The Passage of Time

MithLuin

MithLuin

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We will need to rely heavily on our sets to show the passage of time, and there's not a lot of the usual details available to us to clue in the audience - no news reports, dates on tombstones, etc.

For Rivendell, I would like to see the seasons change over the course of the first season. So, as Season One opens, we are in Rivendell in late winter. Week to week, we can see spring come, and give way to summer. Some of the events in the 'outside world' can be referenced in the script. Going from February to June to Bilbo's return in the final episode should allow viewers to see that time is passing. Oh, and we can celebrate Estel's birthday on March 1st :) I'm not too concerned with showing time passing in the frame without resorting to awkward dialogue.

I'm more concerned with the passage of time in our main story, in ancient Arda. True, we have some milestones - the formation of Almaren (Episode 2). The lighting of the Lamps (Episode 5). The destruction of the Lamps (Episode 6). The lighting of the Trees (Episode 8).

But that's just the problem - thousands of years need to pass between these events, and it's going to feel like 'yesterday' unless we show dramatic changes in the landscape. I want to show the evolution of plant and animal life to show the passage of time in Season 1, and that's....going to be rather challenging.

Flora
Episode 1: Timeless Halls, Arda is seen only as a Vision in the Void, being giving actual creation at the very end.
Episode 2: Arda should begin...lifeless. We should see barren landscapes of rock and water. We see the green of algae and mosses, but nothing more substantial than this until we reach Almaren. There, we get ferns.
Episode 3: Melkor in the Timeless Halls/Void. He ends by entering Middle Earth, in a barren rocky place.
Episode 4: Almaren, pre-Lamps - Ferns and early (ie short) conifers, cycads and ginkos.
Episode 5: Almaren, pre-Lamps - see above
Episode 6: Almaren, Lamps - TALL conifers (forests) and, during the episode, the first flowers.
Episode 7: Valinor, pre-Trees - ???
Episode 8: Valinor in the Light of the Trees - We have grass now.

Episode 9-13: ??? How to show time passing now?

And Fauna I leave up for discussion, as we will need to make a lot of decisions there.
 
Haakon

Haakon

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We could try to show signs of erosion. Coastlines changing, rivers delving into rock, wind working on the sharp edges of mountain peaks. It will be subtle, though.
 
MithLuin

MithLuin

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Yes, that would be good - we should do that. It will be too subtle to be effective on its own, but it will be a good touch to add realism to this 'history'. Not sure how to achieve that, really, but maybe it's not as hard as I'm thinking. I think that matching up the episodes to 'where are we in geologic history' is maybe a bit too literal, but could be a good starting point for showing the natural progression of life.
 
Haakon

Haakon

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Also, if we have to show animal evolution of some kind. I think we will want to avoid doing some kind of "Tolkien's guide to Darwin", but the animals should be evolving to some degree to show, well basically showing life. We don't have to make big differences from one time to another, but maybe differences in colour, adding fur or something, I don't know.
 
MithLuin

MithLuin

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Haha, agreed, we aren't making a documentary on the development of life in the ancient world. My reason for bringing up geological time periods is that we can pick plants, animals and climates that more-or-less 'go together', and show a progression over time that fits/makes sense to modern viewers. For instance, we might have a natural inclination to have grasslands very early on, but they are actually a later development. And we might want to show flowers and trees immediately, but the first plants with roots should be ferns, not a coniferous forest or an apple orchard ;).

I was thinking that with Episode 2, we could start in the Devonian Period (416 to 359.2 million years ago): http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/devonian/devonian.php

Then in Episode 6, we would be in the Cretaceous (145.5 to 65.5 million years ago), which would coincide with flowering plants developing in the light of the Lamps. Also, conveniently, the major extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous would correspond with the destruction of the Lamps ;)
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mesozoic/cretaceous/cretaceous.php

Obviously, we don't have to strictly stick to this. I think we'll skip the Eocene all together, as it isn't really analogous to anything in our timeline (very warm, when we should be having more of a cold climate at that time). The 'beasts of horn and ivory' that will be marauding in post-Lamps Middle Earth could certainly still be dinosaurs, not mammals, if we wanted them to be. The work of the Valar is not actually constrained by real-life history, as we're going to have Morgoth inventing dragons at some point. But one thing I've always admired about Tolkien's work is how real the geography, weather, flora and fauna, phases of the moon, etc. are in his stories. People make fun of the unnatural mountain ranges around Mordor on the map, but you can use passages from the Hobbit to illustrate the various forms of erosion (as I may have done to an unsuspecting earth science class once upon a time). And, yes, okay, the Carrock being thrown by a giant may be a fanciful explanation for its origin, but that is called a 'glacial erratic:'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_erratic
 
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Haakon

Haakon

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Devonian, ok. And that will last until episode 5-6? Then the Carboniferous period begins? Sort of?
 
Haakon

Haakon

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Maybe we could "time" the destruction of the Lamps with the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse, which included a short ice age followed by a rapid change into warmer climate, probably caused by mass volcanism. This sounds like Melkor... Before the destruction of the Lamps, we will have a lot of ocean life and amphibians, but they will die in the Collapse or in the following climate change.
Of course, after that we must have a scenario where some life forms will be "Yavanna's" and some will be "Melkor's".

Then we could "time" the War with the cataclysmic end of the dinosaur era.
 
MithLuin

MithLuin

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I like the way you are thinking, but I'd much rather introduce flowering plants and grasslands before the end of season 1. The birth of the elves should happen much closer to 'modern' times on this scale, not at the same time as the ending of the Cretaceous. But of course, I'm flexible on setting these times. I do agree that the collapse of the Lamps should coincide with a mass extinction event - would the Cretaceous work for that? Or do you want to move it back to the Permian? Oromë should have his horse by the time we get to Episode 8, so I would want that to 'fit' with the geological era we are in, rather than being a complete anomaly.
 
Haakon

Haakon

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You are right. We must move faster. The Cretaceous extinction should "coincide" with the destruction of the Lamps.
 
MithLuin

MithLuin

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Oh, that does look like fun! And we could make it look almost however we wanted and still be 'accurate', since we only have the skull.

We have a few scenes where we need beasts - Oromë and Tulkas hunt something ominous in Episode 8 (tying in with the 'beasts of horn and ivory staining the land red with blood'). And then as you point out, Yavanna puts something to sleep right before the War (Episode 12). So...which extinction event would the War of the Powers coincide with?

Eocene (55.8 to 33.9 mya) is right after the Cretaceous extinction event, and the world was quite warm at that time. This critter is from the end of that time, and the large mammals are from cooler, more savannah-like environments (not tropical forests, which is what we had when the small, early mammals originated).
 
Haakon

Haakon

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Well... There's a time gap of more than fifty million years between our new pet Andrewsarchus and the modern horse, which arrives in the Pleistocene period.

I think that we perhaps should give ourselves the freedom to mix elements of different geological periods after the destruction of the Lamps/ the Cretaceous extinction, picking elements and putting them in an order that fits the dramatic development of the story.
 
Haakon

Haakon

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Tomorrow I'll have some time to look for pictures of nice (or not so nice) animals. Or perhaps you can find some.
 
MithLuin

MithLuin

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Yes - adhering too closely to the real history will hamper us in ways that are not desirable. I was looking for some broad strokes and overall progression to take us through this season...not so much worried about having everything on screen be exactly contemporaneous. Just...instead of having 'fantastic landscape with made up plants and animals' we can draw inspirations from earth's prehistoric life.
 
MithLuin

MithLuin

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Alternately, we could consider a massive volcanic eruption as part of our War:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oruanui_eruption

I suppose it's not too important to answer the question 'How long ago was the Third Age?' but we should probably pick a sufficiently distant time period to avoid overlapping with recorded history. The Younger Drayas was only 12,000 years ago, and with the 3rd Age being 3,000 year and the 2nd being over 2,000....well, we're cutting it close, is all.

Also, after the fall of the Lamps, things could progress at different rates in Valinor and Middle Earth - so having some more 'prehistoric' stuff running around in Middle Earth after the Valar move into more 'modern' times is a possibility - maybe a contrast we'd want to introduce. [Light of the Trees = magic, so....anything goes :p ]
 
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