I read one online comment that compared the pacing in this season to that of a show that has just been axed by their studio. Which I agree with and it's sort of true in a way.
Squinty wrote:However people feel about the fast travel, it's necessary. It's a big, multi faceted story which needs to answer a lot of questions and resolve a lot of plotlines in a comparatively short time frame. I don't envy the writers at all.
What's the reasoning behind that?
Game Of Thrones director admits the show’s timeline is “straining plausibility”
I'm sure an army in that just pile up on top of dead bodies to fill in a giant canyon or something, dunno why the undead didn't do that.
I mentioned that the other day. Would have made such a cool as strawberry float scene! They did actually do that in a roundabout way because, when the Fellowship of the Harebrained Scheme fell back to slightly high ground, the walkers on the other side (the direction Jon was facing) did clambers upon one another to gain access to it.
Benjen has saved two of the most important characters to be fair. One who is his nephew from his big brother and one who he probably knows is his sister's kid. See my post on him being a ranger. His cameos are fine with me and hugely important. Plot armour or not. It's a reasonable bet that if Ned ever trusted anyone with the secret - it would be Benjen. That's probably a reason for him being so keen for Jon to go the wall and for Ned to be ok with it. Protecting him and giving him a purpose.
That Benjen has served the realm and House Stark even in undeath is actually pretty cool.
I'm sure an army in that just pile up on top of dead bodies to fill in a giant canyon or something, dunno why the undead didn't do that.
I mentioned that the other day. Would have made such a cool as strawberry float scene! They did actually do that in a roundabout way because, when the Fellowship of the Harebrained Scheme fell back to slightly high ground, the walkers on the other side (the direction Jon was facing) did clambers upon one another to gain access to it.
I'm sure an army in that just pile up on top of dead bodies to fill in a giant canyon or something, dunno why the undead didn't do that.
I mentioned that the other day. Would have made such a cool as strawberry float scene!
How deep was the water? There might not have been enough undead to fill it or the Night King might not have wanted to sacrifice a he portion of his army when he knew the water was going to freeze in a few hours.
It would have been a cool (pun intended) scene though.
The last two episodes dragged the series into unsatisfying, forced and silly plot strands. But the minute by minute direction and execution I still think is better than the first halves of series 5 and 6, which I thought were suddenly, noticeably worse than S1-S4. I'm thinking of Zombie-Benjy's initial and rubbish ITV-Drama level intro, Bron and Jamie's Sneak-and-Sandsnakes and so on.
In general, from S5 onwards, for every Hardhome and S6 Ep 9/10 (All directed by Sapochnik - Coincidence?) there's been a scene where an army of white-walkers walk into a tree-den in single file, only for a rubbish sci-fi-show reject like Leaf to make a random self-sacrifice that we don't care about (she did a Benjy before Benjy). Or a whole stadium's worth of Sons of the Harpy fail to kill a small group of people in the centre of it (they did a North Fellowship before the North Fellowship) and so on.
I'm not sure GoT's track record (from S5-onwards) with these big set-pieces is that consistent, often the visual direction and logic of space/place is out of whack.
Currently I think the plot and motives are the silliest and stupidest they've ever been. But I think the granular, dialogue-and-delivery of the non-set-piece scenes is still better than most of S5/S6. The Hound's scenes in the father/daughter house, the discussion about death being the greater enemy, the Olenna scene, Sam's 'I'm sick of reading about the achievements of greater men', even the (believable) growing affection between Danny and Jon (cringe-worthy 'Danny' nickname aside) is all better GoT character stuff than a lot of the prior two seasons, I reckon.
So it's a mixed bag.
And I've no idea why the Night King speared the baby dragon above when he could have just speared Drogon (and his riders) in front of him. So many failures of visual logic.
The latter actually makes sense if you think about it, if he'd speared Drogon the others would have had a better chance to get away since they were already mid-flight. By spearing Viserion first he got to have a crack at Drogon too as he took off.
They also needed to keep Drogon alive as he's the only dragon people can remember. They couldn't have spare dragon 1 and 2 left as that would just be silly.