Session 3.10 - S 3 Ep 5: Menegroth

Nope. The peace was sorta skipped over. We show the tail end of the time of peace in Episode 3, and then on we go.

Naturally, some events that happened during the timeskip are being shown now, after Morgoth's return. So, meeting the dwarves, building Menegroth - that happens...now. After the darkening of the Trees.
 
But if you compress the Beleriand timeline but NOT the Valinor timeline, you literally have two separate timelines in separate parallel universes, at different dates in time. How does that work?

Eliminating the idea that Middle-earth had a time of peace is also a drastic rewrite of the plot.

I'm disappointed.
 
The idea is that we have only one timeline, and everything is shown in 'real time' (at least for this season). We can use flashbacks if we need to, but for the most part, we won't.

In other words, we changed some of the dates of some of the events in this story.
 
The plan that Haakon and others outlined earlier looked reasonable to me. I don't understand why it was scrapped in favor of such an extreme rewrite. Time passed faster in Middle-earth and Morgoth returned only a few years after the Noldor and Vanyar left? The peace just... didn't happen at all? Or time passed at the same speed in Middle-earth and Aman, but nothing happened and nothing will be shown? Either way, the audience will not know that Middle-earth ever had any years of peace at all. That makes the captivity of Melkor pointless.

I'm really shocked by this.

Is the plan to compress every timeline like this from now on? At this rate it seems the whole age will be over in 200 years at most, with only about 5 years for the Siege.
 
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No, there is a timeskip from when Thingol and Melian emerged from Nan Elmoth, to Beleriand after the return of Morgoth. Obviously, things happened in the interval. Lúthien was born and grew up, for instance. Same with Daeron. The Havens got built.

Basically, we're just not showing the peace of Beleriand, except for the tail end of it. So, characters might mention having lived in uninterrupted peace for many years, and they're obviously not militant/vigilant/well-armed/defensive when we meet them. Melian is our main insight into Valinor here, so she's the one who would have to inform everyone of the Melkor stuff.

While there is not a plan to compress timelines, there is also not a strong desire to adhere to them. So, no doubt there will be changes to the timeline in the future as well.
 
I understand your disappointment.

The timeline I presented a couple of weeks ago was rejected during session 3-7, which isn’t available on iTunes yet but when it is you will be able to hear the exec’s views. I am not sure my whole timeline was read and thought through, so I share some of your disappointment.
Some of their arguments are hard not to agree with as things have turned out.
As MithLuin says, they want a linear timeline and since we didn’t go to Beleriand during the ages the Noldor spent in Valinor in season 2, we have to omit some of the Beleriand stuff and compress the rest.
So basically, we should have had a couple of visits to Beleriand in season 2.
 
Haakon said:
As MithLuin says, they want a linear timeline and since we didn’t go to Beleriand during the ages the Noldor spent in Valinor in season 2, we have to omit some of the Beleriand stuff and compress the rest.
So basically, we should have had a couple of visits to Beleriand in season 2.
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I'm sympathetic, but if I remember our discussions correctly, we were afraid that cutting between the family and moral drama of Feanor and the Noldor in Valinor to... bliss and music and happiness in Doriath, would be unlovely television. It could have been done more skillfully, but that might have required developing storylines for Doriath, and that would of necessity cut into our time for telling Feanor's story. Really, there was no perfect solution for telling two utterly unrelated stories in different emotional registers in the same 2nd-half of a season.

In retrospect, I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to plan Season 3 as a largely Beleriand-focused season, framed by the Kinslaying and the Burning of the Ships in the first and last episodes. The Noldor do have some time to pass, and not much to do, in between them, except the Finarfin storyline really, which could comfortably fit in as a sub-plot to remind the audience that, yes, the Noldor still exist and are still coming. Then, we could decompress our storytelling of the encroaching darkness, and have dwarves/Menegroth established before the orcs are seen, etc. It still would have required edits to the timeline, but personally I am less bothered by that... so long as the edit makes sense. Arbitrary or confusing edits are frustrating, of course.
 
In the end, it depends upon how many seasons we want to have. Any of these stories could have been expanded significantly.

For instance, Season 2 could have been split into two separate seasons, with the first one telling the story of the Great Journey and incorporating the Beleriand material, and the second being about Valinor and the Fëanor stuff. So, the Darkening of Valinor would then be the climax of Season 3, not Season 2. (The Vanyar and the Noldor, and later the Teleri, would have gotten onto the Island Ferry during Season 2, but we would have shown their subsequent arrivals in Valinor during Season 3, in other words. The timelines would overlap, but the stories would stay linear.)

Likewise, Season 4 could definitely afford to be split into two separate seasons, and if I hear one more joke about the lack of TV-worthy content in 'Of Beleriand and its Realms....'

The tension we are balancing is the desire to really get into these stories and tell them in an expanded/interesting way...and the desire to get on to the 'good part' that people care about. So, we got a Valar-centric Season 1, which required a lot of invention, but gave us the payoff of establishing the Valar as characters the audience would know and understand. Manwë comes across as a bit of a naive idiot in the published Silmarillion, and we really wanted to avoid that. But. We also want to get to Beren and Lúthien in Season 5, so....
 
Another aspect of this is the frame and how we use it. In season one, we had a situation not far from having a frame storyteller narrating the main story. In season two, we moved further away from that and the main could be seen as partly a series of memories of a couple of the frame characters but also stories connected to those memories but without a certain someone remember everything and in many (most?) cases no indication of the story being told to anyone in the frame. Now, in season three, we haven’t really planned any telling of stories in the frame and no one who remembers the story of the main narrative but we’ve got two separate stories that contrast or highlight episodes in the other one, respectively. This is fine but we lose the opportunity of the storyteller device to explain passage of time, for example. There’s no reason for anyone to say ‘And then, after a long time of peace’ etc.
 
Well, we should figure out where we need narrative help in the main storyline and do it there....
 
Regarding Boldog and his and the Eastern Host’s activities in this and the coming episodes, we shouldn’t rush them. I mean they shouldn’t exit Angband and arrive at Amon Ereb and start a battle in one or two episodes. The orcs may be fast runners but I think they march south at a moderate pace, taking control over Eastern Beleriand in e6 at the earliest. This episode they should just leave Angband and we just get to see the size of the host. I think an initial encounter with an elf or a dwarf could work to show their aggression and/or let someone escape to warn Thingol and Azaghal they’re coming but nothing more, and this should happen pretty far to the north.
 
Yes - there definitely shouldn't be a 'battle' in this episode...and any Sindar attacked should be very small groups.

I know the hosts didn't want to bother with introducing Sindar in the north, but I think that we could get away with it here. They could even see the orc host from a distance, and be frightened enough to flee south before there is any confrontation at all. And then of course the orcs burn their abandoned homes for the fun of it because orcs are needlessly destructive.

So, if there are no battles yet, and the orcs would be overwhelming in comparison to any Sindar opposition they meet, Boldog has to stand out for his 'leadership' skills - ie, how vicious he is to his own people. What does discipline look like in Angband, and in particular under Boldog? We could see him or Sauron or Morgoth angry that groups of orcs have been out roaming without purpose and revealing themselves to their enemies.
 
MithLuin said:
We could see him or Sauron or Morgoth angry that groups of orcs have been out roaming without purpose and revealing themselves to their enemies.
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Yes we could begin the episode with a renegade group of orcs attacking a northern Sindar settlement or a group of elves hunting, which leads to increased production of weapons and armour as well as the idea to move to caves/Menegroth on the Sindars’ part, and also to Sauron or Morgoth being angry as you say. Later, at the end of the episode, the Host led by Boldog are shown to be much more disciplined.
 
Haakon said:
I understand your disappointment.

The timeline I presented a couple of weeks ago was rejected during session 3-7, which isn’t available on iTunes yet but when it is you will be able to hear the exec’s views. I am not sure my whole timeline was read and thought through, so I share some of your disappointment.
Some of their arguments are hard not to agree with as things have turned out.
As MithLuin says, they want a linear timeline and since we didn’t go to Beleriand during the ages the Noldor spent in Valinor in season 2, we have to omit some of the Beleriand stuff and compress the rest.
So basically, we should have had a couple of visits to Beleriand in season 2.
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So what is the Ep-by-Ep timeline the Execs decided on? Is it written down anywhere? Episodes cannot be planned and paced without an overall season plan.

MithLuin said:
While there is not a plan to compress timelines, there is also not a strong desire to adhere to them. So, no doubt there will be changes to the timeline in the future as well.
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I remain very surprised by this. The folks who introduced me to the SilmFilm gave me the impression the "execs" had a greater desire for accuracy, but ... :(
 
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Could we use the Valarin word mâchanâz in some warped version for Melkor’s name? It is supposed to mean ‘one of the Aratar’ but that wouldn’t be too far off, would it?
(Or use goth in some way? I kind of like that it sounds almost like ‘god’, which Melkor would love. I agree about the problematic associations but still... Maybe in combination with Melkor, which must be his favourite name. It has just the meaning we’re looking for. But then we’d come dangerously close to Morgoth.)
 
I don't think I can swallow calling him Melko-goth...but I do like the idea of using something from Valarin, since whatever Orkish language he invented was based on that.

For the current, working outline for this season, see this post:
https://forums.signumuniversity.org...nd-3-07-season-overview.728/page-9#post-13985

The Exec team is interested in the process of adapting Tolkien's works to a television show. So, yes, they *do* care about the spirit of the stories and are intimately familiar with the source material (and aren't exactly running around inventing love triangles), but adhering to the timeline is not the top priority. For instance, it was decided to move the Fell Winter into Bilbo and Aragorn's lifetime because it would give us an opportunity to show it, whereas if we left it where it was, it would never really fit into the show. And...the consequences of moving it forward in time didn't seem too dire. Is that accurate? No. But is it against the spirit of Tolkien's work? Not really, no.

Other changes are more outrageous, but they do give their reasons for them, and it's up to us to either accept them or complain. If we all really, really don't like what they decide, we stage a rebellion and storm the castle ;). It's a collaborative project, so while no one here on the messageboards is a final decision-maker, we are all welcome to voice our opinions. And they do go back and consider ideas that met pushback. For instance, they spent more time than they expected to reviewing their introduction of Ungoliant, and they set aside an entire session to discuss the creation of Orcs, as there were a lot of conflicting ideas there (not surprising, considering the source material was equally ambiguous/un-resolved).

It can be frustrating to have your ideas shot down (especially if they weren't exactly considered fully/fairly), but in the end, the project is better with more voices. At the end of the day, they haven't made any decisions I can't live with, so I'm still here. I might not like all of their choices, but there's enough here that I do like that I keep collaborating. There are disappointments, of course, but, well...so it goes.

I realize that the session in question isn't posted yet, so it's not like you have the opportunity to listen to what they had to say about it, but....hopefully when it does become available, you will be able to hear and understand their reasoning (while not necessarily agreeing with it).
 
Oh haha I wasn’t thinking Melkorgoth! That would have been.... well I was thinking something like Melgoth or Belgoth but none of those are very good. We also have the Bol- element that means ‘mighty’ but it’s a bit tainted by the fact that it’s so prominent in Boldog. I guess ‘Bolgoth’ sounds almost like ‘Belgoth’ but I’m not sure how that helps us. It’s too similar to Morgoth.
No I think the Mâchânaz is the most workable idea so far. It’s better to take a Valarin word that sounds evil than a Black Speech word that’s associated with Sauron.
 
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