10 EPs.
S2 has already been commissioned mind so not sure how that effects pacing.

I'll be amazed if this makes it to a second season tbh.
It's an absolute shit-show, and has the dubious distinction of making the final seasons of GoT look like Shakespeare in retrospect.
I'm afraid if you haven't read the source material, then this show is utterly baffling.
I spent most of ep6 without the faintest idea who I was watching anymore, so badly handled was the massive time jump.
It's almost like when they pitched the show, they had a treatment...but then just filmed the treatment rather than developing it into a shooting script. It's just sketches of events and characters with no meat to any of it.
Terrible stuff.

...and a ten year time jump where half the cast has been replaced by new actors, while the other half hasn't aged a day? Jesus wept.

It reminds me of those history documentaries where a historian will walk around an abbey talking for a bit then it will cut to a dramatization of events.
Its like that but they removed the historian explaining everything and upped the budget on the drama from am-dram to $20mil per episode.

Yup. They've made it impossible to get invested in any of the characters.
I don't know who most of them are, and they might not even be in it again next week.
Terrible writing.

The blame probably lies with the way the book is written. But they should have seen it as an issue before filming it?

I assume the book has facts about eg Daemon's wife. So that's what you get. The major historical facts about her presented to you in three or four scenes. Job done. It's a very weird way of telling a story. All the recasts have led to them turning the clan-coding by haircut up to 11.

I'm not sure what's gone on with the Princess's kids. Her and Sea Snake Boy were supposed to be having kids before fucking other people. But now she's had them with someone else? If it wasn't working, get another Sea Snake in to make it happen surely? These are supposed to be the kids inheriting the crown but they've got completely wrong haircuts. Why were they so blatant about it? And it's only a problem when she has the third one. Then it all kicks off.   

I quite liked that Hand bloke that was hardly in it and is now dead. Although I didn't know he was dead at first because the way it was shot seemed to suggest he wasn't burning to death and was trying to save his son that was.

It's watchable though. Early Thrones didn't have a load of battles and big scenes. That was often just people in a room. Although it did have memorable locations, surprising events and twists, well-drawn characters with depth, variety and personality, and a gripping storyline that made sense with one thing following on from another. And when they did have action scenes, they were interesting, tense and unpredictable. Apart from that, they're identical.

This week's episode was a new low for me. Didn't have the faintest idea what was going on. The sound mix was abysmal and I couldn't hear much of the dialogue, and half of it seemed to have been shot with the worst use of day-for-night that I've seen in decades.

Omg what the hell was up with the lighting and vignette framing?! There was one cool shot of young blonde prince running over the beach. That was it. The rest was a shadowy mess. Don't care if it's symbolism, if I can't see what you're showing me, I'll lose interest.

Over-dramatic emotive music when Daemon and Rhaenyra finally bang, but we've barely seem them together in the last decade (and not with these actors) so feels unearned.

I enjoy the scheming and the messy family politics, but I really get the sense that this could have been adapted better with flashbacks rather than such huge skips and bitty storytelling. I know that's how the books are, but they're two very different media and adaptation is required.

I am taken out every time I see a GoT reference. The biggest one that I have tried to get over but have been unable to is the opening credits. I'm not sure if they were being lazy or thought they were being clever to capitalise on GoT fan service. It's just a reminder that this isn't GoT. The show would have been better off forging its own identity, servicing the actual characters and stonily refusing to parrot phrases and scenes from Thrones.

Still a decent watch for the most part, but it's very flawed and feels incomplete.

Honestly think Atreyu riding Falkor in Never Ending Story looked better.

Viserys being by far the most sympathetic character, but ultimately the most at fault is actually a nice touch.

LivDiv wrote:

Honestly think Atreyu riding Falkor in Never Ending Story looked better.

That was what immediately sprang to my mind too.

This continues to veer between quite good and total crap.

Think there's another major time jump again next week, just to add even more confusion about who the fuck is actually on screen at any given time.