Wheel of Time TV series
- Thread starter seitora
- Start date
It occurs to me we've barely seen any shots of channeling so far. There were about four shots in this trailer that were a half-second each, and three of them were low-key. There isn't a huge amount of channeling going on in the first half of the first book, but I hope this doesn't mean that they're having issues with the SFX for channeling and aren't showing much in the trailers as a result.
So I watched through the first 7 episodes now. My verdict so far is that while it's pretty, the show so far has been a fairly hot mess.
The order of the plot gets moved around. The Caemlyn visit in Book 1 is skipped, with some of the Tar Valon stuff from Book 2 taking its place instead, and the Logain escort gets bumped up to take a couple of episodes. That's a fairly big whatever for me. If stuff can be moved around for expediency while keeping the overall plot consistent, not a big deal.
Perhaps the single thing that really is annoying from a book reader viewpoint is the Whitecloaks. Aemon Valda gets a major upgrade to a baddie here briefly who is shown to have killed multiple Aes Sedai in the past. The Three Oaths have been very slightly modified in a strange way (it omits the ability of Aes Sedai to use the One Power as a weapon against Dark Friends and creatures of the Dark), but they're still able to use it to protect their own lives. The system of channeling in the books is set-up that if you learn to cast a weave a certain way, you can't unlearn it that way, so if you always need your hands to cast a fireball, you can't unlearn to do it without your hands. But that's never brought up here, outside of one very brief line. That, and the Whitecloaks are allowed to set up literally outside of Tar Valon and torture Perrin. Tar Valon in the books would never have let the Whitecloaks set up shop right outside the White Tower.
About the only thing thing I can think of that the showrunners did by switching stuff around that is really clever is using the dagger from Shadar Logoth as a bait-and-switch. When Mat gets possessed by the dagger, several characters think he's channeling and is the Dragon Reborn and has gone mad, only for it to then be revealed he was possessed instead.
There's some weirdness in here where Perrin is married at the start of the show, only to accidentally kill his wife when fighting Trollocs. It's kind of a 'wait, what' moment, but since they already have him and Egwene going to Tar Valon by way of the Tinkers caravan, it's a moderately useful way of speeding up his character arc about the whole 'hammer vs axe' subplot he had going on in the books.
If I had to say what really annoys me, it's that the showrunners took what was a high fantasy plot, used it for the first few episodes, and then ground it to a halt so they can start to throw in a whole bunch of character development moments. But a lot of those moments are way too hamfisted, and they're frontloading a lot of stuff that happened in earlier books, trying to move the Nynaeve and Lan romance along at hyperspeed and losing all subtlety of Moiraine and Siuan's pillow friends. Also, shoehorning in a strange Egwene/Rand/Perrin love triangle, which is going to be really awkward if both Elayne and Faile show up in the next season.
The order of the plot gets moved around. The Caemlyn visit in Book 1 is skipped, with some of the Tar Valon stuff from Book 2 taking its place instead, and the Logain escort gets bumped up to take a couple of episodes. That's a fairly big whatever for me. If stuff can be moved around for expediency while keeping the overall plot consistent, not a big deal.
Perhaps the single thing that really is annoying from a book reader viewpoint is the Whitecloaks. Aemon Valda gets a major upgrade to a baddie here briefly who is shown to have killed multiple Aes Sedai in the past. The Three Oaths have been very slightly modified in a strange way (it omits the ability of Aes Sedai to use the One Power as a weapon against Dark Friends and creatures of the Dark), but they're still able to use it to protect their own lives. The system of channeling in the books is set-up that if you learn to cast a weave a certain way, you can't unlearn it that way, so if you always need your hands to cast a fireball, you can't unlearn to do it without your hands. But that's never brought up here, outside of one very brief line. That, and the Whitecloaks are allowed to set up literally outside of Tar Valon and torture Perrin. Tar Valon in the books would never have let the Whitecloaks set up shop right outside the White Tower.
About the only thing thing I can think of that the showrunners did by switching stuff around that is really clever is using the dagger from Shadar Logoth as a bait-and-switch. When Mat gets possessed by the dagger, several characters think he's channeling and is the Dragon Reborn and has gone mad, only for it to then be revealed he was possessed instead.
There's some weirdness in here where Perrin is married at the start of the show, only to accidentally kill his wife when fighting Trollocs. It's kind of a 'wait, what' moment, but since they already have him and Egwene going to Tar Valon by way of the Tinkers caravan, it's a moderately useful way of speeding up his character arc about the whole 'hammer vs axe' subplot he had going on in the books.
If I had to say what really annoys me, it's that the showrunners took what was a high fantasy plot, used it for the first few episodes, and then ground it to a halt so they can start to throw in a whole bunch of character development moments. But a lot of those moments are way too hamfisted, and they're frontloading a lot of stuff that happened in earlier books, trying to move the Nynaeve and Lan romance along at hyperspeed and losing all subtlety of Moiraine and Siuan's pillow friends. Also, shoehorning in a strange Egwene/Rand/Perrin love triangle, which is going to be really awkward if both Elayne and Faile show up in the next season.
Last episode was REALLY underwhelming
The opening was...meh. They have Lews Therin and the Amyrlin seat briefly speak, and basically distill it down to 'a man and a woman argue for a few minutes'. There's no real heat to it, no 'we've been at war for a hundred years and both the men and the women are exhausted and Lews has a desperate last-ditch plan to seal the Dark One'. It's just them talking in a room for a few minutes, non-sequitur about it being a nursery, and the only useful shot being the outdoors shot showing it's a futuristic society. Lews at least in my head feels like he should be overwhelming, charismatic, larger-than-life. This Lews...wasn't. And random bit of lore failure when Lews calls the woman the Tamyrlin Seat, which is annoying as a book reader. I think she also calls him Dragon REBORN, as opposed to just Dragon (at least the subtitles said so, not sure if that's the actual dialogue since I didn't rewind to confirm), which is another big lore failure.
I'm surprised they just decided to chop out the Green Man entirely. I was honestly expecting a Green Man + Rand + Moiraine vs Aginor + Balthamel fight. And speaking of which...they just...dropped the two Forsaken entirely? The deal with the devil with not-Dark One was it, and the actors just did not emote well. Josha Stradowski wasn't doing it for me one bit there.
Let's see, what else. Moiraine having a sa'angreal for men is a little wtf. That was an artifact from cutting the Green Man, since he had a one-time use pool of untainted saidin. Moiraine foreshadows Elaida's existence with the mention of an Aes Sedai who would whip her until she would use the One Power. The Fal Dara princess I assume is supposed to be a precursor to Morgase, who could also channel but basically was the absolutely weakest a woman channeller could be with the One Power. Seanchan design looks neat, but it vaguely looks like they're not going to follow the higher position = less hair thing. Oh boy. I can't believe they're actually bringing the Seanchan in. I wonder how all that slavery and brainwashing is going to be displayed, or sanitised, next season. Nothing else has really gone off the rails now for the overall plot, outside of Agelmar and Loial presumably being killed (neither are confirmed dead. Loial is moderately important to the plot. Agelmar gets a two-bit scene again late in the series and that's it). Everybody can still reunite in Falme by the end of next season. < SPOILERS for Book 2 and later
The opening was...meh. They have Lews Therin and the Amyrlin seat briefly speak, and basically distill it down to 'a man and a woman argue for a few minutes'. There's no real heat to it, no 'we've been at war for a hundred years and both the men and the women are exhausted and Lews has a desperate last-ditch plan to seal the Dark One'. It's just them talking in a room for a few minutes, non-sequitur about it being a nursery, and the only useful shot being the outdoors shot showing it's a futuristic society. Lews at least in my head feels like he should be overwhelming, charismatic, larger-than-life. This Lews...wasn't. And random bit of lore failure when Lews calls the woman the Tamyrlin Seat, which is annoying as a book reader. I think she also calls him Dragon REBORN, as opposed to just Dragon (at least the subtitles said so, not sure if that's the actual dialogue since I didn't rewind to confirm), which is another big lore failure.
I'm surprised they just decided to chop out the Green Man entirely. I was honestly expecting a Green Man + Rand + Moiraine vs Aginor + Balthamel fight. And speaking of which...they just...dropped the two Forsaken entirely? The deal with the devil with not-Dark One was it, and the actors just did not emote well. Josha Stradowski wasn't doing it for me one bit there.
Let's see, what else. Moiraine having a sa'angreal for men is a little wtf. That was an artifact from cutting the Green Man, since he had a one-time use pool of untainted saidin. Moiraine foreshadows Elaida's existence with the mention of an Aes Sedai who would whip her until she would use the One Power. The Fal Dara princess I assume is supposed to be a precursor to Morgase, who could also channel but basically was the absolutely weakest a woman channeller could be with the One Power. Seanchan design looks neat, but it vaguely looks like they're not going to follow the higher position = less hair thing. Oh boy. I can't believe they're actually bringing the Seanchan in. I wonder how all that slavery and brainwashing is going to be displayed, or sanitised, next season. Nothing else has really gone off the rails now for the overall plot, outside of Agelmar and Loial presumably being killed (neither are confirmed dead. Loial is moderately important to the plot. Agelmar gets a two-bit scene again late in the series and that's it). Everybody can still reunite in Falme by the end of next season. < SPOILERS for Book 2 and later