After top-heavy start, the series premiere of Dune: Prophecy gets on a nice moody roll

The first time I watched the series premiere of Dune: Prophecy, I was afraid I wasn't going to like the show. "The Hidden Hand" kicks off with a 15-minute lore dump, catching viewers up on decades of pre-history. We learn about the Machine Wars, which mankind barely won against the thinking machines that enslaved us; we banned all thinking machines afterwards. We learn about how orders like the Bene Gesserit sprung up to replace thinking machines; the Bene Gesserit sisters have trained to become human lie detectors, making themselves invaluable to the great houses of the Imperium. We learn about Raquella Berto-Anirul (Cathy Tyson), the first leader of the Bene Gesserit, who passed her skills onto the young Valya Hakonnen. We see scenes from a nasty power struggle that follows Raquella's death, and only then do we jump forward to catch up with Valya as an older, more experienced sister who's now running the order, played by Emily Watson.

There are some cool things in this opening stretch, like Valya using the Voice on her rival, but it flies by very fast; we don't have time to come to grips with not only what's happening, but what it means. Is this the way the whole show is going to be? I asked myself. Just worldbuilding and lore without character or context?

Happily, no. After this opening, "The Hidden Hand" gets down to the business of setting up an enveloping sci-fi show, building up its characters and conflicts one brick at a time. "The Hidden Hand" has a lot to set up — it can't quite match the series premiere of The Penguin, another new HBO show, for blood-pumping thrills — but it's rich and dense and leads to what I think is a strong series.

Let's get into the details. Beware SPOILERS below.

Dune: Prophecy review: Episode 1, "The Hidden Hand"

Dune: Prophecy is an ensemble show, but Valya Harkonnen and her sister Tula (Olivia Williams) are first among equals. We quickly get a sense of their relationship: Valya is the senior sister: tough, ambitious, and confident to the point of discomfort. Tula is as smart and wise as her sister but gentler, which to Valya might mean weaker. After decades spent building up the Bene Gesserit order, they each other almost too well.

It goes without saying that seasoned pros like Watson and Williams have no trouble mining this dynamic for drama; it's fun just to watch them work. And they share the wealth. Valya and Tula live on the planet Wallach IX, where they're training a new generation of sisters. We meet them glancingly: the abrasive Sister Jen (Faoileann Cunningham), the waifish Sister Lila (Chloe Lea), the stern Sister Theodosia (Jade Anouka)...they add a sense of lived-in-ness to the Bene Gesserit school, even if we don't know them very well yet. I also liked watching them undergo some of the Bene Gesserit training, like when they're paired up with strangers and tasks to determine whether or not they're lying.

Meanwhile, on the planet of Salusa Secundus, we meet the royal family in charge of ruling the known universe: Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong), his wife Empress Natalya (Jodhi May), their daughter Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) and the emperor's bastard son Constantine (Josh Heuston).

Again, this first epiosde spends a lot of time establishing their dynamics. The ambitious Princess Ynez is preparing to marry the young heir of the wealthy House Richese...like, the really young heir. He's 9, which is weird, but the emperor trusts the Bene Gesserit and the Bene Gesserit have determined that this match is what's best for the Imperium, so he goes along with it. (He's also getting a new fleet of ships from the head of House Richese as part of the bargain, which helps). Ynez is fine with it too; she's willing to marry a boy she has no romantic interest in so long as it puts her closer to power, although the hunky swordmaster Keiran Atreides (Chris Mason) might test that resolve. Ynez has a good relationship with Constantine, who is happy if his half-sister is happy, but her mother the empress doesn't trust that the Bene Gesserit have her daughter's best interests at heart.

The funny thing is that she's right, kind of; the Bene Gesserit have already made inroads with Ynez, who intends to travel to Wallach IX after the wedding and train to become a truth-sayer. It's all part of their master plan to get one of their own on the Golden Lion Throne. So Empress Natalya is correct to suspect the Bene Gesserit of having ulterior motives, but would Ynez not make a good empress, and do the Bene Gesserit not want what is best for the Imperium? Does it matter that the Bene Gesserit are manipulating events so long as they're manipulating them to good ends? The show doesn't offer easy answers to these questions, which helps these early sections feel tense despite the heavy narrative lift.

Enter the firestarter

Into this morass walks trouble in the form of Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), a decorated war hero who's served multiple tours on the desert planet of Arrakis, mining valuable spice for the emperor. Sidenote: it's interesting how this show spends almost no time on Arrakis, the planet most people think of when they hear the name Dune. If I can make another comparison to The Penguin, that show was so good that viewers didn't really miss Batman. Likewise, Dune: Prophecy is good enough that I never wished we were visiting Arrakis. The show made the smart choice to locate the drama elsewhere, which helps it establish its own identity.

Anyway, Desmond Hart brings the news that the noble houses ostensibly under the emperor's control may be ripping him off, stealing spice out from under him. It's hard to see what Desmond's game is at this point in the story; it's clear that he wants to get close to the emperor, but why? Is he a fanatic who believes in what he's saying, or does he want power for himself? Right now, the show keeps things mostly under the hood, with Fimmel turning in a controlled performance that doesn't make full use of his explosive charisma. But we can tell it's there, bubbling under the surface.

Whatever Desmond's motives for doing what he does, he does them all the way. During the reception to Ynez's wedding to the Richese boy, her young groom reveals that he's keeping a little robot lizard as a pet/toy. Thinking machines are strictly verboten, this creates quite the scandal. Later on, Desmond seeks out the kid and...uses some kind of mysterious power to burn him alive from the inside, which is a hell of a way to end an episode.

Desmond takes the commandments against thinking machines very seriously, or he's compelled by some outside force, or he's playing some other game...like I said, his motives are a little obscure at this point; he's a wild card here to kick the plot into gear. Even more mysteriously, his powers somehow reach across the void of space and also immolate the Bene Gesserit sister Kasha (Jihae), the personal truth-sayer to the emperor then convalescing on Wallach IX following a frightening dream that may be a premonition.

How did Desmond do that? What is his beef with the Bene Gesserit? The episode offers more questions than answers, but having seen a few more episodes after this, I don't think it intends to hold out on us. This premiere episode is big on setup and lore, but it has the know-how to make that stuff interesting.

(A few planets over from) Dune

HBO has working with a lot of big IP lately: House of the Dragon, The Last of Us, The Penguin, now Dune: Prophecy. Whenever a studio puts a big emphasis on franchises like this, I fear a Disney-esque rush to overexpose. But thus far it's done a good job of making shows that justify their own existence and pay due homoage to their source material, and Dune: Prophecy is no exception.

We may not spend much time on Arrakis in Dune: Prophecy, but the stark arcitechture on both Wallach IX and Salusa Secundus very much recalls the severity of Frank Herbert's books and Denis Villeneuve's films. The echo is also there in the focus on plots within plots and attempts by different factions to control the Imperium. Some critics have looked at this and compared it to Game of Thrones, by Dune fans know that Herbert was writing about this kind of thing long before George R.R. Martin. Dune: Prophecy is going back to the source.

I think "The Hidden Hand" is the weakest of the four episodes I've gotten to watch of the show so far, but I still had a good time with it. I think a lot of other fans will too.

Dune: Bullet Points

• Although I don't want to give away too much, the younger versions of Valya and Tula, played by Jessica Barden and Emma Canning, will return in future episodes. Watching the rushed opening sequence, I wonder if some of what appeared there was originally meant for a later episode, but then grafted onto this premiere when the editors realized we needed more information up front.
• At one point, Ynez and Constantine jet off to a nightclub on Salusa Secundus, dancing their troubles away in a haze of spice and sex. We don't ever really go to the club in the Dune books, so this was fun. It felt a bit more like Blade Runner than Dune, but I wasn't complaining.

Episode Grade: B

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