Spinning Out Of Time
When Sam and I were in our early world-building and concepting phase, I'd often bring up examples from one of my favourite book series, The Wheel Of Time written by Robert Jordan. Sam would sometimes think of an idea for a character's backstory or their internal struggle, and I'd say "Oh yeah that's like in Wheel Of Time when Perrin or Rand did that thing..." The sheer scale of characters and plotlines in the 14 book series naturally meant that there'd be crossover, simply because it covers so much conflict and development.
When it came to Amazon's recent TV-series adaptation of The Wheel Of Time, I was naturally excited. The lead up to the series filled me with a sense of cautious optimism because of the exciting cast lineup and beautiful imagery used to tease the release. Upon release, I devoured every episode each week and despite some problems toward the later part of season one, I thought it was solid and am excited for season two.
Rather than do a full season review, I'm going to comment on some elements that let the tv-series down. This isn't a book fan's rant about what they did wrong, in fact, I was impressed with the changes they made to the storyline to accommodate for the screen. Instead, let's treat this as an exercise in understanding some of the challenges in writing a fantasy adventure series.
Publicity shot from Amazon's 'The Wheel of Time' series.
Ok, let's start with the pacing.
In "road" stories like The Wheel Of Time (WoT), there's a clear visual sense of progression and pace. Characters are thrown into a new world, pursued by an unrelenting enemy, and often literally on the road to a mysterious destination only described through dialogue. The pace of their travel dictates a lot of the drama and tension, and with a horde of bloodthirsty trollocs (an orc-like enemy) at your back, the stakes were high for the WoT squad. For the most part, the pacing in early episodes was done well. Like in episode 2; with the trollocs are at their heels, the party make a narrow escape thanks to Moirane, giving them the chance to rest and plan their next move. As the pacing gradually slows, characters engage in less sporadic and more personal dialogue, allowing the audience time to digest more of the chemistry between the core characters.
Despite the effective pacing of the chase scenes, there were some jarring moments in the early episodes, where in the middle of a conversation an axe or dagger would suddenly impale the back of someone's mouth or chest, triggering an action or conflict sequence. The same kind of "stab and gasp" scene happened at least three times in the series, to the point that these moments of horror became unintentionally funny. Mostly, they were jarring spikes in pace that felt a bit gimmicky.
Overall, events in the show started happening too fast, which leads to our second point on character objectives.
In the middle of the series, it became unclear what the objectives were for some of the core characters. This certainly doesn't apply to all of them, in fact, Egwene's wants and needs were clear and consistent throughout the entire season. For less active characters, like Perrin, it was easy to forget his objectives and desires, because the character himself was confused in most of his scenes. This, coupled with the pace in which events took place, appeared to leave Perrin behind in the drama. His character is stoic, patient and considered, but these positive traits didn't come across strongly enough. I think he needed more opportunities to display his strengths, not just with his hammer, but with his measured mind.
When you have a limited time window to convey what drives a character, it can be difficult for an audience to understand their motives. WoT is a massive 14 book series, so the books are spoiled for time. The tv series doesn't have this luxury and its possible season one suffered due to the amount of world-building required for the non-book audience. It's ok for characters to be unsure of what to do, but as the plot develops, things should become clearer for the audience as to what that character intends to do. I don't mean things should be predictable, but a trajectory should be set so that we can at least understand their actions.
This is an important takeaway for our series. An engaging character should learn as they overcome challenges; at the same time, they should make mistakes and seek advice from others when these challenges appear insurmountable. If a character is confused after an event, but that confusion isn't resolved through their actions, then that character has presented themselves as incapable or indecisive to the audience. Not everyone needs to be Sherlock Holmes, and not every puzzle needs to be solved, but the main characters should be given the opportunity to display their strengths and qualities so that the audience will have a stronger grasp of their intentions.
On another note relating to limitations for the tv-series, the screenwriters intended for ten episodes to be produced but this was cut down to eight. Losing two extra 45-minute episodes must have made the writing process even more difficult as the world-building job was a mammoth task. It leaves a significant amount left to do in seasons two and three, which I look forward to watching.