Season 1 Discussion (Full Book Spoilers) v2.1

[EmreY]

Just now, Cauthonfan4 said:

So if 5 untrained channelers can wipe out an army of 5 to 20k in minutes, and rand is like an army of channelers and goes for an hour, how many trollocs is he going to have to wipe out at maradon? A million? More?

 

20k is I think an extreme, given the initial estimate of the number involved before the Trollocs crossed the wall.  5-10K a minute would be a closer estimate (especially given what we see on screen), so 300-600K in an hour.  Assuming they're not all massed together, 150-300K, which fits with the estimate I have at the back (don't ask from where) of my mind of 250K.

[Asthereal]

6 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Which is why I'm pointing out that it's problematic. If we've deviated this much this far and this fast, the power creep is so real that by TLB we shouldn't need armies of soldiers to fight the trollocs. 10 to 20 aes sedai at each front will be able to laugh at them. 

 

Except you know, you already spent the entire season not really giving men a chance to shine and shunting them to the side ro let women be badass. So a series that is supposed to br about balance has no such thing.

To be fair, Rand (with Lews Therin in control) does kind of destroy an entire army of 100k trollocks in book 11, so if channelers could be spared to fight trollocks, they would get slaughtered anyway. They can't be spared though because of dreadlords. But a circle of five with dubious to no training killing 10k trollocks in season 1 might become a power creep issue later on, that's true. Though they plan to move up faster than the books did, so they might have the leeway. We'll see.

 

About the women outshining the men: that's kind of the world they live in at that moment. Rand, Mat and Perrin leveling up, as well as the Black Tower, should balance that later on in the series. I don't feel like women taking center stage at the start is a fair critique on the show. The most powerful people in the books at the start are women as well. In fact, the show played up Logain a bit, and showed us more of the warders, so an argument could be made for the opposite.

[Cauthonfan4]

9 minutes ago, EmreY said:

20k is I think an extreme, given the initial estimate of the number involved before the Trollocs crossed the wall.  5-10K a minute would be a closer estimate (especially given what we see on screen), so 300-600K in an hour.  Assuming they're not all massed together, 150-300K, which fits with the estimate I have at the back (don't ask from where) of my mind of 250K.

 

Either way it creates further problems with the story down the road. If he can wipe out an army of 250k at maradon and wow everyone, how many trollocs does the dark ones have at their disposal and why haven't they just wiped out the world with overwhelming numbers?

[EmreY]

2 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

 

Either way it creates further problems with the story down the road. If he can wipe out an army of 250k at maradon and wow everyone, how many trollocs does the dark ones have at their disposal and why haven't they just wiped out the world with overwhelming numbers?

 

That you'd have to ask Robert Jordan and Brian Sanderson.

 

...

 

Anyway, things will get more interesting when the dreadlords come.

Edited January 20, 2022 by EmreY

[Gothic Flame]

3 minutes ago, Asthereal said:

The most powerful people in the books at the start are women as well.

Lan's characterization in the book is on equal footing with Moiraine. And as someone who has been fighting all his life and near a legend by the time he becomes her warder that certainly made more sense than him being a regular joe.

[KakitaOCU]

  

  

4 hours ago, Mailman said:

So her power which you are claiming to be a significant portion of that used to destroy a trolloc army of 10,000 to 20,000 is enough for that but not enough to even singe Valda.

 

What you are saying makes no sense.

First, yes, because raw power isn't the same as being able to control and focus that power.  A new  student to Martial arts might be in phenominal shape, but until they learn the actual moves and practice them against a resisting opponent they'll get taken apart by better fighters.  And again, the show SHOWS how much power is flowing into each channeler and Egwene is pulling in far more than anyone but Nynaeve.

As a lesser note here, you say 10k-20k, but the actual trained soldier says 6k-10k.  Maybe we should trust the trained soldier's word who knows what they're doing vs Nynaeve's untrained eye looking at a swarm and guessing.

 

30 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

So if 5 untrained channelers can wipe out an army of 5 to 20k in minutes, and rand is like an army of channelers and goes for an hour, how many trollocs is he going to have to wipe out at maradon? A million? More?

There's a number of ways to show more power without just upping body count.  Complexity of what he's doing, control, avoiding collateral damage, enemy dreadlords.  You act as if the raw body count is the only thing that signifies anything.
 

31 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Which is why I'm pointing out that it's problematic. If we've deviated this much this far and this fast, the power creep is so real that by TLB we shouldn't need armies of soldiers to fight the trollocs. 10 to 20 aes sedai at each front will be able to laugh at them. 

 

Which is what would happen if that many Aes Sedai were available, we see it in the last book actually.  But once you start having dreadlords on the enemy side the battle shifts back.  Also, there aren't that many Aes Sedai in total to afford just leaving 10-20 in place at every borderland.

 

33 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Except you know, you already spent the entire season not really giving men a chance to shine and shunting them to the side ro let women be badass. So a series that is supposed to br about balance has no such thing.

Except that didn't happen. 

 

[Asthereal]

9 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

Lan's characterization in the book is on equal footing with Moiraine. And as someone who has been fighting all his life and near a legend by the time he becomes her warder that certainly made more sense than him being a regular joe.

I wouldn't call Lan's portrayal in the show "average Joe". He's shown great skill and Henney's portrayal of him is one of the highlights for me so far.

[Raal Gurniss]

1 hour ago, Weird_Old_Lady said:

That is part of the Aes Sedai arrogance that is going to be shown more and more, by my guess anyway. We will be shown how stupid and prideful they are. They go around saying men did all this bad, but then they will do it too, and it will take our EF5 to highlight the hypocrisy and reset the balance. I believe that's where the show is going.

I doubt the Tower will honestly be mentioned that much, very little has been shown at all…Take Egw & Nyn for example, they would have been stuck at the Tower as near prisoners all Ajahs vying for them…Not enough is crammed into each episode, the pacing is all over the shop and priorities seem massively misplaced…It’s just a complete mess…

 

I think we will see the show have massive bias against men throughout the entire run, it’s not going anywhere,  it’s basically what they chose as part of the foundation of the show! Perhaps it is the Gillette effect.

[Cauthonfan4]

1 minute ago, Asthereal said:

To be fair, Rand (with Lews Therin in control) does kind of destroy an entire army of 100k trollocks in book 11, so if channelers could be spared to fight trollocks, they would get slaughtered anyway

But slaughtering 100k when you have years of practice and have merged with someone who had decades of experience. 

 

So if 5 mostly untrained people can wipe out 5 to 10k, is it really impressive for someone with that much experience and even more power to wipe out 100k over the course of an hour? The show is poqer creeping itself in a bad way.

4 minutes ago, Asthereal said:

But a circle of five with dubious to no training killing 10k trollocks in season 1 might become a power creep issue later on, that's true. Though they plan to move up faster than the books did, so they might have the leeway. We'll see

No you'll see. Between the magic system without rules, the bad world building and lack of character development, the bad writing, and the fact rhat men got a bad show of season one I'm not watching season 2 of rafe of time.

6 minutes ago, Asthereal said:

About the women outshining the men: that's kind of the world they live in at that moment. Rand, Mat and Perrin leveling up, as well as the Black Tower, should balance that later on in the series

Assuming they don't steal some of those from men to empower women further like they did in season 1. After all we had a chance to see the men training in season 1 and it was scrapped, but we still got to see egwene train. So many changes were done that took away a chance for a man to shine, and yet added to make men shine. Nothing I saw in season 1 makes me believe they have any intention of balancing the scales.

 

They literally went out of their way to reduce men's chance to shine in season 1 (Tam can't fight a trolloc but perrins wife can, nynaeve mass healing and trolloc assassination, Egwene channeling her and perrin free and then stabbing valda while perrin does nothing, egwene gets trained but the boys don't, lan can't track his own AS but nynaeve can, and the 5 wiping out the trolloc army). 

 

Time after time they could have given the men something and instead they either took their scenes or reduced their scenes.

 

So while you can sit there and say "well men will get a balance later" but nothing has shown me they even care about balance

16 minutes ago, Asthereal said:

I don't feel like women taking center stage at the start is a fair critique on the show. The most powerful people in the books at the start are women as well

And yet book Lan would have not needed to be told how to track moiraine.

Book Tam killed two trollocs while show Tam can't kill one, but Laila can with ease. 

In the books the boys got time to actually develop and we see them learning from Lan, Thom and elyas. All scrapped in season 1. Why? They had no problem keeping egwene learning from moiraine, so why scrap the boys learning from Lan?

 

There is plenty of examples where men were reduced, stolen from or just scrapped elements from the book and they added to the women. So yes. While the women were front and center in book 1 rhe men still got a chance to do stuff and come across as competent, learning, improving, and developing. 

21 minutes ago, Asthereal said:

In fact, the show played up Logain a bit, and showed us more of the warders, so an argument could be made for the opposite

And you ignore all the times men had their stuff reduced and women had the opposite. So no, I wouldn't athue the opposite in the slightest.

[Katherine]

4 hours ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Maybe, but they cut so much potential development with axing all 3 that we saw no real personal growth from most of them. Nynaeve obviously got lots of personal story and badass moments but her character hasn't really changed beyond her relationship with Lan. The rest...well its even worse. 

 

Exactly. There is a reason that tales of a Hero's Journey and coming of age stories have been around for 1000s of years..... they work. They are true to the human condition. 

 

YOu can say that this type of story has "been done". OK fair enough. 

 

Why did you want to tell this story then? Why adapt it when what made it soooooo good  was the characters themselves? The plot is basic, it is the characters, their growth, their personal struggles etc. that make it beautiful. 

 

Take Egwene: She is  the adventure seeking, innocent dreamer at the beginning of the story. She isn't jaded or mature.... just spunky and full of ability. Watching that be stripped from her during her enslavement was brutal, it made me love her because I watched her be hurt and the innocent girl die. 

 

 

Anyways I am rambling, but that is an example of coming of age.... a story of a person exiting innocence and engaging with a world that is wonderful and cruel at the same time. 

 

I really think that the show made a mistake by skipping all of that. 

 

 

[Raal Gurniss]

1 minute ago, Asthereal said:

I wouldn't call Lan's portrayal in the show "average Joe". He's shown great skill and Henney's portrayal of him is one of the highlights for me so far.

Nothing against the actors myself but the script is incredibly weak and doesn’t really give them much to work with, I would say the actor who played Mat had the best talent in the show by far and he’s gone, for whatever reasons…Hopefully with better offers.

[Cauthonfan4]

20 minutes ago, EmreY said:

That you'd have to ask Robert Jordan and Brian Sanderson

Except they only showed power creep like that once. In book 11. The TV show has power creep us from the start.

[Raal Gurniss]

3 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

But slaughtering 100k when you have years of practice and have merged with someone who had decades of experience. 

 

So if 5 mostly untrained people can wipe out 5 to 10k, is it really impressive for someone with that much experience and even more power to wipe out 100k over the course of an hour? The show is poqer creeping itself in a bad way.

No you'll see. Between the magic system without rules, the bad world building and lack of character development, the bad writing, and the fact rhat men got a bad show of season one I'm not watching season 2 of rafe of time.

Assuming they don't steal some of those from men to empower women further like they did in season 1. After all we had a chance to see the men training in season 1 and it was scrapped, but we still got to see egwene train. So many changes were done that took away a chance for a man to shine, and yet added to make men shine. Nothing I saw in season 1 makes me believe they have any intention of balancing the scales.

 

They literally went out of their way to reduce men's chance to shine in season 1 (Tam can't fight a trolloc but perrins wife can, nynaeve mass healing and trolloc assassination, Egwene channeling her and perrin free and then stabbing valda while perrin does nothing, egwene gets trained but the boys don't, lan can't track his own AS but nynaeve can, and the 5 wiping out the trolloc army). 

 

Time after time they could have given the men something and instead they either took their scenes or reduced their scenes.

 

So while you can sit there and say "well men will get a balance later" but nothing has shown me they even care about balance

And yet book Lan would have not needed to be told how to track moiraine.

Book Tam killed two trollocs while show Tam can't kill one, but Laila can with ease. 

In the books the boys got time to actually develop and we see them learning from Lan, Thom and elyas. All scrapped in season 1. Why? They had no problem keeping egwene learning from moiraine, so why scrap the boys learning from Lan?

 

There is plenty of examples where men were reduced, stolen from or just scrapped elements from the book and they added to the women. So yes. While the women were front and center in book 1 rhe men still got a chance to do stuff and come across as competent, learning, improving, and developing. 

And you ignore all the times men had their stuff reduced and women had the opposite. So no, I wouldn't athue the opposite in the slightest.

Its the Gillette effect.

[Skipp]

13 hours ago, Juan Farstrider said:

is that how storms work? Tornadoes sometimes take out 1 house on a block. I somehow had a house that was across the street from a house that was connected back yards to another house which was across their street from a third which were all damaged by tornadoes as well as the cars (very small tornado luckily) but my house and every other house in the neighborhood was free of damage. characterizing this as a storm that you just unleash and let go, and somehow it was 100% effective and only effective with no other problems seems placing way too much faith where it doesn't belong. Why shoot it at all? Just say "oh, those trollocs? we blew them all up. It was awesome." It's equally believable in that I 100% believe either version a film maker might present, but I'd never call either well done or plausible. Couldn't Moraine have done that with Nynaeve and Egwene  to knock the socks off of the trollocs making the second offensive on Emond's Field? 

 

Well it wasn't a tornado that they summoned, just a large lightning blast that blew outwards from them without discretion.

 

As for your second point, why would Moiraine have wanted to stay in the TR.  The Trolloc horde was a convenient way to get her charges to leave with her immediately.  But for the sake of argument lets say they did stay behind to fight the horde.  I have said several times previously that the reason the Channeling was so effective in the last episode is because they burned themselves out.  It does seem if you reach that limit you can do a lot more damage than you could manage otherwise.  So Moiraine probably could have destroyed that Trolloc horde with Nynaeve and Egwene, neverminding the fact that neither had touched the source previously, but Moiraine would have to burnout and possibly kill 2 of her possible dragon candidates.

 

5 hours ago, Mailman said:

So her power which you are claiming to be a significant portion of that used to destroy a trolloc army of 10,000 to 20,000 is enough for that but not enough to even singe Valda.

 

What you are saying makes no sense.

 

The difference between rare power and skill.  Amalisa, despite being weak in the power had the skill to draw on the reservoirs that were Nynaeve and Egwene.  Egwene despite her rare power didn't know how to weave a proper attack.

 

The Show could decide this is not the case, but it doesn't take any mental leaps to reach this conclusion

[Raal Gurniss]

49 minutes ago, Katherine said:

Forgot about that! Thanks for the remind. 

 

Still trying to remember if Accepted were taught combat......  but regardless the show has  decided that an accepted has learned how to do that. 

 

Which brings me to another question....

 

If an accepted can do these things, how will the show differentiate between accepted and full aes sedai? 

Will Accepted even be even in the series? Just possible they may skip that entire training arc.

[Skipp]

1 hour ago, MasterAblar said:

 

I'm guessing that the source of Nyneave's block will be ptsd from her near death in episode 8. Which to be fair I would quite like since it gives a very clear and real explanation to her inability to open up to saidar. The last time she opened up, that happened.

 

I like her block in the books but the whole anger was always a bit weird to me with regards to saidar. Why would being angry help her surrender to saidar? Never made much sense to me.

 

I hope so, I really thought they were going to introduce her block at that moment.  After telling Egwene that he couldn't listen to the wind I thought that was where they were going.  It would have been a good character moment for Nynaeve to show up ready to help but suddenly realize that she couldn't.  That would have been a good driving force to have her go learn.

 

Missed opportunity in my opinion, but I am looking forward to see what they build from this scene.

[Cauthonfan4]

8 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

42 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

 

Except that didn't happen

Really? Show me where men got a chance to shine in season one?

Lan can't track his own AS. And gave zero advice and had ho plan going into SL.

Tam can't kill a trolloc but Laila can kill at least one.

The boys never got any training and perrin did almost nothing all season. Mat has been reduced to a thief even steals from thr dead.

LTT is shown to be completely wrong and Latra was evelevated to his place in the flashback  

And the list goes on.

12 minutes ago, Asthereal said:

I wouldn't call Lan's portrayal in the show "average Joe". He's shown great skill and Henney's portrayal of him is one of the highlights for me so far

 

Lan literally couldn't even track moiraine, he had zero plan in going into SL and failed utterly to take care of the EF5 or give them any advice while there.

 

So yeah, there wasn't one male character that wasn't bloody nerfed at best and incompetent at best in season 1.

Meanwhile women were shown again and again to be powerful, competent and right. 

[Raal Gurniss]

16 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

  

  

First, yes, because raw power isn't the same as being able to control and focus that power.  A new  student to Martial arts might be in phenominal shape, but until they learn the actual moves and practice them against a resisting opponent they'll get taken apart by better fighters.  And again, the show SHOWS how much power is flowing into each channeler and Egwene is pulling in far more than anyone but Nynaeve.

As a lesser note here, you say 10k-20k, but the actual trained soldier says 6k-10k.  Maybe we should trust the trained soldier's word who knows what they're doing vs Nynaeve's untrained eye looking at a swarm and guessing.

 

There's a number of ways to show more power without just upping body count.  Complexity of what he's doing, control, avoiding collateral damage, enemy dreadlords.  You act as if the raw body count is the only thing that signifies anything.
 

 

Which is what would happen if that many Aes Sedai were available, we see it in the last book actually.  But once you start having dreadlords on the enemy side the battle shifts back.  Also, there aren't that many Aes Sedai in total to afford just leaving 10-20 in place at every borderland.

 

Except that didn't happen. 

 

But….Healing is supposed to be one of the more complex weavings yet both seem to have intuitively mastered the most complex weaves instantly….So how does that match?

[notpropaganda73]

1 hour ago, MasterAblar said:

 

I'm guessing that the source of Nyneave's block will be ptsd from her near death in episode 8. Which to be fair I would quite like since it gives a very clear and real explanation to her inability to open up to saidar. The last time she opened up, that happened.

 

I like her block in the books but the whole anger was always a bit weird to me with regards to saidar. Why would being angry help her surrender to saidar? Never made much sense to me.

 

I like that idea, definitely. I always thought of her anger as her letting go a bit/not being in control and so being able to open up to saidar. Tenuous maybe but that's how it worked in my head ha

[Skipp]

2 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Really? Show me where men got a chance to shine in season one?

Lan can't track his own AS. And gave zero advice and had ho plan going into SL.

Tam can't kill a trolloc but Laila can kill at least one.

The boys never got any training and perrin did almost nothing all season. Mat has been reduced to a thief even steals from thr dead.

LTT is shown to be completely wrong and Latra was evelevated to his place in the flashback  

And the list goes on.

 

Lan literally couldn't even track moiraine, he had zero plan in going into SL and failed utterly to take care of the EF5 or give them any advice while there.

 

So yeah, there wasn't one male character that wasn't bloody nerfed at best and incompetent at best in season 1.

Meanwhile women were shown again and again to be powerful, competent and right. 

All depends on what you mean by badass,

 

Thom killing the darkfriend, Lan scouting back and forth and coming back with more wounds, Mat spotting the Fade and creeping everyone out at the same time, Rand Resisting the DO and blasting him away.  Logain's cold open and shattering the axes,  Perrin rage killing a Trolloc(freaking savage).

[Gothic Flame]

7 minutes ago, Raal Gurniss said:

Will Accepted even be even in the series? Just possible they may skip that entire training arc.

They skipped weapons training so...it's likely.

[EmreY]

9 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Except they only showed power creep like that once. In book 11. The TV show has power creep us from the start.

 

Rand defeats the most powerful Forsaken at the end of Book 1.  Though you're right, that's not power creep, that's power dash.

[Katherine]

11 minutes ago, Raal Gurniss said:

Will Accepted even be even in the series? Just possible they may skip that entire training arc.

 

THe show took the time to show that Amalisa had the serpent ring without the stone. I assumed that signalled that she is accepted. So I would assume since they took the time to show that, that we will learn about the novice, accepted, and aes sedai hierarchy. 

[EmreY]

7 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

They skipped weapons training so...it's likely.

 

We did read the same books, I assume.  Where an Accepted vaulted across every Aes Sedai to become Amyrlin?  That action is fine (within its context) but the presumed lack of an Accepted rank in the TV series (in its context) is not?

 

 

Edited January 20, 2022 by EmreY

[KakitaOCU]

7 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Really? Show me where men got a chance to shine in season one?

Lan can't track his own AS. And gave zero advice and had ho plan going into SL.

Tam can't kill a trolloc but Laila can kill at least one.

The boys never got any training and perrin did almost nothing all season. Mat has been reduced to a thief even steals from thr dead.

LTT is shown to be completely wrong and Latra was evelevated to his place in the flashback  

And the list goes on.

I love that you ask for examples of strength but then complain about the stuff you didn't like.

Examples of Strength:
Lan in Ep 1 defending Moraine and wiping out trollocs.
Rand staying cool under pressure and shooting the Trolloc in the eye followed by stabbing it.
Mat sacrificing his own safety to rush out and save his sisters. (Something we don't see in the books)
Perrin standing and fighting and protecting people (Something he didn't do in the books)
Lan constantly leaving the group to go back and make sure Trollocs aren't getting close, coming back with only minor wounds despite being alone.
Rand staying calm in Shadar Logoth and fighting to save Mat.
Mat showing his charm and grace even in a bad situation in the town with Dana.
Thom effortlessly dispatching a Darkfriend and protecting the boys.
Rand fidusing the situation with the Grinwels.
Mat seeking out and finding the Fade while it was hiding.
Thom facing the Fade alone.

I could go for a while.