Dune: Prophecy: (Full Season)   Books Included 
November 18, 2024 3:55 PM - Season 1 (Full Season) - Subscribe

The third TV adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune universe, a "prequel" set some 10,000 years before the first book and recent films.

Like many productions, the series has a somewhat convoluted history: originally titled Dune: Sisterhood, it was rumored to be directed by Denis Villeneuve, but control quickly passed into the hands of Alison Schapker (showrunner for Westworld, Altered Carbon and Fringe, among others.)

Broadly drawing from the prequel books, Prophecy takes on much the visual language of Villeneuve's work, although I don't feel that the acting (at least in the first episode) rises to the same level. I'm interested to learn what other MeFites think.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul (23 comments total)
 
Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power: Dune: Prophecy

I like the look, though it misses the sheer scale of things, and completely lacks the mass.

Why can this weird dusty soldier just walk right up to the emperor at his Contemplation Waterfall? They’re a hundred and fifty years out from an existential war against thinking machines humanity very nearly lost—the Richese kid would have been executed for heresy right then and there. Why can the daughter and son of the emperor not-even-sneak-out just go to a love bar hotel?

I’m here for this whole thing, but it seems like it’s going to have all of the “tell don’t show” vibes of Kevin J Anderson & Brian Herbert’s jam-handed prequels.
posted by hototogisu at 4:57 PM on November 18, 2024 [4 favorites]


Only episode 1 is out so far. I think that lot of the visual panoramas are quite stunning, but ...
I was not impressed that the leader of the Bene Gesserit who secures her position through murder is a Harkonnen. There are no other bad guys in this universe?

I am not surprised to discover that that detail came from the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson prequel. This is a universe literally the size of our galaxy. Using the same few families in the same ways, like nothing has really changed over ten thousand years, makes the universe a small place, and that history a little too pat and simple. Hopefully, the show can transcend the limitations of its source material.

I did like the whale-fur bit.

Is the dusty soldier a ghola? It seems a little early for that sort of thing. Like I said, bringing back all the elements of society that exist 10,000 years later is not realistic. It overly compresses those millennia of time into something small. We should be seeing the very inklings of most things, not their pretty-much-already-realized shape.
posted by skoosh at 9:22 PM on November 18, 2024 [6 favorites]


leader of the Bene Gessert...

Snarkily, "Kennedy, Bush, Clinton, &c."

- not for their Presidential aspirations, but the number of minor progeny that are in politics

And in-laws.
posted by porpoise at 9:57 PM on November 18, 2024 [1 favorite]


Broadly drawing from the prequel books

No thank you.... I'm only planning to watch this if it gets sterling reviews.
posted by Pendragon at 4:51 AM on November 19, 2024 [2 favorites]


I was not impressed that the leader of the Bene Gesserit who secures her position through murder is a Harkonnen. There are no other bad guys in this universe?

Not even Arkingen or Haarko or something that you could see would shift into Harkonnen in a couple of thousand years. Like Rakis and Dan and Gammu would later.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:12 AM on November 19, 2024 [3 favorites]


I give Dune more of a pass than most sci-fi series when it comes to things being the same for millennia since humanity's stagnation is the main theme in the later books.

However, I also rolled my eyes at the fact that the Harkonnen, Atreides, and Corrino are once again the only important people in The Empire of Ten Thousand Worlds. What, they couldn't throw an Ordos or a Metulli in the mix?! Or better yet, make up some houses that have been destroyed by Paul's time? It feels lazy and kind of Star Wars-like where only Skywalkers and Palpatines matter. Since it's based off of Kevin J. Anderson's books I guess I shouldn't be too surprised though.
posted by haileris23 at 8:23 AM on November 19, 2024 [6 favorites]


I did not hate the first episode of this but I think it's bonkers that the Dune universe apparently is basically unchanged, culturally and technologically, for about 10,000 years. Like ok I guess the Bene Gesserits haven't developed The Voice as much yet, or put their breeding plan in place. But otherwise 10,000 years have passed and the Dune world is just a bit shuffled around in terms of power dynamics but everything else is the same.

Also I love that they apparently have night clubs that play house music.
posted by dis_integration at 10:42 AM on November 20, 2024 [4 favorites]


Is the dusty soldier a ghola?

No, that's just how Travis Fimmel looks. He's... unsettling.

The opening sequence was pretty pointless, just there to shout at you: "Hey, the main character is HARKONNEN, remember the HARKONNEN bad guys from the movie? Well, she isn't exactly a total bad guy but remember she is a HARKONNEN, OK, so she'll totally kill people who get in her way."

Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power: Dune: Prophecy

It also had a big Game of Thrones ... IN SPAAAAACE feel to me, especially the horniness near the end.

The torture scene of the Richese child seemed way gratuitous and unnecessary.

Near the end, just before the Emperor wakes up to go look at the video footage, there's a brief shot of Valya standing on a balcony inside the Bene Gesserit school and she's looking at what appears to be -- the previous Reverend Mother frozen in carbonite?!?

As hototogisu mentioned above, Imperial security is a freakin' joke.
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:54 PM on November 24, 2024


No, that's just how Travis Fimmel looks. He's... unsettling.

Yeah, I had to look it up before I realized where I'd seen him before - Raised by Wolves, where he's even more unsettling.

And... I dunno, this probably committed the worst possible crime that a premium big budget blah blah show could commit - I was bored? I want to like it, I enjoy the world and plenty of the actors and yet I had to keep avoiding second-screening it.
posted by Kyol at 6:15 AM on November 26, 2024 [1 favorite]


yeah the second episode was so dull i turned it off, not sure if i’ll revisit. like nothing is wrong exactly i just don’t really care about these characters.
posted by dis_integration at 9:55 AM on November 26, 2024 [1 favorite]


So, why doesn't Desmond just fry Valya with his Microwave Power when he confronts her, beside for Plot Reasons? If he could kill a child and a Reverend Mother on the other side of the galaxy simultaneously, one presumes he could boil Valya, but whatever.

The Other Memory scene was kinda cool, at least.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:06 AM on November 27, 2024 [1 favorite]


I'm sort of hoping that this is just a bunch of moving characters into position? I liked the second episode more than the first, only just, but mostly because I'm a sucker for Bene Gesserit rites and rituals. But oof, I mean if this season is only 6 episodes long, that's not a lot of time to spend on establishing the story, y'know?
posted by Kyol at 8:20 PM on December 1, 2024


Episode 3 was not great. The BG Vow-Taking ceremony made no sense: stand out here until you say "Sisterhood above all" then go back inside? It was supposed to be some crucible moment for young Valya, but it just seemed kinda stupid because, really, what's the actual test, the bar she has to pass besides just "meaning it" when she makes her vow? And she's the judge of when she says it and means it? Whatever.

How many Atreides are left after Tula poisons Orry & his family? I was unclear on whether Vorian -- the one who killed her brother Griffin -- was one of those she poisoned? And I guess little Albert Atreides is gonna come back in some way for vengeance...

The final scene of Lila in the computer-controlled spice bath suggests that the writers are going with the classic "misleading prophecy" trope a la Macbeth that she is the key to the Reckoning and not (or not only) Desmond Hart, since she was born once in blood and is now poised to be reborn in spice quite literally. Although, technically, couldn't every Reverend Mother who survives the agony technically be considered "reborn in spice"?
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:40 PM on December 2, 2024


The poison for the Agony is not (at least not on most planets, and certainly not at this point in history) derived from a sandworm, and is entirely separate from melange. Numerous scenes from this and the previous episode establish that on Wallach IX, the poison is made from a moss or lichen that grows around the edges of an oval pool in the Bene Gesserit complex.

I felt that episode 3 has been the strongest one so far. The oath is delivered before at least one Reverend Mother (all of whom, it seems, have Truthsaying skills), so it's unlikely that anyone is getting away with making a false oath here.

The real standout aspect of this episode, though ...
is the string of extended flashbacks, jumping backwards and (mostly) forwards unannounced, sometimes by years, and yet very smoothly and naturally. Much like how memories flow one after another in consciousness.
Really great editing there.

I wasn't as impressed by all the panoramic shots in this episode. Maybe not enough time was allowed to let the grandeur really sink in? The dialogue between Griffin and Valya also felt a little rushed, given the tone such a conversation would have. Not perfect, but I detect an upward trajectory, and that's always nice to see.
posted by skoosh at 4:19 PM on December 3, 2024


re: the Poison.

GAH! Yes, you are right, and I was just completely overlooking something right in front of my big dumb beautiful face. I think that is (in part) my Other Memories of Frank Herbert's original books and Lynch's film adaptation battling it out with what's going on in the show, so I'm going
"blue poison -- water of life -- spice -- sandworm" in my mind even though obviously it's not.

Also, though, this show doesn't feel like it's 10K years before Dune, because the look is similar, and the names and relationships are identical or just about in most cases, so, again, I'm conflating radically different time periods.

The oath is delivered before at least one Reverend Mother (all of whom, it seems, have Truthsaying skills)

I had figured that was the underlying mechanic of the test, so I guess my complaint was more that the oath as an event in the story wasn't set up as a crucible for the characters until it actually happened, so it seemed unmotivated or to come out of left field. Granted, though, I obviously was not paying super close attention. To wit: I didn't realize that Tula was with the Atreides until Orry said his last name right before they had sex -- even though the bull was a dead giveaway. Did someone else say "Atreides" earlier and I missed it? Either way, big derf on me for that one.

At least some of me not paying attention is that the show isn't grabbing me -- it's just a bit boring, as Kyol said. I'm reminded of an old Patton Oswalt routine about the Star Wars prequels where the message was something to the effect of "I don't care how the Thing I Love became the Thing I Love, just give me the Thing I Love! Don't give me cream and milk and sugar, give me ice cream!" Bad paraphrasing.

Or even granting that there is interest in the broader world and history, it's too closely mimicking the original (poorly) to satisfy on its own merits, and since the baseline is the same -- Harkonnens and Atreides hate each other, House Corrino is on the throne, the BG are scheming behind the scenes for their breeding program, and everyone is squabbling over Arrakis -- we know that nothing too significant can happen until Paul, so who cares about rearranging deck chairs on the Proverbial?

Still, as you say, it is very well put together. And really, I didn't think this episode was much better or worse than the previous two, which is to say they have all been inoffensively mid.
posted by Saxon Kane at 6:06 PM on December 3, 2024 [2 favorites]


Of course, I say all that about the problems with prequels, then I go continue my re-watch of Better Call Saul -- a show that commits almost all of the sins I've just talked about, yet is probably superior to the original. Exception that proves the rule, or maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about?
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:46 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]


So coming back after the 4th episode, 2/3rds of the way through the season, and somehow it feels like very little plot has been moved along in the current era, and yet they keep dropping BWAH big set piece drama bombs like "oh shit, dag, that's significant" without the setup?

I dunno. When you have to watch the "this is how clever we are" piece after the show to dig up plot points, maybe too much was left on the cutting room floor, guys?
posted by Kyol at 6:18 AM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]


Okay, just watched episode 4 last night, and once again, this series has indulged in one of my pet peeves: introducing elements that would be anachronistic if the historical timeline were being respected.

One of the key aspects of the Dune mythos as I understand it is that, after the elimination of thinking machines, humans had to develop their own innate abilities. This is what led to the three major schools: the Bene Gesserit (at this early stage, still called The Sisterhood), the Mentats, and the Spacing Guild. Other schools, developing other skills, also arose. Technological advancement became a matter of developing human potential. There would, in the time of Shaddam IV, have been over 10,000 years of this form of development, resulting in all sorts of abilities that one could not reasonably expect to develop in a mere hundred years or so.
Abilities such as Face Dancing! Like, c'mon! That is not plausible!


So much of the setting of this series betrays a lack of imagination on the part of the worldbuilders (B. Herbert and K.J. Anderson, I presume), who seem to think that a hundred centuries and, say, five centuries, is basically the same amount of time, and pretty much everything that exists in "present-day" 10,191 A.G. would have also existed right after the Butlerian Jihad. This is not a world with magic. This is a world with technology. And that technology should have a history, not just be aspects of the world that have always existed in more or less the same form. Denying that such technological change would normally occur also ends up undercutting the impact of the true stasis imposed between Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune. In short, this anachronistic presentation makes the whole Dune mythos worse.

On a tangential note: What is the BH/KJA chronology supposed to be for the discovery of melange and its usefulness for FTL navigation? Is this discovery made before the Jihad? Why would it even be important at that point, when computers could do it instead? If it is made after the Jihad (as per the sadly de-canonized Dune Encyclopedia), how much later? How does all this jibe with the Villeneuve film (2020) telling us that the abandoned Imperial testing stations dated from before they discovered melange?
posted by skoosh at 8:02 AM on December 13, 2024 [2 favorites]


Watching this, I'm reminded of Star Trek Enterprise. The producers and writing staff wanted to set it on Earth with a lot less technology to begin with, including not having a transporter, but the executives insisted it be "in space" right away, that there be a transporter (which they awkwardly avoided using most of the time) and even a holodeck, which shows up in the first season.

The Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books are simply terrible for a number of reasons, chief of which, often missing the entire point of the original books. Unsure how much of a variance there is from that source material, but this has late Game of Thrones dramatic tone all over it. This could have been a much better story with a Bene Gesserit order that doesn't seem to believe in the myths they themselves have created and harvested.

Theodosia being a Tleilaxu Face Dancer (and therefore an escaped slave of the Tleilaxu) is, like many things in this show, very early in the "history" of this particular universe.
posted by juiceCake at 12:44 PM on December 14, 2024 [1 favorite]


watched the finale last night. overall, i found the show OK, but really uneven. i think the look of it is too dull, too grim, and too dark. not EVERY world should look the same. it always made me wonder how they eat - it's all dust rock and night. the costuming was interesting, tho.
the casting was wildly uneven. Travis Fimmel was the WORST. is he capable of doing anything other than whispering and looking sideways? can he even comb his hair? sigh. and he is way too old to be Olivia Williams child! c'mon.
one thought i had, probably silly: was the Gom Jabbar invented to kill/remove the machine virus? because, that would be an interesting origin story, but maybe i'm late to the party and that's already canon, or something.
posted by lapolla at 12:19 AM on December 24


Yeah, after the last episode, I kind of think the writers missed the mark and were writing for two 3-ish hour movies and not six hour long episodes. Weird story beats and pacing, a lot of "wait, what the fuck was her goal? she died in the first 10 minutes of the first episode, you expect us to remember the differences between her and Valya?" and and and. As someone whose full Dune Experience is basically Dune: The Novel, it was fun enough, but I could see how it might annoy people who want something closer to established canon.

And yeah, that's what I was thinking the whole last episode - fear is the mind killer & etc.
posted by Kyol at 7:58 PM on December 24 [1 favorite]


I finally got around to finishing this and I really didn't like it for the most part. I'm a big Frank Herbert fan but haven't read any of the Brian Herbert stuff (other Dune fans I trust have warned me away from it).

There were some bits I liked in here. I mostly bought the acting, though I agree that Travis Fimmel was terrible in his role. I did think there were some good visual moments, like that last flashback on the ice with the black and white snow mirroring the visualization of the virus. And I do love a good Hamlet style ending where tons of characters die, and a complex Game of Thrones / Dune(!) style espionage plot where everyone is scheming against everyone else.

But apart from that I found the plot really confusing, and not in a good way. I know a lot of lore from OG Dune really well, but it wasn't at all clear to me which parts of it were active in this part of the timeline. The Bene Gesserit somehow go through the spice agony without the spice? But still are able to access Other Memory? But spice does already seem to exist because Arrakis is a critical system and interstellar travel without computers is possible? The Voice just springs up fully-formed and innate in one particular person, rather than being the result of centuries of prana-bindu study by the Sisterhood? A random Fremen is somehow just hanging around Salusa Secondus in the ancient past?

I also didn't think the show did a good job of actually explaining to the audience what the actual status of the Sisterhood was in the universe at this point, which is something that seems important for a show called Dune: Sisterhood. There's no mention of the kwisatz haderach, so it's not super clear what the purpose of the breeding program even is at this point. And elements from later Dune novels like Abomination!!! and Tleilaxu face-dancers seem to just be kind of shoehorned into the plot without much reason to be there. I picked up on them from the novels; I'm not sure what someone who hadn't read the novels would think.

But the most egregious flaw in the show is, as others have noted, rehashing the whole Atreides good / Harkonnens bad framing. It's not even in the original novels, Lady Jessica is a Harkonnen and is mostly presented as a good character. And if we're going 10,000 years in the past, why not just create some new houses and scenarios rather than setting up yet another story about these two houses?
posted by whir at 10:27 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]


Agree that the world-building/timeline here was very confused, and yeah, making The Voice just a natural ability that one person develops for no apparent reason was silly and undermines the whole notion of the BG's training. I also think that tying the Litany Against Fear to a literal fear-induced toxin that the BG have to learn to transmute really dumbs down the whole thing, turning it from an instance of Mental Discipline to a medical procedure.
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:50 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]


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