After a busy opening salvo, Dune: Prophecy episode 3 settles down for an engaging slab of youthful intrigue. And space weasels. Our review:
NB: In line with Film Stories policy, the following review is certified spoiler-free for Dune: Prophecy episode 3. (Ha, that rhymes.)
Like a monarch waited on hand and foot, it’s easy to become grouchy and nitpicky about modern TV. We’re so spoiled for choice, and used to such high production values, that even relatively minor shortcomings can leave us tutting and reaching for the ‘off’ button on our remote control.
Dune: Prophecy, HBO’s TV series which essentially serves as a prequel to director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies, has been pretty good so far, albeit studded with enough of those minor shortcomings to make us feel a bit fidgety in our thrones.
Evidently made on a handsome budget, Prophecy captures some of the angular coolness of Villeneuve’s films, while at the same time carving out its own story of power plays and courtly intrigue. At least for this writer, though, the first two episodes offered up such a rapid-fire stew of characters, locations and backstory, it threatened to feel like a televised Cliff’s Notes of a series rather than a compelling story in its own right.
(You can find this writer’s spoiler-light thoughts on the first two episodes at the URL embedded in these words.)
Seemingly aware of this, the writers of episode three wind the clock back a bit and add more shape and colour to a plot thread that was little more than a footage snippet in episode one. Do you remember when we saw Valya Harkonnen (played as a grown-up by Emily Watson) as a teenager, portrayed by Jessica Barden? Of course you do.
Well, Barden is back as Young Valya, as episode three spends a bit more time explaining what was initially only one or two lines of dialogue: while humanity was engaged in its war against ‘thinking machines’, the entire Harkonnen bloodline was condemned as being a bunch of cowards by the Atreides family – an accusation so profound that the surviving family members live in disgrace on an icy planet called Lankiveil. Crowded round a table, tucking into substandard cuts of space whale meat, the Harkonnens are in a sorry state, and it’s the young Valya who resolves to strike back at the Atreides for besmirching the family name.
(As if to drive home the feeling that Dune: Prophecy is essentially Game Of Thrones in space, Valya’s dad is played by Mark Addy, who seems to be wearing the broadly same Robert Baratheon get-up he inhabited about a decade ago.)
Valya’s parents are vocal about their eldest daughter’s ‘sense of entitlement’ and lust for power, though given how miserable their circumstances are, we can certainly see why she’d want to improve their lot in life. In this regard, Valya becomes an anti-heroine in the same vein as Maleficent or Cruella – a character who, despite the dark aspects of her personality, we can’t help but root for as she climbs a slippery ladder towards her chosen goal.
In Valya’s case, she ends up at the witch academy on Wallach IX, where she’s constantly belittled and underestimated by Sister Dorotea (Camilla Beeput), whom we briefly saw in episode one. On the cusp of giving up on the whole idea of becoming a sister altogether, Valya instead finds an ally in Mother Superior Raquellal (Cathy Tyson), who recognises Valya’s latent power and also appears to share more than a bit of her ruthless, power-hungry drive.
Valya’s progress is intercut with that of her younger, less powerful but no less resourceful sister, Tula. Played in flashbacks by Emma Canning, her thread is the episode’s most arresting – and so effective in its cold bloodedness that it felt like the moment the entire series as a whole snaps into focus. Where previous episodes felt almost too scattershot in their storytelling, episode three finally feels like we’re getting to the emotional core of what the show’s about: two sisters from some backwater planet, and how they quietly become two of the most powerful figures in the Imperium.
Not that episode three is without its glaring faults. The cuts between present and past can be a bit jarring, especially early on, and there’s one edit that creates such a discombobulating time jump that it almost feels as though there’s a scene or two missing. There’s also a few equally distracting lines of dialogue (“I shoulda just done the shopping myself” is an amusingly kitchen-sink-drama thing to hear in an otherwise operatic series) and some iffy fright makeup on Mother Raquella. (This is no slight on Tyson’s actual performance; if anything, it’s a relief to hear her northern accent among all the received pronunciation, middle-class British voices that otherwise make up the cast.)
Those grumbles aside, though, episode three – apparently called Sisterhood Above All – is this writer’s favourite of the run so far. It establishes Valya and Tula’s characters more firmly, and leaves us intrigued to see where the scheming and mischief will take them next. The more measured pacing also leaves space for some handsome sci-fi shots – Mother Raquella’s grand entrance, hooded, in the middle of a thunderstorm is satisfyingly cinematic, for one.
Then there’s the surprising yet welcome menagerie of animals: the hairy cosmic whales are joined by an off-world horse, an exotic bull with imposing horns, and what can only be described as a species of space weasel. We’ll leave you to discover how the latter figures in the plot.
Dune: Prophecy airs each Monday on Now TV and Sky in the UK.
