Latest / Mythmakers / Recent Big Fantasy Dramas - From The Witcher To The New Amazon Tolkien Series

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Recent Big Fantasy Dramas - From The Witcher To The New Amazon Tolkien Series · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Welcome to MythMakers.
• 0:09
  MythMakers is a podcast for fantasy fans and creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre
• 0:15
  for Fantasy.
• 0:17
  My name is Julia Golding, I'm a writer and director of the Centre and today I'm joined by Ed Saunders,
• 0:25
  a fantasy fan.
• 0:27
  And in today's episode we'll be looking at what decisions writers have made when adapting
• 0:32
  fantasy books for TV series.
• 0:35
  So first of all hello Ed, thank you for joining me.
• 0:39
  Now we've had many conversations about fantasy books and how they're adapted.
• 0:44
  And coming up in the autumn we've got the second series of The Witcher.
• 0:49
  What do you think about The Witcher as a TV programme?
• 0:54
  Well I really enjoyed the first series.
• 0:56
  There are lots of very good episodes in it but I think the ones that stood out most for
• 1:00
  me were the ones which were more, let's say, monster of the week.
• 1:07
  For a show which is about a monster hunter, there were sort of a few of those that you
• 1:11
  might think because they seem to be going for a more serialised story approach.
• 1:17
  That's a lot of what we're going through talking today, it's when inspired this.
• 1:21
  Yes and The Witcher books are written by Anjay Sapskowski, a Polish writer which is actually
• 1:26
  quite unusual to have a fantasy book coming out of Poland, you know, you're using them
• 1:31
  coming out of America and out of the UK.
• 1:33
  So it's really lovely to see something breakthrough that's not from those places.
• 1:38
  And it's a long series but I understand that the TV programmes are actually doing material
• 1:45
  from the books.
• 1:47
  Yeah so I know they're quite popular, it's definitely one of the examples of a really
• 1:52
  popular book that's been translated and been translated successfully.
• 1:56
  But I think where most of the wider audience would have heard of it is from the video games.
• 2:02
  There's a very successful series with which there are at least three main entries, each
• 2:07
  sort of more famous and successful than the last.
• 2:10
  And whilst there are definitely elements that are taken from those games that have been
• 2:16
  put into the show in terms of the character aesthetics and things, then it's definitely
• 2:23
  the case that they're going primarily for book material at least for now.
• 2:27
  Yes, you're right, I've read Blood of Elves which is the first of The Witcher saga.
• 2:34
  And this is the foundational material for a lot of what we see in that first series.
• 2:42
  And yeah that you're right, they've drawn on that book material and there's obviously
• 2:46
  lots more places they can go with that.
• 2:49
  So The Witcher as we see it, it clearly is drawing on, you know, the characters like the
• 2:58
  Bard, The Witcher himself, the sorceress character Yennefer, who's obviously a really big important
• 3:04
  character in that first series, and also the young girl, the sort of lost princess figure
• 3:12
  of Siri, all those sort of archetypal characters and following their story arcs.
• 3:19
  But within that, what was really strong, as you were saying, is that you could often
• 3:24
  just watch one episode, there's an episode wasn't there about a dragon, which was like
• 3:28
  a little standalone sweet story actually in the end, I wouldn't spoil it by saying who
• 3:34
  the dragon actually was, that could have been watched on its own, almost like a little
• 3:39
  mini film.
• 3:40
  Yeah, and I mean that one only required just a tiny bit of continuity to know, you just
• 3:45
  had to know who had met before, but they could even cover that a little bit.
• 3:50
  I think Netflix has got a bit of a different kind of challenge compared to a lot of places
• 3:56
  though because they can, I think, assume that people have watched the previous episodes
• 4:01
  because the way, you know, they drop all the series at once and then you sort of, I
• 4:06
  sort of meant to binge them, whereas if it had been made 10, 20 years ago, or even five,
• 4:13
  I suppose, then they would have to perhaps have more episodes for the first season where
• 4:19
  you don't have to have seen the last one because you might have missed it.
• 4:22
  So those monster episodes, as you talked about, do you think that's more of a video game
• 4:28
  aesthetic that's come into the series, that today's problem is this particular monster,
• 4:32
  let's go and kill it?
• 4:34
  I think it's hard to say, because I haven't read the book, so I don't know how many of
• 4:38
  those little adventures are there.
• 4:40
  I think a lot of those little adventures are actually not from the main series books,
• 4:46
  but like little side books have been written later.
• 4:49
  So I think that Dragon One may actually have been not in the first book, but a sort of
• 4:53
  side story that they also released later on.
• 4:56
  I think the style is quite video game, though, where in a video game, if it's a game like
• 5:04
  the Witcher, there are days and days of content in there.
• 5:09
  And if you played through the main story, it would still take probably, I don't know, tens
• 5:14
  of hours at least.
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  If you're coming back to that over long periods of time, you can't really make the story
• 5:22
  too complicated, because most audiences just won't remember what's going on.
• 5:26
  Whereas having the little episodic chunks where it's a quest, essentially, go fight this
• 5:31
  dragon, or there's a king and there's a mystery of who's murdering all of his guards.
• 5:37
  That kind of thing, you could fit that within an hour, have a great time, there's a full
• 5:41
  story there.
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  And I think those are the chunks that actually are most effectively used by a show like
• 5:46
  the Witcher.
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  Like they have one of the earlier episodes is Geralt goes to a distant kingdom where there
• 5:54
  is a mystery of who's murdering people, and they think it's one monster, and he looks
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  into it.
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  And there's all sorts of twists and turns and little characters who are just for that
• 6:02
  episode.
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  Well, these two have been introduced in that episode, and they'll get their own little
• 6:07
  complete stories.
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  And I've found that to be some of the stronger elements, and I do think that that has been
• 6:12
  influenced by the game, where they have these smaller stories that have been developed
• 6:18
  for that purpose.
• 6:19
  I guess, and I think it also works very well with the streaming service, which just wants
• 6:24
  so much content.
• 6:26
  So if you have a limited series, which means in television terms something like The Queen's
• 6:32
  Gambit, which is a distinct story, which lasts four or five episodes, and then it's done.
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  You spend all that money on making the sets, and getting a top notch actors signed up,
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  and a fantasy world.
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  There's all sorts of set design and special things that had to be made for that world.
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  It's very expensive.
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  So to be able to come back and make a second series and keep it fresh, keep people watching,
• 6:56
  obviously it makes sound financial sense for the streaming services.
• 7:02
  Have you got a favourite character in The Witcher?
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  I've got a definite one, which is my favourite.
• 7:07
  I suspect mine might be the same as yours.
• 7:09
  Is it The Bard?
• 7:10
  I do like The Bard, yeah.
• 7:12
  So in the show he's called Yasuke, but in the video games, and at least in the translations
• 7:17
  of the books, he's actually called Dandelion.
• 7:19
  Yeah, now I liked him.
• 7:21
  He reminded me very much of the role of Jeffrey Chaucer played by Paul Bettany in The Night's
• 7:30
  Tale.
• 7:32
  It's almost like our perspective on the world, and I think this is one of the ways of persuading
• 7:39
  us to believe a fantasy, is if there's a character who's a little bit...
• 7:43
  A bit modern.
• 7:44
  Yeah, he's got a modern sensibility, and he can sort of...
• 7:48
  He's definitely got a vibe of somebody who's tried to have a band or something and has never
• 7:54
  had a big hit.
• 7:55
  Yeah, and he sort of latches onto this guy, and he won't let go, he won't be shaking off.
• 8:00
  Well, it's quite a parallel, actually, but I suppose that's like The Bard archetype
• 8:04
  quite often.
• 8:05
  Yeah, you had another version of this, another animated version of this as the Shrek and
• 8:11
  Donkey combo.
• 8:12
  Yeah, well, Donkey sings.
• 8:15
  I don't know if he's...
• 8:17
  The dynamic is similar in sort of the flamboyant one.
• 8:21
  And the broody one with all the muscles.
• 8:23
  Yeah, okay.
• 8:24
  So moving away from The Witcher, and we're looking forward to seeing what they do with
• 8:29
  the second series, and looking at another really big hit, which is Disney's The Mandalorian.
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  Now this is another long sort of many episode story with coming back again for another series,
• 8:46
  which follows the episodic story arc.
• 8:49
  So how did you find that, to announce in the world of sci-fi, but sci-fi fantasy?
• 8:54
  Hmm.
• 8:55
  Well, I also really enjoyed The Mandalorian.
• 8:58
  I do think thinking about it has maybe sort of realized quite how similar the shows are
• 9:03
  in that there is a stoic protagonist who doesn't speak much and is some sort of bounty hunter
• 9:12
  who has given the task of adopting a child who's got special powers.
• 9:17
  Oh, my goodness.
• 9:18
  And realized.
• 9:19
  Yeah, I mean, I don't quite think of a yaskier type character that they've added yet, but
• 9:27
  I'm sure that would be on its way, but no, they're kind of similar and quite comparable
• 9:31
  in many ways.
• 9:32
  But I do think The Mandalorian is more episodic.
• 9:36
  I think that it has been designed more so that you could watch an individual one, and
• 9:42
  there's basically only at most one piece of information you need to know.
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  You might go into an episode and The Mandalorian has to infiltrate some facility and get some
• 9:51
  information, but you don't really need to know why he needs that, to be honest.
• 9:56
  And I don't know if that's partly because it's not all released at once, and things
• 10:01
  on Disney Blaster released per week if the series is ongoing.
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  They'd be interesting to see if that's why, or it could be that there isn't a book that
• 10:11
  it is following.
• 10:12
  They'll have writers who will have plotted it out a bit, I'm sure, but there isn't a
• 10:18
  overarching story that's already been written.
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  So it's not the full-back material, which I kind of think it is in The Witcher a bit
• 10:25
  where they go.
• 10:26
  We have to make sure we're pushing this main plot forward.
• 10:30
  Even though, to be honest, in that kind of show, I actually think I prefer the episodes
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  where they're a bit more standalone because you get the chance to introduce some new characters
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  and some new monster or threat.
• 10:42
  That's just for that episode, and it all wraps itself up quite nicely.
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  I think it also means there's fewer opportunities to perhaps misplay characters or arcs out because
• 10:55
  you have to draw them out and have to make sure they're there for the whole thing.
• 10:59
  I have never really warmed to the world of Star Wars.
• 11:03
  I don't know, hasn't struck me quite in the heart in the way that, say, Tolkien does.
• 11:10
  I'd prefer to go to Middle-earth and to a galaxy far, far away, but I did appreciate
• 11:15
  in Mandalorian the humour of this rough guy having to look after this 50-year-old baby.
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  He's at least 50.
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  I think he's as old as Darth Vader is.
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  He's got a great sense of humour right now.
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  I maintain that guy is just pulling a really long con, that little baby.
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  He's got all these people to protect him, and he's 50 years old, and he clearly understands
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  what's going on.
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  He's always good to see.
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  I don't know if it's a puppet or CGI, CGI, I expect.
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  We should probably put a spoiler warning in at some point at the beginning of this episode
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  for that.
• 11:55
  It's the same spoilers for elements of the Mandalorian and the Witcher.
• 11:59
  Yeah, but I think it's already been out enough time now, it's like saying, let's not tell
• 12:03
  the end of Harry Potter.
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  I'm not sure what the rule is these days.
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  I think once it's all out, it's fair game.
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  There are a couple of long-running series we've just looked at, The Witcher and The
• 12:17
  Mandalorian, but of course the big one coming over the hill towards us is of course the
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  Tolkien series for Amazon, which, well, it's going to be really interesting to see what
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  they do with that, because they haven't got, they've got book material in that they're
• 12:36
  drawing on the second-agents or appendices material, and it's all fiercely guarded by
• 12:42
  the Tolkien estate to make sure that...
• 12:44
  Yeah, that writes issues a weird one, because the only thing at the time of recording at
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  least that I think has been really released is one image where they appear to show elements
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  which are actually, I think, from the first stage stuff, which is interesting because
• 13:01
  they don't have the right to that, they only have the right to the second age.
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  Well, maybe someone will look at a picture and say, I remember when, back in my forefather's
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  day, or something like that, which would be plausible.
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  But I think the writers on this series have such a massively difficult job.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, they must be... well, I hope that they're getting good therapy, because it must be
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  so anxious to know whether or not they've taken a line through this material that a, both
• 13:31
  please is the right holders, and be the kind of Tolkien fans and see the mass audience.
• 13:39
  Yeah.
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  And I just don't know if that is...
• 13:42
  Walking that line is a really tough one, because either it's... well, it could be many things,
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  but you could make it a show where it's just really loyal to all of its law, and it's
• 13:55
  really made for hardcore Tolkien fans.
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  But it won't be, because there aren't really enough of them to support an entire show
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  that's meant to be supposedly the most expensive TV show ever, so it has to have the mainstream
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  appeal, and all that they've really got for that is the legacy of the films, but none of
• 14:13
  that has happened.
• 14:14
  So you sort of have to harken to these films that they don't own or have... I don't know
• 14:21
  how many of the creatives have come over.
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  I'm not sure if...
• 14:23
  I haven't heard of any of them.
• 14:25
  It's a new team, isn't it?
• 14:27
  Yeah.
• 14:28
  And it's definitely going to be a challenge to make it relatable enough to mainstream audiences,
• 14:33
  especially when the characters you're dealing with aren't... I mean, we never really see those
• 14:37
  characters in quite the same way where we get to know them on that kind of personal level,
• 14:41
  because isn't it chronicles of history rather than...
• 14:44
  Yeah, so...
• 14:45
  ...sort of have to invent personalities to an extent, or from the actions at least.
• 14:49
  Well, certainly if it's material from the appendices in Lord of the Rings, it's very
• 14:55
  summary form that it's written down, and in the sort of high chronicle level language,
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  you know, it's not the intimate conversation dialogue-driven stuff from the actual novel
• 15:06
  Lord of the Rings.
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  If they're allowed to flesh that out with some of the Silmarillion and the other writings
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  of Tolkien, which were edited by Christopher Tolkien and sort of published posthumously,
• 15:20
  you could begin to round out characters, but they're still on a... they feel like
• 15:25
  Icelandic saga-style people.
• 15:29
  Hmm.
• 15:30
  Then the thing that really, for me, makes Lord of the Rings work is the Hobbits, because
• 15:35
  they are our perspective in that world.
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  We aren't the hero, we aren't raised to that level of an arrogant, but we can think
• 15:44
  about being a pipping or a merry or a Frodo, and of course they do become the heroes, which
• 15:48
  is the wonderful sort of turnaround in the book.
• 15:51
  Now, if you don't have that level, because the Hobbits weren't, you know, they're not
• 15:55
  known in Middle-earth, really, they're sort of been forgotten people, they lived by the
• 16:00
  rivers, and no one knows much about them.
• 16:03
  So you can't plausibly plant them in an earlier story.
• 16:08
  So who are you left with?
• 16:09
  Well, did you go for a dwarf?
• 16:11
  Just because that's kind of small, but that's a bit tricky, because the politics between
• 16:14
  the dwarfs and the elves is very complicated.
• 16:17
  Did you go for a man?
• 16:18
  Well, then you get to the problem of, well, let's move on to Game of Thrones.
• 16:23
  You get the Game of Thrones problem, but how do you portray adult men and women in a way
• 16:30
  that fits a Tolkien universe, which isn't quite the same as the full-on, sex and violence,
• 16:38
  Game of Thrones world, which people might be expecting?
• 16:41
  I'd say there's a spectrum to this.
• 16:43
  I think the sort of, the most realistic and confronting of human flaws one is like
• 16:49
  on the Game of Thrones end, of at least, you know, these three popular franchises we're
• 16:53
  talking about.
• 16:55
  Then the Witcher has more fantasy elements than Game of Thrones does, and that is still
• 16:59
  very, you know, there are people swear, you know, there are lots of them horrible.
• 17:06
  There are elves in it, but those elves seem to be mostly similar to the humans and
• 17:10
  sort of how realistically they are displayed as personalities.
• 17:15
  And then in Lord Lurings, it is more, I mean, you have realistic characters in a way, but
• 17:20
  the way you see them, you would not expect Legolas to like, stub his toe and swear.
• 17:26
  That doesn't happen in Lord Lurings.
• 17:28
  I mean, a dwarf can maybe, as long as he swears like in Old Warvish or something, but having
• 17:37
  a character when you're restricted to the sort of more mythic ideals of character, I
• 17:42
  suppose what they could say is all of those mythic legends, those are the idealized versions
• 17:47
  from later on.
• 17:48
  But then we've seen that the elves are like this sort of ethereal, I mean, it sounds really
• 17:53
  boring if you live with the elves.
• 17:55
  You wouldn't really want to live with, at least how they've been shown in a lot of the,
• 18:00
  they seem like they just sort of go around singing inquires and...
• 18:02
  Well, Bill, where things, it's a nice place to retire.
• 18:04
  Yeah, well, exactly.
• 18:06
  It's like a nice place to retire, a good place to go on holiday, but you really, you know,
• 18:10
  you probably don't want to be around them the whole time.
• 18:12
  They're not the dynamic culture because they're the ones in their gold, their sort of
• 18:16
  autumnal years or even winter by the time...
• 18:18
  Well, yeah, I suppose they're all thousands of years old, so maybe they were all, you
• 18:22
  know, more active in their youth and they're just sort of a bit tired now, I don't know.
• 18:27
  Well, they don't perceive time, I mean, this is one of the interesting things of the
• 18:31
  elves, their perception of time is different from the other characters.
• 18:35
  So they're living on a different pace from everybody else.
• 18:40
  That's one of the things Legolas says when he looks at people, he feels separated and
• 18:45
  set apart.
• 18:46
  That's what the elves are.
• 18:47
  They're set apart from everybody else.
• 18:49
  I mean, this could make an interesting character.
• 18:51
  If you have somebody, if you have an elf who's struggling with that, that could maybe
• 18:55
  be your way in.
• 18:56
  Like an elf who's got these human friends and companions and it's sort of the iron
• 19:01
  thing if you're going, well, I'm going to look exactly like this in a thousand years
• 19:05
  and you'll all be dust.
• 19:06
  Yeah.
• 19:07
  Then you could have somebody struggling with that perhaps.
• 19:10
  So what about Game of Thrones?
• 19:11
  I mean, that was of recent times probably the most famous long running fantasy TV series
• 19:18
  set, you know, actually based on a set of fantasy books.
• 19:23
  It's definitely why all these shows are being made and they've seen the success.
• 19:27
  Yeah, but of course it ended in somewhat.
• 19:30
  I think it's fair to say, I think it's sort of generally acknowledged now even seemingly
• 19:36
  by the stars of the show itself that it did not end well.
• 19:41
  And I do, I do think the warning signs were there.
• 19:44
  I mean, there's all sorts of analysis of this all over the internet.
• 19:48
  But the author of the book series, George R.R. Martin, he was quite heavily involved
• 19:54
  and did a lot of the scripts for the first four series.
• 19:58
  And he comes from quite a heavy TV background himself.
• 20:01
  That seems to be what he's done for a great part of his career.
• 20:05
  But he left after the fourth one or stepped back mostly.
• 20:10
  I think it was meant to be to focus on his books.
• 20:14
  And although he's put out a lot of material, he hasn't actually continued another entry
• 20:18
  into the story.
• 20:20
  So they were flying a lot on their own, the showrunners in the direction of, I think
• 20:27
  that they'd sort of been told a couple of things or had guests and had that confirmed
• 20:33
  of where the story was going.
• 20:35
  But in terms of the character arcs and how those developed and in terms of what to end
• 20:42
  everybody's stories, it was up to them.
• 20:46
  And yeah, no, it didn't seem to go well.
• 20:48
  The main problem, if you haven't seen it, is everything's quite rushed.
• 20:54
  And the sort of careful crafting of characters and stories kind of chucked out the window.
• 21:01
  I think it's most sort of embodied in there's a character called Jamie.
• 21:04
  It's called Jamie Lannister.
• 21:07
  And this is a guy...
• 21:08
  Again, we should say there are some plot spoilers here.
• 21:10
  Yeah, so this is plot spoilers.
• 21:13
  But he starts out in the books and in the show as definitely a bad guy.
• 21:20
  He is sort of a prince charming, but he's evil, if you like.
• 21:25
  He's sleeping with his sister and the kids who are the worst and become king of the realm.
• 21:34
  They're his...
• 21:35
  And he sort of sets off a lot of the actions in the plot.
• 21:38
  He does, you know, he kills people who don't really deserve it, et cetera, et cetera.
• 21:43
  And he has a very good redemption arc where he sort of strip away that and show that actually
• 21:49
  one of the reasons he did the thing that set him on this path was for good reasons.
• 21:55
  He is famously this king's layer.
• 21:58
  He kills a king who you don't see in the show, he's from the age before.
• 22:04
  And this act is what sort of has shamed him and everybody judges him for.
• 22:09
  And everybody thinks he did it for personal gain, basically, as it's revealed in some
• 22:14
  very good performance and very good scripts in a scene that actually he did that vulnerable
• 22:21
  reasons.
• 22:22
  And he talks about how hard it is to be a true knight because you made to protect the
• 22:28
  people that you also swear to listen to your father and listen to your king and what
• 22:31
  of those all conflict.
• 22:33
  And he chose when his king told him basically kill a bunch of civilians, he chose to kill
• 22:40
  the king instead.
• 22:42
  Fast forward, he's gone through a redemption arc.
• 22:44
  He's on the side of the people who are pretty clearly the goodies at this point.
• 22:50
  And in the final few episodes, he decides to leave his new girlfriend who helped him
• 22:59
  do this redemption arc.
• 23:01
  And he decides to go back to his sister who is definitely a bad guy.
• 23:05
  And he tries to go to her and get into the city where everything's happening.
• 23:12
  And he gets captured.
• 23:14
  And his brother comes to him and says, you know, can you help us think of the people?
• 23:21
  And he says, to be honest, I never cared about the people.
• 23:25
  So he's forgotten his earlier character arc.
• 23:27
  Yeah.
• 23:28
  You could be generous and say, maybe he's lying to himself, maybe, but it doesn't really
• 23:32
  come across that way.
• 23:34
  He kind of just does it.
• 23:35
  You turn.
• 23:36
  And of course, I've heard about the Daenerys.
• 23:38
  Oh, that's famous.
• 23:39
  Yeah.
• 23:40
  Yeah.
• 23:41
  And the Jon Snow.
• 23:42
  There's a lot of, there's a lot of mothers out there who probably regret calling their
• 23:44
  children Daenerys now.
• 23:45
  Well, maybe they just sort of remember the Daenerys before she went off the rails.
• 23:49
  Well, they call them Danny.
• 23:50
  Yeah.
• 23:51
  That's why in the books.
• 23:52
  Yeah.
• 23:53
  So why do you think that they went in this direction that showrunners?
• 23:58
  I think that might have been the way it was meant to go in the books.
• 24:03
  I think that you can kind of see how that might happen and it might actually be pulled
• 24:09
  off well.
• 24:10
  I just think that the execution of it is where the problem is.
• 24:13
  I don't think it's a problem to have that character who is the pretty much the main
• 24:19
  character of that series be overwhelmed, makes them bad decisions, and have us all
• 24:26
  dissenting to madness.
• 24:28
  But the problem is in the show that dissenting to the madness happens in about two episodes
• 24:33
  and it makes they make her look quite petty because the reasons it happens is basically
• 24:39
  she's jealous of her nephew slash boyfriend, that's all I think, and some people around
• 24:47
  her get killed.
• 24:49
  But this is a character who's been shown to be incredibly compassionate and everything
• 24:53
  and the way they framed it in the final series, it kind of looks as if she just gets fed
• 24:58
  up and instead of any kind of proportional response, she decides to burn millions of
• 25:03
  citizens alive and that is definitely slightly overreacting, you know, and then she goes
• 25:10
  full crazy because she starts talking about like they give her lots of fascist imagery
• 25:18
  where she's standing, addressing all of her army, saying how they're gonna bring freedom
• 25:22
  to everybody like she just did to that city, you know, the one that she just burnt down.
• 25:27
  And then she's kind of put down in a fairly problematic way by her lover, which is kind
• 25:34
  of, yeah, the execution is not fantastic and I think that the people involved weren't
• 25:40
  very happy with it either.
• 25:41
  But I do think that the story itself isn't necessarily a problem but the execution and the
• 25:47
  character work is.
• 25:49
  I wonder in a world where these scripts had to be so carefully guarded because of the
• 25:54
  spoiler thing and people wanting to find out what happened and so the scripts all had
• 26:00
  to be locked down that actually in a sense, they weren't tested enough before they went
• 26:05
  ahead and filmed them because it sounds as though there were some really red lights in
• 26:10
  terms of storytelling that you might be able to pick up but because you're in a lockdown
• 26:15
  situation locked down as in your scripts or locked down, this is where it starts to
• 26:20
  go astray and in fact it's much better to share stories and sound them out with people
• 26:25
  so you can be corrected and say, hang on a minute, didn't you make Daenerys do this?
• 26:29
  That's happening too quickly and all those sort of instincts aren't given the chance
• 26:33
  to be discussed because you're trying to keep the story so secret.
• 26:38
  Stories that only really work once they've been tested and tried on your audience.
• 26:43
  It's definitely an aspect of it.
• 26:45
  There's another somewhat important thing as well which is kind of a unique bit of storytelling
• 26:51
  problems to this show which is the plot of this show was speculated about for years and
• 26:59
  in between each season there would be legions of online people guessing.
• 27:05
  One of them is going to get it right and it seems as if the people in charge decided
• 27:10
  that the best thing to do was to try to go with something that nobody would guess.
• 27:15
  They wanted to be surprising, they wanted to be subversive and you know that has its
• 27:21
  cases of validity but I think in this case I think you kind of have to stick with the
• 27:26
  story you've been designing up to until that point.
• 27:30
  They've built up certain characters to be particularly important to never really did
• 27:34
  anything or the character who sort of kills the dark Lord equivalent.
• 27:40
  Not heard of the dark Lord until about two episodes prior and literally comes out of
• 27:45
  nowhere to do it.
• 27:46
  There's no set up particularly and I think if you make that I mean it's not a bad thing
• 27:51
  that the character did that necessarily but if the motivation for a twist that you're
• 27:59
  introducing is because you're concerned about what others think of like the story and
• 28:04
  that somebody else may have guessed it and then I think you might need to reassess if that's
• 28:08
  a good idea.
• 28:09
  I thought the series that handled this best in a different genre was the Sherlock.
• 28:15
  That's a very controversial one.
• 28:17
  Where they did a lot of spoof reasons for him to survive the fall from the roof that
• 28:23
  one where they actually had a group of people all discussing what had happened and they
• 28:28
  played these fantasy versions of it a couple of times.
• 28:31
  It was the beginning of the third series I think.
• 28:35
  Yeah well I don't know if I entirely agree I think at the time I thought this is kind
• 28:42
  of fun but then I looked at it and I realised the people who were coming up with these
• 28:47
  theories were like the biggest fans and they kind of did it in a way we kind of insulted
• 28:52
  those people but not really in like a kind way.
• 28:55
  Well except one of them was right of course this was the joke was that the guy who was the
• 29:00
  pathologist man.
• 29:01
  Oh yeah.
• 29:02
  He was right he looked loony.
• 29:04
  So there was this sort of joke within a joke going on.
• 29:08
  But I think that part of the problem there is they didn't know what the twist was.
• 29:12
  I think you should know what the twist is before you write it.
• 29:15
  What they didn't know and they just...
• 29:16
  No definitely clearly not.
• 29:17
  They clearly hadn't...
• 29:18
  Keep trying.
• 29:18
  They didn't know how he was going to get out of that or if they did then...
• 29:21
  I think they might have done.
• 29:23
  I think that a place where maybe this mystery box story telling is definitely a thing where they
• 29:30
  set up a mystery as the cliffhanger and then say where's you know what's the answer.
• 29:34
  Wait to see you next time.
• 29:35
  And they don't know.
• 29:36
  Star Wars did this big time in the what is currently the sequel trilogy maybe in
• 29:42
  future years it'll be known as something else.
• 29:44
  They set up this big set of mysteries in episode seven force awakens.
• 29:50
  Things like who is you know who is who is Ray who who are her parents.
• 29:56
  Is it Obi-Wan Kenobi or something and I quite liked actually.
• 30:02
  I know that lots of people didn't but I quite like that in the second film they went...
• 30:06
  No.
• 30:07
  Well yeah they went it's maybe this was a mistake to try
• 30:11
  weigh so much on these mysteries.
• 30:13
  Perhaps it's better just to use this and they used it to say something.
• 30:17
  They gave an answer which was in that film they were nobody.
• 30:21
  You know you're not special because of who your parents are.
• 30:24
  And I quite like that because that uses that to make a point rather than just be
• 30:30
  it's this character surprise.
• 30:32
  Well I think it had some problems that set of three in that they had characters who they
• 30:36
  didn't properly employ because they were sort of looking at I know popularity and polls or
• 30:41
  something and so some characters have strange malfunctioning character arcs I think John
• 30:47
  Boyega's character.
• 30:48
  Oh yeah it doesn't really go anywhere and he was great.
• 30:52
  You know there was so much they could have done with that character but he kind of became
• 30:55
  and also ran at the end.
• 30:57
  I mean it had the they were definitely responding a lot with that second film which was not
• 31:02
  received well by Star Wars fans but I don't think I don't think there was a lot of hate towards
• 31:08
  the decision with the parentage of Ray.
• 31:10
  No I think it's more the thing.
• 31:12
  I think it was what they did with Luke Skywalker which I actually liked again but I can understand
• 31:16
  why people didn't.
• 31:17
  Yeah so and then of course Carrie Fisher died during the filming so they may have had other
• 31:22
  plans for that character so there were some odd or decisions taken I think.
• 31:28
  You know nobody hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans so.
• 31:31
  No no no no I'm still a believer in the first ones that were made myself.
• 31:36
  Well you know we've covered quite a few I think we've covered all the fan bases who are
• 31:42
  most passionate about their things.
• 31:44
  No no we haven't done Star Trek.
• 31:45
  Oh that's true.
• 31:47
  No but we weren't going to go there today.
• 31:48
  Anyway so as a regular feature in this podcast I always like to think of one place in a fantasy
• 31:55
  world where it's the best place to go so you can choose any fantasy universe but you now have
• 32:02
  to choose a bar or a tavern in this episode and say where is the best one in the fantasy
• 32:09
  universe as you know where would you like to walk in and have a drink.
• 32:15
  Well I don't want to be in any of the ones where it's quite likely I'll die.
• 32:20
  Good choice.
• 32:21
  So that rules out like your game of thrones probably Star Wars 2 because someone will just
• 32:26
  shoot me probably for.
• 32:27
  I'll pick a fight.
• 32:28
  Yeah.
• 32:30
  If it's do I get to pick when it is in the story?
• 32:33
  I can't see why not.
• 32:35
  Okay because if it's Lord Lurings in peacetime it's probably one of the safer ones which also
• 32:39
  gives you a nice setting.
• 32:40
  But would you want to be in the shire in like the green dragon?
• 32:44
  Well the shire is kind of just Oxfordshire countryside.
• 32:47
  I know it's not different enough really.
• 32:48
  I think I probably if I was going somewhere it would have to be like a like an
• 32:54
  arable or something they sound fun you know I bet they've got some good bars in those
• 32:58
  huge vaults and things.
• 32:59
  Yeah.
• 32:59
  Which would be really cool.
• 33:01
  I think an arable perhaps with a day out at Lake Town oh well I guess it's probably burnt
• 33:08
  down by the stage.
• 33:09
  They make a new town don't they?
• 33:10
  They do and Bard and all his folk move into Dale don't they?
• 33:14
  Well I'll use their tourist agency and they'll punt me over the lake to arable and then I'll
• 33:20
  go round and do the tour of arable.
• 33:22
  Yeah I think if I was choosing a bar I would I have reservations like you about the Star Wars bar
• 33:28
  but maybe something I wouldn't mind one that's in space so something like on the starship
• 33:34
  enterprise they have bars there.
• 33:36
  The restaurant at the end of the universe that's probably the...
• 33:38
  Oh well yes of course that's cool.
• 33:39
  It's got no sadness that is a good place to go.
• 33:43
  Yeah what's the universe end and then I'm not so sure about ordering the meat
• 33:47
  that is very funny but also very uncanny the meat who asked you to eat it.
• 33:52
  Yeah so I think I'd go for a bar in space and I will stick with the bar on the Starship Enterprise.
• 34:01
  Who are you having a drink with though?
• 34:03
  Well which generation? I think a probably Jean-Luc Picard's generation.
• 34:07
  It's probably for the best.
• 34:08
  Yeah I think yeah there's some overlap there.
• 34:12
  They do have episodes where they're all around so you could perhaps pick your favourite
• 34:16
  from the two crews.
• 34:17
  You might bump into Wippy Goldberg as well which is always a plus so
• 34:22
  Anyway so thank you very much Ed it's great fun.
• 34:24
  It's been a pleasure talking about this and Ed will return and we'll have another chat about
• 34:30
  the Marvel Universe and all of its iterations but that's it for today's program.
• 34:36
  Thank you for listening.