Orcs

OK, slightly updated:

A) Things already firmly established by this point (ie. by the end of S2)
A1) Orcs are going to be "built" out of Elves captured at Cuivienen.
A2) Sauron/Mairon is involved in this creation somehow, at least in the early stages we've seen so far.
A3) Dead Orcs are not filling up the Halls of Mandos, or if they are, we've never heard about it.
A4) Melkor/Morgoth cannot create life whole cloth.​

B) Things that seem to be a consensus among the team, but maybe haven't been stated explicitly "on screen"
B1) THIS SPACE DELIBERATELY LEFT BLANK
B2) Good guys are going to be killing Orcs. A lot of Orcs. They aren't going to feel bad about it, and we don't want the audience to feel bad about it either.
B3) Whatever Sauron/Mairon attempts to do to make Orcs, he doesn't succeed. When Melkor/Morgoth gets involved, he is the one to complete the job.​

I reckon A3 and B2 are the toughest nuts to crack.
 
B2 is only an issue if the good guys realize the orcs have some biological connection to the elves. Certainly at first, they do not make that connection - these are monsters come to kill them. And even if they do start to suspect, the idea that the orcs are irredeemably bad isn't hard to reach after watching them slaughter, eat from the dead bodies of their enemies, create torture devices, etc. Letting the audience see a bit of the behind-the-scenes might prime them for different reactions to the orcs, but the elves are seeing them for the first time as an invading army.

The reactions of the elves to the escaped captives of Morgoth later is to shun and mistrust them. How much more an orc? (Maedhros is likely the only captive who escapes without that stigma, but even he likely had to wade through some mistrust at first.)

Are our good guys completely guiltless for slaughtering orcs? We don't have to make that true. Sure, they're going to do it and think nothing of it. They live in a culture where killing your enemy is a justified killing. If modern viewers want to have more squeamish sensibilities and judge them for that, fine - is that a terrible thing?

We could have Mandos and Manwë discuss the sad travesty of the orcs at some point, and *they* might express some thought about 'not everything was evil in the beginning' and there might have been a way to save these poor lost creatures....but what elf embroiled in war would have that viewpoint?
 
Yeah I think that track is the way to go with B2. Make it clear that Orcs as they are now are wholly bad, and that's enough for the good guys. Give the audience a nod to the remembered origins of Orcs via Mandos/Manwe (I really like that idea) as sort of a relief valve - acknowledge that it's a tragedy with no real recourse any more, and then move on with the battles..
 
MithLuin said:
....or we could just have the balrogs stage gladiator death matches between the captives, and the survivors become the future orcs once Morgoth gets involved, having developed a taste for violence and killing.
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as much as i'd love to see the arenas of angband on screen... such fights might corrupt some elves, as well as a capo-system maybe would (make the victim becone an evil-doer himself)....

but this wouldn't corrupt their offspring. the only thing morgith can give them is an instinct of easy rage, pain, hunger and maybe a culture which would serve as a vehicle for every newborn individual to become as corrupt as the parent generation (history repeats...). an orc to broke out of this would be extremely unlikely.

at least with some greater will still dominating them (ok we don't know what happened to orcs after saurin was finally gone... maybe they indeed reverted and became normal savage men or dark faded-elf spectres, bitter but not wholly evil...)
 
I have had a lot of catching up to do in this conversation, but I do have a proposal for the Orcs in Mandos thing.

Iluvatar, in his mercy, grants them release from the circles of the world, despite their elvish heritage. They have suffered enough.

OR

Melkor finds a way to funnel their spirits back into newly born orc bodies, thus explaining their apparently unlimited memory.
 
I tend towards the latter option, Nick. One of the whole reasons for introducing Sauron's necromantic abilities with the werewolf-making-experiments this season was to show that death is no escape for the captive elves.

We don't have to show him snatching their souls as they flee their bodies (this isn't anime!), but the possibility should very firmly be there.

Dead orcs don't make it to Mandos because of the interference of Sauron (and/or Morgoth). Should any of these spirits escape their clutches, they would be afraid of Mandos and refuse to enter the Halls, resulting in a wandering around lost soul in Middle Earth. Such wandering houseless spirits would be very much vulnerable to Sauron, should they run into him. Or they could try to possess someone.
 
Haakon said:
I also think Morgoth should trick or persuade or scare them to reject Eru.
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Yes. Morgoth's ability to completely dominate their wills (and later Sauron's ability to do the same) isn't just because of the force of their own wills (though that plays a role).

Orcs have to do something to not be elves any more. Make some choice or decision. Being tortured into apostatizing and rejecting Eru and then engaging in a little devil worship probably would do the trick. Not sure we would want to show that, but we could say it's one of the things that happens for that transformation, and possibly allude to it in some way. The 'whom do you serve? Saruman!' scene isn't that horrific, but we could do something....

We are never going to have a side story of a 'good orc' who wants to escape the hosts of Morgoth [so he can run off and be a dentist]. Whether or not orcs *can* be redeemed, none of them *are* going to be redeemed. Good guys are going to react to them with pure hatred and slaughter as many as they can. Showing that Elladan can go too far with that hatred and vengeance thing is likely the closest we'll come to acknowledging that there is any issue there.

Within the story, the only characters who are even going to stop to think about this will be our big picture philosopher types - the Valar, maybe Finrod, Gandalf, possibly Elrond, etc.
 
Yes yes yes. A thousand times yes.

It's an old chestnut, a thoroughly debunked, false, old chestnut, that Tolkien is all black and white with no shades of gray. Here, however, is one place that's just black - within the story we are going to tell, Orcs are bad. Full stop.

There are interesting stories available to tell of a reluctant member of an evil group that repents and changes his ways. "The Orcs of Middle Earth" is not the appropriate medium in which to tell those stories. If we have one of those stories that we just need to tell, it can come later with Men.
 
We are going to have the opportunity at Numenor to show characters literally worship Morgoth - offer human sacrifices of their political opponents in a bid for power from a banished god, all under the watchful eyes of Sauron. There can be some nuance in how that plays out. (The Faithful resist thoroughly until the end, Míriel stands by in horror but never worships Morgoth herself, etc.)

I agree that the orcs have no room for such nuance - they all fall utterly, and if any resist, they die out now (before they are 'orcs') and are replaced by 'true believers' in the cult of Morgoth.
 
the few original comments we get from orcs themselves seem to prove that they know little about the cosmology... the valar are just the enemies in the west to them... is there anyrhing they ever say about illuvatar? if they know if him at all hes just a terrible dark name to them... i have little doubt that not a few of the restless spirits within arda the necromancers and sorcerers dealt with were those of dead orcs whose souls did not know where to go...
 
We also need to decide how they get their appearance.

Maybe the original orcs aren't actually the captured elves, but sons and daughters of them. Perhaps Morgoth uses a fallen Maia to breed with the fallen elves - a being called Boldog is mentioned in Myths Transformed. He could have typical orc-form and be the 'father' and leader of the orcs.
So then we'd have this process:
  1. Elves captured and imprisoned.
  2. Sauron and Tevildo (mainly) play good cop/bad cop and break the will of the captives (short version).
  3. The captives become followers of Sauron.
  4. Morgoth returns and when he finds out about the captive elves he comes before them and makes them worship him, through fear and lies. They reject Eru.
  5. Morgoth gives the captives to Boldog, who breeds with them - that is now possible since they will no longer resist or let their fëa free. The offspring are the first orcs.
 
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Wow... I mean, that's possible. But is it a touch too close to GoT's method of "shoving thoughts you don't want to have in your face"? I for one would be quite happy spending all may days never thinking about orcish reproduction.
 
I know and I for one am quite happy leaving all of this to the imagination. Or wait a minute, I'd rather leave it out of the imagination.
 
Yeah, someone with a stronger stomach can put out a companion coffee table book with the S2 DVD that goes into the details that we vaguely work out but don't put in the actual show.
 
The general idea is that we should work out the details of what happens, and then not show any of it. Hence the 'super secret' aspect of the Orc project.

In Season 2 Episode 6, we'll see the Angband crew for one of the last times. At that point, we've seen Sauron make werewolves, Tevildo torture captives, and the balrogs go 'elf-hunting'. So, the pieces are in place, but the captive elves are just that.

Morgoth returns at the very end of Season 2.

When Season 3 opens, we will show something - Morgoth meeting Sauron's captives? And then the next thing you know, deformed orcs are attacking Beleriand. Maybe the audience doesn't even put it together (at first) that this is somehow related to the captive elves. Maybe it takes a few future allusions to even draw that connection, and the 'what happened?!' question should go...largely unanswered.
 
MithLuin said:
I tend towards the latter option, Nick. One of the whole reasons for introducing Sauron's necromantic abilities with the werewolf-making-experiments this season was to show that death is no escape for the captive elves.

We don't have to show him snatching their souls as they flee their bodies (this isn't anime!), but the possibility should very firmly be there.

Dead orcs don't make it to Mandos because of the interference of Sauron (and/or Morgoth). Should any of these spirits escape their clutches, they would be afraid of Mandos and refuse to enter the Halls, resulting in a wandering around lost soul in Middle Earth. Such wandering houseless spirits would be very much vulnerable to Sauron, should they run into him. Or they could try to possess someone.
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Just when I was convinced everyone had forgotten why it was called the Super Secret NECROMANTIC Orc Project, Marie saves the day. High-five.
 
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