The Wheel of Time

[calsnowskier]

Is watching this show worth it? Is it a good adaptation at all, or just read the books?

I watched it with zero book knowledge.

Meh.

I might watch S2. I might not.

 

[calsnowskier]

if it makes you feel any better, the deadliest, biggest badasses in the show will be a homogenous race of light-skinned gingers.

seriously.

We met them mid season 1. The dude who ended up being the Dragon (I forget his name) was strongly hinted at as being of this race.

 

[flyerhawk]

Foundation was only in their 2nd generation of being isolated. Having a hodgepodge of races would make more sense in that story.

Weird argument. You do realize that race, as a social construct, is fairly new to human society, right? And a galactic society of trillions, I would suspect that race wouldn't be the highest priority concern.

 

[calsnowskier]

Weird argument. You do realize that race, as a social construct, is fairly new to human society, right? And a galactic society of trillions, I would suspect that race wouldn't be the highest priority concern.

Who said anything about it being a priority?

In the books, IA actually discusses how each planet’s populations evolved into their own distinct races. There was isolation as well as environmental conditions that contributed to each planet’s racial makeup.

Seldon’s followers come from all over the Galaxy. There would naturally be a hodgepodge of racial samples in that group. It would take more than a single generation for the population to develop into a somewhat homogenous gene pool.

 

[Edonidd]

I haven't watched the second half of the season. Quit after episode 4. But I was following it for so long that stuff still pops up in my newsfeeds. I saw/heard about some further strange changes they made but just today saw an interview where the showrunner stated that he knew fans of the book wouldn't like his show and he did that on purpose...

So I sat around thinking about that. What are the reasons to adapt a book into a show instead of telling your own story?
1. Pre-made built in audience. That was one of the reasons HBO gambled on GoT, they knew even if it was terrible they had a built in floor of book readers who would watch it anyways. Peter Jackson spent a ton of time focusing on all the little details to make LoTR accurate to the books, because he knew his audience cared about that. The newest Dune is another great example.
2. You like the hidden messages and themes personified in it. Or even if you don't necessarily "like" those themes you're at least interested in exploring them. Dune works really well here too
3. The story is just that good. GoT is another great example of this, all the intrigue and plot twists of book 1/season 1 especially. You could have made season 1 as a western or a modern political drama or any other genre that you could shoehorn it into and it still would have been great. The story was just that good.

But for Wheel of time.
1. They took a flamethrower to the fan base. Intentionally.
2. They changed the hidden messages and themes from the books to different themes. Even with the few things they didn't change lost their significance once they cut out the heart.
3. They are 100% convinced that the story in the books isn't good and they have to change things to make it better. We're not talking about changes like internal monologs or omniscient viewpoints or whatever changes need to be made to adapt from a written medium to film. I'm talking about changes they're just making thinking it improves the story.

I guess I just don't get why they're calling their story Wheel of Time?

 

[Mebert]

I haven't watched the second half of the season. Quit after episode 4. But I was following it for so long that stuff still pops up in my newsfeeds. I saw/heard about some further strange changes they made but just today saw an interview where the showrunner stated that he knew fans of the book wouldn't like his show and he did that on purpose...

So I sat around thinking about that. What are the reasons to adapt a book into a show instead of telling your own story?
1. Pre-made built in audience. That was one of the reasons HBO gambled on GoT, they knew even if it was terrible they had a built in floor of book readers who would watch it anyways. Peter Jackson spent a ton of time focusing on all the little details to make LoTR accurate to the books, because he knew his audience cared about that. The newest Dune is another great example.
2. You like the hidden messages and themes personified in it. Or even if you don't necessarily "like" those themes you're at least interested in exploring them. Dune works really well here too
3. The story is just that good. GoT is another great example of this, all the intrigue and plot twists of book 1/season 1 especially. You could have made season 1 as a western or a modern political drama or any other genre that you could shoehorn it into and it still would have been great. The story was just that good.

But for Wheel of time.
1. They took a flamethrower to the fan base. Intentionally.
2. They changed the hidden messages and themes from the books to different themes. Even with the few things they didn't change lost their significance once they cut out the heart.
3. They are 100% convinced that the story in the books isn't good and they have to change things to make it better. We're not talking about changes like internal monologs or omniscient viewpoints or whatever changes need to be made to adapt from a written medium to film. I'm talking about changes they're just making thinking it improves the story.

I guess I just don't get why they're calling their story Wheel of Time?

Do you have a link to that interview? I suspected as much, but would love to hear the guy actually say it.

 

[Edonidd]

Do you have a link to that interview? I suspected as much, but would love to hear the guy actually say it.

I dont remember which article I saw, but I think this is where it came from

 

[Ottermatic]

But there are whites, blacks, Indian/Pakistani/Afghani, Asians….

As you say, even in the books, they have a general description ("usually dark of hair and eye"). If the show were staying with the books, the book would have said something to the effect of “There is no consistent physical traits as is was a true mixing pot of peoples”. There was no minority/majority race depicted in Two Rivers in the show.

Apart from Rand, everyone in the Two Rivers in the show does fit the "dark of hair and eye" paradigm. And for Rand, there's a good reason for that, which I won't go into in order to avoid spoilers. (But it has already been established in the show that he was not born in the two rivers)

 

[Used 2 B Hu]

I'm not sure if I'm going to enjoy season 2. They went way off-course in episode 8.

 

[calsnowskier]

Apart from Rand, everyone in the Two Rivers in the show does fit the "dark of hair and eye" paradigm. And for Rand, there's a good reason for that, which I won't go into in order to avoid spoilers. (But it has already been established in the show that he was not born in the two rivers)

So you think having whites, blacks, middle-easterners and Asians all living in this tiny, out of the way farming village in a middle-ages stone-age world is totally natural to you?

I can’t fix that.

 

[calsnowskier]

If you want to make the case that Two Rivers is a major-ish trading post with lots of traffic coming and going, that would be one thing. But even the trader who bought the bracelet from Mat at the beginning made the point the Two Rivers was a tiny backwater nothing village that was a pain in the ass for him to travel to constantly. That indicates relative isolation. It wouldn’t take too many generations for the gene pool to equalize and for there to be single “race” in the village.

Again, one or two outliers would make sense (Rand, for example), but for there to be complete diversity is ridiculous on its face.

I am willing to overlook it for the sake of moving on with the story, but it really is not a defensible point for the production to take.

 

[Ottermatic]

If you want to make the case that Two Rivers is a major-ish trading post with lots of traffic coming and going, that would be one thing. But even the trader who bought the bracelet from Mat at the beginning made the point the Two Rivers was a tiny backwater nothing village that was a pain in the ass for him to travel to constantly. That indicates relative isolation. It wouldn’t take too many generations for the gene pool to equalize and for there to be single “race” in the village.

Again, one or two outliers would make sense (Rand, for example), but for there to be complete diversity is ridiculous on its face.

I am willing to overlook it for the sake of moving on with the story, but it really is not a defensible point for the production to take.

The Two rivers isn't just an out of the way backwater village. It is the remnants of what was once, hundreds of years ago, the most powerful empire in the world, until it was wiped off the face of the earth by the one power while defending against an impossible-odds trolloc attack.

Moiraine told that story during episode 2

 

[BusSport]

If you want to make the case that Two Rivers is a major-ish trading post with lots of traffic coming and going, that would be one thing. But even the trader who bought the bracelet from Mat at the beginning made the point the Two Rivers was a tiny backwater nothing village that was a pain in the ass for him to travel to constantly. That indicates relative isolation. It wouldn’t take too many generations for the gene pool to equalize and for there to be single “race” in the village.

Again, one or two outliers would make sense (Rand, for example), but for there to be complete diversity is ridiculous on its face.

I am willing to overlook it for the sake of moving on with the story, but it really is not a defensible point for the production to take.

The Two rivers isn't just an out of the way backwater village. It is the remnants of what was once, hundreds of years ago, the most powerful empire in the world, until it was wiped off the face of the earth by the one power while defending against an impossible-odds trolloc attack.

Moiraine told that story during episode 2

Not quite. The story Moiraine told in episode 2 was about the destruction of Manetheren, due to its betrayal by Aridhol, during the Trolloc Wars. The Two Rivers is territory that was then held by Manetheren. Manetheren and Aridhol were just two of the Ten Nations, as shown in this map:

But Manetheren was not remotely "the most powerful empire in the world": it was just one among ten nations of similar strength, and by comparison, the vastly larger Artur Hawkwing's Empire was over ten times Manetheren's size and held almost all of that above map (except for Tar Valon). And Artur Hawkwing's descendent empire of Seanchan is far larger than even that, as can be seen in the maps in the two Wheel of Time guidebooks.

Manetheren was so utterly devastated by the Trolloc Wars that ever since, the Two Rivers, the former core of Manetheren, has been backwater villages to which almost no one traveled. That point was drilled in over and over again in the early books, where the Two Rivers people were regarded by other people as backwards country bumpkins.

Again and again, it was emphasized in the early books how isolated and remote the Two Rivers were. It is also mentioned how the Two Rivers was such a backwater that though the area was in Andor's borders, the capital of Caemlyn hadn't sent tax collectors there for generations.

Book 1 reiterates over and over again that everyone in the Two Rivers looks alike, except for Rand, which of course turns out to be significant because he turns out to have been born far away, to biological parents not from the Two Rivers.

Furthermore, the transformation of the Two Rivers from ethnic homogeneity to great diversity is a process that happens in the later books and is actually a plot point that gets discussed in Perrin chapters over and over again starting in Book 6: the Two Rivers changes significantly, and refugees begin streaming into the relatively peaceful Two Rivers from all the wars everywhere else, greatly expanding its population and transforming its culture from what it was before.

The later books also discuss how the Aes Sedai had come to realize that the Two Rivers was a deep and previously untapped recruiting ground for new novices, and how they had made the mistake of, before Moiraine, ignoring it because it was so isolated.

 

[Ottermatic]

Not quite. The story Moiraine told in episode 2 was about the destruction of Manetheren, due to its betrayal by Aridhol, during the Trolloc Wars. The Two Rivers is territory that was then held by Manetheren. Manetheren and Aridhol were just two of the Ten Nations, as shown in this map:

But Manetheren was not remotely "the most powerful empire in the world": it was just one among ten nations of similar strength, and by comparison, the vastly larger Artur Hawkwing's Empire was over ten times Manetheren's size and held almost all of that above map (except for Tar Valon). And Artur Hawkwing's descendent empire of Seanchan is far larger than even that, as can be seen in the maps in the two Wheel of Time guidebooks.

Manetheren was so utterly devastated by the Trolloc Wars that ever since, the Two Rivers, the former core of Manetheren, has been backwater villages to which almost no one traveled. That point was drilled in over and over again in the early books, where the Two Rivers people were regarded by other people as backwards country bumpkins.

Again and again, it was emphasized in the early books how isolated and remote the Two Rivers were. It is also mentioned how the Two Rivers was such a backwater that though the area was in Andor's borders, the capital of Caemlyn hadn't sent tax collectors there for generations.

Book 1 reiterates over and over again that everyone in the Two Rivers looks alike, except for Rand, which of course turns out to be significant because he turns out to have been born far away, to biological parents not from the Two Rivers.

Furthermore, the transformation of the Two Rivers from ethnic homogeneity to great diversity is a process that happens in the later books and is actually a plot point that gets discussed in Perrin chapters over and over again starting in Book 6: the Two Rivers changes significantly, and refugees begin streaming into the relatively peaceful Two Rivers from all the wars everywhere else, greatly expanding its population and transforming its culture from what it was before.

The later books also discuss how the Aes Sedai had come to realize that the Two Rivers was a deep and previously untapped recruiting ground for new novices, and how they had made the mistake of, before Moiraine, ignoring it because it was so isolated.

I clearly remember Manetheren being described as the most powerful of the Ten nations by a fair margin. But I can't tell you exactly which book that's from. It might be in the "The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time" companion book.

Though you are correct that the transformation of the Two Rivers does become a plot point later. Cultural and pre-industrial development both. I don't feel that the two rivers, as shown in the TV show, is so diverse as to leave no room for later development, however.

I've seen long online debates as to whether the inhabitants of the two rivers are white, black, brown, or a mixture of complexions, beyond their "dark of hair and eye" description. The answer the show seems to have come to is "various shades of brown, from nearly white like Mat, to much darker like Egwene or Perrin." I don't think it's an unreasonable interpretation.

I honestly have much greater issues with the changes that the show has made to other things, like The Way of the Leaf, or the nature of Thom Merrillin and gleemen. Or the simplification of the one power. but I'm determinatedly giving the show a chance on its own terms, not comparing it to the book, treating it as "a different turning of the wheel" as Rafe Judkins has repeatedly said

 

[flyerhawk]

It's strange to me that people would get upset about the racial composition of the show. Who the heck cares? It's a fictional world and Hollywood is becoming more and more race neutral with its casting.

If Alexander Hamilton can be played by a Puerto Rican and Thomas Jefferson can be played by a black guy, I think we can accommodate some ethnic diversity in a fictional fantasy land.

 

[Sparhawk]

It's strange to me that people would get upset about the racial composition of the show. Who the heck cares? It's a fictional world and Hollywood is becoming more and more race neutral with its casting.

If Alexander Hamilton can be played by a Puerto Rican and Thomas Jefferson can be played by a black guy, I think we can accommodate some ethnic diversity in a fictional fantasy land.

That's just ideology talking.
Same folks vented about Last Jedi, small women beating up larger men, etc.

It's friggin' entertainment.

That being said, I just finished the season, only read the first book and didn't really like it many moons ago.
I thought the show was a bit tedious at times, with putting exposition ahead of character development.
I get it. It's am immersive world, but I felt limited investment in any of the characters, save for Lan.

I also didn't like Cowboy Bebop, which has already been cancelled.
But, Amazon seems fully invested in having already green lit a second season, so maybe they'll learn from this????

 

[flyerhawk]

That's just ideology talking.
Same folks vented about Last Jedi, small women beating up larger men, etc.

It's friggin' entertainment.

That being said, I just finished the season, only read the first book and didn't really like it many moons ago.
I thought the show was a bit tedious at times, with putting exposition ahead of character development.
I get it. It's am immersive world, but I felt limited investment in any of the characters, save for Lan.

I also didn't like Cowboy Bebop, which has already been cancelled.
But, Amazon seems fully invested in having already green lit a second season, so maybe they'll learn from this????

I think it's tough to avoid doing a lot of exposition in season 1. GoT was able to use it a little less because the world they built wasn't all that complex and basically was medieval Europe with dragons.

I was pleasantly surprised with the 1st season largely because the script was pretty good. I read a few of the books back in the 90s but I barely remember them. So I don't care if they are faithful to the canon or not. With so many characters to flesh out, there was no way they would be able to do that in a single season of 8 episodes. I would hope future seasons would be able to focus on 1 or 2 characters and develop them more.

 

[Sparhawk]

I think it's tough to avoid doing a lot of exposition in season 1. GoT was able to use it a little less because the world they built wasn't all that complex and basically was medieval Europe with dragons.

I was pleasantly surprised with the 1st season largely because the script was pretty good. I read a few of the books back in the 90s but I barely remember them. So I don't care if they are faithful to the canon or not. With so many characters to flesh out, there was no way they would be able to do that in a single season of 8 episodes. I would hope future seasons would be able to focus on 1 or 2 characters and develop them more.

From what I've read, apparently it's not that faithful to the books, so your mileage may vary.
I just found it slow.

In GoT, two people in a room always had something interesting to say.
In WoT, I found myself drifting off at times.

I get that there's a lot of backstory to fill in, but as you said, they should focus on the characters and what makes them interesting and worth investing our time in.

Honestly, I wanted to know more about the barkeep who could see their futures, because that was interesting.
And I wanted to know more about gleemen and how they earn their living and are they all capable of fighting?
My favorite character might have been the ogre.

 

[Stakesarehigh]

Decent show. Lost my interest at times but all the different characters and names make it a little difficult to follow.

The diversity is pretty ridiculous. It does seem like they try checking boxes for the hell of it these days.

 

[Payton]

If Alexander Hamilton can be played by a Puerto Rican and Thomas Jefferson can be played by a black guy, I think we can accommodate some ethnic diversity in a fictional fantasy land.

Did it occur to you that it might be the same folks that complain about both?

(Not me, mind you. Just sayin’)