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The whole "teleportation" thing


TheSerb

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Many people have noticed and pointed out that characters often seem to cover great distances in seemingly little time - for example, Random Character A might be seen in King's Landing in S8E14 then suddenly show up in the Riverlands in S8E15 with the entirety of their journey off-screen.

In S6E10:

Spoiler

 

Many people have criticized the sudden arrival of Arya to the Twins after last seeing her leaving Jaqen in Braavos, as well as the journey of Varys from Meereen to Dorne, after which he is suddenly seen along with Daenerys on her ship in the last scene, sailing for Westeros.

 

My question is, do we ever know how much time has passed from an episode's beginning to its conclusion? For all we know, these "teleportations" might not be teleportations at all - the show just skips the journey. For example, between 

Spoiler

Varys' apperarance in Dorne and his appearance on Dany's ship

there could be a week of time, or two weeks, for all we know. Not to mention that many scenes are shot out of sequence, so the fact that Scene 2 aired right after Scene 1 doesn't mean that those two scenes occurred right after another in-universe - they might have happened concurrently, or there could be weeks between them.

And remember that in TV continuity: 1 season = 1 year in-universe. So if we go by simple math, each episode actually covers more than a month.

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What you are saying is true, and I'm fine with something like Arya who showed up at the Twins two episodes after leaving Braavos. But Varys is harder to believe. His in Dorne in one scene and then is standing behind Dany on a ship sailing for Westeros. Although I did see a Martell ship sailing with the rest of the fleet indicating how he got back to Meereen.

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1 hour ago, TheSerb said:

And remember that in TV continuity: 1 season = 1 year in-universe. So if we go by simple math, each episode actually covers more than a month.

Not necessarily. Sansa tells Cersei she's thirteen in the very first episode, and tells Tyrion she's fourteen near the end of season three. Even if she had just turned thirteen in the first episode and was about to turn fifteen in season three, that's less than two years, instead of the three years that should have passed over three seasons.

And season four only covered a few weeks, or a couple of months, tops. Tywin wanted Cersei to be married to Loras two weeks after the royal wedding. Naturally, that would've been postponed with Joffrey being killed and Tyrion being on trial for the murder, but I doubt Tywin would've let Cersei's wedding slide for an entire year when he was so adamant about getting her married off. Not to mention, Tyrion's trial wouldn't have lasted an entire year, either.

But I agree that a lot of time passes that we simply don't see. The problem with the Varys situation, though, is that we know he was in Dorne at some point after the Great Sept incident, as Olenna makes mention of it in that scene. Even if he left for Meereen the same day, it would (or should, at least) take a few weeks to get there, and then a few weeks to get the entire fleet back. So at the very least, they'll need to make it believable that a couple of months have passed between Cersei taking the throne and Daenerys getting to King's Landing. If there's any reference to or indication of less time passing, I'm calling complete shenanigans!

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Each storyline operates by a different timeline.

Arya was likely back in Westeros well before the conflict between the Lannisters and the Blackfish (because there is no way Jamie stuck around long enough for her to go from Braavos to the Twins. 

Also also Jamie went from the Riverlands to KL and was there in time for Cersie's inauguration. 

Varys traveled to Dorne. Then an undisclosed amount of time passed where we saw Dany's entire fleet with Dorne and Highharden by her sides. Meaning their was likely a rendevous point that we didn't see. 

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Varys' reappearance in Meereen was weird, to say the least. I suspect a continuity error of some kind.
As far as the rest is concerned, I think the teleportation argument is the less credible, most annoying argument out there.

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6 minutes ago, Zering said:

Varys' reappearance in Meereen was weird, to say the least. I suspect a continuity error of some kind.
As far as the rest is concerned, I think the teleportation argument is the less credible, most annoying argument out there.

They weren't in Mereen. 

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Well, they were leaving Meereen weren't they?
In any case, Varys had to get back to Daenerys ; the time he took to get back there is really short.
I'm just pointing this out ; I really don't care. Like I said, I think the teleportation argument is balls.

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29 minutes ago, Zering said:

Well, they were leaving Meereen weren't they?
In any case, Varys had to get back to Daenerys ; the time he took to get back there is really short.
I'm just pointing this out ; I really don't care. Like I said, I think the teleportation argument is balls.

Not neccessarily. She had ships from Highgarden and Dorne with her. 

Why would she have them go to Mereen? They likely all met up somewhere near Dorne or even at sea. 

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I try not to get too caught up in that, but there are times it just seems way to odd.  I get not all episode cover the same amount of time, and time passes we don't see, and scenes may not be exactly chronological, and it's TV so suspension of disbelief and all that.  Most things like Arya I can let go.  

The Grejoys showing up in Slaver's Bay, and Varys getting to Dorne and at least part way back are the only ones that really bother me much.  It would take so many months to make those trips, so unless there is zero continuity between the episodes in what is happening in Westeros compare to Essos, it can't make any kind of sense.  

I don't let it bother me too much, but those two things in particular stuck in my mind quite a bit.

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For all of the show's issues, on its own this is probably one of the less major ones.

The problem is that everything adds up. the show blatant ignores its own continuity so often that this teleportation just further exacerbate the feeling that the show doesn't have a coherent continuity and time line.

In season 2 when LF had his teleporter it didn't bother as much because everything else still followed the rules for the most part. 

 

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1 hour ago, lancerman said:

Each storyline operates by a different timeline.

Arya was likely back in Westeros well before the conflict between the Lannisters and the Blackfish (because there is no way Jamie stuck around long enough for her to go from Braavos to the Twins. 

Also also Jamie went from the Riverlands to KL and was there in time for Cersie's inauguration. 

Varys traveled to Dorne. Then an undisclosed amount of time passed where we saw Dany's entire fleet with Dorne and Highharden by her sides. Meaning their was likely a rendevous point that we didn't see. 

Didn't Jaime go up to the Twins after settling the Riverrun siege?

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I have no problem with most instances of "teleportation" on the show.

The one thing I do have an issue with is Varys standing behind Dany on her ship.  Unless I'm forgetting something, we've never actually seen those two characters meet yet, and that seems like it should be a kind of significant first meeting.

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2 minutes ago, Frejac said:

I have no problem with most instances of "teleportation" on the show.

The one thing I do have an issue with is Varys standing behind Dany on her ship.  Unless I'm forgetting something, we've never actually seen those two characters meet yet, and that seems like it should be a kind of significant first meeting.

Yeah that is strange. I thought it was supposed to be significant that he left just before Dany returned and all. I mean he was Master of Whispers for her dad and all...

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5 minutes ago, Frejac said:

I have no problem with most instances of "teleportation" on the show.

The one thing I do have an issue with is Varys standing behind Dany on her ship.  Unless I'm forgetting something, we've never actually seen those two characters meet yet, and that seems like it should be a kind of significant first meeting.

Yeah. I call it teleportation to take the piss, but that thing with Varys was just a clumsy (and frankly unnecessary) edit. We know Varys, Olenna and Ellaria are gonna be waiting in Dorne (I guess) for Dany, no need to belabor the point. 

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I think the show should strive for a rough unity of time among the storylines.  I don't care if one scene to the next is 2 months, but if you show me a Kings Landing scene, an Arya scene, a Kings Landing scene, and another Arya scene, and the Kings Landing scenes take 2 months, I expect the Arya scenes to be roughly the same timeline.  If you open with a Kings Landing scene, and Jon's scene right after seemingly happens within a day after last episode, I expect Kings Landing to be the same short term.  

Given the episode gap, I'm a little more fine with Arya's rapid movement than with Arya's (based on the whole expected unity of time, I'm expecting she travelled across the Ocean, then to the Twins within 2 weeks). But Varys' is just so stupidly fast, and in such a way that it has zero impact on the scene.  Remove Varys from the scene and nothing changes in any way.  No impact on the viewers, or anything.  It's just another example of sloppiness.  "Teleportation" is one of those things I normally laugh about, because grand scheme of things, there are sooooooooo many more issues with this show.

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The problem with the constant honeypotting that "time differs per scene and per episode" is that some kind of logical similarities/consistency with the passing of time is necessary to simply being able to follow the plot. In movies like Memento (brilliant movie btw), the constant flashbacks and switching between past, present and future scenes works because it's a single movie where the whole premise is built on that (but even so, it requires you to pay good attention and many people need to watch the movie a 2nd or 3rd time).

We know that Varys was in Dorne after the events of KL, shown in the same episode (Olenna's comment). We then see Varys with Daenerys on the ship a few scenes later. Let's do a huge handwave and say that Varys and the Dorne/Tyrell army (we see their ships) met up with Daenerys somewhere in or at the eastern side of the Narrow Sea. So basically Daenerys already made it like 80% of the way off-screen and them standing on deck is for television drama. That means that the politics scene in Meereen from this same episode happened weeks/months before everything else. Knowing that it should also take weeks/months to gather the Dorne/Tyrell army and get them to meet up with Daenerys, we basically have two Daenerys scenes this episode where one takes place months before everything else/ Kings Landing and the other scene is weeks/months later. That is a problem. How are we supposed to follow the story that they're trying to tell if there are such huge differences between timelines? Perhaps Jon being made KitN is irrelevant, because it happens months before the King's Landing plot? What can we believe? How can we connect any of these 10 different stories together, if we cannot even trust internal consistency with the passing of time?

This scene with Varys is just one example of the many problems that are created by the shameless teleporation D&D use and the total lack of effort they put into creating matching timelines. The timelines should be linked and roughly the same. That's the least you should expect from this show if you want to just follow the events. At this rate, we're watching 10 different stories instead of one. Maybe when Bran gets back to the Wall, Jon is still not resurrected. Maybe when the White Walkers invade, Daenerys is still in the Dothraki Sea.

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1 hour ago, lancerman said:

Not neccessarily. She had ships from Highgarden and Dorne with her. 

Why would she have them go to Mereen? They likely all met up somewhere near Dorne or even at sea. 

So you're saying Dany is already in Westeros?

I guess it's a good thing that people don't care about continuity.

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3 hours ago, SuperMario said:

So you're saying Dany is already in Westeros?

I guess it's a good thing that people don't care about continuity.

Or all the ships met somewhere off the coast. I find it more likely Dany's fleet started moving from Mereen and rendezvoused somewhere along the way, whether off the coast of Dorne or somewhere else, than having House Tyrell and the Dornish fleet travel all the way to Mereen.

You're confusing continuity with timeline by the way. Just because two scenes happen back to back, it doesn't mean they happened minutes apart. A lot of things in this episode had to happen at different points in the timeline. Same way it happens in the books. Same way Jamie we missed a lot of travel time from Jamie from the Twins to KL.

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