Dune: Prophecy

 Set 10.000 years before the events of Dennis Villeneuve's Dune and Dune: Part Two, this series hit this year on HBO.

 

The 6 episode long series is based on the novels Great Schools of Dune, from which it draws material but actually takes place after the events in the book.

 

After the end of the Machine Wars, House Harkonnen has fallen from grace with the Imperial Throne, their only trade being whale fur from their icy homeplanet.  The sisters Valya and Tula Harkonnen join and order known as the Sisterhood, which trains Truthsayers for the Imperial Houses.  A young Valya uses her special commanding voice power to kill Dorothea, the successor of the recently died Mother Superior, and ascending to the highest rank of the Sisterhood.

 

Thirty years later she arranges for the Imperial Heiress, Ynez Corrino, to mary with 9-year old Pruwet Richese to stabilize both their bloodline and their control over Arrakis.  A soldier named Desmond Hart, survivor of an ambush at Arrakis and said to have been swallowed by Shai-Halud himself, arrives at the palace, causing the Turthsayer Kasha to experience disturbing visions.  Desmond, after meeting with the Emperor, uses a power to immolate both Pruwet in the Palace, as well as Kasha on the farr off homeworld of the Sisterhood.   

 

Valya, who has a hatred for the House Atreides for events in their youths, and her sister Tula killed a whole hunting party in the past in vengeance.  During that time, Valya had been introduced to Mother Superior's Raquella's greatest work, a thinking machine of forbidden machinery that stores a DNA database to influence the course of the future.  Add odds with Dorothea to become the next Mother Superior, she knows she must keep this hidden from the more zealous stretch of the order Dorothea leads.

 

As the students at the school all suffer the same nightmares, Valya becomes the Harkonnen's Truthsayer while Desmond pleads with the Emperor to remove the witches from the Landsraad all together, to no avail.  Keiran and the rebels want to assassinate the Landsraad, but Valya plans to save the Emperor and turn the Atreides over to rise the House standing again.  As Harrow Harkonnen is invited by various houses to induct the Emperor in the murder of Pruwet Richese, Desmond intervenes at the last moment revealing the whole plot before Valya's plan is set in motion and executing the conspirators during the Landsraad meeting using his special powers with Emperor Javicco's approval.

 

He makes Desmond his Bashar, the leader of an elite regiment to wade out any conspiritors to the throne.  Sister Francesca, the old lover of Javicco and mother of the prince Constantine, arrives to have her imprint on the Emperor turn the tables a bit to Valya's benefit once more.  In the school, Lila, who had went into coma during the Agony, is revived by Tula and shows the personality of Mother Raquella, her ancestor.  This allows her to isolate the virus that killed Pruwet and Kasha, and they start working on a way to counter the manner Desmond can activate this.  Keiran is uncovered by Constantine and taken into custody by Desmond, as Valya learns Desmond has Atreides and Harkonnen blood, being the result of Tula's romance with Orry Atreides during the hunting party.

 

Lila awakens once again, but it is Dorothea that has taken her over now, and she reveals the murder of herself and her followers all those years ago.  Tula has left for the Imperial Palace to try and stop Desmond, as Valya breaks out Ynez and Keiran from prison, to flee to Arrakis instead as the Emperor and Francesca are killed...

 

So not to bad a series at all, and it adds to the mystique of the movies.  It has been confrmed for a second season, so I guess we'll have to see how it goes from here with the Sisterhood in turmoil and the Empire without a crowned leader...