Session 1.14

Phillip Menzies

Phillip Menzies

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Staff member
Questions for the next session airing on Friday 12th of February 2016 are:

• Ents and Eagles? How are they connected to the theme of the latter half of the season (growing elements of chaos)
• What's happening in Middle-earth?
• Melkor's comments on The Children?
• Set up for the war
• Timing of the Awakening of the Elves - Silmarillion time frame or Book of Lost Tales timeline?
• Yavanna, Ents and Eagles​

Don't forget the
• "Episode outlines" thread on the discussion boards (called "Scripts")​

As always refer to the last session and session notes if posted at http://silmfilm.mythgard.org/seasons/season-1/
 
I think that Melkor will have the opportunity to make a comment about Aulë's dwarves, and that this reaction will be very telling of his thoughts on the Children in general. It should also be the seed of orcs.

The Timing of the Awakening of the Elves has 2 major implications.
(1) Are the Valar making a pre-emptive strike to make Middle Earth safe for the coming of the Children? Or are they responding to Melkor's actions that have already hurt the Children?

and (2) Are Orcs made from Elves? Depending on how we answer that question, the timeline may not work.
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I think the first point is much more crucial to the telling of this story. It has to do with the entire character of the Valar. Because Tolkien's good guys don't get to claim to be good guys just because they look the part....they have to make choices that are heroic and thoroughly grounded in 'doing the right thing' rather than the expedient thing.

So, IF the Valar are going to go to War prior to the awakening of the Children, it will almost certainly have to be because they've uncovered Melkor's plan to enslave the Children when they arrive. There would have to be an urgency of "We have to stop him!" driving them. In this scenario, the War is occurring practically on the eve of the Awakening of the Elves. They would raze Utumno because it would be thought that Melkor was going to turn that into a prison to entrap the elves (making Melkor's later words in Valinor much more....pointed). Irmo and Námo could be aware of the arrival of the Children, so that could add to the urgency - the Valar know they are 'here', and it's a race of whether Melkor or Oromë will find them first.....

I'm not sure I entirely like that idea. But it is important that there be justification for a pre-emptive strike. There has to be a reason diplomacy has failed. There has to be a reason to imprison Melkor and not leave him free to continue acting.



As for the second point...I think it best that we not answer that question. Provide plenty of hints, but leave it up to the audience to figure out where they came from. Lots of ominous sounds about how Melkor couldn't have made sentient creatures himself, so....what happened? The reasons for leaving this question unanswered should be fairly straightforward. There's no way to show it happening without extreme levels of squick and horror, and if we imply that orcs are 'ruined' elves, it opens up all sorts of quandaries about their fate and whether or not it's okay to just kill them on sight. Much better to show Melkor's gruesome menagerie of beasts prior to the War, so we know he 'tinkers' with such things...and then leave it open. It's also a true statement that no one who wrote this history actually knew the origins of orcs. They had to deduce it after the fact, just like the audience.

[Obviously, the show creators should have some idea of 'what happened?' but it is allowed to be a complicated and involved explanation that never makes it to screen - 'Well, first he tried to breed his Maiar, but that didn't work, so then he bred monstrous beasts, but they were dumb, so then he bred the Maiar with the monstrous beasts, and that was better. He also tried forcing Maiar spirits to inhabit the beasts. Eventually, he captured some elves and added them to the mix as breeding stock, but they kept dying, so he figured out a way to animate their bodies after their spirits fled and used that.....' Like I said - ridiculously complicated.]

Also keep in mind storyteller bias - Elrond's wife was captured and tormented by orcs, badly enough that he was unable to heal her. His sons hunt orcs with unholy vengeance as a result of this incident. It's unlikely he could discuss their origins dispassionately even if he is a loremaster.

Orcs are not needed for the War. They would be completely useless against the Valar. Saving them for the return of Melkor to Middle Earth and the fight against the Noldor shouldn't be a problem. The 'older and fouler' things than orcs should dominate for now. I am fine with not seeing an orc until the Battle Under the Stars.

For a long time, we've spoken of ending Season 1 with the Elves at Cuivienen awake. I don't want to change that. Yes, I know that doesn't match the published Silmarillion, and I recognize that it introduces problems with chronology. But I think we can handle those issues.
 
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To quote Smee in Hook: "Lighting has just struck my brain."

What about this. We don't get clear evidence that the Children have awoken, but it leaks out of Utumno that they have, and that Melkor's been rounding them up. This sends the Valar careening into gear, and they tear Utumno apart in hopes of rescuing the Eldar. Who aren't at Utumno. It almost makes it seem like Melkor has been wronged, and he laughs in their face after he's been chained. He gloats over the Valar in such a way as to show that he is unrepentantly evil. Orome has been continuing his search while the Valar combed Utumno, and returns and whispers something to Manwe. We do not know what he says, but Manwe orders Melkor brought back to Mandos to be imprisoned.

Later, Gothmog is leading the remnants of Melkor's forces to the doors of Angband. He asks Sauron if 'they' are ready yet. Sauron says, "Not quite," and then shows him a fair-sized body of orcs training in combat. Or something.
 
[SIZE=4][B][URL='http://forums.signumuniversity.org/index.php?members/nicholas-palazzo.139/']Nicholas Palazzo[/URL][/B][/SIZE]
I think that has a lot of possibilities to give the Valar a concrete reason to go to war, while not completely tossing out the timeline which has been proposed so far throughout the series (ie. waiting until the last moments of the season for the elves).

It does kind of cast Melkor in the role of the Trickster, which I don't have too much of a problem with...I just wouldn't have him overdo it once his deception is found out. If this is the route we go, it may prove better to lend more subtlety to Melkor having him follow this course of action as a form of counter-intelligence...to find out what the Valar know of the Children and let them do the finding for him. He also, perhaps, wishes to start war (feeling prepared) without actually starting it himself, so then he can be the aggrieved party.
 
How would it leak out of Utumno that Melkor has found the elves, exactly? In general I think we need to play the Coming of the Children more personal. I want to see Melkor finding them and really have this last straw push him over the edge. Equal parts jealous older brother and meglo-maniacal despot. I'd almost even like to see him standing over their sleeping forms trying to decide if he'd rather destroy them or subjugate them and turn them to slaves. In that scenario I'd play the "Hunter" as an attempt by Melkor to be really extra clever, trying to sow fear of the Valar to poison their arrival and make the elves willingly submit themselves to him, perhaps?

That doesn't really fly in the face of what you suggested, Nick, but I'm still not sure how we would "hear tell" of something as likely to inspire war as torturing the Children. I think it works pretty well thematically, just that we need some mechanism for it to makes sense plot-wise.

Edit: I think we should also maybe really drive home the point of how big a mistake it was that the Valar abandoned Valinor: Melkor wasn't "supposed" to be the first to find the Children, but ceding Middle Earth to him has created the unavoidable choice to go to war, and Manwe has to deal with the fallout as best he can. Does that make him seem more foolish, or just idealistic?
 
(Reply to Nicholas): I like most of that but have a slightly different idea, also based on what we discussed earlier. I think that Irmo and Namo, as MithLuin says, should have a feeling that the Children might be awake. There is a rumor that they have been taken to Utumno. One of the Maiar is sent over there to investigate. He (who I suggest should be Olorin) does not discover the Firstborn, but finds the Balrogs and Melkor obviously mustering. Their power is so great that he can't investigate further. When he returns it is decided that the Valar must go to war. They attack, and tear Utumno apart, the Firstborn aren't found, and the Balrogs escape through the tunnels to Angband.
 
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I agree Ouzaru that rumors are a problem. I can't see anyone who would gain anything by spreading it. Unless Mairon does that (and that is probably not a good idea). But rumors could start by people assuming things and then one assumption leads to another and suddenly there is this "fact" that really isn't true.
 
To me the question of the awakening of the elves before or after the War of Powers is like flogging a dead horse. This was discussed, rightfully after the season outline session http://forums.signumuniversity.org/index.php?threads/chronology-clarification.61/ and Corey addressed the issue in the next session to confirm the state of the outline for the war to begin all wars to be a preemptive strike and to follow the BOLT chronology. Dramatically it works for the final scene of season 1 to be the elves waking up. We just have to make it happen.
Corey also has misgivings about the orc origin story of them being ruined elves. I like MithLuin's idea of not telling definitively, but giving hints. Corey's thought of having Melkor emulate Aule's creation of the dwarves is brilliant. Even if orcs in the end are a hybrid between Melkor's creation, embodied Maiar, and later elves or men, this origin fits in so well with Melkor and later Sauron dominating the wills of their servants. Automotons can be totally subjugated to one's will. In addition orcs appear to be more easily dominated than other races and held in thrall. At the Battle at the Black Gate with the destruction of the one ring the orcs, trolls and other creatures run away without Sauron's will forcing them on while it is the men of Rhun and Harad who draw together to make a last stand.
If Melkor makes the same mistake as Aule in creating creatures akin to the children of Iluvatar the Valar can decide to enact Iluvatar's judgement (there is no doubt after Aule about Iluvatar's ruling on this) and this can be one of the reasons for the war.
 
I stick to my opinion that we should wait with the Eagles and the Ents until the awakening of the firstborn, for the following reasons:

· Dramaturgy – We should feel that the Valar have lost control over the lands where the Firstborn are going to awaken. Introducing the Eagles in particular will bring at least some (and in my opinion way too much, given their eucatastrophical reputation) hope, which makes going to war seem less like the next logical step. The less control the Valar feel they have, the more Melkor will seem like a dangerous force who will somehow harm the Children. Also, if the Eagles appear now, why don’t they discover the Firstborn? And thirdly: if we know that the Eagles and Ents shall appear at the time of the Awakening, we can use that to introduce the Awakening and show the Eagles fly and Ents start to move before we show Cuivienen, as a build up to that scene, which otherwise might seem confusingly short.

· Subcreation and creation – In the Published Silmarillion, Yavanna goes to Manwë after Aulë has told her about the Dwarves. She asks to have trees that defend the olvar - "it was in the Song". And Manwë says that is a strange thought but then concludes that the trees of Kementari, along with the Eagles of the Lords of the West, shall awake when the Children awake. This gives the impression that they (Yavanna and Manwë) remember the Music and realize that the wish to have those guardians created is also the will of Ilúvatar, and that they will appear in good time, after his will. They do not set about to create them themselves, but wait for them. If they instead create them by their own hands, and now at a time of their own choosing, they seem dangerously close to transgression in the same way that Aulë was, especially since Eru just intervened (alright Manwë doesn’t know that at this time). I think that the Manwë we are shaping is one who is careful and does not cross lines.

EDIT: I know, the Eagles are supposed to come before the awakening. But that makes just a little difference.
 
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Yeah, I agree with Philip that we really are going to need a judgement call from on high here. We all have different, and I think very good, ideas as to how this should play out. I think you could make a case for any of the above scenarios.
 
I like the idea of the Children not necessarily being found or awoken yet, but rather known beyond a shadow of a doubt that their coming is immanent. This gives us the same thematic urgency, while still following the BoLT timeline.

As was suggested earlier, perhaps this is a point at which to involve the Fëanturi or even Mandos. Or to include within the context of Manwë's communion with Eru following the creation of the dwarves.

This sets up a ticking clock, where Melkor is seen as a potential danger that must be addressed (in war or diplomacy) and can no longer be ignored.
 
Haakon, I would substitute Eonwë for Olorin in your idea of an emissary checking out Utumno.

Not that it's out of character for Olorin, but just that he's such a minor player at this point and we've built him up way too much while neglecting Eonwë (who *is* a major player - or should be!)
 
I supposed we could dodge the problem of knowing when the children are coming by giving an ominous portent to Mandos, although that would be flying in the face of what's in the PS. I gotta make sure I don't miss next week's session, so I can be there live to hear Professor Olsen squirm over this. We certainly haven't made their jobs any easier.

Let's maybe try talking in plain language about what we want to accomplish with this point. What do we gain by being obscure about the origins of the orcs? What could be gained, if anything, by being explicit? I can see scenarios where the origin is revealed in Season 1, but Orome reporting back that someone is kidnapping elves and suspicion falling pretty naturally on the only major power in Middle Earth at the moment seems to me to hold together well enough, and getting specific about the whys and hows in Season 2 would be fine. I also don't think it would be a disaster for the elves to actually wake up here in the last episode. We could even, as I suggested earlier, have Melkor come upon them sleeping, and have the notions of "The Hunter" be sort of telepathically induced dreams he fills their minds with as he takes some of them to Utumno. This might be one way to get at the "free will" problem of orcs: if the race was literally born into bondage and abasement from the moment of their awakening, what might that do to their psychology? Would they ever be free of the master/slave relationship if their first mythological waking moment was in the pits beneath Utumno? Certainly they would still have free will after a fashion, but if your entire worldview is constrained by that sort of imprisonment...?


I'm disgressing from my original point, which was "what are we trying to do with any of these choices". What is the narrative, thematic, super-/sub- textual work being done by these various options? To put my money where my mouth is, I want to see Melkor standing over the prone (naked?) bodies of the sleeping elves specifically because of how that informs his character, and the dramatic, formative, visceral moment it provides for him to develop as a real, despicable, vindictive master of evil. For the same reason, I think being overly coy about where the orcs come from takes away from that very clear passage in the PS that calls out his creation of the orcs as the very worst thing he ever did, "the most hateful to Illuvatar". Shying away from the specifics of it feels to me a lot like coddling the audience. They ought to be horrified, and to that end leaving some things to the imagination is necessary, but some specificity in at least the decision-making process needs to be present, it seems to me, so that we can give this adapted, and far more nuanced, version of Melkor some consistency in scope of character. If we really do want to look closley and understand him as a character, then I vote we've little choice but to get specific about the moment he chooses to ruin the elves.
 
I think the goal we're striving for is a clear aggravation, a clear transgression leading to war. I personally think shying away from the orcs is not the way to go. This seems the clearest reason for war as Melkor's most demonstratively heinous act.

That being said, the idea you pose, ouzaru, is an intriguing one. In this manner the elves do not need to awake, and the seeds of Melkor's acts can be sown. It doesn't need to be shown explicitly how the elves are turned to orcs...I think that can remain a mystery, potentially to be argued over. In particular, in the frame, this would be a sore spot and therefore easily explained why it would not be completely revealed...only that elves were taken.

It was said in discussing the previous episode that making the orcs of the elves would lead to confusing questions about the morality of fighting and/or killing them. I think this confusion or rather grayness is absolutely necessary. The few times Tolkien explicitly writes of orcs or uruks as characters interacting, separate from the 'protagonists,' I've always been struck by their apparent normality. They're crass and uncouth, yes, but have much the same desire for self determination as any other race, and significantly more intelligence than they're given credit for.

Just like every other case in Tolkien's writing, we shouldn't assume the orcs are always evil. Granted much of the evidence for this is in LotR rather than the PS, but it will lend a much more interesting and nuanced character to the 'side' of evil.
 
I have just spent an hour looking through my collection of the History of Middle Earth trying to find a specific story, and I found it :) . In the Book of Lost Tales I there is Gilfanon's Tale: The Travail of the Noldoli and the Coming of Mankind. This is the only story I can think of that has a situation where the Children of Iluvatar are seen before the awakening. It is about Tu the wizard and the Dark Elf Nuin who wandered in the ages of the stars and found the children of men sleeping before the sun first rose. He wakes up two of the sleeping children and teaches them how to talk and these two actually witness the first sun rising. When Nuin tells Tu that he found the children Tu's reaction of one of fear; fear of Manwe and fear of Iluvatar. I think this should be our reaction too. Remember how adamant we were about Mairon having no part in the creation of the dwarves because we didn't want to sully them or create any doubt in our minds that the future Sauron may have corrupted them in some way? The same is true about showing the children being interfered with before their awakening. If we show Melkor finding the children and taking some, what is to say that all the children have been marred in some way. The children are Iluvatar's alone. No other being had a hand in their conception or their creation. They are secret and need to awaken whole and unspoiled. Tu was right to fear Iluvatar and so should we.
We have to work with the chronology we have developed which is:
  • Melkor is chained
  • the children awake
  • Melkor is unchained and has to report to his parole officer every day and has no opportunity to do depraved things to anything until he is called out by Feanor and he runs away to team up with Ungoliant and assaults the trees, steals the silmarills, murders Finwe and escapes to Middle Earth, is rescued by the balrogs and returns to Angband for the first time in an age.
Elves into Orcs? as the song says:
Let it go
Let it go
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I hear what you're saying Phillip, but I want you to really hear what you're saying in the context of both the adaptation and the themes of the Silmarillion itself. Arda has been marred. By Melkor. Much is made of the elves being tied to Arda, even more than men. Naturally the Children are not ruined in their inception, but in light of the work this angle would do for us with the plot and Melkor's character in particular, and the thematic comparison outlined briefly above, doesn't it fit awfully well? I don't see why we're necessarily conflating their creation with their awakening, or why the spiriting away of a few before their awakening is somehow inconsistent with a) what we're told in the PS, and b) with Melkor's affect on the rest of Arda.

The Children of Iluvatar are not some how "more perfect" than anything else in Arda simply by virtue of their creation by Iluvatar and no other hand. They're creatures of the world, and though they are physically superior specimens that do not age or grow sick, in the end they diminish and fade away, like anything in the world does. Are we to assume this is not intrinsic to their character, in their making by Iluvatar? If not, then where does this failing come from? If so, then why need the sleeping elves be somehow inviolate?

Edit: please also forgive me if I'm coming on too strong here, I gave up Sam telling the Ainulindale, but as is probably clear by now, I have got Opinions (tm) about Orcs, and I'm actually in an intellectual and temporal place to do Battle (tm) over them.
 
More ideas as I think more about this, I also think turning the orcs into Aulean automatons or great spirits such as eagles or dragons embodied in beastial form runs the risk of playing into one of the criticisms of Tolkien's work that, to me really rings untrue in close reading of all his works, which is that it is far too black and white. People sometimes complain that good guys are unambiguously good and bad guys are unambiguously bad, and easy to spot by their outward appearance. If the orcs are somehow a creation of purely Melkor, the subtext for all conflict between the incarnate races across Valarian and Morgothian lines lose any semblance of nuance or complexity from the get go.

In fairness to the opposing view point, most of the complex narratives surrounding conflict are played out between the Children themselves, and there is, in older mythological tradition, usually not a ton of complexity when fighting monsters in works like Beowulf or The Odyssey, and I really haven't got a great reason for applying this complexity to the Orcs other than I think it's a little more interesting. My other points about how much the ruining of the elves into orcs can do for us both in plot and theme stand, however.

I would also like to hear more on the other alternatives and what kind of themes and connections we can make with them, but I probably need to shut up and be patient for that, so... Shutting up now!
 
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MithLuin said:
Haakon, I would substitute Eonwë for Olorin in your idea of an emissary checking out Utumno.

Not that it's out of character for Olorin, but just that he's such a minor player at this point and we've built him up way too much while neglecting Eonwë (who *is* a major player - or should be!)
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It wasn't really important for me to involve Olorin. I must confess MithLuin that I was just trying to give him the personal experience so that he later, as Gandalf, can exclaim "Flame of Udûn". But he can get that experience by taking part in the war. But that's his chance - after that, there is no Udûn, after all.
 
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Phillip, Tim and ouzaru I really like your arguments, on both sides, I find myself swinging from the one to the other.... Could we separate this issue into two parts? One would be Melkor finding the Eldar, and the other would be the creation of the orcs. I think we could show Melkor finding the Firstborn sleeping and taking some of them to Utumno, and yet not really know how the orcs are created. The crime of taking the sleeping, defenseless Children is in itself a great enough crime to make Melkor really really bad. Got to work now but I'll get back on this.
 
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Haakon said:
Phillip, Tim and ouzaru I really like your arguments, on both sides, I find myself swinging from the one to the other.... Could we separate this issue in two parts? One would be Melkor finding the Eldar, and the other would be the creation of the orcs. I think we could show Melkor finding the Firstborn sleeping and taking some of them to Utumno, and yet not really know how the orcs are created. The crime of taking the sleeping, defenseless Children is in itself a great enough crime to make Melkor really really bad. Got to work now but I'll get back on this.
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I'm inclined to agree that getting an up close and personal view of the mechanics of the elves ruination into orcs is unnecessary, and probably best left to the imagination. I'm much more in favor of emphasizing the nature of Melkor's choice to ruin them over what exactly he does to them.
 
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