I thought about creating a Dune-specific header image for this blog, but I didn't think this aspect of the franchise deserved there extra effort. So you get today's lunch instead.
We just finished the third episode of Dune: Prophecy over dinner and...this show is so weird. But I'm not talking David Lynch's Dune kind of weird but more WHAT THE HECK IS THIS SHOW?
Potential spoilers for the how and some of the prequel books ahead.
First, I recognize that this was bound to be an uphill trudge for me given I'm not the biggest fan of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's expanded prequel and sequel content for the Dune universe as a whole. Many don't want to consider these other books as even potentially canonical given the maybe quirky directions they've taken with some of the plotlines. In the expanded universe of Dune, the franchise is burdened with the Skywalker problem - everything seems to go back to the Atreides and the Harkonnen families.
Before the show, I opted to finally read the Great Schools of Dune trilogy, which covers the material that probably inspired the HBO series. The show itself is set sometime after the events of the books but has included scenes from those books in the show as flashbacks. This week's episode was almost entirely a flashback episode and it covers a lot of material from the books - but in a different way. And it feels even weirder when a show inspired by books you don't like doesn't even follow those books closely - so we're in very weird territory now.
It was already weird in the books that the writers decided to try to explain EVERYTHING about the sisterhood - including having separate members develop the skills of Truthsense and the Voice. Valya Harkonnen had been credited to developing the Voice, but she kept this skill quite secret and only used it in very select situations where people would be unaware of her ability. In the show, especially this episode, it's implied that she already had the skill before joining the Sisterhood and she seems to have no qualms trying to control other people regardless of potential witnesses. And this feels so...messy, especially if the Sisters are going to be eventually known for carefully thinking actions through and such.
Granted, Valya isn't the ideal sister and this sisterhood is not yet the actual Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. But what we're getting instead feels very muddy and convoluted and it's not even clear to me what the end goal is. And that end-of-episode stinger? I guess it wasn't terrible and felt a lot more dramatic than what the books described, but sure, it's TV.
I'm still going to try to get to the end of the series just to give it a fair shake, but it's clearly not priority viewing.
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