Wheel of Time MUD

Perrin and Egwene run into a familiar face. Mat and Rand see strange ones. Moiraine and Lan mourn their loss.

Release Date/Time: 12/1/2021 7 PM EST, 12/2/2021 12 AM GMT

Virtual Watch Party: 7:00 PM EST WOTMUD Discord Channel #tv-series-spoilers (you need admin permission to view)

Sneak Preview: What mysteries wait in the White City. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0-LuHV-pdM


Spoiler warnings: Spoiler mark Episode 6 and further. Spoiler mark any appropriate Book spoilers.


Trivia:
Title is reference to Dark Prophecies:
Daughter of the night, she walks again, blood feeds blood, blood calls blood.

Extra Content (transcrip for those who cannot watch it)
[Amyrlin] As one age passes into memory, another finds its beginnings.

Out of the ashes of the Breaking, surviving factions of female Aes Sedai emerged into a new world. They met under common cause, to protect the world from further devastation.

While male Aes Sedai continued their descent into madness and destruction, the island of Tar Valon was chosen, and the White Tower was born. A base dedicated to progress, research, and training.

Here, those with the natural ability to channel are welcomed as novices to begin their training. From novicehood, years may pass before a sacred serpent ring is placed on one's finger, raising her to the level of Accepted. And long after, when deemed ready, the Accepted take the Three Oaths and are raised to wear the shawl as Aes Sedai.

Those lucky enough to get called to the shawl will choose their Ajah, of seven factions, each with their own specific purpose. Warriors standing ready, healers of all things living, keepers of the past, seekers of justice, law focused diplomats, pursuers of truth and reason, and those dedicated to preventing the wrong and dangerous use of the One Power.

The Hall of the Tower is our central council, represented by three Sitters from each Ajah. Here, we vote and deliberate over important matters. On the throne, the Amyrlin Seat. Here, I was sworn in, as the Watcher of the Seals, the Flame of Tar Valon, chosen for life.

It was no accident that we chose the island of Tar Valon in plain view of Dragonmount. It's a message, spoken to all generations. A reminder of the past. A warning that the Dragon Reborn will come, one day.


Media Reviews:
Vulture. 3/5 "It’s a far cry from the storytelling pattern of, say, Game of Thrones, which took eight seasons to pay off the confrontation between life and death incarnate that occupied its final episodes. The question now is whether The Wheel of Time has enough storytelling mojo left over now that its first quest has been successful."

IGN 9/10 "The Wheel of Time delivers some excellent intrigue, character development and drama in its fifth episode. The show’s high production value really shows in the introduction to Tar Valon and the White Tower, which feel appropriately wondrous while holding secrets that have so far only been hinted at."

AV Club B- "More than anything “Blood Calls Blood” feels like The Wheel Of Time trying to work around the inherent limitations of television, for better and worse. It’s clumsy, but it’s probably necessary; the show wasn’t going to survive if it didn’t start working harder at finding its own voice."

Review: 8/10

Good:
Pacing is good
Mat's acting is good, and the affects of the Dagger are well done
Loial's personality and dialogue is great
Tar Valon is well built
Character building with Lan is good, might have pushed it a little bit too much right at the end
Whitecloak interactions was good until the end when Valda basically got shellshocked by yellow eyes
Nod towards Forsaken

Not as good:
Weird transition sometimes that shows something was cut out. Nynaeve suddenly appears with Loial.
Not sold on Loail's hairdo. Prosethics look good, but size is not there (understandably the cost)
Wish Perrin was more than just a sad sack right now. golden eyes does not look as good on screen as I would have hoped for


Speaking of Forsakens (BOOK SPOILERS)
I was hoping they would keep all 13, but didn't see 13 on the table.
At least a few is confirmed

Walrus with a cloak: Ishamael (confirmed)
Tall nun (next to him): Lanfear almost definately

(to right)
Squinty - Rahvin?
big boob: Graendal almost definatly
pharoah: Asmodean?

(to left)
Dwarf chewbacca (to left): Sammael
Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas: Semirhage?
Squat girl: Moghedian?

Complete and utter waste of screen time.

Karene and Stepin's entire presence in the series is a waste of contrived side story that did not need to be told. I think they might have accidently thought Stepin was king of malkier and Lan his manservant.

Not a fan of midget Loail at all.

Perrin and Mat both continue to be dung characters since they intentionally started them that way, if only Mat had actually started from a point to fall from.

halfhand wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 02, 2021 8:19 pm

Whitecloak interactions was good until the end when Valda basically got shellshocked by yellow eyes

and this, plus the random carving up perrin didnt seem to be anything in particular.
It's been fairly forgettable so far, did Perrin slaughter whitecloaks with wolf assisance like books earlier in series I've already forgotten? Or were whitecloaks just randomly after them for no reason already?

Definitely my least favorite episode and made me wish I could have that hour of my life back.

WAY too much time spent on Stepin and Karene, two characters few people really needed to care about after Ep 4. In truth, this episode is not really about them, but really trying to get us deeper into the relationship of Moiraine and Lan and giving us a side of warders I dont think most people care about. Warders are an archetype character. They are warriors whose prowess is exaggerated in order to contrast them with regular soldiers. This series spends more time establishing warders through their feelings rather than their larger-than-life profile given to us by RJ. This episode was an hour of time that could have been spent on actual story events from Caemlyn, Elaida, Elayne, Morgase, Gawyn, Galad, Gareth Bryne, and Basel Gil. I see ZERO reason why they need to be in Tar Valon in this episode and every reason for them to be in Caemlyn.

It also seems that in a continuity error, Rand and Matt managed to cross the River Erinin to the east side when they caught their first vista of Tar Valon. Dragonmount is on the west side, which would have been the same side of the river they would have been on having left Andor. In order to get to the east side they would have to ford the Erinin unnecessarily. This was never a problem in the EoTW book because they never went to Tar Valon or even passed it. So apparently left to their own devices, the writers couldnt even figure out something this simple. Reminds me of Benioff and Weiss. Not a good sign in my opinion.

One of the things about the series that is really starting to irritate me is that I'm constantly lost trying to figure out where everything is taking place, and like most wotmudders and wheel of time fans, I know the map of the world like my own palm. Wheel of Time is a sprawling world of people and places. I never felt lost even once in the books, and like its inspiration, the LOTR trilogy, RJ went to great lengths to ensure that places were very well described and travel paths of the focus parties in each book were easy to track on a map. Peter Jackson's LOTR movies, which sprawled huge swaths of middle earth in just about 10 hours of film never left me lost as to where the main parties were at and how places were connected. Season 1 of WOT is also about 8 hours long, covers only a small part of the WOT western continent and has major trouble with location continuity, even to the point of cutting out almost all of Andor with "1 month later" transitions.

I feel like if they had stuck with the book narrative, cut out almost all of the warder wimpering, and went through Caemlyn rather than Tar Valon, the series would in much better shape right now. The writers are just trying too hard to adapt it to the screen and its not working for me.

I give this one a 2 out of 10 rather than 1 because Loial and the fact that Dragonmount and Tar Valon were well-rendered on the screen by the art team.

Ultimately the choice to have Tar Valon instead of Caemlyn is costs and logistics. The various different cities in EoTW (EF,Breen Spreen aka pseudo-Baerlon, TV, FD) are already costly enough to to build/location shoot. Some of the sentiment that the show gets cheaper because they can use the same sets can be reused are mostly incorrect (costumes, some soundstages, yes). Tar Valon set has to be broken down , they can't maintain sets for years. Instead of buildilng up Caemlyn and TV and then breaking them down, they have to shift story elements so that don't have to build or rebuilding too many setpieces a year.

And one thing I just realized with moving all the early TV forward is that we're probably going to lose a lot of great scenes like

(BOOK SPOILER) Mat defeating Galad and Gawayn 1v2

Yeah definitely an underwhelming episode ..too bad last episode set up expectations. I'm not too disappointed since overall still happy to watch the story.

My sense with the stepin side story is that they wanted to show the bond and consequences without sacrificing any main characters, so now the implications of the bond can be magnified and dramatised without any major ..cuts. I feel though they could have got to the Amyrlin by now. Rand is doing Nothing. I thought liandrin gave nynaeve the hint so that she could follow her to rand or some such. Instead she was just being helpful? :d

Anyway seems like a setting up stuff episode. But a lot of scenes were not much happens except mild foreshadowing.

I think the biggest let down for me was that the sets/architecture looked so obviously staged. The spaces were so narrow and I guess made for camera. It works when it's the deck of a spaceship but these buildings looked like miniature versions of the real thing. Maybe on rewatch it will look better but tar valon looked like scenes from fake Disney alladin. Indoor shots, the screen looked so packed with pillars. Same with the first view of the tower. It is supposed to be this grand huge thing and it looks Nothing grand from the outside. WT is supposed to be as tall as the great pyramids I think. It looked nowhere as imposing.

I don't feel like it's creating immersion so far and I realy still think the problem is the protagonist lack. Who are we supposed to side with is still not clear. Moiraine being secretive discounts her because we don't know her motivations. Rand looks very pretty had such filler sidekick lines for Mat who was also barely there. The fact that rand looks like an aielman seems to cause no problem in tar valon when he runs around uncloaked..eesh!

I guess nynaeve or egwene are better protagonist points, but again barely there. Alanna has more screen space then nynaeve it feels like.

isabel wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:32 pm

I think the biggest let down for me was that the sets/architecture looked so obviously staged.

They used the same set for Shadar Logoth. The corner building when the camera pans from street and up (up andto the right-ish? IIRC) is the same one shown in the Shadar Logoth episode.

This episode makes all the previous ones actually look good.

All the cuts, skipping significant parts of the story, the scenes (etc.) that are just made up, the obvious (I guess mandatory these days for anything on big and small screens) implementation of real world BS into the story..

Can't wait for the battle of Dumai's Wells...if they keep cutting things out, rewriting WoT because I guess Rafe knows better than RJ....the battle will be Rand (or whomever they pick to be the Dragon) slapping an Aiel in an actual well, on a farm owned by a Dumai or Dumai family, while Taim has a thumb war with a Black Ajah Sedai....all the while Loial is in the background narrating, but we won't be able to see him because he's really just a tall dwarf.

Non-reader comments:

Lots of different things going on (the different POV). She is still interested by the show, she asks me when the new episode is. She thinks Perrin is turning into a werewolf, and when the wolves showed up, "oh he called his Wolf Brethrens." She thinks Matt is going to become a villain on the show. She didn't know why Lan was ripping his shirt off. This episode was about the same on-par with rest of episodes before


Book references:
Since it's a second watch through, I caught a few other details/foreshadowing. Rand mentioning him recognizing Dragonmount. Squinty Forsaken has a guitar, so Asmodean confirmed (so if it a full set of 8 which would suck, Balthamel, Aginor, and two of Rhavin/Belal/Demandred is out). Seven sword holder(seven tower of Malkier?). Moiraine wondering if a Bond can be broken/passed. Based on the conversation with Alanna, Liadrin is likely going to be taking Elaida's place. Loial insinuating Jain Farstrider still alive. Still missed the Padain Fain background appearances.

At least based off the audio description of the show,
I'm wondering was there something visual, that indicated how when Eguaine tried to launch fire at the white cloak, how it did not hit him?
The description said, fire formed in her hand, she sent it towards the WC, but it vanished half way to him.
I could not determine, if vannished meant, her weave failed, because she's untrained, or if it was suggesting somehow the WC had something like the foxhead, which unraveled the weave.

Really did not find the entire end of the episode good, seamed like Lan's grief at the dead gaidin was extremely over done, and uncalled for.


My brain is breaking, at all of the missed interactions/places, with everything from TF to TV being skipped, Baerlon, Rand/Matt's boat ride, WB, 4k, Caemlyn.
It's making me wonder if characters are going to just be left out, or if they are going to weave, what I'd think of as critical characters, back into the show, just in a non-book way.

That episode did have me wondering if they are combining the Liandrin/Elaida character, which is a no from me.