The scenes where Moiraine or Lan stand and monologue at the rest of the characters for multiple minutes, less so. The Whitecloak sequences are great at this.

But in the early going in a show like this it's all about combining performances and visuals to create memorable first impressions. Obviously, some of a book's depth and complexity can be introduced later, once audiences have gotten a bit more comfortable. It would be very, very easy to make them dour and joyless pricks, since as a group they are typically the most interested in imposing their rigid idea of what 'goodness' is onto characters who we already know to be fundamentally 'good.' Making the most prominent Whitecloak-and our introduction to the organization writ large-a slimy, horny sadist who murders Aes Sedai with a smile is one of the strongest moments we get here.Īnd that's sort of what you need to do, right? TV shows especially rely on this kind of shorthand, the ability to tell us what we need to know about a person or a group of people with a combination of visual cues and one or two characters. What is the right way for a monstrous book-to-TV adaptation to slim down? How do you balance the need to tell that story with the need to be a coherent, functional, standalone adaptation?Īndrew: Seconded on the Whitecloak introduction. You’re an excellent book reviewer-folks, check out Andrew’s podcast!-and I’d love to hear your take. We'll probably have more to say about Thom in a future piece.) (Speaking of characters whose names sound like 'Tom,' Thom Merrilin has an absolutely electrifying introduction-though, sadly, the character lacks giant, white twirly mustaches.

If you’re still angry that Tom Bombadil didn’t show up on screen to sing you songs or that you never got to see the Scouring of the Shire, you might take issue with WoT’s streamlining for TV. We speed through the Tinker encounter without the aid of a major supporting character-I suppose we’ll get to that in detail, but something to be aware of is that a lot of swizzling has been done to shape the narrative for TV. What we see of the Whitecloaks is excellent, and Eamon Valda (Abdul Salis) is gratifyingly unctuous. Folks who are coming into this show expecting to see their favorite scenes echoed back at them onscreen are going to have to realign their expectations, because as you say, we’ve got so much we have to get into. And Eye of the World is one of the biggest meals to get through in the whole saga. Lee: It’s a hard ask for a TV writer to get us into this story-you don’t have the luxury a book author has where you can just go ahead and take a thousand pages to do whatever.

The wheel of time book 7