The Witches of… Some Planet or Another

I’m gonna be up front with this: I’m doing a series premiere episode for this because, much like with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, I am not going to finish Dune: Prophecy. I tried to do it, I did. I watched the first episode, said, “sure, I’ll be back,” expecting to get back to it the next day… and then the next… or maybe the next after that. It just never happened. I'm not the biggest Dune fan, in fairness, but I did find the recent movies (Part 1 and Part 2) at least palatable. But even with that, even know this show was a distant prequel to Denis Villeneuve movies and that, presumably, it would somehow time into the films (and even the third one he’s working on) I just couldn’t get through it. I wanted to, I knew for this site I should… but I just couldn’t.

Guys, this show is so bad. And not just bad, which on its own could still at least be watchable (bad doesn’t always mean it can’t be finished), but it’s also boring. This is one of the most tedious, needless self-congratulatory series I’ve ever watched since… well, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. For a series made by very smart people, with Denis Villeneuve’s films to work off of, and Amazon’s terrible Tolkien series sitting right there, just being awful, you’d think they would have known what to do to make a good television series, and yet they failed. I’m not going to say it’s an utter travesty because it gives me one less Dune thing to watch, which I don’t mind, but still. Come on guys, you should have been able to do better.

The thing with the first episode is that it has to hook a viewer. Yes, this is a prequel series to the Dune movies so technically the hardcore fans are already hooks. They’ll gobble up anything Dune. Except, couldn’t the same thing be said about Middle-earthCreated by J.R.R Tolkein, Middle-earth is the setting for the author's big sagas, featuring the characters of hobbits, dwarves, elves, and men.? Isn’t The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power struggling to keep viewers even as Amazon PrimeWhile Netflix might be the largest streaming seervice right now, other major contenders have come into the game. One of the biggest, and best funded, is Amazon Prime, the streaming-service add-on packing with free delivery and all kinds of other perks Amazon gives its members. And, with the backing of its corporate parent, this streaming service very well could become the market leader. spends a stupid gob of money on that series (Billions of dollars, or as Jeff Bezos puts it, pocket change)? You can say the same for Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same., which is seeing more and more fans turn away from their streaming works on Disney+Disney's answer in the streaming service game, Disney+ features the studio's (nearly) full back catalog, plus new movies and shows from the likes of the MCU and Star Wars. because the content quality just isn’t there. Maybe the series improves after the first episode, but as an initial taste of what’s to come, this first bite is so bad that I just can’t see how anyone would want to continue watching.

If we’re being kind, we have to at first acknowledge that the show’s production values are pretty good. From the set design to the costumes to the show does nail the design of the Villeneuve world. Sure, this first episode doesn’t give us the massive, sweeping action set-pieces we saw in the film, but then, how could it? This production probably doesn’t have the budget, per episode, of the Villeneuve movies, so there’s only so much they can present on screen. Nailing it at all is a solid attempt.

And at the same time, the cast really is trying. They’re presented with a dense, thick script with all the weird Dune names for characters and planets, full of the kinds of political set up you’d expect from a series about rival factions warring for control of the universe. From Emily Watson to Olivia Williams and Mark Strong, they put in the effort. If there’s a sour note among the cast in this first episode it’s Travis Fimmel, an actor who basically has one character – “viking with crazy eyes” – that he’s been playing since he was on Vikings as Ragnar Lothbrook, a viking with crazy eyes. The man has been playing that character ever since, and sometimes playing it very well, but he sticks out here as a grit of sand that doesn’t quite fit the performances the series is really expecting.

Not that we get to blame everything on Fimmel. Hell, he’s honestly a bright note for the series since he is above all the shit and at least seems to be having fun. No, the problems with the episode start early and never really go away. The series opens with a fifteen minute history lesson, given to us primarily through narration. We learn about a great war that happened between the various houses of the Empire, all vying for control of the galaxy. House Harkonnen profited greatly from the war, and so when they were on the losing side of the conflict, they were banished, the power of the house stripped from all members.

Let’s start with an obvious point here: the war, and what follows from it, is a key point of contention in the series. It’s the crux upon which House Harkonnen’s fate hangs. Because of that, one might say, shouldn’t we actually see the war? At least some part of it, something to make us understand what was going on with the house and why they did, well, whatever it is they did? We don’t get this, mind you, with just a single scene of war out of context while we’re narrated at, and then the show moves on. But to make this plot point stick, to make it matter to the audience, it shouldn’t just be casually slung at us in a few lines of dialogue.

We’re then told (because we’re only just getting into the history lesson) that one member of the house, Valya (played at this point by Jessica Barden) goes to join the Sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit in hopes of using the power and influence of the religious order in, somehow, rebuilding the power of her house. Again, though, we don’t actually see her machinations at this point. The show very quickly skips ahead to the point where the Mother Superior of the order, Raquella Berto-Anirul (Cathy Tyson), is on her deathbed and she chooses Valya to lead the order. Why? Because we’re told that Valya has the strength and resolve to see through the order’s great political work.

I think you can see what’s going on here. At every turn of the show (and this continues for some time) important details are told to us, not shown to us. We don’t get to watch the war that set these events in motion. We don’t get to see the fall of the House Harkonnen. We don’t get to see the rise of Valya into the older Mother Superior (played by Watson) that we then follow. All of these details that would craft her into a character and make us care about what she’s up to are glossed over and we’re dumped into the future of her character when she’s already assumed power. Important parts of her story don’t matter to the series, but somehow we’re supposed to care?

There are other instances of this. Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong) has to deal with a fragile peace and factions coming at him from all sides, we’re told. All we see of this is one house leader trying to strike a better deal for his son, who is set to marry the Princess. We get this at the Imperial palace, which feels like one of the only sets they built for this show, and we don’t see all the factions vying for control or get a sense of the political nature of the Empire. This is just a key detail, that the peace is weak and the Empire fragile, we’re told.

How about the marriage between the Emperor and his wife, Empress Natalya (Jodhi May). Apparently their marriage united the empire and brought about the peace, but in recent years Javicco has ignored his wife’s advice, something she notes. We don’t see any of this, and even the dialogue that conveys this to us, said between the two characters specifically to each other, comes across as flat when it should feel like verbal sparring. The show has so much history it has to tell us that instead of making it organic and natural it just spews it at us. Every scene has to dump more history, tell us more about what the characters are going to be doing, info dump everything we need to know so we can enjoy the rest of the series, and none of it lands. It’s all just more narration and bad dialogue.

This is why I tuned out and didn’t bother with any episodes beyond the first. There’s a possibility that once all of this information was set we’d then get to see all the characters bounce off each other without constant information dumping, but it’s just as likely that this first episode was indicative of exactly how this series would play out: two characters look at each other and spew information all over each other in the least interesting way possible. Sometimes with extra narration. I just couldn’t take it.

And this is why first episodes matter, why they need careful crafting to avoid, well, all of this. This was the chance for Dune: Prophecy to hook me, to make someone that was only mildly interested in the show (because I could review it for this site) into someone that had to watch every episode. It failed, on all fronts, to produce anything I was even mildly interested in. The show needed to put in some effort, do something interesting that got its hooks in me, but at every turn it failed, and so I stopped.

I feel like there probably is an interesting story that could be told about the war, or Valya’s rise to power, or the internal politics of the empire. Each of these threads probably should have been their own movie or their own mini-series. It shouldn’t have all been info dumped on us before the series even started. That was the wrong way to handle this story, and I don’t think, after the fact, you can really fix it. This pilot episode is a mind-boggling disaster, a writer’s worst nightmare, and even if the rest of the series is phenomenal after this, I simply don’t care to give it a chance. This pilot was that chance, and it failed spectacularly.