, I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't air your thoughts and criticisms. I get that it can fun to really dig in and nitpick. I'm just more airing a general complaint that could probably be better expressed as disappointment that so much of discussion around shows like this, and really pop culture in general, focuses on what's wrong rather than on what's right. I mean, I know it's the internet so criticism is the bread and butter, but sometimes I pine for optimism.

[hepcat]

And i think you're overlooking plenty of times where people here have gushed over things in order to point out the times they didn't. I daresay that I post about things I love more than I do those I savage.*

If you want to believe something negative about people, that's probably all you'll see.

* With the notable exception of anything to do with Mark Wahlberg.

[Exodor]

This conversation has echos of the conversations we had when the first season of House of the Dragon came out. It seems like any time there's a chance to give a positive or a negative interpretation of something, the go to is negative for many people without giving the show the opportunity to develop and show otherwise. Maybe I'm too Pollyanna-ish, but with a series like this I think you need to give it time to develop. It reads like some have already decided it's not going to be that good.

I think both HotD and Dune suffer from obsessive fans who freak out over trivia like a guild crest being red instead of blue because "that's not how it was in the books!" while regular watchers just enjoy the show for what it is.

I'm not really a Dune guy. I've read the first book and enjoyed the new movies but I never watched Lynch's version and I'm not steeped in the lore. I enjoyed this first episode and I'm hopeful the nitpicking from the obsessives doesn't tank the ratings and get the show cancelled.

[hepcat]

I don't even feel I'm nitpicking. My criticisms were about pacing and plot, for the most part.

[ImLawBoy]

If you want to believe something negative about people, that's probably all you'll see.

That's wildly unfair, and I'm going to assume you didn't mean it to come out like that. Nowhere did I say or imply that people don't have positive impressions of things. I specifically said "so much of discussion", which leaves plenty of room for gushing about things you love. I'm well aware that you and others enjoy a lot of things too, but I don't always comment on them like this because they don't raise my hackles. I feel like you're taking this as a personal attack (thus the line I quoted above), but that's really not my intent and I apologize if it's coming off that way. You're absolutely free to criticize as you see fit, and I'm allowed to call out what I see as unfair or, perhaps more accurately in this case, premature criticism (and then you're allowed to defend your criticism, etc.). That doesn't mean you're wrong and that I'm right - we're just sharing our takes.

I'm reminded again of discussions around House of the Dragon when it first came out. Some (including you, I think) felt that Matt Smith's Daemon was a one dimensional evil guy after the first episode, while I argued that we needed to give the show time to breathe and for character development. In the end we were both right - Daemon was one dimensional in the first episode, while the show developed his character more throughout the season (I haven't watched season 2 yet, so no comment there). But I'll maintain here that my take was ultimately the better take because it's a series and it's unreasonable to ask the show creators to put all of the character development in the first episode.

So let's look at one of Holman's criticisms of the first episode. (Minor spoilers here for some dialogue, so skip if you haven't seen and want to wait).

Also, in the engagement party scene, we see a Baron Harkonnen (a thin and weaselly guy, not any Baron character we know) pitching the value of Whale Fur to the Emperor. But Whale Fur is known to Dune aficionados as a product of Caladan, the Atreides homeworld. Lest we perhaps assume that the Harkonnens controlled Caladan at some point, we have already been told half an hour earlier that the Harkonnen house has been exiled to a barren and unhospitable world some time before, and that our current BG protagonist feels the loss keenly.

Is the show not doing its own assigned homework?

Why is the assumption here the show is missing basic facts of the Duneiverse (the negative assumption) instead of dropping us into the middle of a conversation where Harkonnen is trying to get the Emperor on his side for some nefarious scheme where he gets control of Caladan (the positive assumption)? This is why I often argue for giving this kind of show time. If this were Netflix and folks were able to binge all the shows on Day 1, this criticism may have never come up if the positive assumption comes to fruition. Or perhaps it would have been a throwaway that ended up showing the creators were indeed not doing their homework. Too early to tell, but the instinct to take it as a negative instead of as a potential point of intrigue is what gets me.

So to reiterate, I am not arguing that people shouldn't share their takes, positive or negative. I am arguing that I think some of the negative takes do not properly factor in the nature of a show such as this and thus may be premature. Consider my posting here planting a flag in the ground so that if we end up all saying how fantastic the show was at the end of the season and marveling at how subtly the creators planted the seeds in the first episode for the greatness that was to come, we can all agree that I was right.

[Holman]

Hey. True Duneheads know that if you're sloppy with whale fur today, you'll be sloppy with pongi rice tomorrow.

[hepcat]

If you want to believe something negative about people, that's probably all you'll see.

That's wildly unfair

I wish you'd go back and read everything you posted in response to the criticisms I made about the show (as you have done in the past when I criticized House of Dragons, and which I previously took with good nature and humor) and put yourself in my shoes. You trivialized my criticisms of the show by going after my right to do so (the caveat that you weren't doing that doesn't hold water in light of what you wrote multiple times) instead of just addressing my criticisms (which are valid). You conflated my critique into a lament about how awful the internet is. It doesn't take an empath to get slightly offended by that.

So yes, I did mean that. And I think it was perfectly fair considering how you had to stumble across the easily found evidence of NUMEROUS times I've sung the praises of some film or other item in pop culture to get to the few where I didn't, then turn it into a wildly unfair insinuation that I'm part of some crappy segment of the internet that just likes shitting on things.*

* With the notable exception of anything to do with Mark Wahlberg.

[ImLawBoy]

I will try to make it a point to refrain from discussing criticism of pop culture with you going forward, as we clearly are not on the same wavelength.

[hepcat]

If that means I won't be told in so many words how awful I am for criticizing something, I sincerely appreciate that.

[ImLawBoy]

Your insistence on reading ill-intent into my comments even after I've specifically said there is no ill-intent is disappointing. It's calling me a liar.

[hepcat]

I've specifically said there is no ill-intent

Then we're good. Let's return to discussing how crappy that first episode was.

[Holman]

how crappy that first episode was.

SPICEY, you mean.

[$iljanus]

Hey. True Duneheads know that if you're sloppy with whale fur today, you'll be sloppy with pongi rice tomorrow.

Past...I got a guy who can get the latest game console from Ix.

[El Guapo]

Hey. True Duneheads know that if you're sloppy with whale fur today, you'll be sloppy with pongi rice tomorrow.

Past...I got a guy who can get the latest game console from Ix.

I think I'm speaking for everyone when I say that we're all hoping to see some gilk in a later episode.

[hepcat]

I'm leaving a plate of cookies and some gilk out for Santa this year.

....I'm making that son of a bitch pay for not getting me a Simon when I was 6.

On topic question time:

Spoiler:

What do we think Travis Fimmel did to the kid at the end? As Holman points out, gods don't really exist. But man steps into his shoes thanks to genetic engineering, eugenics and quasi mystical science in the form of spice quite often in the Dune universe. As they completely side stepped explaining how one sister was able to teach herself the voice (at least so far), I hope that isn't a sign that the show is going to just say "because" a lot.

[Holman]

On topic question time:

Spoiler:

What do we think Travis Fimmel did to the kid at the end? As Holman points out, gods don't really exist. But man steps into his shoes thanks to genetic engineering, eugenics and quasi mystical science in the form of spice quite often in the Dune universe. As they completely side stepped explaining how one sister was able to teach herself the voice (at least so far), I hope that isn't a sign that the show is going to just say "because" a lot.

My uneducated guess:

Spoiler:

He somehow is or is connected to the Big Threat that the sisterhood sees coming.

The mechanism seems to be that he made the kid burn up through some sort of telekinesis or matter manipulation. But people's special powers in Herbert are always tied to incredible reflexes or senses or self-control; they are heightened versions of what we (or at least Bruce Lee) can already do. There doesn't seem to be an explanation of that sort here, although of course the show hasn't yet gone far enough to offer one, which I assume it will.

That the sacrifice of the kid somehow brought on a similar death for the Emperor's Truthsayer on a completely different planet certainly appears to kick it way up into magic territory.

[$iljanus]

I'm leaving a plate of cookies and some gilk out for Santa this year.

....I'm making that son of a bitch pay for not getting me a Simon when I was 6.

On topic question time:

Spoiler:

What do we think Travis Fimmel did to the kid at the end? As Holman points out, gods don't really exist. But man steps into his shoes thanks to genetic engineering, eugenics and quasi mystical science in the form of spice quite often in the Dune universe. As they completely side stepped explaining how one sister was able to teach herself the voice (at least so far), I hope that isn't a sign that the show is going to just say "because" a lot.

Spoiler:

Nanotech poison left over from the machine wars? Or just a nasty biological agent and he delivered it to the kid and that Bene Gesserit sister somehow and perhaps he’s under some mental compulsion hence his face all gnarled up when the child groom was being barbecued? Poison was pretty popular in the Imperium. I don’t know if I want it to be spice related but I guess 10,000 years ago anything may be possible?

[Jaymann]

I generally don't like the Bene Gesserit except when they use The Voice. But it does make me wonder:

Spoiler:

If she could get the unbeliever to stab herself, why couldn't she just Voice force her to bend the knee?

[Holman]

I generally don't like the Bene Gesserit except when they use The Voice. But it does make me wonder:

Spoiler:

If she could get the unbeliever to stab herself, why couldn't she just Voice force her to bend the knee?

I believe the Voice is all about something happening right there in the moment. It overcomes immediate resistance, but it doesn't permanently control someone's mind. You can make someone drop their weapon or unlock a door, but you can't make them your permanent follower.

In the same way that Bene Gesserit fighting techniques are just superb martial arts, the Voice is a superb commanding presence and authority that (somehow) sidesteps the listener's own will.

[$iljanus]

I generally don't like the Bene Gesserit except when they use The Voice. But it does make me wonder:

Spoiler:

If she could get the unbeliever to stab herself, why couldn't she just Voice force her to bend the knee?

Spoiler:

Probably the effect is only good for immediate actions "Stab yourself, untie me, let her go, etc" but if the unwitting victim thinks about it for a bit they would snap out of the compulsion.

Edit: Yeah what Holman said. He truly is the Kwisatz Haderach.