Game of Thrones - TV Series (NO BOOK SPOILERS)

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tommo123

Platinum Member
Sep 25, 2005
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For all you guys complaining about the fast travel... these are ~60 min episodes, and there's only what.. 8 total episodes this season? They have so much going on at once (so many story lines and info to fit in) that if they didn't fast travel, episodes would be massively longer, and there would be many more episodes in turn.

For Gendry's run... Obviously it wasn't just a couple minute run, or even just 30 minutes. He likely ran for hours to get back to the wall as fast as possibly (as evident by his collapse, similar to the Marathon story).

I don't know the proposed distance between dragonstone and where the crew is on that little island, but it's probably reasonable to assume it took a few DAYS to have Danny show up. Why would we need the writers to somehow convey this with a huge dialogic or otherwise? Any reasonable person who is a fan and knows the landscape realizes it's a pretty far distance, and the ravens probably max out around 20mph and the dragons maybe 40mph? Either way, they didn't just get there in a few hours, and I think that's pretty obvious.

sometimes i get the feeling people want GoT to be "realtime" like 24 was
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
14,006
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sometimes i get the feeling people want GoT to be "realtime" like 24 was
I've generally been completely fine with time progression in GOT, as it's understandable that stuff happening in a fantasy medieval kingdom tends to take a while, but without a solid explanation somewhere, 2x 1000 mile trips + dude running through the snow for unknown number of hours/minutes shouldn't have happened in what appeared to be an overnight. As others stated, even a quick one liner from one of the characters to state how long they'd been there, how long it might take Dany or the ravens to travel, anything, would have gone a long way.

Other instances if fast travel in this show weren't bound by a time anchor of any kind, this one was, you've got like 48-96 hours tops before they die from exposure, dehydration, or starvation.
 

Elganja

Platinum Member
May 21, 2007
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i thought this article laid out the "bran is the night king" theory pretty well

for those who don't want to click.. here's the meat of it:

The idea is that Bran makes three trips to the past, using all his powers in an attempt to eradicate the White Walkers, but inadvertently creates all the events that cause the present chaos and destruction he was trying to prevent in the first place.

Strike one.
According to the theory, the first time Bran travels back in time, he visits the Mad King, Aerys Targaryen II. Bran whispers in his ear "Burn them all" to try to warn him about the White Walkers and persuade him to burn them, which would prevent their return. But instead, the message drives the Mad King well, mad, and he then burns his people instead of the White Walkers.

Strike two.
The second time Bran travels back in time, according to the theory, he tries to go back to when men were first able to eliminate the White Walkers to learn how they did it. However, Bran miscalculates and misses this event, so he instead wargs into the legendary Bran the Builder and helps build the Wall, which we now know is not a permanent solution to separate the White Walkers from Westeros.

Strike Three
The third and last time Bran travels back in time, according to the theory, he goes back to the era of the Children of the Forest and embodies the first man they turned into a White Walker. The Children of the Forest created White Walkers in the hope of eliminating men, but the White Walkers eventually became a bigger threat. The idea is that Bran wargs into this first White Walker, thinking he'll be able to prevent any war among White Walkers, the Children of the Forest, and men. But he becomes trapped in the White Walker and, armed with his powers, eventually turns into the Night King. Both Jojen and the Three-Eyed Raven warned Bran that if he stayed in the past or in someone's body for too long, he could be trapped.

This theory is also used to explain why the Night King let Jon Snow go during the battle of Hardhome — because Bran was seeing the first member of his family in over a millennium. This moment, according to the theory, reveals there's still a little bit of Bran left in the Night King.
 

z1ggy

Lifer
May 17, 2008
10,004
63
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regarding strike 2:

The Wall is supposedly 300 miles long, and 700 feet high. Assuming "normal" men built the wall, that would take more than just a few years... You're talking hundreds of years of non stop labor probably, maybe even 1000's.

There's a very good chance that the Wall is the physical boundry/agreement that the White Walkers and the men from the north agreed to as part of a treaty. The Wall would have been much easily built by the WW'ers as they seem to have powers that control ice/cold, etc.

It doesn't change the theory/facts that Bran = NK, but either something is missing from that story of Bran the Builder, or logically I can't quite think that some normal dudes just built a 300 mile by 700 foot tall ice wall in just a few years.
 
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SMOGZINN

Lifer
Jun 17, 2005
14,202
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It doesn't change the theory/facts that Bran = NK, but either something is missing from that story of Bran the Builder, or logically I can't quite think that some normal dudes just built a 300 mile by 700 foot tall ice wall in just a few years.


The Bran = NK theory does not work. If Bran is the NK and wants to stop all of it from happening (stop the white walkers, stop him from becoming the NK) all he has to do is NOT GO SOUTH. The NK going south is what causes all the events in the first place.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
14,006
12,075
146
The Wall is supposedly 300 miles long, and 700 miles high. Assuming "normal" men built the wall, that would take more than just a few years... You're talking hundreds of years of non stop labor probably, maybe even 1000's.
IIRC, the aid of the frost giants was requested in building the wall. I don't remember if that tidbit came from the books or not though.

A full community of frost giants assisting would have sped things up, and they probably would have been happy separating themselves from men, unfortunately it seems they succumbed to the WW anyhow.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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I've generally been completely fine with time progression in GOT, as it's understandable that stuff happening in a fantasy medieval kingdom tends to take a while, but without a solid explanation somewhere, 2x 1000 mile trips + dude running through the snow for unknown number of hours/minutes shouldn't have happened in what appeared to be an overnight. As others stated, even a quick one liner from one of the characters to state how long they'd been there, how long it might take Dany or the ravens to travel, anything, would have gone a long way.

Other instances if fast travel in this show weren't bound by a time anchor of any kind, this one was, you've got like 48-96 hours tops before they die from exposure, dehydration, or starvation.

I haven't re-watched it, yet, but apparently the Hound does say something to the effect of "4 days on this bloody rock!" So, maybe that is reasonable. I guess we have to remember that walkers are certainly far closer to the wall than they were when the series began, and it took months and months for the Night Watch and rangers to go expedition their way out to those parts of the North North. I only recall one sequence of night-day during these scenes, but I imagine they skipped a few. ...I do think that they started their journey, encountered the bear and the wight squad, and Gendry fled back to the wall all on the first day...which is probably reasonable, no?
 
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GagHalfrunt

Lifer
Apr 19, 2001
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.I do think that they started their journey, encountered the bear and the wight squad, and Gendry fled back to the wall all on the first day...which is probably reasonable, no?

It might be a reasonable explanation of how things *could* have happened, yes. But it's not reasonable to expect the viewer to fill in the blanks and invent a sequence of events that might plausibly work. It would take seconds of screen time to explain things to a suitable degree to remove doubt and a minute or two at the most to create a really powerful scene of their deepening desperation.

What they're doing with this lazy ass, piss-poor storytelling is something like writing a fairy tale that reads "Once upon a time three rabbits went hopping down a trail when suddenly a hungry wolf charged at them..... and they lived happily ever after". Yeah, a creative reader can come up with a way they escaped, but that's still utter shit.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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It might be a reasonable explanation of how things *could* have happened, yes. But it's not reasonable to expect the viewer to fill in the blanks and invent a sequence of events that might plausibly work. It would take seconds of screen time to explain things to a suitable degree to remove doubt and a minute or two at the most to create a really powerful scene of their deepening desperation.

What they're doing with this lazy ass, piss-poor storytelling is something like writing a fairy tale that reads "Once upon a time three rabbits went hopping down a trail when suddenly a hungry wolf charged at them..... and they lived happily ever after". Yeah, a creative reader can come up with a way they escaped, but that's still utter shit.

Totally agree. I don't mind events happening that quickly in succession, but none of that was really clear the way it was edited. I can tolerate that they are time-compressed to plow through the content, but sequences like that are rather jarring when much of this entire series follows characters that take the better part of 3 years or more to walk down a road.

I assumed that there was more time elapsed than was obvious (at least one day/night from the first encounter to then seeing Gendry collapse back at the wall, I think, and then back on the rock again, with Thoros' corpse getting bluer and bluer...I took the freezing of his corpse to mean a couple of days had passed), but it still seemed unreasonably compressed.
 

Skel

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2001
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'Game Of Thrones' Director Responds To Backlash About Timeline Issues In Latest Episode


So how fast are those ravens anyway? I’ve only looked at one review online, and it was very much concerned with the speed of the ravens. I thought, that’s funny — you don’t seem troubled by the lizard as big as a 747, but you’re really concerned about the speed of a raven. It is true there are time issues, and I’m not exactly sure how many kilometers there are between Eastwatch and Dragonstone. But it was a bit dreary to hear somebody who said, “I cannot enjoy this episode because, you know, that speed of that raven ... ” There’s was a lot of wonderful stuff going on here and if it really gets that much in your way, that’s not good to hear. But that said, Gendry’s a really great runner. [Laughs.] Ravens go super fast. And who’s to say how much time passes on that island, since it’s always sort of an eternal twilight north of the Wall? With those three ideas in mind, I think we can lay the timing concerns to rest.

There's also a bit of a spoiler about the ultimate direction of the show at the end..
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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'Game Of Thrones' Director Responds To Backlash About Timeline Issues In Latest Episode




There's also a bit of a spoiler about the ultimate direction of the show at the end..
Well fuck a doodle doo, apparently we shouldn't bother actually examining anything going on, and just let pretty lights and sixth grade prose be spoon fed into our brains. FSM forbid there's some measure of consistency and we only have to suspend belief about a handful of things. Let's just throw all expectation of logic out the window. John Snow firing lasers out his eyes? Sure! Arya shapeshifts into a grue? Why not? Hell, just have Ghost run at .5c and instagib the NK with percussive force!

Jackass. Reminds me of George Lucas.
 
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purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
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Well I mean what he says is true. We have no clue how long they were stranded on the island. Everyone is just assuming it was a few hours because the episode was like 78 minutes long. And it's the internet and people love to bitch about everything on the internet.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
14,006
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Well I mean what he says is true. We have no clue how long they were stranded on the island. Everyone is just assuming it was a few hours because the episode was like 78 minutes long. And it's the internet and people love to bitch about everything on the internet.
Or it could be that people who love this show expect a consistent story and writing. If you just expect people to put stuff together themselves then don't even bother with next season. Just show Dany, Cerci, and John riding dragons, some some pretty crap, make the Night King explode, then pontificate online that viewers should just enjoy the amazing things they're being shown and laugh off anyone who calls it out for what it is; bad writing.
 
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GagHalfrunt

Lifer
Apr 19, 2001
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Well I mean what he says is true. We have no clue how long they were stranded on the island.

We have no clue how long they were stranded on the island because he and his people FUCKED UP. It's that simple. The timeline is important, when it breaks down the story breaks down.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,834
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Well I enjoy it when they don't just spoon feed us everything. I can come to my own conclusion that they were stranded there for a few days which was enough time for all of the travels to happen between the Gendry/ravens/dragons.

We don't even have a clue how far they walked away from the wall (unless I missed them letting us know) so people claiming to know how far Gendry ran is kind of amusing.

But hey it's ATOT, let's bitch about everything instead.
 

microAmp

Diamond Member
Jul 5, 2000
5,996
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I think Jon and company did it in a half day and the fire was bait for the White Walker to stop and investigate. So with Gendry running and making it to the Wall night fall works.
 

bononos

Diamond Member
Aug 21, 2011
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For all you guys complaining about the fast travel... these are ~60 min episodes, and there's only what.. 8 total episodes this season? They have so much going on at once (so many story lines and info to fit in) that if they didn't fast travel, episodes would be massively longer, and there would be many more episodes in turn.
........
It wouldn't take extra episodes, maybe some people prefer a captioned director's message saying something "2 days later" or "after hours of running". I don't need the extra hand holding to follow whats going on but sudden change in pacing in that episodes throws some people off.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,834
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It wouldn't take extra episodes, maybe some people prefer a captioned director's message saying something "2 days later" or "after hours of running". I don't need the extra hand holding to follow whats going on but sudden change in pacing in that episodes throws some people off.
Now that is something that would be out of character for this show. I don't think they've done that once the entire series.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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Now that is something that would be out of character for this show. I don't think they've done that once the entire series.

well, the ep1, s1 did have text overlays for Winterfell, King's Landing, etc, when they first introduced these places. But location names and time indications after that, I don't think has happened. Honestly, all that sequence needed was about ~30seconds more of those dude's camping on that rock, night and day and night, edited within the scenes that show Gendry, Eastwatch, crows, Dany and the Dragons, and it would have been far less jarring.

If the series hadn't spent so much screen time and well, entire episodes and seasons dedicated to the glacial pace of traveling across this world, it wouldn't have mattered all that much. It is still weird to see so much time pass in a few minutes of screen time, throughout this season--that's understandable and unavoidable, imo--it could be represented in a smarter way.
 

GagHalfrunt

Lifer
Apr 19, 2001
25,297
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Well I enjoy it when they don't just spoon feed us everything. I can come to my own conclusion that they were stranded there for a few days which was enough time for all of the travels to happen between the Gendry/ravens/dragons.

We don't even have a clue how far they walked away from the wall (unless I missed them letting us know) so people claiming to know how far Gendry ran is kind of amusing.

But hey it's ATOT, let's bitch about everything instead.


LOL, the last desperate gasp of the slobbering fanboy. "You people are smart enough to notice major flaws that I missed, so it's all your fault!! Wahhhhh!!!!!"

And it doesn't matter how far Gendry ran, that's not the part that breaks the scene. And you know that, but you're going to cluelessly argue about the length of the run because you know the rest of the scene is utter garbage and you're trying to deflect the criticism to something else. Just sad.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,834
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LOL, the last desperate gasp of the slobbering fanboy. "You people are smart enough to notice major flaws that I missed, so it's all your fault!! Wahhhhh!!!!!"

And it doesn't matter how far Gendry ran, that's not the part that breaks the scene. And you know that, but you're going to cluelessly argue about the length of the run because you know the rest of the scene is utter garbage and you're trying to deflect the criticism to something else. Just sad.
Aaah, the good ol' "LOL YOU DISAGREE WITH MY CRITICISM YOU ARE SUCH A FANBOI" argument. I wouldn't expect anything less from you.

Your schtick is getting old on here.
 
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Spjut

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Apr 9, 2011
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The plot about the capturing the wight was stupid from the get go, but the execution made it even worse. They didn't even have horses when they left the wall, great idea to spend days walking to find a wight and then have to drag it back.

The previous seasons also had weaknesses, but they were still on another level than this season. The writing has really gone downhill.
 
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