The Wheel of Time: Another Turning (No Book Spoilers)

[Which Tyler]

I think the last 2 were affected heavily, by both Matt's actor not returning, and Covid itself, and the necessity of actors forming bubbles, locations, stuntmen and extras being unavailable etc.

Not to mention what must have been hasty rewrites exposing an already apparent lack in talent.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

The intro intrigued me…had this world already reached the technological level of the space age\Information Age and beyond? If so why were the character dialogues  ,decor and outfits still stuck in mideval level ?

can a mad dragon really offset so much tech , cant they just nuke him from their flying ships or satellites lol

if the internet existed could they not find a way to preserve knowledge for future generations? It just really calls to suspend my disbelief that aes sedai and a lot of the mythology  survived but not any of the tech and they just went back to late medieval age.

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

The intro intrigued me…had this world already reached the technological level of the space age\Information Age and beyond? If so why were the character dialogues  ,decor and outfits still stuck in mideval level ?

can a mad dragon really offset so much tech , cant they just nuke him from their flying ships or satellites lol

if the internet existed could they not find a way to preserve knowledge for future generations? It just really calls to suspend my disbelief that aes sedai and a lot of the mythology  survived but not any of the tech and they just went back to late medieval age.

The costumes in the intro were definitely not medieval. Lews Therin's uniform looks like something out of Battlestar Galactica.

I recommend you watch the bonus content, mainly the animated shorts which give more book lore. The first one talks about the Breaking of the World. It wasn't just the Dragon who went mad, it was all men who could channel. And as we see in the show, every time a man is born with the ability to channel, he eventually goes mad and causes havoc. Imagine how many men who were Aes Sedai may have existed in the previous age. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

But the Witcher world in which a similar  premise is hinted at  ( modern humans come to an ancient continent and lose their tech ) , they at least retain some modern lingo like abortion,genetics, virus etc

Here it seems every trace of the former world has been erased except the Aes Sedai  order and the mythology and structure  around it which seems a bit illogical.

[Ran]

No book spoilers, folks.

[fionwe1987]

6 hours ago, Ran said:

No book spoilers, folks.

Apologies on that front.

[Poobah]

8 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

But the Witcher world in which a similar  premise is hinted at  ( modern humans come to an ancient continent and lose their tech ) , they at least retain some modern lingo like abortion,genetics, virus etc

Here it seems every trace of the former world has been erased except the Aes Sedai  order and the mythology and structure  around it which seems a bit illogical.

While, per the bonus content, the breaking of the world was an event of truly apocalyptic proportions they've retained some things and a generally higher level of technology than a typical fantasy world, for instance we've seen that books and literacy are common enough that even backwater peasants like the protagonists have owned and read them. Also I don't think it's an unreasonable speculation / leap to think that since their old world was run by the Aes Sedai it's likely that their technology was less "technology" and more "magitech" which became unsustainable once half of that magic was tainted and the chaos began.

[fionwe1987]

54 minutes ago, Poobah said:

While, per the bonus content, the breaking of the world was an event of truly apocalyptic proportions they've retained some things and a generally higher level of technology than a typical fantasy world, for instance we've seen that books and literacy are common enough that even backwater peasants like the protagonists have owned and read them. Also I don't think it's an unreasonable speculation / leap to think that since their old world was run by the Aes Sedai it's likely that their technology was less "technology" and more "magitech" which became unsustainable once half of that magic was tainted and the chaos began.

That said, their understanding of "magitech" is at close enough to the few glimpses of tech/science knowledge we see in the Witcher world. 

[Maltaran]

9 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

But the Witcher world in which a similar  premise is hinted at  ( modern humans come to an ancient continent and lose their tech ) , they at least retain some modern lingo like abortion,genetics, virus etc

Here it seems every trace of the former world has been erased except the Aes Sedai  order and the mythology and structure  around it which seems a bit illogical.

IIRC the timeline from the Witcher back story, the time from the Conjunction of the Spheres to the present is at most half the time since the Breaking in WOT. Also, as Poobah mentioned, WOT’s tech level is somewhat higher than the standard medieval level of most swords and sorcery fantasy - it’s more Renaissance level minus gunpowder 

[Argonath Diver]

Yep Ran my apologies for the logistics joke that could have been a minor spoiler. I thought I was in the other thread, and was referring more to Jordan's issues with geography and travel more than actual events. 

On topic, my two coworkers who are new comers both were confused by the last episode and not sure how the show would progress. I'm not sure the finale did the best job setting the table for the remainder of the show. Lan and Nynaeve are easily their most discussed/favorite characters.

The older fellow had no idea what was happening with the Aes Sedai in the battle and after. He was so excited for most of the season, but I think all the increasing magic and greater stakes have passed him by. He was under the impression that the show was now over after Rand and Moiraine's battle with the bad guy at the end.

I think the second season can easily be a lot more fun for newcomers than this one, but I suppose we will know soon enough!

[Zorral]

28 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

Lan and Nynaeve are easily their most discussed/favorite characters.

This seems to be the case among my friends who watch such things too; like me, it's the adults in the series -- Moiraine, Lan, Nynaeve, Siuan Sanche, and the politics in the Tower, -- are what kept us watching the show.  The kids, and the emo, forget about it. As far as the Dragon goes -- don't care about him / it either; so far, despite the finale, it's still an abstraction.  Then that really REALLY cheesy scene with flying cars and what not? What????? it looked like something out of a 1940's superhero comic book - Flash Gordon, maybe -- or the cover art for a pulp sf adventure magazine from the 1930's.  This, in a series that had more money than god, and yet looking less solid, less convincing than The Witcher does.  Considering how well the previous six episodes did, it really seems that covid killed the landing of the first season, doesn't it?  You see the same thing in the first part of what is supposed to be the final season of Lucifer, when they resumed making the show from their covid hiatus.  It looked and moved pretty poorly; the second, and really final final half of the final season was much better.

[karaddin]

9 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Yep Ran my apologies for the logistics joke that could have been a minor spoiler. I thought I was in the other thread

Yeah I've done the same unfortunately, and have managed to catch mixing up the threads another few times. I think the thread titles are a very similar length and I was subconsciously using the difference in length to remember which I was in before. I'm being more careful now.

9 hours ago, Zorral said:

 it really seems that covid killed the landing of the first season, doesn't it? 

I'd thought a lot of it was down to losing Mat's actor, but a YouTube review discussed this in a bit more depth and yeah - it seems highly likely that the pandemic really screwed them. They were unable to even get to some of the locations for the last two episodes on top of actor disruptions, effects companies and possibly even editors working from home etc. I'm hoping the next season finds it feet better and I'll just give them a pass on extra difficulties here.

[Arakasi]

I had heard some complaints about how the show felt like CW but tbh WoT IS CW. Its main characters are three teenage boys and a teenage girl who are all described at least as being handsome and all get into romances with hot women or men while growing into adulthood. I think it was rather deliberate to focus on Moiraine here early to get away from that and let the kids grow into their characters.

And yeah it looks like Covid really messed up the last two episodes. They did pretty well with seven but eight was imo 3 things, one of which was fixable and two that weren’t really.

1. The battle looked small and disjointed and didn’t mesh well with the girl parts.

2. Mats departure left Perrin to carry his plot. I don’t mind Perrin being passive here it is a reasonable penalty of him shirking the axe. But it’s clear he should have done something else, maybe to start correcting that while Mat had it out with Fain.

3. The handling/ending of Nynaeve and Egwene. That whole scene was a mess because of production but they could have made it better with some better dialogue, pacing and effects. Just slight alterations would have helped a lot there.

[karaddin]

3 hours ago, Arakasi said:

2. Mats departure left Perrin to carry his plot. I don’t mind Perrin being passive here it is a reasonable penalty of him shirking the axe. But it’s clear he should have done something else, maybe to start correcting that while Mat had it out with Fain.

3. The handling/ending of Nynaeve and Egwene. That whole scene was a mess because of production but they could have made it better with some better dialogue, pacing and effects. Just slight alterations would have helped a lot there.

I'd focused on how Perrin was pretty clearly standing in for what was meant to be Mat's role in the finale but hadn't thought through to the impact of "what was he meant to do, which now isn't happening" and its entirely possible it was meant to be something with the girls, or something else completely.

[Gertrude]

I heard a Youtuber speculate that he might have helped Lan track them through the Blight via his emerging connections. It's as good a thought as any - highlight something specific about Perrin and drop the "she has a tell" nonsense. I'd love to know one day what their plans were for those two episodes. I wonder that's something Amazon would let Rafe talk about once it's over.

[Maia]

18 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

I heard a Youtuber speculate that he might have helped Lan track them through the Blight via his emerging connections. It's as good a thought as any - highlight something specific about Perrin and drop the "she has a tell" nonsense.

I honestly don't understand why Lan would have needed anybody's help to track them, honestly. I thought that this nonsensical dialog was there so that Nynaeve could give him explicit on-screen permission to run off after a night of passion, because the writers thought that him just leaving would make him look bad otherwise.

IMHO, Perrin was likely intended to pick up an axe and fight defending the girls. That was supposed to be the moment when he abandoned the Way of the Leaf. I also think that the circle was initially intended to be a part of the overall battle, hence the weird "charge" of warriors to the pass fortification. I can forgive awkward things that were clearly the result of Covid and Harris leaving, like this and the Seanchan wave.

But "the Tell" and most of the fake deaths were really  counter-productive, IMHO. That's not how you demonstrate that things are serious and dangerous.

 

[Infidel]

On 12/31/2021 at 2:36 AM, karaddin said:

I'd focused on how Perrin was pretty clearly standing in for what was meant to be Mat's role in the finale but hadn't thought through to the impact of "what was he meant to do, which now isn't happening" and its entirely possible it was meant to be something with the girls, or something else completely.

Doesn't help that Perrin's actor is the biggest charisma black hole on the show, trading off with arguably the best (Mat's actor)...