Some interesting stats to give a sense of just how big Rafe's task is

[Pandemonium]

13 minutes ago, Windigo said:

They have already pulled elements from Book 2 (3?) into season 1,  I can see that they will continue to do that combining similar plots from multiple books into the same season.  I can see them also pulling Book 1 plots like Camlyn  into future seasons where Carhein and Camlyn are more relevant. 

how many elements from book 2 are in season 1?  other than going to tar valon and some of the Aes Sedai stuff, I'm not actually sure.  

 

Season 2 & 3 combined, I guess they could do it, but would need to use instant transportation devices.  falme and tear are pretty far apart unless they use the portal stones/ways.  The Dusty Wheel did have a picture of costume design for season 2 that includes both tear and seanchan.  so it will be interesting.  

Some of the Tanchico plotlines and wonder girls chasing the black Ajah could definitely be condensed into 1 story.  Also Rand only needs to be proclaimed once, so there isn't a need for both callandor and the sky over Falme fight with Ishy.  

 

Book 3 was Matt's breakout book, so hopefully they don't cut some of his best scenes too much.  Hopefully amazon allows them 10 episodes starting season 3!  

Edited December 4, 2021 by Pandemonium

[Arthellion]

For what it’s worth I’ve started a petition for 10 episodes.

 

https://chng.it/49t4xd7wKz
 

This show really needs it to shine

[AdamA]

There seems to quite a bit of confidence on the 64 hours total runtime thing. I've never heard of a television show knowing in the first season exactly how many seasons, how many episodes per seasons, and how much time per episode they'll be allocating. I don't think this is written in stone. They'll get more if early success warrants it and the showrunners, cast, and crew are willing and able to devote the extra time.

 

Longer seasons or longer episodes seem more likely than more seasons, though. The only way to do a ton of seasons usually is to be somewhat obscure and lower budget or do the Walking Dead thing and turnover the entire cast. Eventually, the main cast gets too popular if the show is successful and they either leave for giant movie deals, starring roles on easier shows (epic fantasy entails a lot of travel and overnight shoots compared to anything else they can be doing), or they demand too much money and can no longer be afforded.

[JenniferL]

The number is an estimate based on statements Rafe has made and some good faith assumptions on the part of fans. Rafe says he has outlined eight seasons for the adaptation. We are assuming that those eight seasons will have eight episodes each like the first one. But the final number of seasons and episodes will probably be different because life is rarely that predictable. I know I’m hoping for more than that. Still, it gives us a number to play with for our predictions and theories. 

[Harad the White]

5 hours ago, AdamA said:

Eventually, the main cast gets too popular if the show is successful and they either leave for giant movie deals, starring roles on easier shows (epic fantasy entails a lot of travel and overnight shoots compared to anything else they can be doing), or they demand too much money and can no longer be afforded.

Or they get hit by a bus. That's another reason GoT/HP were so successful, and maybe why Lan, Matt, and Egwene, should have been cast as 10 year-olds. ?

Edited December 5, 2021 by Harad the White

[TheDreadReader]

21 hours ago, Pandemonium said:

how many elements from book 2 are in season 1?  other than going to tar valon and some of the Aes Sedai stuff, I'm not actually sure.  

 

 

This depends on what you define as "elements from book 2" I think.

 

A short list...

- Aes Sedai/Warders

- Amyrlin seat

- Tar Valon

- The White Tower

- Pending arrival of Elayne, Gawyn, and Galad 

- Aes Sedai interest in recruiting Nyneave & and her joining as a novice/accepted

 

It is done more as an establishing a setting and environment then as specific story or plot elements but most of it doesn't come until book 2.

 

[AdamA]

21 hours ago, JenniferL said:

The number is an estimate based on statements Rafe has made and some good faith assumptions on the part of fans. Rafe says he has outlined eight seasons for the adaptation. We are assuming that those eight seasons will have eight episodes each like the first one. But the final number of seasons and episodes will probably be different because life is rarely that predictable. I know I’m hoping for more than that. Still, it gives us a number to play with for our predictions and theories. 

Yeah, we'll see. Wheel of Time itself was famously planned to be a six-book series. A Song of Ice and Fire was supposed to be a trilogy. These outlines have a way of getting bigger when it becomes time to publish and/or film. If he really only think he's going to get 64 episodes, he should probably outline how to tell the story in 32.

[Jaysen Gore]

While I would love to maybe see a couple of additional episodes per season, to give some moments more time to breathe and show intimate relationship building, I think that 8 seasons for this is probably a good middle ground between the books, and the reality of TV finances.  that's 9-10 years of time on a series, and people - cast and crew - would be getting antsy and / or stale for new projects by that point.

 

I'm also wondering if one of the reasons for Rafe's semi-certainty around the 8 seasons thing is that their employment contracts with the EF5 / Magnificent 7 (TM?) / key crew include option pick up language, and adding more seasons would blow those up. So they might have covered up to 80 episodes with their contracts, but more than that, and the money changes in a big way.

 

 

[Jaysen Gore]

6 minutes ago, AdamA said:

Yeah, we'll see. Wheel of Time itself was famously planned to be a six-book series. A Song of Ice and Fire was supposed to be a trilogy. These outlines have a way of getting bigger when it becomes time to publish and/or film. If he really only think he's going to get 64 episodes, he should probably outline how to tell the story in 32.

There's a major difference here though - the Wheel of Time, like most of the other literary comparisons raised in this thread, is complete.  You can map out every character arc and plot point for every character from the TR to Shayol Ghul. There will be no new rabbit holes to create (Dorne, Dany's cousin), there will be no author to lose the plot and go around in circles for books at a time (Perrin / Faile, Camelyn) 

 

In another thread, I did a rough 64 episode skeleton for the series, and while I'm sure it's not the same as Rafe's, I am also sure he already has a much more detailed treatment for 64 episodes than I did.  So he already knows:

 - Which subplots and their associated foreshadowing are going to get cut completely, in order to ensure nothing dangles at the other end. Cutting Checkov's Gun creates two issues, not just one. The Bowl is the best example here; no Bowl, no Ebou Dar. No Ebou Dar, no Mat / Tuon.

- This surgery is especially risky for WoT because foreshadowing is so massive. They don't have to show every prophesized event from the Karaethon Cycle, Min, and the Aelfinn / Elfinn that are in the books, but every single prophecy they do include has to pay off. If we get the "twice and twice shall he be marked", or "Mat's three answers" speeches, we'll know next season which plot points are in, and which aren't.

 - Which themes or character moments need to get moved elsewhere because they are critical to a character arc but buried in a dropped plot line (potential e.g. Galad, Elayne, and the price of a boat, Rand and the child in Tear)

- which characters' plot beats can / are going to get consolidated or given to someone else (Taimandred? Myrellanna? Galiandrin?) and what does that do to plot line continuity? Anyone need to be in two places at once, or live when they're supposed to die?

- which new story beats need to be created in order to show, don't tell, critical aspects of the world, without simply having Moiraine, Thom, or Loial talk a whole bunch. This could be as small as Else's doll, or as big as Logain

- at a high level, what the casting requirements are for, say, 250-300 people over 10 years (not all in all 8 seasons), and what you are trying to sign the actors up for contractually. GoT had over 200, broken down between 40 fully credited actors, 40 recurring credits, and 140 1-2 episode types but it wasn't as big as WoT. GoT also wrote off a helluva lot more characters mid series than WoT does  (140 of the 220 in GoT end up dead ? )

- what story locations need what kind of sets, when, and for how long. Camelyn vs TV is a great example here. Aside from the early chapters, only Camelyn's palace is on screen until after Ebou Dar. But the WT is in 12 of the 15 books. And god help a continuity team (and finance) if they ever have to rebuild a location after they thought they were done.

 - Finally, an order of magnitude of the cost of each particular sub-plot, location, and set piece, in order to determine where the budget has to go to tell the story you want

 

He would then have used all of the above to create his proposed series treatment and pitch the whole thing to Amazon. He'd probably note where he'd like some room to let things breath, so it might even be two or three full treatments (8x8, 8x10, 10x10, extra $$), but all this stuff exists already.

 

The reason I think they have all this already is that once you're into the series production window, the day to day treadmill as show runner allows no time to think about anything but the day's production progress, marketing, HR, and money. The focus is all Trees, so the Forest has to have been planted already

[Jaysen Gore]

And another thought....

 

Probably Rafe's biggest job is to get the Studio to trust him. He IS relatively unproven in the industry, and if the marketing budget follows Hollywood standards, this is a $125-150 million commitment over 8 years. So maybe in year 1, he has to follow the letter of the law (8x8x60). But if his internal notes align to non-reader criticism, maybe he can get 30 extra minutes of run time across season 2 to use as he sees fit, and in season 3, 45 minutes.  Not to do more big stuff, or an additional episode. But enough to flush out more little stuff. 

 

Finally, in the second half of the run, if it's coming in on time, on budget, pulling viewers, and he's built up a rep with the studio of not abusing their trust where they've given him leeway, he can get to the point where if he needs a lot of time and / or money to add something big, he can get it.

[KakitaOCU]

There's also another thing I noticed...  Rafe is falling into a similar trap that Guillermo del Tory fell into with Pacific Rim.  When you show, don't tell, you're relying on the audience to pick up nuance.  When the audience fails it leads to issues.

Prime example is one of the "Lan's not bad ass enough" things going on.  People want to see proof of how awesome he is, but when it's there, if it's subtle, people ignore it.

In EotW in the flight from the Two Rivers it constantly draws our attention to Lan riding away from the others, coming back with wounds and blood, then riding out again.  If you rewatch episode 2, you see him having a growing collection of small wounds throughout the episode.  

In the books, this is in text and draws our eyes because you have to describe it in a lot of words.  In the visual medium we show him going out alone, coming back with minor injuries.  That has the same ramifications as the book, but because it doesn't specifically go "Look at this!"  So many people missed it.

This can be for benefit too.  Rand in Episode 3 definitely channels against the door.  But visually it's only the slightest warping of the air around him instead of drawn out process we see with Moraine or Logain.  We see a similar smaller warping with Egwene earlier, so the hints are laid out.  But I noticed that Book fans knew exactly what they were looking at where as new to the series fans often missed it.  

All in all, visual means you can show not tell a LOT but there's such a razor line balancing act to that.

[AdamA]

It would have been way more obvious if they kept the "lucky strike" lightning from the book, but I think they wanted it to be subtle on purpose to maintain the "who is the dragon" mystery.

 

How is the whole mystery thing playing with people who don't know? This feels like another of those things that is somewhat alienating to people who already know the answer, making it such a central feature of the show so far. I'm not sure what an ideal way to approach this is for a television show. It's analogous to the last season of Narcos: Mexico showing the continual frustration with the Arellano-Felix family always getting away at the last minute and then discovering General Rebollo was working for them the whole time. They couldn't play up the mystery too hard, because anyone alive and paying attention in the 90s (including me) already knew about this and it wasn't really a mystery. I'm not sure what the difference was, but it felt like that played well even knowing what was happening already, but the dragon mystery is feeling like pointless misdirection to me.

[Jaysen Gore]

5 hours ago, AdamA said:

It would have been way more obvious if they kept the "lucky strike" lightning from the book, but I think they wanted it to be subtle on purpose to maintain the "who is the dragon" mystery.

<<snip>>

 

I don't think they'd earned this. In the book, there was all the Dragon's Fang strange happenings, incredible luck stories the kids talked about as rumors. But we didn't get any of that, so a Lightning Strike out of a clear blue sky (not raining during the chase) probably would have been too much.

[Agitel]

22 hours ago, AdamA said:

Yeah, we'll see. Wheel of Time itself was famously planned to be a six-book series. A Song of Ice and Fire was supposed to be a trilogy. These outlines have a way of getting bigger when it becomes time to publish and/or film. If he really only think he's going to get 64 episodes, he should probably outline how to tell the story in 32.

 

I'm hopeful for more. But Amazon execs no doubt asked Rafe how the hell he was going to adapt 14 books, and he no doubt had to pitch doing it in a "manageable" number for television, because walking in and asking for fourteen seasons for an unproven idea isn't going to sell.

[Deviations]

On 12/3/2021 at 6:53 PM, Skipp said:

Except by focusing on that character nonbook readers get a better understanding of the warder bond and the perils that come with it.

It's just not relevant at this point in the story.  Did they think people wouldn't watch if they followed Jordan's pacing (proportionally with the amount of time allowed)?

 

 

I know I'm 90% negative at this point.  I'm going to keep watching and I'm rooting for them but I wonder if 'they' shouldn't have held out for the opportunity to do this story justice and have more time and budget to work with.  Throw the full weight behind season one.  Do it right or don't do it at all.

[chri5]

On 12/4/2021 at 11:12 AM, Maximillion said:

This was a relatively easy job given the budget. 

 

While I have never been a series runner before, I never would have thought it was easy to make an epic fantasy series…regardless of budget. 

[KakitaOCU]

56 minutes ago, Deviations said:

It's just not relevant at this point in the story.  Did they think people wouldn't watch if they followed Jordan's pacing (proportionally with the amount of time allowed)?

Yes.  100% yes.

If they don't really focus on the Warder Bond up front then it risks people assuming Lan just works with Moraine and then when the Bond issues start coming up (Lan and Moraine, Rand and various) it could easily come out of left field and leave people going "What's with the Deus Ex to write Lan out for a while?" 

It's Chekov's Gun vs Diablus Ex Machina.

Easy example is Fire Emblem Three Houses.  Your main character is a Chronomancer who can rewind time at will.  At the end of Chapter 9 out of nowhere someone gets stabbed in the back and killed, you rewind and move to stop them only for another villain we haven't seen to show up magically out of nowhere, thwart you and somehow prevent you from just rewinding time again because... reasons.

Now, if they had established this character's power set earlier, if they had had them stop your chronomancy before to show he could, it would be sensible.

[Ralph]

13 hours ago, Jaysen Gore said:

<<snip>>

 

I don't think they'd earned this. In the book, there was all the Dragon's Fang strange happenings, incredible luck stories the kids talked about as rumors. But we didn't get any of that, so a Lightning Strike out of a clear blue sky (not raining during the chase) probably would have been too much.

Was any of that in eotw? We only had bela and the boom

[TheDreadReader]

1 hour ago, Deviations said:

Did they think people wouldn't watch if they followed Jordan's pacing (proportionally with the amount of time allowed)?

 

 

Well, consider the following.   Whitebridge, Four Kings, and other assorted Inns along the way.

 

Do you dedicate one episode to each?  Or, do you put all them all in the same episode? 

 

If you do one episode for each how do you structure the episode to have enough conflict, characterization, etc for it to be a good episode?   

 

If you put all three stops in the same episode what does the structure look like? 

Maybe, something along the lines of this. Rand & Mat disembark, find an inn, do some stuff.  Rand & Mat wake up, travel, find an inn, do some stuff.  Rand & Mat wake up, travel, find an inn, do some stuff.   

 

Do either of those examples  work particularly well as a TV show or would it get fairly repetitive and boring rather quickly ?

 

Any adaptation, even one that tried to stick fairly close to everything in the books would have to make some adjustments to both plot and story to make it interesting.  

 

[Deviations]

1 hour ago, KakitaOCU said:

If they don't really focus on the Warder Bond up front then it risks people assuming Lan just works with Moraine and then when the Bond issues start coming up (Lan and Moraine, Rand and various) it could easily come out of left field and leave people going "What's with the Deus Ex to write Lan out for a while?" 

Assuming this is correct, I still don't feel it's worth the better part of one out of eight episodes.  Poor use of time and resources.

 

Aes Sedai dies in the Logain battle.  Nynave finds warder dead via suicide walking through the garden later in the episode and Moraine (in front of a TOO STONY FACED Lan) explains the highs and lows of the bond.  Lan gives Nynave a meaningful, yet STONY FACED look.

Done.

 

[KakitaOCU]

15 minutes ago, Deviations said:

Assuming this is correct, I still don't feel it's worth the better part of one out of eight episodes.  Poor use of time and resources.

 

Aes Sedai dies in the Logain battle.  Nynave finds warder dead via suicide walking through the garden later in the episode and Moraine (in front of a TOO STONY FACED Lan) explains the highs and lows of the bond.  Lan gives Nynave a meaningful, yet STONY FACED look.

Done.

 

And we disagree on this point (Time spent), which is fine.  

If we're being fair, I don't feel it's justified to have Stepin commit Suicide.  Warders aren't supposed to suffer grief and be unable to continue, they become single mindedly focused on taking out the thing that killed their sister.  Personally I would have kept the time but had him try to take out Logain and regrettably have to be killed by the Tower Guard.

I also don't feel it was the "Better part"  While I would have liked more time with some other things we saw Mat getting worse, we saw Loial, we saw the first appearance  of Goldeneyes.

[DaddyFinn]

35 minutes ago, Deviations said:

Moraine (in front of a TOO STONY FACED Lan) explains the highs and lows of the bond.  Lan gives Nynave a meaningful, yet STONY FACED look

That would be BORING and just a verbal exposition bomb. No thanks.

[Deviations]

15 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

If we're being fair, I don't feel it's justified to have Stepin commit Suicide.  Warders aren't supposed to suffer grief and be unable to continue, they become single mindedly focused on taking out the thing that killed their sister

True.

 

Don't mind my grumbling.  The TV retelling has been so, so, so different than what I had hoped.

 

GOT seemed to get most of it right in my mind.  This has in my mind, gotten so many things wrong.

[Scarloc99]

3 hours ago, Deviations said:

Assuming this is correct, I still don't feel it's worth the better part of one out of eight episodes.  Poor use of time and resources.

 

Aes Sedai dies in the Logain battle.  Nynave finds warder dead via suicide walking through the garden later in the episode and Moraine (in front of a TOO STONY FACED Lan) explains the highs and lows of the bond.  Lan gives Nynave a meaningful, yet STONY FACED look.

Done.

 

And Amazon would lose a load of viewers who didn’t get it because they never read the books. People hate exposition for expositions sake, stories that rely on it pretty much universally bomb. You need to show not tell.

[Jaysen Gore]

5 hours ago, Ralph said:

Was any of that in eotw? We only had bela and the boom

I'm not talking about actual channeling. I'm talking about them Coplins and Congars in the TR drawing the dragon's fang, and sheep gettin' the dip as a result. And them blabbing about what a false dragon could do when Fain started talking about War.  Calling lightning, starting fires. All that evil stuff that belongs over the mountains, or maybe up to Tairen Ferry

 

Also - given we did see Moiraine call lightning in Ep.1, they couldn't have (redacted) do it, because the visual would have given away the game