I Watch TV: Dune Prophecy

 

Dune: Prophecy

10,000 years before Dune and 80 years after the end of the Butlerian Jihad (war with machine intelligences) Valya Harkonnen is Mother Superior of the Sisterhood (destined to be the Bene Gesserit). Together with her (biological) sister Tula they are trying to fulfil the vision of the Sisterhood’s founder, to found bloodlines that will maintain stability to allow a future for humanity. This includes them training truthsayers (women who can tell if someone lies) as well as influencing nobles of the Imperium, and training the sisters in various extraordinary talents. They also secretly use forbidden technology (a thinking machine) to track genetics. Valya has had to secretly kill other sisters who opposed her leadership, using the Voice to command them.

She has influenced the Emperor to have his daughter Ynez engaged to the 9-year old Richese heir; this will stabilise the bloodline and also Richese support will help keep the spice flowing from Arrakis (Dune). In the meantime Ynez will train with the sisterhood. This goes wrong; the boy is seen playing with a forbidden machine toy and later burns to death.

He burns because of the arrival at court of Desmond Hart, only survivor of an ambush on Arrakis. Records suggest he was swallowed by a sandworm. He claims that the ambush was due to plots from within the Imperium, and not the native Fremen. As the show goes on he uncovers plotters and slowly reveals he has powers to burn people.

Back in the Sisterhood home the trainees are all having the same nightmare. They try to use the great-granddaughter of the founder to seek out her ancestral memories, and succeed but also this goes wrong and she is possessed by others. Valya goes to court to try and deal with the situation and the plotting gets complex as Desmond Hart escapes ambushes by the rebels (who are connected to the palace by the sword-master Keiran Atreides, trainer and lover of Ynez) and political manoeuvring.

Based on one of the Dune prequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson, not one I’ve read. Putting aside both the conceptual difficulty of 10,000 years* and the inconsistency with other Dunes** how does this show stack up?

It’s very serious, takes itself seriously. All the older characters have tragic and bloody backstories, the Harkonnen sisters in particular having committed massacres. The settings are excellent, seamlessly combining special and practical effects. The stunts are good, and at least one revelation was great. Desmond Hart as weird magic avenger continues to be sinister even when his secrets become clearer, and it becomes clear his fanaticism is matched by everyone else’s ruthlessness. If anything he's more honest and above board about it. When the Sisterhood all start having visions and nightmares there’s some good scenes where they’re trying to control infectious panic spreads amongst determined and disciplined women.

So if this is, again, a lightly magic-tinged blood-boobs-and-betrayal show, dark and foreboding and leaning heavily on who will die horribly next, well it’s a good example of it. Though I regret to say that very little gets resolved, leaving it for another season (forthcoming I note).

Watch This: Dune-flavoured space-fantasy of plotting and occasional violence
Don’t Watch This: Everybody keeping secrets from each other, and the secrets are mostly murder.

* Even for a static empire, the Harkonnen-Atreides feud already being in existence, the same ruling house and the embryonic Sisterhood essentially doing what the Bene Gesserit do seems… premature. Indeed the use of shields and swords is perfectly complete, the political make up of the Imperium as it will be, all this seems to be a problem. Frank Herbert threw 10,000 years into the backstory and hinted that the Imperium’s unchanging nature was as much propaganda as history. Here they’ve just accepted it.

** The Imperial Capital world Salusa Secundus is supposed to be harsh; this harshness making it the home and training ground of the Imperial Sardukar legions and the cause of their toughness. Apart from the dubiousness of this (both proved and disproved in Frank Herbert’s Dune novels), the palace seems to be in a pleasant, temperate climate. They dine outdoors at one point and the weather seems fine. Though in Dune it is supposed to have been a prison planet and also mysterious, closed to outsiders, here the 10,000 years works in the show’s favour; that could easily be a later development.