Episode 45: Adapting the The Wheel of Time for Television
- Links to this episode: Spotify / Apple Podcasts
Unofficial, reviewed transcript. It may still contain mistakes; check the podcast when wording matters.
Speakers are labeled by first name where identified. Unidentified-speaker labels may refer to different people. Bracketed question marks indicate uncertain wording.
Transcript
[00:00:10] Cameo: Welcome to the Theory of Anything podcast. I'm Cameo, and I have here with me co-hosts Bruce Nielson.
[00:00:17] Bruce: Hello.
[00:00:18] Cameo: And Tracy.
[00:00:20] Unidentified speaker: Hello.
[00:00:22] Cameo: And today we are going away from some of our usual topics, and we're going to discuss the Wheel of Time TV show, the adaptation of the much loved story that people have been enjoying for many, many years.
[00:00:41] Bruce: So, I just want to say how I actually discovered the Wheel of Time. I have a friend, David Lovell, call out to David. I'm sure he doesn't actually watch this, listen to this show, but he's kind of one of my geek friends from way back in my high school days. And we were both going to college together, both happened to go to BYU. But we were friends back in California back when I was growing up. And he said, there's this book series by Robert Jordan, you've got to read it. And so I was in college and all my roommates had already read it. And so I started to read this. And at least for the first, let's say three books, maybe even beyond the first three books, it's one of the best series I'd ever read. It had a hard time holding it up after at some point, but it really was an incredible series. And I found myself just devouring the books. So yes, much love would be a correct statement.
[00:01:45] Cameo: And I think my experience was pretty similar, although I've read it earlier, but you jump into that first book and it's just absolutely compelling. And he drags you along with at least those first four books. Yeah, I mean, it's just super, super compelling storytelling. So for those who haven't seen it, Amazon, this was a very big deal for Amazon to get the rights to this much beloved book. And now they've released a show. It is not true to the books. And if somebody has read the books and has waited to see the show, this is absolutely going to have spoilers in it.
[00:02:31] Bruce: Yeah, we should probably mention we're going to have spoilers of both the TV series and the books.
[00:02:37] Unidentified speaker: So yes.
[00:02:39] Bruce: So if you if you haven't read the books and you want to, don't listen to this episode, if you haven't seen the TV show, go watch it first and then you can listen to the episode. But we're going to talk openly about our feelings about the TV show in particular, but also the books.
[00:02:57] Unidentified speaker: Yes, yes, I think that that's fair. I think that's fair. So Bruce, let's start with you.
[00:03:02] Cameo: Like, what's your what was your impression first moment of watching? You know, this it's finally made it to the screen. It was very hyped coming into…
[00:03:13] Bruce: It was. And so let me let me give my standard disclaimer here. I feel like fans of shows and books and such sometimes take things to ridiculous levels, the very fact that I watched the whole season and that I intend to watch the next season and that I have not quit yet. That's impressive. And that must be seen as a positive, right? So clearly, I'm not in the camp where I hate the show, right? It's this is a show that I like enough that I'm going to continue to watch. So I have overall a positive impression of the show, just based on the fact that I intend to keep watching it. Because once I reach the point where I don't intend to watch it anymore, I won't, right? The fact that I'm willing to put my time into it, that means something. Just so we understand that, because I'm going to say negative things, but it's in context of I actually so far do like the show.
[00:04:18] Cameo: Yeah, you're going to keep coming back. It's at least not so reprehensible that you can't even stomach looking at it.
[00:04:24] Bruce: Right, right. And it doesn't take much for me to quit a show, right?
[00:04:28] Unidentified speaker: Oh, me either.
[00:04:30] Bruce: So this is really saying something. This is what I kind of said the same thing with the Star Wars movies, right? I really don't hate the most recent Star Wars movies. I kind of hate what they did to Star Wars, but like every single one of the movies was entertaining. And I'm glad I went to go see them, right? I mean, I got them each for free. I didn't pay money for them. They were absolutely worth my time, right? Stuff's like, I mean, you have to keep this in context, right? Some movies are good enough that if you can see them for free and they're worth your time, that's good. That's a positive that that means you like the movie, right?
[00:05:05] Cameo: Yeah, I go out of my way to watch very few movies. Like I don't go to. Movie watching for the sake of movie watching is not a part of my life. And so if I go to watch something and continue to watch it, it does indicate that I've chosen to watch it because it's got redeemable qualities.
[00:05:23] Bruce: Yeah. And so like I used to tell people when Batman versus Superman came out, I said that movie is definitely worth going to see at the Dollar Theater. And people would laugh. I had actually not seen at the Dollar Theater. I had higher expectations. So I went to go see it in first run theater. And people would laugh. Tracy laughed at me when I said that. She said that is not an endorsement of the movie. I said, no, no, it is an endorsement of the movie. This is a good Dollar Theater movie. I mean, I literally not only is it worth your time for if you were to see it for free, but it's worth a dollar. Right.
[00:06:00] Cameo: So well, and you're going to spend more than a dollar because it's really hard to go to the movies and not buy at least popcorn.
[00:06:06] Bruce: Fair enough.
[00:06:06] Cameo: So you're going to spend twelve dollars by the time you walk out the door.
[00:06:10] Bruce: Right. So, okay, so with this in mind, let me give my impressions here. I watched the first episode with my daughter, who's kind of the one in the family that will watch a lot of these shows with me. And it's also interesting, since she hasn't read the books, getting her impressions is kind of important because it's hard for me to, there's no way I can watch this show without comparing it to the books. I'm going to have visceral reactions any time they've changed something that mattered to me. Like they change something that doesn't matter to me, then that's fine. But any time they change something and I think, oh no, they changed that, I'm going to have this visceral negative reaction. And she's not going to, she's just enjoying it for what it is. So I would say, first of all, that the casting of Rand was spot on, other than the fact he's too old, spot on.
[00:07:04] Bruce: Like he was exactly what I thought Rand should look like. And that meant a lot to me that they got that, that they nailed that. I would say Perrin looked like Perrin. Mat wasn't what I expected at all. Obviously none of the women were what I expected because of the race changes that they made.
[00:07:30] Unidentified speaker: Including Moiraine?
[00:07:31] Bruce: Oh, Moiraine was spot on. Oh, yes, Moiraine was totally spot on.
[00:07:36] Unidentified speaker: Yeah, she was pretty perfect.
[00:07:40] Bruce: Lan wasn't at all what I had envisioned him in my head. He did act like I thought. Nynaeve didn't look at all like she should have, but she acted exactly like she should have.
[00:07:51] Tracy: She did act like Nynaeve.
[00:07:54] Bruce: Egwene was probably the roughest one. She neither really acted nor looked like she should have.
[00:08:03] Unidentified speaker: Yeah, I agree.
[00:08:04] Bruce: So just in terms of the casting, I would say they get a pass. They did pretty good. They probably did better than I expected. Because I think in most shows like this, you have to get used to the fact that none of the actors look like you imagined in your head. So they went well beyond that, in my mind. On the race change, the race change in and of itself isn't a problem. But the fact that they did it in the way they did it was maybe a bad sign. So what I mean here, one of my friends online said, I just don't buy that there's this town that's been separated from the rest of the world for 200 years. And it just so happens that half of them are Indian and half of them are white. That doesn't make sense, right? And it was one of the early signs that they're going to make change. Not this, you know, we can talk about whether this is bad or good, but that they are going to make changes to appeal to the audience that they're after, even if it breaks the fiction, right?
[00:09:08] Bruce: Which does matter in a case like this, because one of the things that really mattered in the books is that he really thinks through, if I change this, that will change a whole bunch of other things. And that's the world-building aspect, right? So the fact that they clearly don't care as much about the world-building as the original author Robert Jordan did, that was a strong sign that we were gonna have to deal with that. And I think-
[00:09:35] Cameo: That's an interesting point, because I've thought a lot about the race, because I didn't actually mind any of the characters like how they looked. I don't think that Egwene acts like I would expect her to act either, but I've really liked Nynaeve, even though she doesn't look how I expected. But from a world-building perspective, race was a thing in their world. It's why Rand always stands out so much, because he looks so different from everybody else, right? He looks different, and it's a part of what shapes him as a character, is this mystery attribution of why he looks different from everybody else, which [unclear: “you totally lose”] in this context.
[00:10:21] Bruce: You do, because they've got a pluralistic society like modern America everywhere they go, basically, right? It's instead of every single race from our world exists in the Robert Jordan books. So he has representation of every race, but they're within countries, and they aren't this pluralistic society, modern society that America is today, right?
[00:10:47] Cameo: Right, which is how it would work if you are isolated by time and space.
[00:10:52] Bruce: Right, right. So the issue there for me was, oh, this is a flag that they're going to not care as much about the world. But on the other hand, that didn't surprise me that much, right? And we have to be realistic. They have to appeal to a modern audience, and they would take tons of criticism if every single one of the main characters was white. And at the end of the day, they got to make money. And if that's what they need to do to make money, it's hard for me to blame them, right?
[00:11:23] Cameo: I wouldn't have begrudged, and I still don't begrudge them any of the racial changes at all. And I think they would have been non-noticeable after the very first part if they hadn't also changed the characters, which is my opinion. I think people would have been upset for a moment. And then settled into the familiar story and forgotten that people didn't look exact. I mean, I have had movies where the character didn't look like what I had expected from the book, and that I end up really enjoying because it still is truthful to the intent of the author.
[00:12:01] Bruce: I have an opinion on this that I formed over time, just from having this happen so many times. Every single time that they make a change, I always feel wrong about it initially. And then some percentage of the time, I end up not caring as I get into the story. On the other hand, sometimes I do care, and I'm trying to figure out what is the case where I do care, what is the case where I don't care? So one of the ones that really comes to mind, one of the early ones that happened to me was in Smallville, Lana Lang not being a redhead. So Lana Lang is iconically a redhead, right? And when they cast Kristen Whatserbucket as Lana Lang, I was really upset. And I watched, and then about halfway through the first episode, I just did not care anymore because she nailed the character so well that the change of the hair color just did not matter, okay?
[00:13:05] Bruce: Now, you might say that means hair color doesn't matter, and I don't think that's the case. If you were to put a blonde Superman in a show, I do not care how well he acts. I'm never going to see him as Superman, okay?
[00:13:22] Cameo: I see, and I think I would buy a blonde Superman if he was Superman-ish enough.
[00:13:30] Bruce: You know, there are certain things that are more iconic than others, right? And for Superman, being dark is really important to me. And you know what, just in my defense, maybe it's true for you that you could buy a blonde Superman, but think about like the TV show The Boys, where they have a blonde Superman character. They did that on purpose. They intentionally made their Superman character blonde so that you know there's something wrong. That's why they did it, right? Is that they're trying to make you super uncomfortable with this Superman character, almost Superman character, right? Since he's an evil Superman, we ultimately find out. And I don't think it's an accident at all that they made him blonde, that they knew we're gonna have to change something significant about the iconic Superman so that you are just uncomfortable with him.
[00:14:21] Bruce: And all they had to do was the hair color change, and boom, spot on, he's evil.
[00:14:28] Unidentified speaker: Blonde equals evil.
[00:14:30] Bruce: Yes.
[00:14:32] Cameo: Okay, so bringing it back to Wheel of Time, the race thing definitely was jarring at first, but they followed it so quickly by making some major background changes for characters that…
[00:14:49] Bruce: Yeah. Talk through the ones that bothered you the most. I've got my own opinions.
[00:14:54] Cameo: Well, the background change for Perrin is…
[00:15:00] Unidentified speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:02] Cameo: And I saw you made a comment on a Facebook thread that you believed that they are... Somebody made a comment on maybe your Facebook thread. I don't want to attribute it to you, but that they needed to pull people into all of the characters quickly as possible. And so they didn't have time for Perrin's character to evolve naturally. Was that your comment?
[00:15:28] Bruce: I don't think that one was, but that's probably a fair comment and probably almost assuredly why they did what they did.
[00:15:35] Cameo: I'm just always going to be upset about it.
[00:15:40] Tracy: Brandon Sanderson was upset about it too, from what I read. He disagreed with the trope of what they did.
[00:15:47] Bruce: So let's call it what it is. They fridged a woman they made up that wasn't in the original story to give Perrin motivation.
[00:15:57] Unidentified speaker: Yeah.
[00:15:57] Bruce: Right. It was... And I don't want to say that the fridge trope is always wrong. I doubt anything is always wrong. But man, you better really write it well if you're going to do the fridge trope and pull it off at this point. Right? That is one of the worst tropes that there is. So basically, Perrin kills his own wife in the first episode. Now, we knew it was coming because he doesn't have a wife in the books.
[00:16:24] Unidentified speaker: Right?
[00:16:24] Bruce: At least not at first. So it didn't fit his character. It didn't...
[00:16:32] Cameo: I don't think it gave him the motive. I mean, everything that happens from—to Perrin throughout the arc of the story doesn't make sense. In a world where he just killed his wife or had been married or like anything that happens to him.
[00:16:46] Bruce: I agree because he's the one who ends up with the best love story in the book, right?
[00:16:51] Cameo: Well, and he ends up with just a fantastic hero story in general. And he has his own complexity of character to get to where he's going.
[00:17:02] Unidentified speaker: That none of it makes sense. It just...
[00:17:04] Bruce: I agree.
[00:17:06] Cameo: They ruined the awesomeness that is watching Perrin grow into his powers.
[00:17:12] Bruce: Yes. Now, the reason they did it is they did thematically hit something that was correct, which is Perrin is the big guy that's worried that he's going to hurt people. Because... And he gets that way after he first hurts a bad guy, right? So instead, they make him kill his wife. I mean, it's so much more extreme. But you can see thematically, they were trying to go for the same thing, right? And it just did not work. And then to make it worse, they end up implying that he was in love with Egwene even while he was married. And it's like, where did that even come from?
[00:17:51] Unidentified speaker: That was confusing to me.
[00:17:53] Tracy: I didn't remember that happening.
[00:17:56] Bruce: Yeah, no, they were buddies. They often paired off as buddies, but there was not even the slightest romantic tension between them, and it was played that way in the books. And why they couldn't do that in the show, I can't even fathom. It doesn't even make sense that they decided to, out of the blue, have a throwaway line to change that.
[00:18:16] Tracy: There's just a little tension between the main characters?
[00:18:20] Cameo: Maybe? This is where plot changes to me start to... to reek of hubris on the part of the people who are creating the screenplay. They've decided they have a better story that they want to tell. They're inspired by the original story, but they feel like they can improve it. And this is where I can't help but feel a little used as an audience. If you tell me I'm coming to sit down to watch The Wheel of Time, because you have no intention of showing me The Wheel of Time. You want to show me a story that was inspired by The Wheel of Time, where you decided you knew better how to create a good story. Yeah, that's my takeaway. I'm kind of, I don't know, I guess I'm a little angry.
[00:19:13] Bruce: Do you intend to keep watching the show, Cameo, or have you given up on it?
[00:19:17] Cameo: Well, I actually enjoy the show as if I can look at it and say, you know, inspired an entirely new story, but inspired by The Wheel of Time. I like some of their characters. Even some of the ones that I, Lan's a great example. I don't think that their Lan is a good representative of Lan, but I like their Lan for what he is. I will probably continue to watch it, but I'm not going to think of it as a rendition of The Wheel of Time because it's not that story.
[00:19:55] Bruce: So Brandon Sanderson on his podcast, Intentionally Blank, he actually explains how he looked at the show. So now Brandon Sanderson, for those who don't know, he wrote the last three books in the series after Robert Jordan died. So he is one of the authors of the series, just not the main original author. And in fact, I had quit the series. I had given up on the books.
[00:20:18] Unidentified speaker: Which book did you stop on?
[00:20:21] Bruce: You know, it might have been book eight.
[00:20:22] Tracy: I know it was book eight for me.
[00:20:24] Unidentified speaker: [Unclear: “I couldn’t…”]
[00:20:26] Bruce: So the books are not perfect. Like the first few books are really, really, really good. And then the story slows down quite a bit for a long time. And there were a number of reasons why I quit the books. And we can talk about that if you want. There were some things that I really just had a hard time stomaching in the books. And I used to make fun of people who read The Wheel of Time. I would see people reading The Wheel of Time, and I would say, oh, you know, and I would make fun of the books. And I'd say, you know, he's going to die before he actually finishes the series. And I was joking at the time, but that's exactly what ended up happening. He stretched the series out so far. He milked it so far that he ended up dying of old age before he completed the series. And so I would totally make fun of fans of the book. And I would say, ah, he died.
[00:21:18] Bruce: You never get to find out how the story was really going to end. Then they announced that Brandon Sanderson's going to finish writing the books. He happens to be my favorite author. So I had to go back and I had to eat my words, read all the books, so that I could get to the last three, which by the way were excellent. They were really well done. And I'm really glad I completed the series. Overall, I have a very positive impression of the series now. I had this really dreadful, you know how you're like going with the story and it's really like, let's say Lost as an example, the TV show Lost. The first season was one of the best shows on television ever. And then partway through the second season, I realized they don't know where they're going. There's no way this is going to end well. And I quit. And that was where I was at with The Wheel of Time.
[00:22:04] Bruce: As much as I had enjoyed the first part, I really thought he's never going to pull this off. He's dragging it out too much. And I was wrong. Okay, there was some, maybe some not the best books in the middle, but he apparently gave the story to Brandon Sanderson before he died. Brandon Sanderson, it was authentic to me. People will argue over this. But to me, it felt very authentic to the original story. And I think it really did represent exactly what Robert Jordan intended to do. I don't think it was at all like the Game of Thrones ending on the TV show, where they had a few plot points and then they kind of did their own thing. It really felt like he, that Brandon Sanderson had done a true mind meld with Robert Jordan and had really understood this is where each of the characters needs to go. It felt like Robert Jordan was maybe not the main author of the books.
[00:22:56] Bruce: There was at least some change in style because it was a different author. But it still felt like his characters and authentic canonical ending to the series, at least for me it did. So Brandon Sanderson on Intentionally Blank, he says, you know, the Wheel of Time is about this idea that time keeps repeating itself. And in the books, they have, during the books, they have myths about us from our time period. They have myths about Dear Abby. They have myths about Russia versus America. They have myths. And I didn't even notice this when I read the books. I went back and checked it on the internet. Sure enough, a lot of their myths are from us. Like to them, we are the ancient past, right? But then in turn, our myths are about them. And the story is about how, is a version of a lot of our ancient myths being played out. Okay. And just as a lot of our—their myths about us are giant exaggerations or wrong in some significant way.
[00:24:12] Bruce: So are our myths about them. So you've got the cycle where we're their ancient past and they're our ancient past, right? So Brandon Sanderson told the people on the show, he says, in my headcanon, this isn't the wheel of time from the books. This is a different time through the wheel.
[00:24:34] Tracy: Like iteration?
[00:24:35] Bruce: Yes, it's a different iteration that's going to play out similar, but not the same. And so he said, once he had decided that, he could accept how much the show was different from the original story. Sanderson seems to like, he's an executive producer on the show. To some degree, he's being paid to like the show. He says in his contract, he's allowed to just say whatever he wants that he needs to, because he is kind of the liaison with the fans of the books. So he has to be truthful to them about his feelings. And I think that's true. I don't think he could realistically say anything too bad about the show.
[00:25:18] Unidentified speaker: No, not, not.
[00:25:20] Cameo: And I mean, as an executive producer, there is a certain amount of his stamp that it went out the door, right?
[00:25:28] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[00:25:29] Bruce: It sounds like he helped, he was a resource on the first three episodes, and then COVID hit, and he had no connection with the show at all after the first three episodes. And in fact, he claims that he says that COVID was probably what ruined the final episode where they have the giant battle at the gap in the books, and it turns out to be eight women instead. He says, yeah, I'm pretty sure that they didn't intend to do that. That was their COVID response to how to get the show out the door during COVID.
[00:26:06] Cameo: Oh, interesting, but okay. Okay, so what plot changes beyond Perrin bugged you most?
[00:26:16] Bruce: Okay, so I disliked the fact that they tried to hint that Lan and Moiraine were in a romantic relationship in the first episode, only to like suddenly walk that back out of the blue and instead put her into a romantic relationship with the Amyrlin Seat.
[00:26:36] Cameo: So I didn't feel like they insinuated that. I felt like they insinuated that they were so comfortable with each other as peers and people who had worked together for years that they could be in sexual situations with each other and it didn't really even faze them.
[00:26:57] Tracy: Yeah, I felt more like that too.
[00:26:59] Bruce: That may be what they were going for.
[00:27:01] Cameo: Because I never felt, in fact, I felt like that part was pretty truthful to the way I perceived the books when I read them. I perceived them as their relationship was one where they could be naked in front of each other and probably routinely were without it having any sexual overtones whatsoever.
[00:27:27] Bruce: So let me tell you that it did not come across that way to my daughter who [unclear: “had it close”]. I've done a lot with trying to get her feelings on it so that I can see how someone's going to react to the show. And she does like the show. She'll keep watching it, too. I did not like the ending. And Brandon Sanderson did like the ending, by the way. He said he thought that was really well done, and I didn't. The ending of the first season, they have him meet Ishamael, which is correct. That's what happens in the books, too. But how do I explain this? Ishamael in the books is... You think he's the dark one, and they do that in the TV show, too. So this is a big spoiler that, in fact, he's not the dark one. This is a really important plot point, because in the books, you are terrified of the guy with the burning eyes that keeps coming after the boys, right?
[00:28:28] Bruce: And he seems unstoppable. He can come to them in their dreams and things like that, right? And you really, really, really believe this is the dark one. And then you get to the end of the first book, and you find out, oh, no, he's actually the dark one's shoeshine boy. And it's a big deal, right? I've had people say, no, he's not his shoeshine boy. He's his general. Yeah, I know, but bear with me, right? He's nowhere near as powerful as the dark one. Okay, that's my point here. And you suddenly realize, holy crap, we're dealing with something way more powerful than we thought. Okay, it was well done. It was one of the best parts of the book. In the TV series, not only did they not reveal that this isn't the dark one, but he's not scary in the slightest. He's suave.
[00:29:20] Cameo: I would say he's purposefully not scary.
[00:29:23] Bruce: Yes.
[00:29:24] Cameo: They re-envisioned. It's another place where they just wanted to improve the story. They wanted a 50 Shades of Grey version of it. It's implied that he's an awful guy, but on the surface, you want to impress him because he's obviously very cool.
[00:29:51] Bruce: Right.
[00:29:52] Unidentified speaker: Yeah.
[00:29:52] Cameo: It was kind of a crazy interpretation of that.
[00:29:57] Bruce: You know, it could have worked in season two, maybe, right? Where initially we're scared of him, but then we realized that he can be completely suave or something like that. It did not work for me. And my daughter, I asked her, I told my daughter, I said, you know what? That's not the dark one. That's Ishamael. And you know what she said? She goes, oh, thank goodness. I was so underwhelmed. So I don't think it worked. I think that it took one of the best plot points of the original book, ruined it, and then replaced it with something that was just bad, right? Not completely bad. A suave villain can be interesting. And let's see where they go with it from here. But it was just, it felt very underwhelming to me. And then the fact that his battle with Ishamael was actually the battle from the final book, the final of the whole series, that they've moved that battle all the way up to...
[00:30:54] Cameo: But they have done that. It's super bizarre to me.
[00:30:58] Bruce: It is. It's just, it's weird. Now they've already, we've already seen it once. So it's not going to go when they do it at the end, right? And okay, another thing. I really care about the world building. Now, not every show do I care about the world building. So let's be clear. I'm not trying to make a unilateral statement, but for Wheel of Time, this is a set of books where the world building is half the appeal or more. This is Lord of the Rings type book, where if you as a kid try to read Lord of the Rings, I couldn't get through it because they're not very exciting.
[00:31:40] Cameo: Because of the [unclear: “war”] of the world building.
[00:31:43] Bruce: Yeah, until you realize this book is about the world building. You can't enjoy Lord of the Rings for what it is. As a kid, I didn't get it. And as an adult, I read the books and went, wow, these are amazing books. But the books are about the world building. And this is actually, let's earmark this. The fact that you have to change the original story to make a movie out of them, because they're completely inappropriate as a movie. For Lord of the Rings, I'm saying. Of course, that's also true for Wheel of Time. And so this is why it's not immediately obvious, just because they made a change, it's bad. But if they make a change, so we're talking about the race thing, they make a change that shows a lack of world building, it bothers me because this is a story about world building. And this is overwhelmingly a story about world building.
[00:32:41] Cameo: Well, and I think when it comes to science fiction and fantasy, that's always going to be true, and actually historical novels. When you have so much of the storyline that's intertwined in either the magic and how it's intertwined in the world itself, or the science or the technology and how it's intertwined, if you can't be faithful to the world building, it's very difficult to have the story feel like the original.
[00:33:14] Bruce: Yeah. So let me give you an example of this that really grated me wrong. So the original stories have a kind of gender essentialism, which I can understand why that would bother them, and they would feel like they need to change that today. But if you are male, you are forever male in The Wheel of Time, right? Every time the wheel comes around, you will be reincarnated as a male. If you are female, you will be reincarnated as a female.
[00:33:41] Cameo: You always stay your gender no matter how you are reincarnated.
[00:33:44] Bruce: There is a sort of transgenderism that only happens with one character, where he comes back as a female, physically as a female, but inside as a male. I can't even remember what all the reasons were, but there are very specific reasons why it happened. And that was actually a cool moment where you have this woman who shows up and can use the male power, right?
[00:34:06] Cameo: Well, that was a punishment, if I remember my...
[00:34:10] Bruce: Oh, it may be. It may have been a punishment.
[00:34:13] Cameo: A punishment by the dark one to that particular character for how they behaved as a man.
[00:34:20] Bruce: Yes, it was something like that. And Jordan worked out a very, very careful balance between the genders. So basically, male magic users... First of all, male magic users go insane. So this is a big giant strike against being a male magic user.
[00:34:39] Tracy: Like 100% of the time, right?
[00:34:41] Bruce: Yeah, 100% of the time, they go insane.
[00:34:43] Cameo: Well, and they don't just go insane. They go insane having power that's beyond compare, and it's almost incontainable.
[00:34:55] Bruce: So the males and the females have strength in the one power. By the way, it's actually two powers, even though it's called the one power, the male one and the female one, and the two are not similar. You can't teach each other across genders. You can't even see the power across genders. It is invisible to the other gender, right? And initially, because a lot of the knowledge has been lost, Egwene is like upset that the males get the strong, in her mind, the stronger powers. They get like, they're usually better at fire, let's say, destructive things, and the women are usually better at healing or something like that. And the Aes Sedai immediately say that just isn't true, right? It just isn't true that certain of the powers are more important than others, okay? But then you find out a little bit later, in a different book, that that isn't the reason why the men are so scary.
[00:35:59] Bruce: It's actually because your strength in the power is, the strength, a man's and a woman's strength in the power is similar to the muscle strength of a man and a woman. So just like you can have some women who are very muscular and can beat men, you can have some women who have strength in the power that could beat most men. But you will never have a woman who's at the top, like the dragon, who's the single most powerful channeler. That will always be a man, because that's just the way nature made it, right? And that's the real reason why the men are so uncontainable. You've got all these women magic users that have to work together against the men, because the men are just so much stronger on their own. However, offsetting that is the fact that the women can link. They can get up to 13 of them working together. And if you have 13 women putting their strength together, no man, even the dragon, has the slightest chance against them, right?
[00:36:57] Bruce: They will overwhelm any male at that point. And some of the knowledge of how to link has been lost. So a lot of women don't really know how to do it. Some of the women in the tower know how to do it, which is an important point, because they ended up just out of the blue linking in the TV show. No one had to teach them, which really was a problem in terms of the world building for a number of reasons. And these are a big deal. And a lot of the humor in the book and a lot of the tension in the book comes between the tension between the genders. And this is the way he wrote the book, because the women are jealous that the men are stronger, the men are jealous that the women can link and that they don't go insane. And a lot of the humor comes of the women getting upset with the men, the men getting upset with the women. And it was something that actually worked fairly well in the books.
[00:37:50] Bruce: And in this world, the dragon can be a woman. It's really just one power. So it's not even clear why the males go insane, because if you've only got one power and you don't have one for each of the genders, why did the males go insane? Because in the original version, it's like a well of power that the men draw from, and it's poisoned.
[00:38:13] Cameo: And the other problem with not having the one power be distinct is the politics of the world don't make sense anymore.
[00:38:22] Bruce: I agree.
[00:38:23] Cameo: The reason the women are the dominant gender is because the men are not considered to be trustworthy. And so the power of the tower is because the world is afraid of another dragon. Otherwise, the tower wouldn't exist. People wouldn't even put up with how much they're bossed around by the Aes Sedai, except that they need the Aes Sedai to protect them from the inevitable fact that the world will spin up another male dragon.
[00:38:55] Bruce: Right.
[00:38:56] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[00:38:57] Bruce: And then Jordan, Robert Jordan, really thought through what the implications of this was. So even when you're dealing with women who don't have magic, that can't channel, they tend to be more dominant than the men. And it's not always, just like in our world, it's not always. You might have one kingdom that has a king instead of a queen or something like that. But it's more common to have a queen, right? It's because we perceive the women differently, because they are the magic users. They are the ones that basically rule the world. That has changed the way men see women, that's changed the way women see themselves, and it has made a different world where women are the dominant sex for the most part. And the men know it, right? In the TV version, not only is the balance between the genders gone, the women can both link, and they're just as powerful as the men, and they don't have the taint.
[00:39:53] Bruce: It is an overwhelming victory for the women at this point. But just out of the blue, they start talking about how women are oppressed. It's like, that's totally, totally wrong for this world.
[00:40:07] Cameo: See, and by the time you get to that, now not only do you have the hubris that we're going to write a better story than was originally there, than what Robert Jordan wrote, but we also, as screenwriters, didn't take the time to understand the world building that happened in the books. Because if you introduce that idea of women as being subjugated, you ruin the story.
[00:40:39] Bruce: Yeah. That one really bothered me. And it was such an overwhelming sign that they were not paying attention to the world.
[00:40:46] Tracy: I think it's what bothered me the most. It's the one thing that makes me kind of not watch it, but I will again anyway.
[00:40:53] Unidentified speaker: But yeah.
[00:40:57] Bruce: There were a lot of little things like that where I would go, that was bad world building. And I don't know how they're going to handle a lot of things. The story is going to have to be significantly different as it goes on. Because they've already changed so much, some of the most important plot points aren't going to work. And I don't know where they're going to go with that. To Cameo's point, if they make it work, like if you think through, this is going to be inspired by the original story, but because it's different, we're going to think through how the world building is different, and then we're going to make it work in the world building. I might buy that, right? I might buy it's a totally different story with its own set of world building. But if they're not going to pay attention to the world building and they're going to change the story, there's this really big fear that things will fall apart as they go along, that they just won't know how to make the plot work anymore.
[00:41:59] Cameo: I think that that's a very reasonable fear.
[00:42:02] Bruce: Yeah. So I'm going to keep watching the show. I felt like season one was fairly good, but my big fear at this point is they can't pull off making it work. That was why I quit Lost, was because I could tell they weren't going to make it work. Now, actually, for the record, once I started watching TV while I was exercising, I needed something to watch, I ended up watching all of Lost way later, and it really was as bad as I feared it would be. It's rare that once you derail, you can come back. And if I were to give a really good example of this, it would be The Matrix movies. I don't know if people really understand this, but The Second Matrix movie ended on a significant plot hole where it just did not make sense, and there was no way to make sense of the prophecy because they had made a mistake. And I believe that the movie up to that point had actually been a pretty good movie.
[00:43:01] Bruce: Most people say the second movie wasn't very good. It really was a pretty good movie until they ruined it right at the end. And then there was no way to recover. Just once you've written yourself into a hole, you can't get back out of the hole easily.
[00:43:14] Cameo: Well, and my opinion of that is I actually really liked the second movie where I feel like it fell apart was when they had to go into the third movie and now they're trying to get back out of this hole that they made in the second movie.
[00:43:27] Bruce: Yeah. And this is a common thing. I often bring up plot holes, and I often have people tell me, I just don't care enough. And I know that's true to some degree because a lot of times people will overlook plot holes and still enjoy a movie. Even I will do that sometimes. The problem with plot holes is that they ruin your ability going forward, right? They aren't necessarily in and of themselves at that moment a problem all the time, but they tend to, and they seem silly and you can't... Anytime I find myself stopping and thinking, wait, I don't understand. I'm confused, right? There's a good chance it's because of a plot hole that there is no way to make sense of that plot point. And once that happens, the shows just don't recover, right? They just kind of go off the rails at that point.
[00:44:18] Cameo: I think that's where there's additional responsibility for anybody who's making an adaptation of a book. Because even if their intent—and they have a good reason to make a change, the dissonance that's going to be in anybody who knows the canon's mind is going to feel like a plot hole almost instantly, right? It's a plot hole because you can't make sense of how the rest of the story could continue when a key thing has not happened the way you expect it to happen.
[00:44:53] Bruce: Right. So let's talk about examples of where it's done well. So Marvel movies, they are not true plot-wise to the comics, right? If you were to go read, I've read Age of Ultron, the comic book. And of course, it's not only unlike it, it's they're like completely different stories compared to the movie, right? I would go so far as to say, it was only vaguely inspired by the original story, okay? And you know what? I don't care. Marvel has done fairly good world building. To a level, Marvel world building, I wouldn't expect it to be Lord of the Rings type world building, to the level that I would expect of a superhero movie. They've done pretty good world building, and as they've changed things, and they have changed—Civil War is another one— that was a massive set of changes between the comic books and the movie. And I did not care. In fact, I actually thought it was better the way they did it in the movies.
[00:45:58] Bruce: They were at least internally consistent, right? It doesn't matter that they changed. It doesn't matter that they have gone differently than what the comics did, because they thought through, how does this impact our world that we're building now in these movies, rather than how does it compare to the comics? And just to give examples here, in Civil War, if you were to say, you know, in the movies, which side was right? Captain America's or Tony Stark's? Actually, I think most people would probably say Tony Stark was, even if that wasn't the intent of the movies. And clearly, though, there was no clear answer, would probably be the most common answer. And I think that's about right, because it was a really tough, moral gray area. That's not the way it was in the comic books. In the comic books, Captain America's team was the right one, and it was clear.
[00:46:56] Bruce: So that was a giant change that they made. It didn't ruin anything. As long as they were able to move forward with that and kind of have the characters learn from that, it worked. Age of Ultron, like I said, they're not even—they're not even—they're not even really similar. In fact, it's almost funny that they called the movie Age of Ultron because in the original one, Ultron literally took over all of time, and there was actually an age of Ultron.
[00:47:24] Unidentified speaker: Oh, interesting.
[00:47:26] Bruce: The title doesn't make sense anymore because they changed it too much. That's why they make jokes about the two and a half weeks of Ultron. So they kept the title, but they didn't keep why the title was the title, right? They changed it that much. And again, I didn't care. It didn't matter, right? Those were good movies in and of themselves. So it's not necessarily a given that you have to stay true to the original source material. It just isn't true that you have to. You have to in a certain way. Thematically, I don't think anybody doubts that the characters in the movies are very much the characters from the comic books. Right? They've made them the same characters, even if they're telling different stories. One of the main things that comes to mind here is the Lord of the Rings. Let's talk about Lord of the Rings just for a second. I think I love the movies.
[00:48:16] Bruce: In fact, in many ways, I think the movies were every bit as much a work of genius as the books. But they are not the same. They're not even close to the same. Right? You almost miss that fact because Peter Jackson was so good at what he did that he made you feel like thematically, this is the same story.
[00:48:37] Cameo: It's because he respects the world building.
[00:48:40] Bruce: Yes. So just as a few examples, Frodo isn't a kid in the books. He's old. Right? They, they, they, I mean, think about that for a second. They drastically changed the age of one of the, of the main character and nobody noticed. Because Elijah Wood sold it so well. Right? Just like with Lana Lang, not being red. There are some things that you can just change. It depends on how iconic that is for that character. They made a gamble. No one's going to care about the age because that isn't what makes Frodo Frodo. And they were right. And it was a risk. It was a giant risk that people would react. Nobody, even the, even the hardcore fans didn't seem to care that this massive change had been made to this character. It just, nobody cared. A lot of people got upset about Faramir's change because he, that was the one that bugged me. Now I'm going to argue in favor of Peter Jackson on this one.
[00:49:39] Cameo: [Overlapping speech] Making that change to Faramir?
[00:49:41] Bruce: I think that that was the only way you could have turned it into a cinematic experience. I don't, I cannot even fathom how you would go about making that story work in a movie if you didn't make that change. Faramir basically is completely resistant to the ring in the books. He just basically sits down, has tea with them, and then says, how can I help you? And that's it, right? There's no tension. There's no—there's nothing [sentence break unclear] in a book like The Lord of the Rings that made sense, right? Because first of all, you're not really telling simultaneous stories. I mean, you are, but like he tells, each of the books is split in two, one for one side and one for the other side, right? You're not intertwining them like a modern book. And a lot of The Lord of the Rings books feels realistic because, strange as this may sound, because Tolkien wasn't a very good writer in terms of being a modern storyteller.
[00:50:41] Bruce: He was trying to tell the myth of this world, and that's what he cared about. He never milks the action scenes. He never milks the payoffs. When he sits down and has the Council of Elrond, it kind of just wanders around like a real meeting does in real life. Right? And it's completely inappropriate for a movie. In fact, it's completely inappropriate for an adventure story, but it's spot on for what he was actually doing.
[00:51:10] Cameo: Right, because he wasn't writing an adventure story.
[00:51:12] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[00:51:14] Bruce: So I felt like that was a necessary change with Faramir. I totally get why people were bothered by it. And yet, thematically, he still made it, right? Faramir eventually comes around and realizes, I've got to resist the ring and does the right thing. He's still, in essence, Faramir, right? Even though there's this massive change to his character. Lord of the Rings is a really good example of how you significantly change the, significantly change the story. And yet, still make it, thematically, the same story. To where you're not offending the fans, right? And it's hard. Let's be honest, Peter Jackson is a genius, right? He really is one, he's probably the only director in existence that could have pulled off a Lord of the Rings movie as well as they were done. And we even saw, he has to be well prepared. Like, The Hobbit was not that good.
[00:52:05] Bruce: Because he was making it up as he went along. There was various political reasons why he wasn't supposed to be the director of those movies and then he had to take over the last minute. It's not really his fault. But he was forced to kind of make things up as he went along. He couldn't plan it out like he did with the Lord of the Rings movies. And we saw that, you know, if he doesn't put his effort in, it doesn't work as well. And I think a lot of things are like that, where we have to accept this is a different medium. They're going to have to change things. Actually, Brandon Sanderson brought this up. So let me tell you what Brandon Sanderson said. He said, you know, you've got like, you've got like some shows where it's just barely inspired by it. You've got some where it's like play for play the same. Harry Potter was the example he used.
[00:52:52] Bruce: Harry Potter, play for play, the books and the movies are the same, other than, of course, the books have more. But one of the reasons why you can pull that off with Harry Potter is because the entire world had read Harry Potter. And so unlike probably any other set of books in existence, other than maybe Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, not everybody's read them, right? The vast majority of your fans are going to be people who didn't read the books. And that's really your main audience. So it makes sense that you're not going to play for play, make it the same, and that you're going to change things. You really have to think through, not just, it's not so much I need to be true to the original material, it's more I need to make it work as well as the original material. And I think that's what we're seeing with Wheel of Time, is that some of it just does not work as well as the original material, which it was a high bar, right?
[00:53:47] Bruce: I mean, let's, Robert Jordan is one of the best in the business with doing world building. So it was a high bar. But to some degree, it feels like they're just not trying that hard to match the world building. I didn't expect them to do as well. That probably wasn't possible. But I expected them to at least put a lot of effort into it, like Peter Jackson did. And it didn't feel like they did.
[00:54:09] Tracy: Yeah, I would agree with that. They didn't. Kind of a kind of a shame. [Unclear: “They”] couldn’t put that much effort and thought into it because you're right. There's going to be a lot of problems in some ways. It does kind of feel like the Lost series where they really didn't really know where they were going. And they were kind of like, well, maybe we'll just figure this out as we go. And that just doesn't seem to work too well.
[00:54:34] Bruce: Yeah, I think I think that's a common problem with TV is if you really think about TV shows, you don't know how many seasons you're going to get, right? It may be one. It may be, you know, ten. And so because of that, it's very hard in a TV show to plan out where you're going to go because you just don't know. And you had like I think about like one of the better TV shows in terms of being planned was Deep… Sorry, not Deep Space Nine. That was a good one, too. But Babylon 5. He had a five year plan from the beginning. He had a way to shorten it to four years. And then he did. So he actually finished his story in four years because he was going to get canceled. If he had been canceled any time in between, he was going to just not finish the story. He wasn't going to try to wrap it up because he knew that was impossible. He then got canceled, finished up the story in season four, and then got renewed by a different station and had a whole other season when his plan is now done.
[00:55:38] Bruce: And you can tell there's a difference. Season five really plays like an epilogue rather than a part of the original story because he had to make up something new because he had finished his original story early. And there was a big risk there. It was that he'd get shut down at any moment. He was lucky that he made it to the fourth season. And because of that, that's one of the most coherent stories in terms of a TV story arc that there is. If I could use a similar example to Battlestar Galactica, the new Battlestar Galactica. I know people love that show. And you know what? I do too. It's really a good show.
[00:56:16] Unidentified speaker: So do I.
[00:56:17] Tracy: Don't tell me you hate it, please.
[00:56:19] Bruce: Well, if you look at that show on an episode to episode basis, the writing is really quite good. If you look at the story in terms of its story arc, it's not. Right down to the fact that they finally wrap up a lot of the mysteries they created by basically saying God did it. Let me like literal Deus Ex Machina at the end. Right. And it was because the individual episodes, they knew where each individual episode was going to go. They didn't know where the story arc was going to go. So they have a story arc, but they're making it up as they go along. And you can tell they're making it up as they go along. There's like a series of mysteries about who's the Cylon. They don't know who it is. So there are no clues that matter. And it plays that way. Right. I did not care who the Cylon was going to be because it could be anyone because there were no clues that were going to matter.
[00:57:12] Bruce: And I think that's a good example where you clearly have some good writers, but they can't make the story arc work super well because it's just hard to do story arcs when you don't know how many seasons you're going to get.
[00:57:23] Unidentified speaker: That's a very good point.
[00:57:27] Bruce: It's rare that you have someone like Michael Straczynski, who actually plans it out in advance. And then because he did, there were several seasons where he had to write half of the episodes himself because nobody else could write them, which is impossible. He must have been working around the clock during those seasons. It's inhuman to have to have one person write that many episodes of a show. And yet that was the only way he could make that show have an arc that matched his vision. Right? Because otherwise you have different authors and they're going to be going off in different directions. And there's no way to make it work. A better way to do it is probably the people who did Lost and went on to do Once Upon a Time. And the show definitely shows some of the Lost problem in the later seasons. But the first season was excellent. And it relatively wrapped up the storyline, where if you have an arc that's across one season, that's maybe better, right?
[00:58:34] Bruce: Instead of trying to do one that's across the entire show.
[00:58:39] Tracy: Is this why you don't like shows that have seasons that have cliffhangers? Because it's not kind of wrapped up satisfactorily?
[00:58:46] Bruce: Yes.
[00:58:47] Tracy: To start again?
[00:58:48] Bruce: Yes. And you don't know if it's going to get another season, right? You know, I loved the fact. I mean, there are shows that I've seen that have cliffhangers where I like it. Star Trek, The Next Generation did excellent with that. But then they also didn't have a giant story arc. Deep Space Nine did amazingly excellent with that and had a story arc. Babylon 5, did excellent with it and had a story arc. And so in those cases, though, I had a lot of trust with the authors. They had won me over that they weren't just making stuff up as they went along. Even in Deep Space Nine, where they actually were, to some degree, making stuff up as they went along, it was really obvious the writers had put some thought into this. That once they had decided, this is the direction we're going to go with the Dominion War, they really thought through what's the impact of the Dominion War and how are we going to demonstrate that.
[00:59:41] Bruce: And they came up with... They won me over that I could trust them that they weren't going to just leave me hanging or they weren't just going to suddenly change things or a character suddenly… Lost—the… I forget the guy's name, but the black guy. In the final episode, he does something, he kills somebody out of the blue, unthinkable for his character. A gigantic change to his character for no reason at all, right? Other than to try to shock the viewers. That's bad, right? That's just bad writing.
[01:00:11] Unidentified speaker: It's bad writing.
[01:00:12] Bruce: It is. It's really bad writing. And then they couldn't recover. His character had to be taken out of the show because there was no way to recover his character. You know, and a lot of the problems with Lost came from that. So I guess that's where, I mean, like, with Wheel of Time, how many books are there in the series?
[01:00:27] Unidentified speaker: At least 12. I’m not sure.
[01:00:30] Bruce: It's a ton of books. There's no way they're going to have 12 seasons, right?
[01:00:35] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:00:35] Cameo: Yeah, three quarters of that storyline is useless anyway.
[01:00:38] Unidentified speaker: Maybe not three quarters, a quarter.
[01:00:43] Bruce: He concentrates a lot on the world building. And so a lot of the story doesn't matter. That is one of the problems that happens in the middle of the books. But even just the idea that they would do one season per book, that's not going to happen, right? That they're going to, you know, at most, do five seasons, I would guess. Right. So they're going to have to take 12, 13, however many number of books that are, by the way, these books are, you know, I kid you not, 5,000 pages apiece or something, right? I mean, it's a lot. They're very, very, very large books. And they're going to have to do a compression on the show that is deeply significant. So from that standpoint, it doesn't matter so much to me that they are changing things. I can accept that. They need to do it in a way that does good world building, that is thematically the same. And I see signs that they're not doing that.
[01:01:41] Bruce: And I guess that's my ultimate opinion. So far, it's okay. It's not bad. But I definitely have that sinking feeling inside. Sometimes it's wrong, but that sinking feeling that they aren't going to be able to pull this off, that at some point they're going to go off the rails and they just won't know what to do with the characters of the story.
[01:02:01] Cameo: I feel a little like they've already gone to that point, where some of these characters, I don't see how they can, like Perrin, I don't see how they can have Perrin do what he needs to do as far as building his character towards the final battle. I think they've taken it too far.
[01:02:23] Bruce: Yeah, I have a lot of concerns. Perrin's the one I'm most concerned about. I actually had some concerns with Rand, not because of—the main problem with Rand is that he's not a very important character until the last episode or two, which in a way was an interesting choice, since he is in fact the main character to downplay him so much. And I say he's the main character, and he is the main character in the books, but it is an ensemble story. So there's multiple main characters in the books. And the fact that they were going to make it so the show didn't emphasize any one character was probably a wise choice. It was... I struggled with Rand because I felt like he was so unimportant to the story. And then they did come around and make him more important at the end.
[01:03:11] Tracy: Well, you know, in trying to say, oh, it's a mystery, any one of these kids could be the Dragon Reborn, it kind of forced them to have to take focus off what really is the main character and ultimately the dragon.
[01:03:24] Bruce: Yeah. And you know what? I don't felt like that mystery worked at all.
[01:03:28] Unidentified speaker: No, I don’t either.
[01:03:30] Bruce: Oh, and just to prove my point, so Melissa, my daughter, is watching it with me. I say, do you know which one is the dragon? She goes, oh, it's Rand. [Overlapping speech: “after the first…”]
[01:03:40] Unidentified speaker: So she had never read the books, and right away she knew.
[01:03:43] Bruce: Yeah, she knew. And I said, how did you know? And she goes, he's the best looking one.
[01:03:47] Tracy: Oh, that's funny.
[01:03:50] Bruce: And you know what? She's right. They put a ton of effort into casting him right. Because she was—because we—ultimately, he has to be the dragon, right? So he's going to be the most important character, at least by some margin, right? So she was able to figure out who the dragon was, based on casting choices. Even though there was nothing in the story to suggest it one way or the other, right? It just, it didn't work, right? They put all this effort into making this mystery that... I won't say the mystery wasn't in the book. There was a mystery in the book as to which of the three boys was going to be the dragon. But we all knew it was Rand, right? It was an open secret that it was Rand, because he's pretty much the point of view character. Like, Mat's not even developed as a character yet in the original first book, right? You don't even know who this guy is.
[01:04:43] Bruce: He's barely in the story. So it's really obvious it's Rand, who's the dragon. And here it was really obvious it was Rand, it was the dragon too, and yet they paid this price of downplaying him because they thought they had a mystery.
[01:04:58] Unidentified speaker: And they didn't fool anybody, probably.
[01:04:59] Bruce: They didn't fool anybody, right. So, yeah.
[01:05:04] Tracy: That's kind of a big ask for people who've read the book who already know. We're like, we already know. You're going to make us pretend for the whole season.
[01:05:11] Unidentified speaker: We don’t know.
[01:05:15] Bruce: That was annoying for a number of reasons. Especially since it didn't work. Right. It was already obvious it's going to be Rand. So, they ruined him as a character for a few episodes, at least. I don't mean they really ruined him ultimately as a character, but they ruined him for a few episodes, so they can have this mystery that doesn't even work.
[01:05:36] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:05:38] Bruce: So, yeah. Anything else that bothered you, Tracy, or stuff that you thought was good?
[01:05:46] Tracy: I think the things we've touched on really were the main things that bugged me. I mean, I'm glad that we kind of covered those points. I mean, the biggest thing that it's been so long since I'd read the books, and they said, any one of these kids can be the dragon. I'm like, I don't remember. That's not true. So, those kinds of things, like you said, some of the, yeah, setting up the women like they're somehow the underdogs when they're not, it's, I don't know. Yeah, we touched on it all. And overall, it is still interesting, the story. I think they're doing a relatively good job with, for the most part, character building. And I just absolutely love Moiraine. She's probably the main reason I'll come back.
[01:06:31] Bruce: Yeah, well, she's like the most famous actress in the whole show.
[01:06:37] Tracy: She's great in everything anyway.
[01:06:39] Bruce: Yeah.
[01:06:40] Unidentified speaker: Yeah.
[01:06:40] Bruce: And she was like spot on. She looked like Moiraine. She acted like Moiraine. She was, it's interesting, though, that they cast her, knowing what's going to happen with her. It's interesting that they put so much effort into it. Essentially, she was the main character, right?
[01:06:54] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:06:55] Bruce: They made her the main character instead of Rand, which was a weird choice, given that she's not even going to be in all, if they stick with what the books did, she won't even be in all the shows.
[01:07:09] Tracy: Well, maybe their intention is to focus on, have a new main character every season.
[01:07:13] Unidentified speaker: I don't know.
[01:07:14] Bruce: You know what? That's not a terrible thing, right? As long as they're doing a good job, you could pull that off. It is a weird choice, though, because how often have you actually seen them change main characters in a show and pull it off, right? I was thinking of Blake’s 7. I have to go way back. That's an old British show where they literally killed off the main character and then switched to a different main character. In Valerie's family, they did that. Valerie was the original show. They fired the main actress, and then they made the show about her family instead. It's rare that you make it work. People get attached to main characters. So it was a little bit of a weird choice. I mean, maybe they know what they're doing, but then again, I've seen signs that they don't know what they're doing. So that may be a problem, or maybe they're just going to change it.
[01:08:09] Bruce: Maybe they're going to arrange for Moiraine to be the main character the entire way. You know, that could be.
[01:08:16] Tracy: Well, now that I think they have a sense that they might be in trouble if they're not careful, like, will there be a season three? Maybe it's going to be a non-issue, depending on how they tie that up. I don’t know.
[01:08:27] Bruce: Yeah, I think I'm going to definitely watch the next season. I feel like I like the show enough that I'm going to definitely watch the next season. It's just, I'm just worried.
[01:08:38] Tracy: I think a lot of people are worried, but I think a lot of people will tune in hopeful and entertained enough.
[01:08:46] Bruce: So one other thing that we should probably mention in terms of changes, the fact that made the kids adults. The reason they did that, they've said that the reason they did that is because if they were actually teenagers, then people would mistakenly think that the show was aimed at a younger audience. And they wanted to aim it at an older audience. I think I can understand where they're coming from there. And I did not like that. I felt like a great deal of the humor was lost because we're not dealing with kids anymore. We do funny things and have funny ideas about each other and things like that. And it was. The show was not very humorous, whereas the original books were actually quite humorous at times. And so I felt kind of bad about that. On the other hand, the whole idea that they have to appeal to the movie watching audience, my big fear was that they were going to do Game of Thrones, that they're going to take Wheel of Time and make it the next Game of Thrones.
[01:09:44] Bruce: And after the first episode, I really thought that's what they were going to do, because the first episode was Game of Thrones-ish like.
[01:09:50] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:09:51] Tracy: Adding tons of tension and violence and...
[01:09:55] Bruce: Yeah.
[01:09:56] Unidentified speaker: Yeah.
[01:09:56] Bruce: On the other hand, I didn't feel like it was Game of Thrones after the first episode. And so that fear got removed to some degree, that they're not going to make it like Game of Thrones. Maybe it might be fair to say that they injected 10% Game of Thrones into it, not that much. And maybe that was also why they felt like they needed to... They know they're going to do some more matured material compared to the books. So they decided to signal that they're going to do this by making the characters older. It's not a terrible choice. I can at least see where they're coming from on that. I do wish they had... I mean, the original characters were so wide-eyed. A huge part of the story is Rand and the other characters finding out about the rest of the world for the first time. These are not savvy characters that are pluralistic and cosmopolitan, and they're fish out of water.
[01:10:59] Unidentified speaker: Yeah, totally.
[01:11:01] Bruce: And it just isn't going to work with the older cast. It's just not believable that they're going to be fish out of water anymore because they're not kids. So that one, I don't know. I feel like if I were the person making the show, I may well have made the same choice, so I can't fault them for it. But I dislike the fact that now the show can't be as funny as the books were. We've lost something because of that, I guess. But it's too bad.
[01:11:34] Tracy: You think it's taking itself a little too seriously? Because there is, you're right, there's an overall everything’s serious, serious, serious. And the slight humor that they try is, it feels a little sad.
[01:11:47] Bruce: Well, like, I mean, like Mat's character was the most obvious change. Mat's really, to some degree, the comic relief character in the books. And there's no way they can make him the comic relief character in the show based on what we know of his character at this point. I mean, the fact that he comes from an abusive background now, which wasn't in the books. Just the there was a lot of changes there that, you know, Mat's not going to be the comic relief character. And, you know, it may be questionable whether Mat ever worked as well as he should have in the books as a comic relief character.
[01:12:23] Tracy: That begs the question, how are they going to address the change in Mat, like the actor? Because as I understand it, there's problems with the actor. There'll be a new person cast. They've got a tough task to sell.
[01:12:33] Bruce: Yeah, they do.
[01:12:34] Unidentified speaker: Season two.
[01:12:35] Bruce: Well, I'm actually glad they're recasting Mat, because I couldn't understand what the actor was saying. He had this accent.
[01:12:44] Tracy: Yeah.
[01:12:45] Bruce: And that was rough. You know, that was maybe not the best casting choice, but, you know, I can't say, I mean, like, I'm trying to think of examples of where the first season of a show went off the rails and then they recovered. Babylon 5 would be the best example I could think of. The first season of Babylon 5 is not that good. And unfortunately, you have to watch the first season because the story requires it.
[01:13:09] Tracy: I agree. It was kind of a tough sell. It's like, oh, okay, just get through season one. I swear it's better. And it is.
[01:13:15] Bruce: And a lot of that came from recasting the captain. The fact that Bruce Boxleitner is an excellent actor and the original guy was a terrible actor. And once Bruce Boxleitner came on, all the other actors started doing better. And I've heard that that happens. Like when Patrick Stewart was cast as, as Picard.
[01:13:32] Unidentified speaker: Yeah.
[01:13:33] Bruce: The other actors started taking their roles seriously. And this is what they claim.
[01:13:38] Tracy: Yeah. You respond to excellence, you know?
[01:13:39] Bruce: Yes. They could see this Shakespearean actor playing the role to the hilt and all of them felt like, oh, this isn't, this isn't just some kid show that we're in, that we don't, we can phone it in, right? And that's what made Star Trek The Next Generation such an excellent show, was that all the actors started really doing well. And supposedly by their own admission, because of Patrick Stewart, right? That he was, he refused to not do this like it was Shakespeare, right?
[01:14:10] Unidentified speaker: You take it seriously.
[01:14:11] Bruce: Yeah. So I think the same thing happened with Babylon 5. Bruce Boxleitner came in. He's this veteran actor who's really good. And suddenly everybody else stopped phoning it in too. And the show just took off. And I would even say the same thing happened with Deep Space Nine. The first season of Deep Space Nine, there's one episode of the first season of Deep Space Nine, which might be the single best episode of any Star Trek show ever. But other than that one episode, the first season is terrible. And even the second season wasn't—I thought the second season was pretty good. I found it fairly entertaining. But it wasn't great.
[01:14:46] Tracy: Maybe that's part of the problem is really, I think more and more we have a harder time capturing and holding an audience's attention. That grace period that often a really good show would need of a whole first season of being maybe a little bit bumbling and getting its feet and then getting really good after that, that's a harder and harder sell.
[01:15:04] Bruce: I think you're right. Like I said, it's rare that they do recover. If you've got a bad first season, I think people are right to abandon a show for the most part. And yet clearly, Deep Space Nine in particular, they did not understand what they had with that show. Like the writers were essentially just doing a poor version of Next Generation for the whole first season. It was basically Next Generation without the starship, without the exploration, without any of the things that actually make it a good show. Other than that, it was the Next Generation. Brent Spiner is an excellent actor. Patrick Stewart is an amazing actor. They were lucky. They had two, maybe possibly the two best actors on television. Jonathan Frakes claims that what made the show was that they happened to have the two best actors on television at the time. That's a quote from Jonathan Frakes from Commander Riker.
[01:16:01] Bruce: He's very humble about that. It's interesting. Deep Space Nine didn't have that. It did not have any standout actors, and they were trying to do a kind of hobbled version of The Next Generation. And then partway through the second season, they introduced The Dominion as a joke. You know, it was a humor episode, right? They apparently did this intentionally. It wasn't unintentional. They introduced The Dominion in one of the humor episodes, one of the Ferengi humor episodes. And then they sealed the deal by having the final episode of the second season be the introduction of The Dominion, who up to that point, you don't know anything about. And it turns out that they are terrifying. And I really believe that what really makes good heroes is the existence of good villains. If you really pay attention, you have to have a really good villain to be able to have a good hero.
[01:17:00] Bruce: The show just, the hero doesn't work if you don't have a really super credible villain.
[01:17:05] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:17:06] Tracy: The bad guy is just a bad guy to be a bad guy.
[01:17:08] Bruce: Yes. The Dominion was one of the most credible villains. I thought I was afraid of the Borg, right? Because the Borg were a really credible villain. But the Borg are nothing, in my opinion, compared to the Dominion. The Dominion were terrifying. The fact that they were multiple races, the fact that they were higher technology than the Federation, the fact that, unlike the Borg, you didn't take two episodes to get rid of them. You spent the next five years trying to get rid of them. The first season of Star Trek The Next Generation was terrible. It was awful. And the second season wasn't very good either. It was a lot better than the first season, but it still wasn't a great show. We did give shows a lot more time to find their footing back then. And we really don't anymore. There's higher expectations. And strangely enough, that may be why they were better at story arcs.
[01:18:06] Bruce: They didn't do story arcs back then, but when they did do them, like Deep Space Nine or Babylon Five, they were excellent. They felt planned out. They felt really good. Perhaps it was because they knew there was less chance of getting canceled. Deep Space Nine probably had a pretty good idea based on the success of The Next Generation that we're going to be here for at least a few years.
[01:18:30] Unidentified speaker: Yeah.
[01:18:31] Tracy: So hard because it's like everything has to be a TikTok video. We have that much attention span. But by that same token, I feel like maybe these story writers do have more of an onus to really think about it and deliver. We've got to figure out ways to convince us to spend our time.
[01:18:48] Bruce: It seems like they've got the opposite problem now, where the first season is excellent and then everything after that sucks. And I guess that makes sense. If your theory is correct, that they really have to think it through. Look, we've got to survive this first season. We've got to make this first season excellent, and we don't know if we're going to get a second season. Then you put all your effort into the first season, and you put in some cool arc, and you build up mysteries, and you have great acting.
[01:19:14] Unidentified speaker: I think they should think of it as excellent enough. [Overlapping speech; wording uncertain.]
[01:19:17] Bruce: Yeah. And then you get your second season, and you don't know what to do with the show, because you didn't actually plan that far.
[01:19:24] Tracy: We didn't think we'd make it here.
[01:19:25] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:19:28] Bruce: All right. Well, we can probably wrap up this episode. This was fun talking about this. It was something that I think we've all been thinking for a while. What is necessary to really make this work, adapting material like this? And I think there's no easy answer is the simple [unclear]. All right. See you later.
[01:19:50] Unidentified speaker: See ya.
[01:19:51] Bruce: Bye-bye. The Theory of Anything podcast could use your help. We have a small but loyal audience, and we'd like to get the word out about the podcast to others so others can enjoy it as well. To the best of our knowledge, we're the only podcast that covers all four strands of David Deutsch's philosophy as well as other interesting subjects. If you're enjoying this podcast, please give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. This can usually be done right inside your podcast player, or you can Google The Theory of Anything Podcast Apple or something like that. Some players have their own rating system, and giving us a five-star rating on any rating system would be helpful. If you enjoy a particular episode, please consider tweeting about us or linking to us on Facebook or other social media to help get the word out. If you are interested in financially supporting the podcast, we have two ways to do that.
[01:20:41] Bruce: The first is via our podcast host site, Anchor. Just go to anchor.fm slash four dash strands, F-O-U-R dash S-T-R-A-N-D-S. There's a support button available that allows you to do reoccurring donations. If you want to make a one-time donation, go to our blog, which is fourstrands.org. There is a donation button there that uses PayPal. Thank you.