Dune: Prophecy – The Complete First Season, 2024.
Directed by Anna Foerster, John Cameron, and Richard J. Lewis.
Starring Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Travis Fimmel, Jodhi May, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, Chloe Lea, Chris Mason, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Mark Strong, Jade Anouka, Edward Davis, Josh Heuston, Faoileann Cunningham, Aoife Hinds, and Mark Addy.
SYNOPSIS:
The first six-episode season of Dune: Prophecy arrives on 4K Ultra HD with a solid batch of bonus features. Highly recommended if you liked the show, as I did.
What a time for science-fiction and fantasy fans to be alive. Yes, I realize what I’m about to say applies to any genre of films and TV shows, but science-fiction and fantasy has always been awash with stories that were tough to cram into a feature film and highly unlikely to get a TV series in the old days.
Thanks to streaming, a platform like HBO Max can give us the six-episode Dune: Prophecy, based on Frank Herbert’s vast, legendary story world but not adapted from a specific book. Set 10,000 years before the events in Denis Villeneuve’s pair of Dune feature films, the series explores the origins of the powerful, shadowy Sisterhood that would later be called the Bene Gesserit.
The main characters are two sisters who belong to a family that would later clearly fall under the “bad guys” label in the overall Dune timeline: Valya and Tula Harkonnen. The former is the order’s Mother Superior, and she’s played by Emily Watson in the present day and Jessica Barden as a young woman. The latter is its Reverend Mother, with Olivia Williams in the present-day role and Emma Canning as the younger version.
Over the course of six episodes, we see the early days of the Sisterhood and the ways its members exert influence over the current Emperor,. Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong), and his family. They have their own shadowy motives for their actions, and, of course, the desert planet Arrakis, also known as Dune, plays a role in those power struggles.
The arrival of a mysterious soldier named Desmond Hart (Travis Kimmel) is the inciting event that propels the story forward. His ability to cause people to self-immolate is of great concern to all the vectors of power, and Valya finds herself at the center of those activities, dealing with politics within the Sisterhood and the Harkonnen family on top of that. It’s the kind of Machiavellian storytelling that I wish the Star Wars prequels had embraced. (And, yes, the wonderful series Andor is another example of that.)
Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment has issued the first season of Dune: Prophecy on a trio of 4K Ultra HD discs. You don’t get a code for digital copies of the episodes, but you do get a healthy portion of bonus features.
The extras kick off on the first disc with Entering the Dune Universe and Houses Divided, a pair of featurettes with a total runtime of about six minutes. Between the two, you should be well-versed in Dune 101; if you haven’t watched the show yet, or need a refresher, it might be good to watch both of these before taking in any episodes.
The disc one extras conclude with Inside the Episode featurettes that break down the first two episodes. Those featurettes continue on the other two discs for the remaining four episodes. I’m pretty sure they’re the same featurettes that aired at the end of the episodes late last year, but I admit I don’t remember for sure.
Moving on, disc two serves up Truth or Lie, a six-minute featurette broken into Imperium and Sisterhood chapters; this is the cast and crew playing a game in which they answer questions about Dune. And Expanding the Universe digs into the decisions made to tell this particular story.
Finally, the third disc offers the 35-minute Behind the Veil, which is a solid overview of the making of the first season. You also get the 13-minute Building Worlds, which dives deep into the show’s production design.
I wasn’t expecting a lot from the bonus features in this edition, since they can often be scant for TV shows, but what’s offered here pleasantly surprised me. Kudos.
Brad Cook
