Jump to content

The Wheel of Time: The Thread Reborn (Book Spoilers)


A True Kaniggit

Recommended Posts

The dialogue was a lot better. Normally I’d prefer it if they fully embraced the fantasy nonsense but I really appreciated Aram’s head-shaking over the way of the leaf. It makes it seem a more grounded world.

The battle scenes were hit and miss. Everything Logain did looked cool for some reason but the Aes Sedai swirly white stuff is not working for me, the battle in the woods was a bit rubbish. Thom fighting the Fade was the coolest part, wish that had gone on longer. Seemed kind of lame that Rand and Mat just rode off and left him, even though that’s what happens in the book. But Rand was only recently complaining to Egwene about how Moraine didn’t chase the lost cause of the drowning ferryman.

Didnt notice the continuity error myself but it definitely seems like one. Nothing that’s been said suggests Moraine should be looking for a fifth candidate. She literally left the place with four people. Not sure why the darkfriends have better information than the person who overheard the prophecy, unless they’re changing that. But even if the BA got wind of it they’re quoting a different number than Moraine? The scene with Nynaeve in the TR I took to be Moraine rejecting her as one of the four, not checking to see if there might be a fifth. But Moraine doesn’t seem to know what to think anyway, I mean what is the point of prophecy if you just disregard it? Oh he’s really strong, maybe he’s the dragon? Wait a second, she’s shining like the sun! Maybe she’s the dragon!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Small gripe, but hey, I only rolled my eyes at one line of dialogue so this is a substantial improvement. 

Am I the only one kind of disappointed we didn't get the warder cloaks? It wouldn't have been difficult or even that expsnesive efx wise-- green cloak, warp the background. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Arataniello said:

Logain was healed back to his old strength in Salidar, because his gentling was healed by a woman.  Siuan and Leane are healed of their stilling by Nynaeve, but because that's a woman healing another woman, they are much weaker in the One Power after their healing.

 

I remember that only women could fully heal men and Vice versa; but I’m almost positive I remember comments about the healed being brought to their full potential.  Seems like I remember discussions at Dragonmount that intentionally severing and healing could be a shortcut to power leveling. :dunno: 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

58 minutes ago, Arataniello said:

Alanna's Warders (unnamed I think in this episode, Owein and Ihvon in the books) seem to have a little something something going on.  Perhaps fitted in their to satisfy the perceived lack of same sex relationsships in the books, but also to perhaps balance the whole idea of sister-wives amongst the Aiel when we get to that point.

The Warders were named, at least if you use subtitles. The black guy is Ihvon, but the other has a different name. I expected him to die, to be honest.

I do like that not all Warders use swords, though Stepin's double-sided axes are ridiculous.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Lord Patrek said:

And the massive Deus Ex Machina moment at the end really killed it for me.

They really do have a lot of world building to dump in. I saw the Vulture's recapper focuses on it as a bit of a problem right now for someone who doesn't really know anything about it, because it's a lot of info dumps to actual scene action ATM.

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

I did think they played up Mat’s corruption as a possible channeler well.

Yes and no. They do a good job not letting Rand or Thom realize what's really going on, but at the same time it should be pretty  obvious to the audience that his sickness is because of Shadar Logoth and the knife rather than because of channeling.

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

 I think they may have missed an opportunity with Shadar Logoth by not explaining that it’s evil was opposed to the DO’s evil.  Could have been a nice set up for Mat finding the Myrdraal. :dunno: 

Yes, I think that was a bit of a miss.

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

The shielding being something that takes some time seems like it will be problematic in some of the channeler on channeler fights later where much of it depends on being able to shield someone from the source quickly.

It's going to be a lot of Ryu hadouken moments given that they show them creating a small ball in their hands representing the shield. So you start doing that, the other person cuts the weave and presumably the ball dissipates, so you hurriedly form another while cutting their weave, etc... Honestly, the pace of channeling in the show is going to make channeler-on-channeler fights probably look rather odd compared to the books. Linda reminded me that when Nynaeve and Moghedien face off, there's a thought from Nyn or an omniscient narrator remarking that if a maid had walked into the room, all she would have seen would have been them staring intensely at each other, whereas from their perspective it was just a litany of shield-weaves and counter-weaves. 

 

48 minutes ago, Arataniello said:

The AS who died is was listed in the credits as Kerene (I think), who was one of the AS in New Spring sent out to hunt for the Dragon Reborn.  Guess here they are recycling names. '

Yeah, that was Kerene. Not sure why they recycled her name in particular.

48 minutes ago, Arataniello said:


Alanna's Warders (unnamed I think in this episode, Owein and Ihvon in the books)

One is definitely credited as Ihvon. Owein apparently gets renamed to Maksim for some reason.

48 minutes ago, Arataniello said:

seem to have a little something something going on.  Perhaps fitted in their to satisfy the perceived lack of same sex relationsships in the books, but also to perhaps balance the whole idea of sister-wives amongst the Aiel when we get to that point.

They are definitely involved with one another as well as with Alanna. They've made the whole setting much more "modern" in terms of sexual frankness. The Nynaeve of EotW would never have even understood them to be getting it on, much less asking a man she barely knows whether that's what's going on or not.

Speaking of that, a leaker who had an early draft of the episode 1 script through their work in the film and television idnustry has posted some snippets. This one features, on the last image they share, a sex scene between Mat and Danya, the woman he robs. They also reveal the details of the cut Egwene ceremony scene, which apparently happens before her river dive... and Linda noted again that if you look closely at Egwene's dress, there do seem to be some faded splatters of other colors against the blue of it. And then this leak gives some very-close-to-the-book-dialog featuring Tam al'Thor that I'm sure folks will recognize.

48 minutes ago, Arataniello said:

We haven't yet got to the thorny issue of ranking of strength in the Power, who is stronger than who, etc etc - but I did like the depiction on Nynaeve using saidar for the first time, and the amount of it she can access. 

I think that the bit that bugs me is they overdid it and had her heal everybody -- so she basically split her weave however many ways, and then did massive healing with it. Better if Lan was the only one injured and she just healed him, since they're not even trying to be subtle.

(Also, continuity again -- Moiraine has a massive piece of ax haft in her torso, but it's nowhere to be seen when Nynaeve heals it. I don't understand why they're so consistently sloppy with this stuff.)

 

9 minutes ago, john said:

TEverything Logain did looked cool for some reason but the Aes Sedai swirly white stuff is not working for me,

Logain doesn't do any hand gesturing. He just channels.  IIRC, in the books the Forsaken don't gesture because in the AoL you learned without it, but by the present time the Aes Sedai have built up all sorts of crutchy hand gestures that have now become indelibly linked with the weaves they taught. I guess Logain as a wilder learned on his own and just wasn't the gesturing kind. 

9 minutes ago, john said:

Thom fighting the Fade was the coolest part, wish that had gone on longer.

Kind of agree, but at the same time true to the books -- we never do learn what the hell happened that Thom survived, or why there was that blue or white flash of light... Think it's better to leave it a bit up in the air.

 

3 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Am I the only one kind of disappointed we didn't get the warder cloaks? It wouldn't have been difficult or even that expsnesive efx wise-- green cloak, warp the background. 

They said it was not that straightforward and would really be difficult to sell for all scenes warders are in. I'm guessing it was a time and budget thing for them. Shame, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Ran said:

They said it was not that straightforward and would really be difficult to sell for all scenes warders are in. I'm guessing it was a time and budget thing for them. Shame, though.

Mmn, I suppose. The visual would be unnecessarily distracting in some sequences, certainly-- guess I'll hold to the hope they'll roll the cloaks out eventually, when circumstances are more deliberate and some stealthy stabby action is required.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Owein was renamed because they realised having a character called Owein in close proximity to Thom talking about Owyn risked being confusing.

Nynaeve and Moghedien's power battle was done without any hand movements because Nynaeve's a wildling and Moghedien is from the Age of Legends, so neither need to do the hand gestures. It'll be interesting to see how this works, with Nynaeve getting a speed advantage over the regular Aes Sedai because of that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Nynaeve's a wildling

But not one kissed by fire, eh? :P

That said, her being a wilder doesn't strike me as the reason, since wilders learn some weaves on their own, yes, but then when they're taught weaves by others that include gestures they, too, will gesture. Otherwise it would have been remarked that Nynaeve was unusual and never gestured when she wove, which I am pretty certain is not true. 

So either the shield weave is one that was taught to her at the Tower without gestures, or the shield weave is something she just came up with on her own. 

ETA: Linda dug around and found that Egwene sort of remembered the weave when the Black Ajah shielded her and did one of her own -- I guess either they didn't gesture at all or because she just watched the weave rather than formally being taught she didn't incorporate it into her version. And then Nynaeve copies Egwene.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Book spoiler

Spoiler

So I wonder if we're going to see first time channelers getting sick. I was expecting it with Rand this episode, but not enough time has necessarily passed, so maybe next episode, when it's just him and Mat, without Thom.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

That said, her being a wilder doesn't strike me as the reason, since wilders learn some weaves on their own, yes, but then when they're taught weaves by others that include gestures they, too, will gesture.

So, the gesture thing was a relatively late ret-con by RJ when he decided that the AS needed to be Worfed by practically everybody, since before that he had even the Forsaken use gestures on occasion and Rand certainly did so as well. What is more, there are some examples of the weaves that wilders and other channelers invent on their own having the gesture component, like Moiraine's eavesdropping weave needing a stone for focus or the Asha'man "wife" bond requiring a kiss, etc. So, to me the implications of so many (but not all) AS weaves having a somatic component is that  much of their syllabus was cobbled together from the wilder  tricks, rather than being an unbroken tradition from AoL like they like to pretend. Mind you, the AS still knew a lot of techiques that the Aiel and the Windfinders didn't, like healing, linking, etc. They actually had the broadest and biggest library of commonly known weaves, with secret Ajah and personal ones on top of that.

 

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

So either the shield weave is one that was taught to her at the Tower without gestures, or the shield weave is something she just came up with on her own.

Siuan shields Nynaeve while being completely immobilized in TGH, so the Tower weave for it doesn't require gestures in the books. And frankly, it would be pretty useless if it did, because speed is of critical importance in this case. I don't think that she gestures when grabbing somebody with the flows of Air either.  Moiraine  covered all the area up to Baerlon in mist from the back of a galloping horse without gesturing and IIRC never gestured when setting wards. Oh, and she hit Rand with OP once without twitching a muscle and didn't gesture when she attempted to fight various Forsaken either, unless she was using balefire - for which both Rand and Rahvin also gestured.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I caught up on the first four episodes and I can say the show has exceeded my expectations this far. In all fairness, however, I was very wary before seeing it since Witcher turned out to be a turd. But I've liked WoT so far. It's not a masterpiece of television but it doesn't have to be.

Then again, I was never a die-hard fan of the book series, although I was interested enough to finish it when the last books came out. So the deviations from the source material don't bother me much and I'm quite interested in seeing where they take this.

Perrin's axe kill was still pretty baffling to see, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Maia said:

So, the gesture thing was a relatively late ret-con by RJ when he decided that the AS needed to be Worfed by practically everybody, since before that he had even the Forsaken use gestures on occasion and Rand certainly did so as well.

To be fair, some of Rand's weaves come from his past life. But I also think that a wilder might naturally want to do something like... throw an item with the One Power, and end up just naturally doing a gesture with it, and then that's that. 

I don't think it's so much as "Worfed" thing with the Tower, but the formal education side of things that suggested it to him -- no other group of channelers have, as you say, such a wide library of weaves that they systematically teach to classes of students. Wise Ones-in-training tend to be very few in number compared to the Tower, so it's all individualized training done communally, the Kin don't seem to make any effort to learn more about their power or teaching, Sea Folk windfinders seem to more apprentice to another Windfinder directly rather than having a bunch of different teachers, and so on.

Linda thinks maybe straight-up Spirit weaves maybe don't generally have gestures anyways, which may be true. Would make sense in a way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Everyone's book memory is impressive.

About the visuals, if the fx department incorporated different colors for particular strands, and also perhaps a variance of texture for the flows, the weaving would look markedly more dynamic. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, JEORDHl said:

Everyone's book memory is impressive.

About the visuals, if the fx department incorporated different colors for particular strands, and also perhaps a variance of texture for the flows, the weaving would look markedly more dynamic. 

That, I completely agree with. I don't understand why they didn't do that, but I'm sure they must have considered it. It'd be easier to see things being "woven" of multiple strands of different parts of the One Power and so on.

ETA: Actually, someone asked it as part of a set of questions during the AMA, but Judkins did not respond to that part.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

I remember that only women could fully heal men and Vice versa; but I’m almost positive I remember comments about the healed being brought to their full potential.  Seems like I remember discussions at Dragonmount that intentionally severing and healing could be a shortcut to power leveling. :dunno: 

This was speculation, and never borne out. Logain was at full strength before being gentled, because Siuan says he'd needed 6 women holding his shield before, and that was the case at Salidar as well. 

49 minutes ago, Ran said:

ETA: Linda dug around and found that Egwene sort of remembered the weave when the Black Ajah shielded her and did one of her own -- I guess either they didn't gesture at all or because she just watched the weave rather than formally being taught she didn't incorporate it into her version. And then Nynaeve copies Egwene.

Nynaeve copies Egwene's stilling weave actually, which is of Egwene's own invention:

Quote

She knew it was possible to cut a woman off from the True Source even if she had already embraced saidar , but severing a weave already established had to be much harder than damming the flow before it began. She set the patterns of the weaving, readied them, making the threads of Spirit much stronger, this time, thicker and heavier, a denser weave with a cutting edge like a knife.

She made a shield so strong it cut through the conduit to the Source in Amico.

That's what Nynaeve tries with Moghedien, who uses the same weave on her.

It's unclear if this is how the Tower stills/gentles, though, or if this is how stronger channelers do it because they have the strength to, but the Tower's weave is more power efficient. It'd make sense that the Tower spent time perfecting this weave compared to Age of Legends channelers, though obviously, few were skilled enough to have a level of efficiency matching someone with a true Talent. 

 

Quote

About the visuals, if the fx department incorporated different colors for particular strands, and also perhaps a variance of texture for the flows, the weaving would look markedly more dynamic. 

Agreed. I hope they get a bigger VFX budget in future seasons to improve channeling. More contrasty colors and texture will help immensely. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Ran said:

 But I also think that a wilder might naturally want to do something like... throw an item with the One Power, and end up just naturally doing a gesture with it, and then that's that. 

 

Exactly. There was a suggestion up-thread that only the Tower-trained use gestures and wilders don't. I think that the Tower  weaves with somatic components initially come from  wilders and/or private invention. Certainly, Logain in the show doesn't gesture and I don't remember one way or another what he does in the books, apart from the bond kiss, but for instance Damer Flynn also used extensive gestures with his own, superior Healing. Taim, of course, didn't use gestures, but he  wasn't truly a wilder.

 

1 hour ago, Ran said:

 Wise Ones-in-training tend to be very few in number compared to the Tower

I think that it was the other way around, since they find and train all sparkers and the Aiel are pretty numerous. At least there were a lot of Wise Ones  in pre-Sanderson books - hundreds in every clan IIRC, but he simplified the disposition of forces for TG by seriously reducing channeler numbers on the side of Light without explanation. I mean, I understand that all these thousands of channelers were seriously unwieldly in a battle scenario and it was  hard to come up with something to put forces of Light in desperate straights with them around, but I can't help feeling a little bitter because books were wasted on recruiting and assembling them!

Anyway, back to the show - why was Kerene worriedly glancing at Moiraine - twice, right before she was killed? It must be some kind of misdirection, but I didn't see Liandrin doing anything untoward, either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Maia said:

I think that it was the other way around, since they find and train all sparkers and the Aiel are pretty numerous.

I guess the fact that Aviendha is practically alone as an apprentice (there's like two others named) made it feel like while Jordan says there's many of them, it didn't feel like it. Also, officially the apprentices literally apprentice to a particular Wise One. There doesn't seem to be formal, class-based schooling, unlike the Tower.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Wise Ones don't have an institute for learning, so the apprentices are spread around. We meet Aviendha, Surandha and another two, all Egwene's friends. 

The Wise Ones, however, have a higher attrition rate of trainees, also. The Tower rarely lets someone test for Accepted before they're believed to be ready, ditto for the Shawl.

With the Wise Ones, their initial apprentice test seems fairly ok, but they do the same things Clan Chiefs do for the main test, and that proves hard for them too, though not as much as the men, apparently. Still, more deaths than in the Tower.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...