Josh Reviews Dune: Prophecy

Dune: Prophecy is a six-episode TV series set 10 millennia before the events of Dune.  The show adapts the novel Sisterhood of Dune, written by Brian Herbert (the son of Dune author Frank Herbert) and Kevin J. Anderson, telling the story of the foundation of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood in the decades after mankind’s defeat of the Thinking Machines.

I am an enormous Dune fan.  I have read Frank Herbert’s original six Dune novels many times, and I have watched and rewatched all of the various Dune adaptations over the years.  I adore Denis Villeneuve’s glorious two-film adaptation.  When a TV show spin-off was announced (way back in 2019), I was thrilled!  Dune is an epic universe, and I loved the idea of Dune movies and TV projects being created in harmony.  On the other hand, I worried about the source material.  Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have written many Dune spin-off novels and… well… I have not been impressed.  I have read their initial Dune prequel trilogy twice (House Atreides; House Harkonnen; House Corrino).  I didn’t much like it either time.  There was a lot of plot, but not much character development.  I was very excited that Mr. Herbert and Mr. Anderson then moved on to write Dune 7 and 8.  Frank Herbert’s sixth Dune novel, Chapterhouse: Dune, ended on an enormous cliffhanger, but Mr. Herbert died before finishing the story!  Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson said they’d be working off of the late Frank Herbert’s notes to finish his story; and while that was exciting, I thought their finished novels were OK, not great.  Then they went on to write a new trilogy, set millennia in the past, depicting the battle against the machines hinted at in Frank Herbert’s books.  I tried twice to get through The Butlerian Jihad, but I gave up both times.  I thought it was awful, and I have not ready any of their other (many) Dune novels.  So I was nervous about one of their books being used as a basis for this show.

I have no idea whether Dune: Prophecy is a faithful adaptation of Sisterhood of Dune or not.  I can only judge it on its merits.  My feeling is that this show was disappointingly mediocre.

It’s a shame, because the elements are here for a great show.  The series has clearly been brought to life on a significant budget.  Visually the show looks great, with a grand scale befitting Dune.  And the cast is spectacular.  I like these actors, and there are a number of characters on the show who feel like they have potential to be interesting.

Unfortunately, I found these six episodes to be surprisingly flat.  I didn’t feel we really got to really know any of these characters as much as I’d wanted to.  I didn’t really connect to, or care about, any of these characters.  (In this respect, my complaints are remarkably similar to my issues about the first seasons of both The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and The House of the Dragon.  These are all shows that aspire to be sweeping fantasy epics, with a lot of visual effects and lots of characters in lots of different places; but they all felt like too much plot and not enough character for me.)  This very short six-episode season felt like we were just barely dipping our toes into these characters and this world.

I also have a problem with many aspects of the basic set-up of the show.  (I don’t know if this problem has its source in the book they were adapting.)  For a show set TEN THOUSAND YEARS before Dune, I am mystified as to why everything we see in this show seems to already be basically exactly the way it was in Dune!  We see all the same warring families: Atreides, Harkonnen, Corrino, Richese.  The Bene Gesserit sisterhood and the Swordmasters already exist.  The Sisters basically wear the same dark robes and ornate veils we’re familiar with.  Spice is already being mined on Arrakis, and the Empire is already fighting Fremen there.  The spacing guild already exists, and they already have their enormous Highliners looking exactly like they do in Dune.  All the great houses are already organized into the Landsraad council, and they all are already using Bene Gesserit truthsayers.  The Bene Gesserit already have developed the Voice (to control people) and their truthsaying abilities, and they already have a comprehensive DNA archive that allows them to track matches and breeding.  The only changes we see are very, very minor.  (For example, the Empire is ruled from Salusa Secundus, which in the time of Dune is a nuked wasteland where the Sardaukar soldiers train.)

If this show was set 100 years before Dune that would make sense.  It seems crazy to me that the show is set 10,000 years before Dune and yet basically the universe is exactly the same.  If you’re going to set a show so far in the past, then I want to see a totally different society!!  It’d be cool to actually see how some of the status quo of Dune came to be.  But that’s not at all what this show is, and it’s a bummer to me.

Visually, the show is impressive.  We visit lots of different planets and locations over the course of these six episodes, and I was impressed by how well they were all brought to life.  The series has an expansive feel.  This doesn’t feel like a show that was made on the cheap!  The sets, the costumes, the visual effects — everything looks great.  I like how each house has a different visual look.  I like seeing the Bene Gesserit’s home planet of Wallach IX brought to life — we haven’t seen that in any prior Dune adaptation.  I also enjoyed seeing the depiction of Salusa Secundus, where the Emperor rules, as a lush and beautiful world.

This show was, to the best of my knowledge, made with a different creative team than those who worked on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films.  But the show makes efforts to be visually consistent with the films, which feels wise to me.  We get a few glimpses of sandworms, and they look exactly like they did in Mr. Villeneuve’s films.  The Bene Gesserit are different but similar; still with veils, dark cloaks, etc.  The show also tries to carve out some new territory, visually, especially on Wallach IX.  They found a good balance, I think.

Both Emily Watson (Gosford Park, Punch-Drunk Love) and Olivia Williams (Rushmore, The Sixth Sense) are very strong in the lead roles of the Bene Gesserit sisters Valya and Tula Harkonnen.  I really like both of these strong women, and the show is at its best when they’re together (either working together or sniping at one another).  These are two terrific actors, both with a powerful on-screen presence.  I wish the show was as good as they are!  I also was quite taken with Jessica Barden and Emma Canning as the young versions of Valya and Tula.  Ms. Barden in particular is terrific, with a fierce presence on-screen that I thought was quite memorable.

The great Mark Strong (Sherlock Holmes, Kick-Ass, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Green Lantern, Shazam!, Kingsman: The Secret Service, The Penguin) is terrific casting for Emperor Javicco Corrino, though I wish they’d given him more of a character to play.  (The idea of an Emperor with feet of clay could have been interesting; but they don’t allow us to get to know him well enough for us to sympathize with him.)  Travis Fimmel (looking and sounding a heck of a lot like Charlie Hunnam) plays Desmond Hart, a mysterious soldier who seems to have supernatural powers and an agenda of his own.  Mr. Fimmel certainly is memorable, but the “mystery box” approach to this character frustrated me, as this type of storytelling so often does in modern TV shows.  We spend much of the show watching Desmond with very little idea of what he wants or how he can do the things he does.  That quickly frustrated me.  I’d rather understand a character as we follow them through the story!

As the show unfolds, we meet several young Bene Gesserit sisters in training: Jade Anouka as Sister Theodosia (who Valya takes with her to Salusa Secundus because of a secret in Theo’s past); Chloe Lea as Sister Lila (through whom we see the peril of Bene Gesserit trying to use their powers to contact their dead female relatives; an intriguing idea developed in Frank Herbert’s later Dune books); Faoileann Cunningham as Sister Jen (a stubborn, quiet sister who is fiercely loyal to Lila), and Aoife Hinds as Sister Emeline (whose religious beliefs might put her at odds with some of her other sisters).  I like and was intrigued by all of these young women.  What we see of them is good; I wanted more.  I wanted to more deeply explore who they are and their differing viewpoints on the events happening around them.  Same goes for Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, who is memorable as the Emperor’s daughter Princess Ynez.  Ms. Boussnina has a great on-screen presence, and I was intrigued by the concept for this character, who has a foot in the Emperor’s political world and also a foot in the world of the Bene Gesserit; I wish the show had explored her more deeply.  Chris Mason was fine, if a bit flat, as Keiran Atreides, the Emperor’s swordmaster who has the hots for Princess Ynez.  In the back half of the season, Jodhi May gets some juicy scenes as Empress Natalya, who is not to be trifled with.  Same goes for sister Francesca (Tabu), an intriguing character who only enters the story in the season’s last two episodes. I wanted more time with both of those women.  This is a strong cast, and on paper most of these characters sound interesting.  In reality, the show didn’t do enough to develop these characters and give me a reason to care about them.  As a result, I never got hooked into the story the way I’d hoped (and that I assume the filmmakers wanted)!

Want to dig in a little more deeply?  Beware SPOILERS ahead!  Let’s go…!

Episode 1 — “The Hidden Hand”

• Things get off to a rough start with a long (15-ish minutes, I think!!) prologue that dumps a huge amount of exposition on the audience.  We get way too much, too fast.  I thought young Valya was an interesting character and, as I’d noted above, Jessica Barden was terrific in the role.  But this rush of backstory felt to me like an extremely awkward way to open this show.  (People need to stop trying to imitate the long prologue that Peter Jackson created for The Fellowship of the Ring!!  It worked there, but it usually doesn’t!!)  In my opinion, we needed to either spend more time with this setup and these characters (maybe a full episode), or else just cut this altogether.  (I’m not sure we needed any of this info at the start of the show.  It could have been presented in flashbacks later.)
• Once we jump 30 years forward, the storytelling felt much smoother to me.
• As I’d noted above, it was cool to see Selusa Secundus as a lush, beautiful world where the Emperor lives, and I liked getting to explore the Bene Gesserit home on Wallach IX.  I enjoyed seeing glimpses of Bene Gesserit training, and their hierarchy of trainees and acolytes.  This is new territory for Dune adaptations.  (It was strange to me that they don’t actually show us the DNA archive here in the premiere, after talking a lot about it.  This gets explained later.)
• Why does the Emperor seem to never have any guards around him? Why does scruffy soldier Desmond Hart seem to have free reign of the palace??  This seemed silly to me.
• I enjoyed the brief, Terminator-like glimpses in the prologue of humanity’s war against the thinking machines.  I thought the designs for the robot creatures were cool. I liked that House Richese seems to be okaying with continuing to use A.I. and machines.  (They were doing the same thing 10,000 years later.  I appreciate the consistency, though as I’d noted earlier in this review, I also found it to be very strange that everything was exactly like Dune even though we’re 10,000 years in the past.)  I liked the look of the young prince’s transforming robot lizard toy.
• The horrific murder of a boy at the end reminded me of the end of the Game of Thrones premiere.  (Though, in GOT, Bran survived — he was just crippled!)

Episode 2 — “Two Wolves”

• I thought the show’s opening credits were boring — just a jumble of unmemorable images and no catchy theme.  I had the same problems with the opening credits of Foundation, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and House of the Dragon.  Why do the opening credits for all these modern fantasy/sci-fi shows stink??
• It was surprising to me to see that even this long before Dune, the Bene Gesserit had already discovered 1) how to access the inner voices of their female ancestors, and 2) how dangerous that could be.  (Poor Lila’s fate is tough to watch!)
• I was also surprised that, so early in this universe’s history, we already have someone who can resist the Bene Gesserit Voice.  Has that ever happened before in other Dune stories?  And yet here it is, 10,000 years before Dune??  That feels so strange to me.
• I have so many questions about what exactly is happening in that suspensor prison!!  Is Desmond Hart in stasis?  Or is he just hanging there, while still conscious?  Where are the other prisoners?

Episode 3 — “Sisterhood Above All”

• I liked seeing the Harkonnens on Lankiveil, a planet mentioned a lot in the Dune novels but never before seen on screen.  I liked seeing the whales, which also are talked about a lot in the books!
• I have mixed feelings about this extensive flashback to young Valya.  I wasn’t expecting to see young Valya again after the extended sequence that opened the first episode.  On the one hand, I liked Jessica Barden’s performance, so I was happy to see more of her.  On the other hand, it is very strange to me that we’re only two episodes into this short six-episode season, and yet we spend about 99% of this episode on a flashback.  I don’t love that choice. Theres good stuff in this episode, but it totally interrupts the momentum of the show for me. There had to be a better way to structure this.
• For a prequel, there’s still so much important stuff that happened before the events of this show that is very important and that I wish we were actually seeing.  This episode suggests that the Atreides family stole the glory from the Harkonnens at the end of the Butlerian Jihad and the war against the Thinking Machines.  That’s a very interesting suggestion… but is it true?  Is Valya justified in her anger, despite her being portrayed as entitled and power hungry??  Or is Valya an unreliable narrator and her perspective is not correct?  It’s weirdly muddled for me.
• I’d complained above that even though we’re 10,000 years before Dune, all the cool Dune stuff is already in place.  So I liked stepping back, here, to see the origin of the Bene Gesserit Voice.  I like the idea that Valya first uses it in moment of intense crisis.  I wish there was more of this approach to the storytelling on this show!
• As much as I was interested in the Valya flashbacks, I was also pleasantly surprised how interested I was in the Tula flashbacks!  These were very interesting and surprising scenes.  Wow — Tula murdered all those Atreides??  To this point in the show, she was the more sympathetic sister!!  It’s fascinating to me that they make this pivot here to show us this appalling action she’d taken in the past.  I liked the surprise, but I must admit this made me question what the point of this show is.  Why are we watching a show with these two awful women as the leads?  Does the show want us to empathize with them?  (The Penguin was an amazing show that centered on an awful villain.  But the storytelling on that show felt clearer.  It was very apparent to me that the show knew Oz was awful and took pains to regularly remind the audience of that.  But here, the storytelling isn’t so clear, and I wasn’t sure what intentions of the makers of this show were and how they wanted us to feel about these women.  That’s a problem.)
• It’s wild to me that the show presents Valya’s Atreides fiance as being ready to end the Ateeides-Harkonnen feud.  (Instead, it lasts for another TEN MILLENNIA.)
• Watching the show, I had been wondering if Valya had faced the “agony” (needed to become a Reverend Mother, as seen in Jessica’s experiences in Dune).  This episode seems to clarify that all reverend mothers have, even in this long-before Dune time-period.  I wish we’d gotten to see how Valya (and Tula, and the other Reverend Mothers) conquered all of their inner voices (that bested Lila in the previous episode).
• I’d wondered throughout these first three episodes why they kept avoiding showing us the Bene Gesserit’s DNA archive.  Here at last we find out why.  I like the idea that it’s powered by an A.I. — that was a surprising twist, and a cool prequel development at last.

Episode 4 — “Twice Born”

• It goes by fast, but was that an Ixian selling the thinking machine drone to the Atreides?  (I like that reference to the broader Dune world, but it’s surprising to me that any Atreides would go along with the use of a thinking machine.)
• The Emperor is smart not to follow Desmond Hart’s rash advice to go to war against the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. I wish they’d abandon the mystery box and explain to us what Desmond wants and why he hates the sisterhood so much!
• I thought it was a cool, freaky scene when we see all of the sisters in a trance, drawing the imagery from their shared dream/vision.
• I enjoyed the Landsraad scene.  I liked of seeing all the various conflicting plans.
• We learn that the Sisterhood’s secret A.I. is called Anirul… which I don’t understand.  It’s a reference to the original Dune novel; Anirul was Emperor Shaddam’s wife and the mother of Princess Irulan.  But what’s the connection?
• I was completely confused by whatever the heck happened with the shapeshifter at the end.  I had to watch the special features that came after the end of the episode to understand that Theo was some sort of Tleilaxu experiment.  That key piece of information needed to be clear in the episode!!

Episode 5 — “In Blood, Truth”

• I laughed to see Desmond finally changed his clothes!
• Is the group of elite soldiers Desmond assembles to do his bidding the origin of the Sardaukar?
• I enjoyed the scene of Raquella inhabiting Lila, working in the med bay to investigate Kesha’s death.  It was suitably creepy and weird.  I liked hearing Mother Avila says “abomination” when she sees Lila/Raquella; that’s a nice callback to the original Dune novels.
• Desmond finally asks Mikaela the obvious question: what’s a Fremen doing operating a sex bar on the imperial throneworld?  I wish the show gave us a better answer!!  (I guess she’s just a Bene Gesserit following orders… but wouldn’t her public identity as a Fremen be very unusual and therefore suspicious??)
• I was surprised that a personal shield could protect Desmond Hart from that huge explosion.  That felt like a narrative cheat.
• Speaking of narrative cheats, it’s insane that Keiran Atreides leaves the key to his locked box with damning evidence inside.  That’s so dumb; such bad writing.  Have the characters be smart!
• Mikaela is right to be pissed at Valya for destroying her life and burning her undercover identity.  Valya is a villain!  Watching this show, I’ve been puzzling over the choice to make her the main character for this show.  I’m not exactly rooting for her to succeed.
• In this episode, we meet Emperor Javicco Corrino’s true love, Francesca, who also happens to be a Bene Gesserit.  I was intrigued to meet Francesca, but it feels like it’s too late in the season to introduce this important character.  I wish we’d been following her throughout.
• Desmond Hart is Tula’s son?  That’s interesting.
• Why does Empress Natalya hate the Bene Gesserit sisterhood so?  I thought it was because she’s a religious believer/zealot.  But here, Natalya talks angrily to Desmond Hart about how the sisterhood took away her husband, her daughter, and her power.  When?  How?  When was Constantine born?  Where did her schism from Ynez (and Ynez’s idea to join the sisterhood) begin?  I wish the show had better clarified these characters’ backstories — that would have helped me understand this story and better connect to all these characters.

Episode 6 — “The High-Handed Enemy”

• I like seeing Dorotea’s death from the perspective of the other three women.  I liked the power of their “sisters above all” mantra.
• Someone mentions that Kesha was a master of prana-bindu. I like the reference, but that needs explanation/context here on the show!
• The one time on this show when the Emperor actually has guards with him is with Valya in throne-room, and he lets them stay and hear all the awful things she says about him?!  So strange!!
• I was interested to learn the origin of mother Avila.  That was a nice surprise, but I wish we’d gotten this information earlier.  As has been my familiar refrain with this show, I don’t like the “mystery box” approach in which key information was withheld from the audience until the end.
• Once Ynez insists that she and Valya take Kieran with them, why leave Theo behind on Salusa Secundus?  What’s the point?  (And what actually happened to Theo in the end?  I wish the show had made that clearer.)
• The tragic Romeo and Juliet ending for Javicco Corrino and Francesca would have had more weight if we’d had more time to invest in their relationship.  Francesca should have been in the show from the beginning.  I think they should have combined her character with that of Kesha — it would have been interesting had the show started with Francesca as the Emperor’s truthsayer; we’d have seen her pain at being forced to watch the Emperor married to another woman for politics.
• I liked getting the origin of the famous Dune litany against fear (letting it pass through you).  I wanted more of this sort of thing from the show.
• I’m annoyed that this season leaves us with so many unanswered questions about Desmond Hart.  Who turned him into a weapon?  Did his encounter with the sandworms really happen?  How exactly did he kill people?  Through a virus?  How were they infected?  Is everyone on Salusa Secundus infected?  How and why did Kesha die?  How did Desmond Hart’s vision infect the sisters’ nightmares, far away on Wallach IX?
• One of the few things this show did differently from the established Dune lore was the inversion of having a Harkonnen hero/main character and an Atreides villain.  I was a little bummed that we reverted to normal by the end.  Valya is clearly despicable, while Keiran Atreides seems noble and trying to do the right thing.

I’m thrilled that a Dune TV show exists; I just wish it was better.  I wanted these characters to have more depth, and for this story to be more thrilling.  I’m glad the series has been renewed for a second season.  I’d love to see the makers of this show try to improve and bring this show to the next level.  The spice must flow…

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