Dune: Prophecy is easily the worst live-action adaptation of any Dune property – worse than David Lynch’s oddball wonder, worse than the Sci-Fi miniseries of the 2000s. It misunderstands not just the central appeal of Herbert’s work, but also the appeal of Game of Thrones and other TV epics that HBO clearly wants to replicate.
Showrunners Diane Ademu-John and Alison Schapker, the former wrote the premiere “The Hidden Hand” and Anna Foerster directs, do not make things easy on themselves, choosing to build off a little-loved trio of books (written by Frank Herbert’s son Brian Herbert and co-author Kevin J. Anderson) set more than 10,000 years in the future but more than 10,000 years before the events of Villenueve’s Dune movies.
“The Hidden Hand” mostly concerns sisters Valya and Tula Harkonnen (Emily Watson and Olivia Williams, respectively), biological sisters and leaders of a religious order called the Sisterhood, forerunners of the Bene Gesserit seen in Dune. The more enterprising of the duo, Valya wants to continue her mentor’s desire to put a puppet ruler on the Emperor’s throne, giving the Sisterhood someone they can control.
Valya sees her opportunity during the reign of Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong), a relatively weak ruler who struggles to keep up with the various power plays in his court. These plays include not only the machinations of Valya, but also his wife Natalya (Jodhi May), his daughter Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), and Harrow Harkonnen (Edward Davis), the last of whom arranges a marriage to Ynez to his very young son, in hopes of securing spice flow from Arrakis. And then there’s soldier Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), who seems to be playing his own game, and Javicco’s son Constantine (Josh Heuston), who seems mostly concerned with being handsome, but might also have other motivations.
Complicating matters for Valya are the fissures within the Sisterhood, which we only begin to glimpse in the pilot. We’re introduced to a number of Sisters who more or less declare their character descriptions and then move on, including Aoife Hinds as the devout Emeline, Chloe Lea as youthful Lila, Jade Anouka as the mercurial Theodosia, and Jihae as the politically-minded Kasha Jinjo.
To its credit, Prophecy seems to anticipate audience confusion. To its great demerit, Prophecy addresses the problem by reducing almost all dialogue to exposition, complete with voice over narration from Valya for the first ten minutes or so of the episode, referencing a war against “thinking machines” and elements that viewers might know from the movies. Even after the voice-over stops, most of “The Hidden Hand” consists of actors reading the Dune fandom wiki to one another in darkened hallways.