Series Review: The Shannara Chronicles Season 1

Mild spoilers for The Shannara Chronicles Season 1 (and likely the book series) below! If you want to approach this series with no preconceptions, avoid this blog post.

So I’ll preface this by saying that I haven’t read any of the Shannara Chronicles books by Terry Brooks. I have no idea as to the quality of content that lies within them, or how closely the Netflix show follows them, though from the blurbs of the books it would seem to be quite loosely. As somebody who normally reads the books first, this was actually a welcome change, though I do wonder how much enjoyment I’ll be able to get from reading the books now that I’ve watched the series.

I found this series simply because I was browsing Netflix for something to watch, and I almost passed over it. I’m not saying that it didn’t appeal to me, but show adaptions from novels don’t have the best track record and it was only as a last resort that I decided to give it a try. But from the opening shot, I could tell that the middling 3-star ratings had nothing to do with the budgetary commitments, and that this was a world that at the very least had plenty of care and effort put into it. This was one of my main fears, as a novelist never has to worry about budget or realistic scope of setting and scale, and the scale issue only showed in a few battle scenes… but even the big-name novel adaptions like Game of Thrones have 50 warriors where there are meant to be 50,000.

Season 1 of the Shannara Chronicles is a quest. It reminds me of Lord of the Rings, in a good way, and I’m not even very familiar with LOTR. (I’m working on it!) Having only seen the first two Lord of the Rings movies and having started reading The Fellowship of the Ring last night, it probably says something when I can immediately identify it as a direct influence and continual referral point in the Shannara Chronicles. The world is made up of Humans, Elves, Trolls, Gnomes and the notably absent Dwarves. The latter three races are descendants of humans (or at least that’s what I’ve gathered base on the incredible intro), whilst the existence of elves remains a mystery… at least, to me.

But here’s where it really hooked me. The Shannara Chronicles are an indeterminate (though later specified) few thousands of years after modern mankind’s downfall. So, while you have elves and magic and so forth, you also have decaying fallen skyscrapers and abandoned wastelands that form the backdrop of the series as a grand narrative; humanity is still recovering from this downfall even thousands of years later. The series balances this portrayal of present day society as ancient lore perfectly, making it not a main plot point or even a readily discussed matter, but a background that rarely comes into play and brings a sense of intense wonder and discovery when doing so. It is possibly my favourite part of this narrative. I often have to remind myself that this takes place on a future Earth, and that’s wonderful. I want to learn more about Earth’s fallen civilisations, and I say this in a world which is currently wrought with the same almost idealised apocalypse story over and over.

The series has its flaws, though. Most notably, the pacing takes weird jumps and skates over important developmental issues. Sometimes it’s forgiveable, such as travelling from point A to point B – a travel of weeks – over the course of one single cut. Other times, you have characters entering environments that should make their jaw drop, but they are instead already at home. You have characters lose loved ones and fail to even grieve or be affected by it. And I am 100% certain that this comes down to cut content. But even this is, as worst, merely jarring, and whilst I recall it being particularly bad at around episode two or three, it didn’t come close to deterring me from the series.

I’d also say it was somewhat predictable. Whilst it may be set in a vastly and commendably unique world, the events that take place within it are far from having never been told before. I found myself predicting events which were meant to shock me, and I can’t particularly think of any one moment that felt like a huge revelation or surprise. But perhaps that is simply me being jaded or having a foresight that any writer of the same genre might have themselves.

Just give it a watch. These last two paragraphs have been criticisms, but they’re the only bad things I have to say about an otherwise pleasantly surprising show. I highly anticipate season 2.

The Movie as a Limited Form of Narrative

Note: The second half of this blog post uses the new Netflix Original series ‘Stranger Things’ as a point of discussion, but reveals no spoilers or plot points.

I’m not a big movie guy. Name a classic movie that everybody’s seen, chances are, I haven’t seen it. And after we get done with the ten straight minutes of “So you’ve never seen [x]?!”, I’m just about ready to stop talking about movies altogether rather than justify my reasoning. But here it is: I think TV series do it better.

Well, ‘TV series’ is getting to be an outdated term, what with the increasing number of shows releasing directly to and exclusively on streaming services such as Netflix. And sure, there are some stories which suit a movie better than being stretched out over a series. But the downside of cinema is that you’re highly restricted by the length which your movie is allowed to air for, so as to get the optimum amount of showings in the theater per day. This often constricts narrative cohesion, with most movies having plenty of cut footage. There is no movie that I can think of where there hasn’t been at least one scene that should have been explored in greater depth, or one plot point that feels somewhat convoluted in order to get the rest of the movie rolling. Much of the time, it’ll feel like we’ve barely become acquainted with a set of characters before we’re meant to be fearing for their lives, or rooting for their romantic interests, or whatever the subject of the movie is about.

‘TV Series’, on the other hand, have more than enough room for character development and a fully fleshed out plot. Often, of course, this leads to the opposite problem, with many series having ‘filler’ episodes (see: Breaking Bad’s fly episode), some plot points being redundant (see: Orphan Black S2E8) and the pace of the overarching narrative feeling a little too slow (see: The Flash, Season 1). But nothing is perfect; these are all good shows (in my opinion) and I’d much rather have something with a few redundancies that still makes sense, than something which is cut together and barely retains its narrative thread.

Fun fact: It is for almost the exact same reasons as I mentioned above that I thought season 8 of Doctor Who was just pants. They decided to do a series of non-linked, standalone episodes and almost every single one of them felt rushed and constricted.

Stranger Things just released on Netflix, and is what finally prompted me to write this blog post which has been brewing in the back of my mind for the better part of a year. Stranger Things has eight episodes, all of which were released at the same time, as many Netflix Originals now do. However, I believe that there was more of a solid reason behind why the Duffer Brothers released them this way (if it was in fact their decision). At the end of my viewing I felt that I’d watched an eight hour movie as opposed to a TV series, and lo and behold, when I looked this up, many others felt the same way. The Duffer Brothers stated that they envisioned it as an eight hour movie themselves, so kudos to them for achieving their desired effect.

I’m not a specialist in writing for screen. We had a few modules about it on my Creative Writing course (which I just found out I achieved a 2:1 in, go me!), but we didn’t delve too deeply into the overall craft of making a screenplay, and therefore I’m no expert on what the narrative difference between a movie and a TV series is besides quantity, and basing your structure around that. This eight-hour movie concept, then, is an abstract one to me, as there must have been a reason as to why I pegged it as more of a movie narrative myself. I just can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s to do with the fact that the series is more of a self-contained story (which may or may not have an ambiguous ending or some loose ends, I leave that for your viewing discovery), whereas most TV series are written with narrative threads for future series in place.

All I know is this: It proves my point about the limitations of standardised screen times for movies. In eight hours, there was enough time for character development, emotional exploration, side-characters that felt real, suspense that lasted long enough, and a plot that wasn’t in a rush to get to the end. And yet, when I review it in my head, it doesn’t feel like it stretched out at all; nor does it feel like a TV series. I remember it like it was an hour and a half movie… just a real, damn good one. Of course, you wouldn’t sit in a movie theater for eight hours straight watching ‘Stranger Things’, and I won’t deny that the movie-going experience is an enjoyable social occasion that I’d hate to lose. But maybe it’s time for us to stop restricting ourselves to the current forms of narrative we perceive as absolutes, and step into unknown territories such as eight hour movie-series hybrids.