It doesn't need to be Erasmus, or Omnius. It could also be the Ixians. We know that they, like Richese, were famous for skirting the edges of what was permissible Tech. And the Ixians were also noted for being not exactly friendly to the Imperium. Using forbidden machines to create a virus in order to destabilize the Imperium would be right up their alley...
Spoilers Dune: Prophecy - Spoilers!
- Thread starter FPAlpha
- Start date
She was meant to replace Ynez, but that was when they were leaving Kieran there. The idea was that nobody would realize the princess was in on the breakout and nobody would be looking for her, only for Valya.
Once Kieran was also breaking out there was no point in leaving a replacement Ynez behind, because nobody is that stupid. Who breaks out the Mother Superior and the Atreides swordmaster but leaves the rebel princess behind? Everybody with half a brain would see through that.
So, because their plan was already shot to hell by Ynez refusing to leave her boyfriend behind, Theodosia improvised to by them time. It was the best she could do with resources on hand.
Once Kieran was also breaking out there was no point in leaving a replacement Ynez behind, because nobody is that stupid. Who breaks out the Mother Superior and the Atreides swordmaster but leaves the rebel princess behind? Everybody with half a brain would see through that.
So, because their plan was already shot to hell by Ynez refusing to leave her boyfriend behind, Theodosia improvised to by them time. It was the best she could do with resources on hand.
Me too. What's the Empress' background? Could she be from Ix?
I don't think so. She's a rabid Butlerian, so not even remotely Ixian...
I kind of blanked her background.
I think all we've had was that she is a Butlerian (ironically more so than her husband, a member of House Butler), they cited her noble house at one point (House Arat?), and her marriage brought in the non-aligned worlds to the Imperium
Damn, that was bad.
When i saw the run time of 1.2 hours i groaned ( bad sign 1). Then halfway i started fast forwarding through most of the Javico scenes ( really bad sign 2). Nothing that happened in this season finale excited me even a little bit.
The Sisters are an infighting, internally treacherous group of women ( as in not just disagreeing on the course of action but actively infighting), the Emperor is a wet blanket, Desmond Hart is just going around killing people and i wonder what the whole point of the season was at all. Everybody is running around like headless chickens, doing something then pivoting to doing something else, nobody has a real plan much less Valya/The Sisters who seem completely inept at this point even though they like to think themselves as master manipulators ( which never really gets to be seen in the show).
The writing is a mess, the characters even more so and as much as i love Fimmel from his Vikings days he's a complete failure here.
So yeah, i'm out for season two. This was an endurance slog for me after the mediocre pilot episode with the hopes it would get better and it only got worse. Too bad, i had hopes they would pull off something good worthy of the universe but the producers ain't Villeneuve or Frank Herbert, that much was evident.
When i saw the run time of 1.2 hours i groaned ( bad sign 1). Then halfway i started fast forwarding through most of the Javico scenes ( really bad sign 2). Nothing that happened in this season finale excited me even a little bit.
The Sisters are an infighting, internally treacherous group of women ( as in not just disagreeing on the course of action but actively infighting), the Emperor is a wet blanket, Desmond Hart is just going around killing people and i wonder what the whole point of the season was at all. Everybody is running around like headless chickens, doing something then pivoting to doing something else, nobody has a real plan much less Valya/The Sisters who seem completely inept at this point even though they like to think themselves as master manipulators ( which never really gets to be seen in the show).
The writing is a mess, the characters even more so and as much as i love Fimmel from his Vikings days he's a complete failure here.
So yeah, i'm out for season two. This was an endurance slog for me after the mediocre pilot episode with the hopes it would get better and it only got worse. Too bad, i had hopes they would pull off something good worthy of the universe but the producers ain't Villeneuve or Frank Herbert, that much was evident.
Deep cover?
At this point it's a possibility, there was definitely a vibe of "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"
I can't get past how that highly important and secret piece of equipment could be accessed via crowbar.
Was that the last episode? Just started getting interesting.
I still haven't gotten over the switchblades.
Sometimes simplicity wins out.
I love this show. (I know a lot of people don't. That's okay. I understand some of the complaints.) It's SO right up my alley because it has so many soap opera elements and tropes. It's I, Claudius set in the Dune universe, and since I have some rudimentary knowledge of what's going on in that universe it's the perfect show for me. And the presence of Javicco Corrino doesn't hurt either. I can't wait for the BluRays in April, I hope they'll put a decent amount of bonus and behind the scenes stuff on them.
Even though my favorite character most likely won't be in season 2 (sigh) I'll still keep track of this show. It doesn't happen very often that a 'modern' show manages to capture me, I prefer re-watching old shows over and over again these days, but this one sure managed. I'm glad they'll be getting another season. I hope they'll be able to flesh things out a bit more, something they couldn't do in the first season for a number of reasons.
Even though my favorite character most likely won't be in season 2 (sigh) I'll still keep track of this show. It doesn't happen very often that a 'modern' show manages to capture me, I prefer re-watching old shows over and over again these days, but this one sure managed. I'm glad they'll be getting another season. I hope they'll be able to flesh things out a bit more, something they couldn't do in the first season for a number of reasons.
Has anyone bought the show on Blu-Ray? It's just (finally) been released. I'm a little miffed about the lack of new special features (most of them are already on Youtube), but otherwise I can't complain. I mean these days you have to be glad when a show gets a physical media release in the first place.
Also, the soundtrack will be released on vinyl soon (delivery date for me is Monday next week). I hardly ever pay attention to music on a show but this one is different.
Oh and a friend of mine drew a wonderful Javicco portrait for my birthday, I figured I'd share this here as a small bonus, too. I know people here don't really seem to care much for the show but hey.Gotta hold up the Corrino banner.
(art by AnnaUsagi2/Instagram)
Also, the soundtrack will be released on vinyl soon (delivery date for me is Monday next week). I hardly ever pay attention to music on a show but this one is different.
Oh and a friend of mine drew a wonderful Javicco portrait for my birthday, I figured I'd share this here as a small bonus, too. I know people here don't really seem to care much for the show but hey.
Yeah, I got the Blu-ray, in fact that's how I watched the show. I don't subscribe to Crave (the Canadian streaming service which carries most Max shows) since they don't have very many shows I'm interested in, the few that I do have an interest in are Max shows and Max does usually put their shows on physical media within a reasonable timeframe, I just wait for that. And in this case, I'm enough of a Dune completist that I would have bought this on Blu-ray anyway, making it less of a priority to sign up for Crave just to watch this and then wait for The Last of Us.
Anyway, my feelings on this show echo that of many in this thread that while it is a well put together show with excellent production values and an amazing cast, the show seems to lack a bit of soul to it. It's entertaining enough to hold my attention, but it doesn't really grab me enough to consider it Must Watch television. The first half of the season was the much better half, with the third episode, the flashback about Valya and Tula in their youth being a really good episode and a part of me thought they could probably have expanded that storyline out to an entire season and have a better show. The second half of the season did suffer from spinning its gears, though the finale was certainly an engaging enough ending.
Anyway, my feelings on this show echo that of many in this thread that while it is a well put together show with excellent production values and an amazing cast, the show seems to lack a bit of soul to it. It's entertaining enough to hold my attention, but it doesn't really grab me enough to consider it Must Watch television. The first half of the season was the much better half, with the third episode, the flashback about Valya and Tula in their youth being a really good episode and a part of me thought they could probably have expanded that storyline out to an entire season and have a better show. The second half of the season did suffer from spinning its gears, though the finale was certainly an engaging enough ending.
It's funny how the third episode was the only one I didn't rate 10/10, haha. (No Javicco in it. Hey. I'm biased. I know.) I normally would have waited for the BluRays as well but for this show I made a rare exception and watched it on Amazon.
I'm really curious as to what they're going to do next, given how they've mentioned that there are more stories in the Sisterhood/Mentats/Navigators of Dune trilogy the show is based on and that the second season might dive into those a bit more... what I really hope is that they get more episodes to tell their story this time. I love the show to bits but I can definitely go along with the criticism about things taking wild turns sometimes because there just didn't seem to be enough time for the whole story.
And there's a lot of background knowledge things you have to be aware of in order to fully grasp what's going on. I've now read the trilogy the show is based on and there are quite a few plot points that only fully make sense if you're aware of what happened in the books. (Kinda mirrors the Lynch Dune movie here, that one I didn't understand at all until I read the book, lol.)
I'm going through the show again right now on BluRay and I'm still finding new little plot points to examine. It's what I really like about the show, it forces you to pay attention and yet there's still things you miss and only notice after a few re-watches.
I'm really curious as to what they're going to do next, given how they've mentioned that there are more stories in the Sisterhood/Mentats/Navigators of Dune trilogy the show is based on and that the second season might dive into those a bit more... what I really hope is that they get more episodes to tell their story this time. I love the show to bits but I can definitely go along with the criticism about things taking wild turns sometimes because there just didn't seem to be enough time for the whole story.
And there's a lot of background knowledge things you have to be aware of in order to fully grasp what's going on. I've now read the trilogy the show is based on and there are quite a few plot points that only fully make sense if you're aware of what happened in the books. (Kinda mirrors the Lynch Dune movie here, that one I didn't understand at all until I read the book, lol.)
I'm going through the show again right now on BluRay and I'm still finding new little plot points to examine. It's what I really like about the show, it forces you to pay attention and yet there's still things you miss and only notice after a few re-watches.
All righty... I finally had a chance to see this pile of <nonsense>.
It took about 4 episodes just to figure out who was who, since most of the female cast looks alike. Yes, I know some of them were supposed to be the same people 30 years apart. But when you have to study the angle of people's eyebrows to figure out who they are, that's not good.
I had to laugh when I saw one particular name among the crazy number of "executive producers": Byron Merritt. He's Frank Herbert's grandson, and used to run the old Dunenovels.com forum, back when the KJA/BH novels first came out. There was quite the forum feud going on between that one and Arrakeen at the time (about 15 years ago, give or take some months). Byron had the notion that the people at Arrakeen were all really horrible people because a few of them crossed a few lines in how far they went in criticizing the nuDune novels (I ended up permabanning them from Arrakeen some time after Byron permabanned them from Dunenovels.com; criticizing the books is one thing, but getting personal about KJA's family is unacceptable).
I'd honestly tried to extend an olive branch to Byron by inviting him to Arrakeen so he could see for himself how much we genuinely loved Frank Herbert's legacy of work, not only Dune but his other novels, stories, and poems... but he didn't seem to care about that. He only cared that we didn't worship that pile of crap that KJA/BH wrote based on the Holy Notes That Frank Left that I no longer believe ever existed (given how the stories about them have changed every time KJA talks about them).
Anyway, the episodes. I take it these 6 are all there are? At least that's all that's currently available on Crave. It's like half a train wreck. It's kinda really bad, but I still hoped for more resolution. At least confirmation of my theory that Desmond was actually turned into some kind of cyborg/Dune-style Terminator, since he seems able to survive anything.
I realize some of these posts are over a year old. It's not really reasonable to expect a new thread for this, so please don't give me static over it.
He and KJA will never acknowledge that their version has very little to do with the real version put forth by Frank Herbert and expanded on in the Dune Encyclopedia, by Dr. Willis McNelly. The only thing in common was that an AI was responsible for the death of a baby whose mother was of the Butler family. They completely misinterpreted the actual meaning and intent of the Butlerian Jihad.
According to the Dune Encyclopedia (p. 516, in the "ZENSUNNI WANDERERS, History" article), the Zensunni were transported to Arrakis by the Spacing Guild in the year 7193 A.G and after that they referred to themselves as Fremen. So by the time the Atreides (Duke Leto, etc.) arrived there to take over the spice harvest, the Fremen had been there for 2998 years.
The article details the history of the Zensunni Wanderers, as they migrated from planet to planet (sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not). But there's no way they were on Arrakis for 10,000 years. Even adding up the time referenced in the Encyclopedia plus the thousands of years accounted for by Frank Herbert's novels, it still doesn't add up to 10,000 years.
According to the Dune Encyclopedia, the Bene Gesserit already existed at the time of the beginning of the Butlerian Jihad. Jehane Butler's place in the Kwisatz Haderach breeding program was to be the grandmother of the Kwisatz Haderach (her unborn daughter, Sarah, was supposed to bear the Kwisatz Haderach - until a self-programming AI doctor made the decision to abort her shortly before she was to have been born).
The thing about spice addiction is that once you're addicted, you can't wean yourself off of it. You either keep taking it or you die. That's enough to motivate the nobility to rebel. It's got nothing to do with the common people. They never got addicted because unless they lived on Arrakis or served in a noble household that was generous enough to share with the servants, they never had a chance to become addicted. You can't become addicted to something you never become exposed to.
Wow. They actually quoted from Frank Herbert's novel. This line is also in the David Lynch movie.
The show lost me here. There's no way that any Padishah Emperor would willingly go along with a female heir if he had a healthy son to inherit. That's not to say there weren't Empresses regnant (again, the Dune Encyclopedia has quite an interesting article and a very long list of the Imperial rulers). There just weren't that many, compared with the number of male rulers.
Um, what?
Okay, I could take this as an in-joke. After all, two of the I, Claudius actors (Sian Phillips and Patrick Stewart) were in the David Lynch Dune movie. Sian Phillips made an excellent Gaius Helen Mohiam, and she was terrifying as Livia Augusta.
But put her up against this thing?
I, Claudius was based on real history (yes, even acknowledging that Suetonius probably was less than truthful about some of the deeds attributed to Livia, it was mostly reasonably accurate).
The way the Bene Gesserit is portrayed in this TV show, I wouldn't trust them to run a lemonade stand, let alone influence the Emperor of the Known Universe and the Noble Houses of the Landraad, never mind the whole Kwisatz Haderach breeding program.
Another thing that really took me out of it was putting Lila through the Agony in the hopes that she could access Raquella in her Other Memory and find the answer to... whatever it was. This series was so uneven, contradictory, and confusing, I've already forgotten and I only finished watching it last night (binged it over about 2 1/2 days).
Since they were expecting Lila to access Other Memory, why wasn't anyone considerably more upset than they were over those other Memories taking over Lila's body? Hello, that's Abomination. You know, the thing that's anathema to the Bene Gesserit? Possession, which comes with a death sentence among the Bene Gesserit, as well as among the Fremen?
But ho-hum, Lila is possessed by a number of Other Memories, and while some are a bit scared, most of them just go along with it.
Good grief. Valya isn't anyone I'd trust to lead the Sisterhood. She's just a psychopath who never got over her personal issues and put them in the background.
What a mess. Oh, well. It'll just add to my reasons for not liking nuDune. Kevin J. Anderson once asked me why I read his books if I hated them so much (we were corresponding on MySpace, back when that was a decent social media platform). I told him that I kept hoping they would improve, but so far I kept being disappointed. So I'd hoped this series might be a decent watch. Alas, it's not. I'll admit that using the Voice to force people to kill themselves is scary. But after the first couple of dozen times of people slitting their own throats, don't the rest of them get even slightly suspicious?
Ugh.
It took about 4 episodes just to figure out who was who, since most of the female cast looks alike. Yes, I know some of them were supposed to be the same people 30 years apart. But when you have to study the angle of people's eyebrows to figure out who they are, that's not good.
I had to laugh when I saw one particular name among the crazy number of "executive producers": Byron Merritt. He's Frank Herbert's grandson, and used to run the old Dunenovels.com forum, back when the KJA/BH novels first came out. There was quite the forum feud going on between that one and Arrakeen at the time (about 15 years ago, give or take some months). Byron had the notion that the people at Arrakeen were all really horrible people because a few of them crossed a few lines in how far they went in criticizing the nuDune novels (I ended up permabanning them from Arrakeen some time after Byron permabanned them from Dunenovels.com; criticizing the books is one thing, but getting personal about KJA's family is unacceptable).
I'd honestly tried to extend an olive branch to Byron by inviting him to Arrakeen so he could see for himself how much we genuinely loved Frank Herbert's legacy of work, not only Dune but his other novels, stories, and poems... but he didn't seem to care about that. He only cared that we didn't worship that pile of crap that KJA/BH wrote based on the Holy Notes That Frank Left that I no longer believe ever existed (given how the stories about them have changed every time KJA talks about them).
Anyway, the episodes. I take it these 6 are all there are? At least that's all that's currently available on Crave. It's like half a train wreck. It's kinda really bad, but I still hoped for more resolution. At least confirmation of my theory that Desmond was actually turned into some kind of cyborg/Dune-style Terminator, since he seems able to survive anything.
I realize some of these posts are over a year old. It's not really reasonable to expect a new thread for this, so please don't give me static over it.
He and KJA will never acknowledge that their version has very little to do with the real version put forth by Frank Herbert and expanded on in the Dune Encyclopedia, by Dr. Willis McNelly. The only thing in common was that an AI was responsible for the death of a baby whose mother was of the Butler family. They completely misinterpreted the actual meaning and intent of the Butlerian Jihad.
Unfortunately, the Dune Wiki doesn't give timings, so anything goes, I guess.
Zensunni Wanderers
The Zensunni Wanderers or Wandering Zensunni were the ancestors of the Fremen. Descending from Muslims on Earth, the Zensunni Wanderers traveled from one world to another in search of freedom from persecution by the Imperial raiders, a journey which came to be known as Zensunni Wandering...dune.fandom.com
It does seem unlikely that the Fremen had been had been on Arrakis for 10,000 years given the number of planets they are supposed to have passed through. However, perhaps they arrived from all the various planets in independent migrations and could assimilate easily because they shared a religion.
According to the Dune Encyclopedia (p. 516, in the "ZENSUNNI WANDERERS, History" article), the Zensunni were transported to Arrakis by the Spacing Guild in the year 7193 A.G and after that they referred to themselves as Fremen. So by the time the Atreides (Duke Leto, etc.) arrived there to take over the spice harvest, the Fremen had been there for 2998 years.
The article details the history of the Zensunni Wanderers, as they migrated from planet to planet (sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not). But there's no way they were on Arrakis for 10,000 years. Even adding up the time referenced in the Encyclopedia plus the thousands of years accounted for by Frank Herbert's novels, it still doesn't add up to 10,000 years.
According to the Dune Encyclopedia, the Bene Gesserit already existed at the time of the beginning of the Butlerian Jihad. Jehane Butler's place in the Kwisatz Haderach breeding program was to be the grandmother of the Kwisatz Haderach (her unborn daughter, Sarah, was supposed to bear the Kwisatz Haderach - until a self-programming AI doctor made the decision to abort her shortly before she was to have been born).
The thing about spice addiction is that once you're addicted, you can't wean yourself off of it. You either keep taking it or you die. That's enough to motivate the nobility to rebel. It's got nothing to do with the common people. They never got addicted because unless they lived on Arrakis or served in a noble household that was generous enough to share with the servants, they never had a chance to become addicted. You can't become addicted to something you never become exposed to.
Wow. They actually quoted from Frank Herbert's novel. This line is also in the David Lynch movie.
The show lost me here. There's no way that any Padishah Emperor would willingly go along with a female heir if he had a healthy son to inherit. That's not to say there weren't Empresses regnant (again, the Dune Encyclopedia has quite an interesting article and a very long list of the Imperial rulers). There just weren't that many, compared with the number of male rulers.
Um, what?
Okay, I could take this as an in-joke. After all, two of the I, Claudius actors (Sian Phillips and Patrick Stewart) were in the David Lynch Dune movie. Sian Phillips made an excellent Gaius Helen Mohiam, and she was terrifying as Livia Augusta.
But put her up against this thing?
I, Claudius was based on real history (yes, even acknowledging that Suetonius probably was less than truthful about some of the deeds attributed to Livia, it was mostly reasonably accurate).
The way the Bene Gesserit is portrayed in this TV show, I wouldn't trust them to run a lemonade stand, let alone influence the Emperor of the Known Universe and the Noble Houses of the Landraad, never mind the whole Kwisatz Haderach breeding program.
Another thing that really took me out of it was putting Lila through the Agony in the hopes that she could access Raquella in her Other Memory and find the answer to... whatever it was. This series was so uneven, contradictory, and confusing, I've already forgotten and I only finished watching it last night (binged it over about 2 1/2 days).
Since they were expecting Lila to access Other Memory, why wasn't anyone considerably more upset than they were over those other Memories taking over Lila's body? Hello, that's Abomination. You know, the thing that's anathema to the Bene Gesserit? Possession, which comes with a death sentence among the Bene Gesserit, as well as among the Fremen?
But ho-hum, Lila is possessed by a number of Other Memories, and while some are a bit scared, most of them just go along with it.
Good grief. Valya isn't anyone I'd trust to lead the Sisterhood. She's just a psychopath who never got over her personal issues and put them in the background.
What a mess. Oh, well. It'll just add to my reasons for not liking nuDune. Kevin J. Anderson once asked me why I read his books if I hated them so much (we were corresponding on MySpace, back when that was a decent social media platform). I told him that I kept hoping they would improve, but so far I kept being disappointed. So I'd hoped this series might be a decent watch. Alas, it's not. I'll admit that using the Voice to force people to kill themselves is scary. But after the first couple of dozen times of people slitting their own throats, don't the rest of them get even slightly suspicious?
Ugh.
To play devil's advocate here, the Dune Encyclopedia is essentially polished and officially licensed fan fiction which ignores Heretics and Chapterhouse. The books written by Frank Herbert seem vague enough on the specifics to at least allow for the possibility of the TV show's interpretation.Timewalker said:
The Dune Encyclopedia doesn't include Heretics or Chapterhouse because it was published before they were. Kinda hard to include books that didn't exist at the time of the DE's publication, wouldn't you say?
(or at the very least, both the DE and Heretics were released in the same year, which wouldn't have given McNelly enough time to read it, decide what to include, get it written, and ready for publication)
As for "officially licensed fanfiction", OH. COME. ON.
Many years ago I found a fanfic of "Dune 7" (as the sequel to Chapterhouse was commonly known among fans) on a Geocities site. I'm still kicking myself for not downloading and preserving it, because it was excellent. It was light-years ahead of that pathetic crap that KJA/BH spewed out.
As Frank Herbert says in his introduction to the Dune Encyclopedia:
Frank Herbert said:
This introduction is dated November 1983, so it stands to reason that it's impossible for McNelly to have included anything from Heretics. The DE was already past the point of adding more content.
Note that Frank Herbert didn't say anything about stuff his son and some other opportunistic author might do 13 years after his death. I think it's pretty clear that he was reserving his own rights, not anyone else's to contradict the DE.*
*At the time he wrote that introduction, he would have already contradicted a huge detail about Duncan Idaho. In the section of the Encyclopedia about Duncan Idaho, there are details of various gholas besides those in Messiah onwards. The Duncan Idaho in God Emperor, according to the Encyclopedia, was also known as Duncan-the-Last. One fundamental thing about being brought back time and time again as a ghola is that not even once had Leto ever thought to ask him if he wanted to come back - to keep on being reborn as a ghola. Duncan-the-Last has decided that it's definitely NOT what he expected when he gave his life for Paul and Jessica, not what he'd ever wanted, and so he destroyed the means to resurrect him after the death of his current incarnation.
As we see in Heretics, the Bene Gesserit didn't give any more of a damn about what Duncan wanted than Leto did (easy enough to get DNA and the Tleilaxu would have been happy to cooperate, for the right price). It's too bad FH didn't address that point further in his last two books. Maybe he might have in Dune 7, if he'd been able to finish it. Unfortunately, we'll never know.
Actually, speaking of the Tleilaxu... this reminds me of another point about this TV series that took me right out of it. The Bene Gesserit who was the Face Dancer... By that time in binge-watching this, I was just really ready for it to all be over, so I didn't catch what her origins were. The Tleilaxu are a variant form of human, but one thing that both FH and KJA/BH agree on is that the Tleilaxu had no use for females, other than as biological "tanks" - fit only to produce more Tleilaxu, or possibly gholas if they had a contract to do so. If the TV series was consistent with the novels (all of them), that Face Dancer was really a Tleilaxu male. So what was that character's origin stated as being? I have to confess that I've already forgotten and really don't feel like rewatching that whole miserable episode.
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