Q: Could Amazon Have Covered 3,441 Years of Second Age History In 5 Seasons?
ANSWER: Yes, Amazon could easily have covered 3,000 years of history in 5 seasons. But would audiences have accepted such a rapid succession of vignette storylines? I think that’s the real question.
In many online discussions about the Amazon Prime show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, viewers (and pundits) often agree with showrunner Patrick McKay, who said “[the show] needs to move like a story. It needs to have breadth and depth. It needs to be emotional and have a continuity. That means you can’t stop for 200 years and have half your cast die every two episodes. It’s not practical or satisfying to the viewer.”
However, as James Rebhorn (playing Secretary of Defense Albert Nimziki) said in Independence Day, “That’s not entirely accurate.”
How do you profile a large diverse audience of millions of people, many of whom grew up watching anthology TV shows like The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, Creepshow, Night Gallery, The Outer Limits, Police Story, and many more?
Some of the most successful science fiction and fantasy, or action/adventure, TV shows in history have rotated new stars in every week. If you go back to the 1960s and 1950s, you’ll find audiences loved many anthology shows that most people today don’t remember (too young to have watched them, even in syndication).
The longest running science fiction show in history, Doctor Who, has had 13 leading actors (and more than 20 others who played episodic incarnations of the Doctor), covered billions of years of history, and took audiences to hundreds of worlds and cultures.
But as I asked above, would contemporary audiences have accepted a Middle-earth anthology show? I’m pretty sure I would be comfortable with the idea, but I can’t speak for millions of Amazon’s viewers.
On the other hand, one of the most popular science fiction shows to run on cable and syndication in the 21st century changed lead actors several times. I’m talking about Stargate SG-1. And then there are all the character changes in Game of Thrones.
I don’t think it’s fair for anyone to say no one could have put together an anthology-style Middle-earth show. But it would be unfair to say that such a show would (automatically) have been successful. Many anthology shows only lasted 1 or 2 seasons. Amazon committed to producing 5 seasons’ worth of episodes. What would they do if no one showed up to watch seasons 3 and 4?
I think it’s fair to say that an anthology would have been a bigger gamble than the format Amazon chose, where they have compressed the Second Age timeline and introduced both mortal and immortal characters who are expected to last through all 5 seasons.
Of course, nothing is guaranteed. Stargate: Atlantis was spun off Stargate SG-1 with Jessica Steen cast as Doctor Elizabeth Weir, who was to head up the Atlantis expedition. And yet, after an exciting 2-episode story with Steen, she was unceremoniously dropped (apparently because the producers feared she would become too pre-occupied with the Burning Man festival to stay committed to the show). So Torri Higginson was brought in to replace Jessica as Dr. Weir. And yet by the end of the 3rd season, Torri was written out of the show. She made a couple of guest appearances in season 4 but didn’t even make it to season 5.
Amanda Tapping (reprising her role as Colonel Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1) assumed command of Atlantis in the 4th season. But then she went off to launch a new show, Sanctuary, and so was replaced in the 5th season by Robert Picardo (reprising his SG-1 role as Richard Woolsey). By the time Stargate: Atlantis ended (due to the MGM bankruptcy), fans would have accepted Picardo or almost any capable actor in the role as Atlantis’ commander/administrator.
Showrunner Brad Wright is proud of the fact the show ran 5 seasons (and rightly so!) but fans were left wanting more. So the argument that audiences want characters to live on through every episode is logical but also ignores reality. Actors die, take new roles, or fail to find the right place in an ensemble cast (often through no fault of their own – Johnny Depp lost interest in 21 Jump Street after 2 seasons, although he only made his final appearance in the 4th season).
Whether Amazon could make an anthology-style show work is anyone’s guess. I’m sure many Tolkien fans have speculated about ways Amazon could have followed the Second Age timeline. I suggested a semi-anthological format in this 2019 article. That would have been like doing 50 years of Doctor Who in 5 years, though – so I’m not suggesting it would have been easy.
At the end of the day, we have the show we have and everyone who watches it needs to figure out if they’re going to love it, hate it, or merely follow it. Contrary to what some people have suggested, I don’t hate the show. While there have been moments where I threw my hands up in the air or rolled my eyes, there have also been many moments where I’ve thought, wow, that’s pretty cool. I like enough of the characters that I’ll continue watching the show. And I knew long ago they weren’t going to follow the books, so that’s not an issue for me, either. If it were, I wouldn’t bother watching the show.
A Word about My Health
I didn’t stop blogging about Middle-earth because of the Amazon production. I underwent a rushed medical procedure in May. I’m technically fully recovered now but the medicines the doctors put me on sap my energy. It’s not easy for me to write a lot of blog posts, and I write a weekly newsletter for Web marketers. My Middle-earth blogging schedule will be light for the rest of this year, I think.
I include this note here to assure people I won’t be publishing a long series of articles about the Amazon show. I might answer questions about the show in the future. In fact, such questions are perfectly valid for Tolkien fans and I won’t mind answering them (as best I can).
But I still have a queue of questions people have sent to me about the books, or movies, or whatever, that I’m working through. You’re always welcome to send me questions about anything related to Tolkien and Middle-earth, or to comment on one of the older blog posts. I love hearing from you all.
However, for now, I won’t be resuming my regular editorial pace for this site for the foreseeable future. I may edit some of the older articles, as that usually requires less time and energy.
See Also
How Faithful Is Amazon’s Rings of Power to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Books?
Is Amazon’s Lord of the Rings Based on The Silmarillion?
Which Lord of the Rings Characters Will Appear in Amazon Prime’s TV Show?
Some News and Rumor about Amazon’s LoTROnPrime Project
Will Amazon Create A New Canonical History for Middle-earth?
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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
I’m glad to hear that you’re taking care of your health, Michael. Best wishes.
On a lighter note, I like the idea of a show that focuses on the voyages of Aldarion. Though it would have been funny if season one of RoP had been nothing but The Mariner’s Wife, just to see the fan’s reactions.
As a fan of Tolkien I would certainly accept it far more than what we actually got in the show! 🙂 And I don’t care what others would think, Mariner’s Wife has all the best elements that could make it a proper family drama set in Numenor which in maturity of themes (though quite different) would rival Game of Thrones in it’s best years :).
And for Michael best wishes! Hope you’re feeling well!
Best wishes on the health stuff, its good to see you posting again.
To me this is very much a “yes, but” question too. I think that if you actually sit down with the Tale of Years for the Second Age in front of you, you’ll see that there’s really only two shorter time periods that need covering (maybe a third at a stretch).
The first is Annatar in Eregion, the Rings, the War of the Elves and Sauron, finishing with the Intervention of the Númenoreans.
Then you do a time-jump to the last days of Tar Palantir and everything that follows.
(The third might be from the Aldarion and Erendis time, the first rumours of the shadow, etc, but that could be reasonably argued to be prologue material.)
So the answer is more along the lines that they didn’t actually need to do a 3.4k year series because there’s really only two main times of interest. The really interesting thing is that there’s also a lot of common characters between the two times: the Elves, Sauron of course, and one could easily set up and carry forward the Men who become Ringwraiths from the first to the second, all of which invalidates Amazon’s main objection.
I think the real reason to not do it is simpler; as we saw with Game of Thrones, certain sections of modern viewing audiences have apparently forgotten about “don’t tell me, show me”. The biggest example of this was the complaints of “teleporting”. It’s actually interesting to re-watch GoT, look at all of the “teleporting” cases, and ask yourself if each could be explained by a caption at the bottom of the screen saying “3 (or whatever) weeks later”. The percentage is very very high. And the reason for not having such a caption is “don’t tell me, show me”, of course, but sometimes maybe people need to be told.
I’m not saying that was a reason that even occurred to Amazon, but it sure did occur to me.
Voila! I always knew that fans would sometimes do better job than these supposed ‘professional’ writers, but that’s the consequence of having two inexperienced showrunners who didn’t even get a proper project of their own for the last 10 years or so! Whose only writing credit was unreleased version of script for a Star Trek reboot movie! Hah, even those writers so lauded for their previous work did a lousy job!
1. Health first. Glad you’re on the mend.
2. Yes. They could have. I’m not a writer, but I can see a few ways to do it easily:
One is this: Roll out the Tale of Years, tick marks for all the stated events, etc. Elrond becomes your framing device – we know he’s one of the few whose timeline extends through both ends of the SA. Is he sitting around telling a story? Maybe. Probably too clunky. But he’s your signposts. Obviously the other Elves are present and barring death, stick through the whole production.
And you wouldn’t do this concept in a straight linear fashion. Your parts where Men (and Dwarves) are involved don’t have to end halfway through Season 2 just because that character is mortal – they can be shown in flashbacks/non-linearly. Good writers can create scenes that show the immensity of the years piling up as Elven lords meet/accept the fealty of the great great grandson of Dagrod, just like they did with Dagrod himself 250 years before – to them, it’s last week.
You have Umbar and license to do almost anything with it, and at least 3 (if not all 9) future Nazgul to tease and then follow as they grow and fall in later seasons.
You have Numenor and its exploits. You have Lorien, etc. This concept is full of locations to bounce around in.
And you can do all this without contradicting any canon or lore.
-dale
Hope your health continues to improve. I had major surgery three years ago and recovery seemed to take forever (although it was while I couldn’t do much that I discovered this site, so not all bad).
As I’m not an Amazon subscriber I probably won’t get to see the Rings of Power, but for what it’s worth I would say that they have one big advantage in that the Second Age is almost a blank slate, at least in the texts to which the makers have the rights. They could create a back story for several important though sketchy, characters, such as Pharazon, Anarion, and Celebrian. Of course, that could backfire as well as being an advantage.
It doesn’t need to have time skips every few episodes. Each season should have covered one part of the Second Age. The immortal characters and their long-running plots would carry on between seasons, but there would be new mortal characters and a new plot for them each season.
Always always health first. This website and its contributors greatly assisted me in recovering from a stroke 22 months ago so take care of yourself Michael.
A couple of weeks removed from the TLOTR: The Rings Of Power and I still find myself with a “whelmed” feeling which is fine considering after the first three episodes I was definitely “underwhelmed”. Not a fan of the time compression! Somehow Celebrimbor and Pharazon alive at the same time seems wrong. I am of the mind that, creatively, all 3,441 years of the Second Age could have been covered in a multi-season story. It would certainly have been a challenge. I imagine a Season 1 revolving around the the Edain gathering to sail to Numenor, choosing Elros as their king over some other claimants as well conflict with an eastern-retreating Sauron to spice up some conflict. I don’t know how many seasons are planned but I can see dealing with the return of Numenor to Middle Earth, the War of the Elves and Sauron, Sauron’s return and conflict with Numenor, Sauron’s capture and rise in Numenor and finish off with the island’s sinkign and the War of the Last Alliance. Anyway I am giving the series a chance to see where they go.
Again Michael take care of yourself and drop in once and awhile.
You get the story the writer wants to tell. So I strive to not judge writers by the story they want to tell.
That said, the rationalizations they offer for the time compression do ring a bit hollow. One of the most successful science fiction shows of the 1990s was Quantum Leap – talk about characters not lasting through more than 1 episode. I think there were only 2 permanent cast members – Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell.
Maybe pointing that out only adds fuel to the fires raging through “fandom”, wanting to burn this show. But people should also remember that at most only about 12-13 million people have even watched it. I doubt this show will ever have the audience that the movies or the books do.
I hope you’re feeling better, Michael, and continue recovering well. I love your articles, you have really great insights.
While I was glad that ROP wasn’t an abomination like Amazon’s Wheel of Time series, I felt like the writers made the same types of mistakes: failure to identify the really important pieces of the story – the connective “deep” lore – and really explore it. That made much of the story ring hollow for me, which is the opposite effect of so much of Tolkien’s actual work.
They could have done so much with the breaking at the end of the first age, the kinslayings, the futility at the loss of the Silmarils in the end… but instead, the writers skipped over all of the trauma and tragedy that would have been carried into the second age entirely. It would have given the story DEPTH.
The other mistake, same as WOT, was that the writers failed to properly capture each character’s motivation. They skipped the Annatar narrative entirely, along with his desire to subvert the elves while gaining the power of absolute order. They completely misread Galadriel’s guiding motivation: to remain in Middle Earth in order set up her own dominion. And Pharazon, Celebrimbor and Gil Galad? They felt “smaller” to me than in the books, even with the sparseness of the written material. They were not the “larger than life” characters they should have been. The feeling was missing.
Instead, the ROP writers gave us some new characters set in the second age of Middle Earth. Was that a reasonable addition? Of course it was. But those characters weren’t compelling enough to justify skipping all of the other rich threads of the 2nd age. It was not a fair exchange.
Is anyone else seeing this the same way, or is it just me?