Same, possibly a bit to do with the character/writing but he’s not very convincing so far – hopefully it improves.

I get the impression the source material is pretty thin – just a fake scholarly ‘history’ of the Targaryens. It lacks the multiple character arcs that made GoT so compelling. In the end GoT struggled to unite all those arcs and stay true to the original characters, so season 8 was unsatisfying, and there were times when some of them were a bit tedious, but there was always something interesting going on.

The last episode of HotD was a bit better – a lot more conniving, and Paddy Considine’s performance is growing on me – you can feel the suppressed rage starting to break through. I think we’re due a big time jump and new actors after just five episodes though, not sure how that will work.

Is he just not a very good actor?… what were those ridiculous Jedi robes about

Not sure the problem is Matt Smith. As for the robes, that was a scene that never needed to happen. He should have just shown up at the wedding later on amid rumours of his wife’s demise… Sometimes, spelling things out is worse.

The whole thing seems to be missing an antogonist.
The crabfeeder thing was largely pointless.
Is the other house the antagonist?
Is it Dr Who?
Who is or are the heroes?

In the end GoT struggled to unite all those arcs and stay true to the original characters, so season 8 was unsatisfying

Problem was that it just made no sense. Daenerys escaped slavery, set out to free the slaves, then suddenly turned into a tyrant. Jaime Lannister started out as a nasty villain, learned some hard lessons and turned good, then suddenly went right back to villainy as soon as he was reunited with his sister. That’s just the beginning of the problems, the whole season was just laughable.

Daenerys escaped slavery, set out to free the slaves, then suddenly turned into a tyrant. Jaime Lannister started out as a nasty villain, learned some hard lessons and turned good, then suddenly went right back to villainy as soon as he was reunited with his sister.

Exactly the two examples that spring to mind first. They could have constructed a decent heroine to tyrant arc, and a redemption arc for Jamie, but not over the course of a handful of episodes, and you would have needed to plant more seeds earlier in the series to support them.

I suppose you see Danaerys being utterly ruthless on several occasions beforehand, but you would need a bit more evidence of the true Targaryen madness coming to the fore in the run-up to Kings Landing.

Problem was that it just made no sense. Daenerys escaped slavery, set out to free the slaves, then suddenly turned into a tyrant. Jaime Lannister started out as a nasty villain, learned some hard lessons and turned good, then suddenly went right back to villainy as soon as he was reunited with his sister. That’s just the beginning of the problems, the whole season was just laughable.

You can add the Jon Snow failure, he went from being the main focus, i.e. the prince that was promised, to a bit part, with the whole Night King ending being a bit pants. Varys going from the smartest player in the game to pointless, etc, etc. They’d put so much effort into the storylines in earlier seasons to then just do a fast ending to the plots.

Plus, we wait years and years for the Big Bad to finally arrive, he’s a supernatural being who seems invincible, and then he walks into a really obvious trap and gets killed by a girl with a knife without any explanation of who he was and what his motives were.

The bloke blitzes through the Wall pretty easily but can’t take Winterfell. Winterfell should have been razed to the ground and Bran/Arya killed. Bran was easily the most tedious character in the whole thing anyhow.

Bran was easily the most tedious character in the whole thing anyhow.

Every time I think of Bran, I’m reminded of Neil from The Young Ones, just less interesting.

Been catching up on this; by God it’s dreadful! 😂 Entertaining, however, but not as intended I imagine. Although I was very disappointed not to see the crap feeder villain’s demise. Dr Who comes out of the cave dragging about a third of his corpse, but we didn’t get to witness it! Some utterly dreadful ‘acting’; not least by the king’s daughter, Paddy Corstophine and the main Valerian guy, but the very worst is his son. Can’t act at all. Rhys Ifans was ok though. Not a patch on GoT, this. Hopefully they’ll limit it to one series.

Hopefully they’ll limit it to one series.

guffaw

Bit of a slow one, but some sneaky dealings coming to the surface…

10 years later, the years don’t seem to have been kind to rhaenyra targaryen! The older Alicent looks a better match, I could believe that’s the same actress.

Still, it’s yet to get into a stride – bit of an amble at the moment with the odd interesting side quest. Hmmmm.

Still to watch this weeks, not really got the bug for this series, as stated earlier, there’s just no characters you root for, Game of Thrones made you root for both good and bad characters, they fleshed out the characters, this series has a lot of two dimensional characters, and in the main, mostly unlikeable.

My wife said that last night, apart from struggling to keep track of who’s who (really not helped by the decade jump and change in actors) all the characters seem to whiny and spineless. At least we had flawed characters you could like in GoT. They all seem to be back stabbing entitled small minded idiots, maybe a reflection of our times.

Why change some actors but keep others the same? Christen Cole looked the same and Jase, but rahenyra completely different. Seemed a bit half-arsed.

Usual problem for me though, I watch it during the day and it’s all so bloody dark I can barely see what’s going on, even curtains closed. We can pretend about dragons, about people completely changing appearance etc, can’t we also pretend they had bloody light bulbs!? 🤣

Why change some actors but keep others the same?

Dr Who hasn’t aged a day.

Not enough tits

Not enough dragons

Nowhere near enough people getting their skulls stoved in with axes

They’ve systematically stripped out all the bits that made Tits’n’Dragons good and now it’s just a lot of people in fancy dress sat around mumbling to each other in dark castles

Frankly, it’s shite!

Not impressed by teenagers pleasuring themselves out of windows?

Watching it in tandem with a GoT rewatch, it’s an interesting drama, but it can’t compete, and they shouldn’t have tried by giving it the same theme music.

Watched the latest episode last night, I’m out

Boring, too mumbly, can’t keep track of characters (nothing to do with changing actors, just too many with not enough going on for them that they just lack interest) not enough violence or Matt Smith quite frankly.

As it’s been said, you can’t drag some of a corpse of possibly the most promising character the week after introducing him as the biggest threat to everybody without him uttering a word and having the big fight off screen and expect people to keep watching. I’m all for slow storytelling but this is just dire

Got so bad that the wife mixed up Paddy Considine with Paddy McGuiness and I instantly thought that would be an improvement

Dr Who hasn’t aged a day.

Well he does have a time machine.

An’ another thing…..

the tech they have seems to be better in this timeline than it was in GoT, despite it being 200 years earlier. It’s like an iPhone 15 turning up in Peaky Blinders.

I’m pretty unimpressed so far. The time jumps are annoying me. I don’t like Matt Smith as an actor anyway, but he’s really doing my head in in this.
Paddy Considine is wasted in this
Rhys Ifans was turning into an interesting character and he’s giving the boot and not seen again so far.
There’s no looming threat in the background. The thing GoT did well was introduce us to the white walkers first thing and then have them as this undercurrent that grew and grew so you always knew that despite the machinations and politics going on between the different factions, the big bad was there to be dealt with eventually.
GoT lost its way when they stopped telling a macro story through the eyes of a few individuals. HotD doesn’t have any of that to start with

Watching it in tandem with a GoT rewatch, it’s an interesting drama, but it can’t compete, and they shouldn’t have tried by giving it the same theme music.

yeah, it’s got a completely different tone to it. That said, pretty much any other show is not going to compare favourably to (early) GoT!

Usual problem for me though, I watch it during the day and it’s all so bloody dark I can barely see what’s going on, even curtains closed.

google a tutorial for tweaking the settings on whatever specific telly you’ve got. Made a massive difference with mine!

Rhys Ifans was turning into an interesting character and he’s giving the boot and not seen again so far.

Presumably what happened to the current Hand of the King paves the way for his return.

Got so bad that the wife mixed up Paddy Considine with Paddy McGuines

That might make me restart watching to be fair: “one of these girls has got a secret…”

Slow going isn’t it? Each week I go into Sky and think “must only be at episode 3 because nothing has happened yet” only to find out I’m on ep6.

Going to persevere with it in the hope there’s a catalyst moment where everything goes ape shit and it becomes interesting but at the minute I can’t see a single thing that’d keep me hooked in the same way proper GoT did…

Seems I’m on my own but I’m really enjoying it!

I don’t like Matt Smith as an actor anyway, but he’s really doing my head in in this

He’s the best thing in it! At least when he appears on screen, you can be sure something will happen. I don’t rate Paddy Considine much; in this, all he does is look like someone trying to act a bad part. Perhaps that’s not his fault though. But so far, it’s only Dr Who holding it all together.

As it’s been said, you can’t drag some of a corpse of possibly the most promising character the week after introducing him as the biggest threat to everybody without him uttering a word and having the big fight off screen and expect people to keep watching. I’m all for slow storytelling but this is just dire

Precisely. I was wondering if they’d perhaps deleted the scenes, concerned about too much violence. But it’s tits n violence that are what the whole GoT thing is all about. If you’re going to portray a fictional land and time as being filled with depravity and gore, then **** show it!

Frankly, it’s shite!

Sums it up perfectly.

Seems I’m on my own but I’m really enjoying it!

Oh no; we’re all enjoying it. Gives us all something else to moan about. Because the reality of life is too depressing to contemplate… 😪

Update on previous Summary So Far:

Rhys Ifans is in hiding.

The time jumps is a bit of a pain – young Rhaenyra was turning into an interesting character and then she’s grown up. No mention of what went on with Ser Criston, or what deal he did with Alicent.

Guessing Otto will make a return as Hand – unless Larys Strong somehow gets that position (seeing as he’s offed his own Dad & Brother….).

I like it

I’m hoping it settles and slows down a bit now and fleshes out the main characters more. Not sure how many seasons they’ve planned but I expect the writers/producers needed to get to the main plot (civil war) fairly quickly so they skimmed through the scene-setting part (hence time jumps and lack of character detail) but it does compare poorly with GoT’s first season at the moment – there’s still time left to salvage it though…

Trouble is, I don’t care who wins the civil war, which is a sign that the scene-setting/fleshing out so far hasn’t really done its job, whereas at this point in GoT you were fully invested in all the characters and their dynamics.

Yeah, there’s not a single likeable character in there. They’re all pretty unpleasant or just dull, all of them. I wouldn’t feel a jot of regret if a rogue dragon flame-grilled them all at the start of the next episode. Stark (ha!) difference with GoT where you could root for multiple characters and enjoy the villainousness of the obvious villains.

I keep hoping it’s going to improve, but it actually seems to be getting worse. I keep waiting for something momentous to happen.

First half of this one was a bit tedious, partly because of the colour grading to make it look like it was night*.
Got better as it went on, feels like this is what the last 6.5 episodes should have been

*Lots of young actors in it so they would have had to shoot in the daytime

Lots of young actors in it so they would have had to shoot in the daytime

I wondered why that was.

Decent episode, nice twist at the end which should hopefully pan out into consequences.

Yeah best episode so far, seems to be finally coming together! I think Paddy Considine is doing a great job as the King trying but totally failing to hold it all together, I really want him to die though so it all kicks off 😀 Still aren’t any likeable characters, not sure it really matters though – I don’t care who wins, I just want to be entertained 😀

It’s a bit ‘meh’ compared to the rings of power…

But that said I love Sci-fi and fantasy stuff and it’s reasonably good so far.

There’s precious little else worthy of watching anyway, in these genre’s.

It’s a bit ‘meh’ compared to the rings of power…

I’d switch that around myself, I’m finding ROP pretty slow and tedious and it’s not helped any by someone likening Elrond to Mr Bean – now I can’t get that out of my head!

Good episode of HOTD this week, it’s warming up for some proper scheming and depravity with gloves off all round.

Improved. Dragon. Knife fight. 5/10.

I really don’t get why there’s so much criticism of Got and LOTR.. Good fantasy romps as far as I’m concerned. I’m enjoying both.

Well I spent about the first 10 minutes trying to remember who had died. Oh, Dr Who’s wife. Yes, of course. That unforgettable character, erm… Whatshername. Zzzzzzzzz.

Oh, BTW… Spoilers ahead. Obvs!

Ooh, a bit of light incest. No tits. Boooo!

I thought the kid running along the beach was going to catch them 2 going at it, harking back to Bran in GoT. But no, he’d just been watching “How to train your dragon” on repeat.
Will he ride the dragon, won’t he… Of course he will. Can’t have such a vital character killed off with a accidental dragon burp, or even just char grilled and eaten whole, can we?

Best bit was the kid who brought a rock to a knife fight.

And now, here’s the entire plot of what would be 3 GoT episodes with lots of sneaky dealings and back stabbing and cunning stunts to kill off a “main” character. Nope, we’ll have all that, AND a wedding between uncle and niece crammed into 5 minutes please.

Oh, wait, the body that fell into the fire and was so completely unrecognisable must be that bloke who was gay because the body had his boots on. Oh, wait, it wasn’t him!?! What an unexpected surprise!!

Yeah, it’s rapidly going down in my ratings, I mean I was playing on my phone almost the entire episode and didn’t really miss much or struggle to understand what was going on.

Oh and how in the hell is Rhaenyra not bleeding to death with that wound, it was a sodding 6 inch long deep cut along her arm!? I thought that was an actual surprise moment and they killed her off, until she’s getting it stitched up with the biggest needle in the entire world in the next scene and she’s barely lost a few drops of blood!