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Hugh Cook's epic CHRONICLES OF AN AGE OF DARKNESS series returns to print

In unexpectedly splendid news, Hugh Cook's idiosyncratic, funny and genuinely inventive Chronicles of an Age of Darkness series, all ten volumes, has been brought back into print. Fans at the r/hughcook subreddit acquired the rights to the series, formed Zenphos Press and have brought the series back as both ebook and print editions.

Hugh Cook was born in 1956 in Billericay, England, but grew up after the age of six in Kiribati. He then moved to New Zealand, where he served in the military. He began writing fiction in the 1970s, publishing his first novel, Plague Summer in 1980. In 1986 he began the Chronicles of an Age of Darkness fantasy series, planned to run to twenty volumes, with two series of equal size, Chronicles of an Age of Wrath and Chronicles of an Age of Heroes, to follow. The series was cancelled after just ten volumes due to disappointing sales.

In 1997 he moved to Yokohama, Japan, and worked on additional books, short stories and poetry. He published the Oceans of Light fantasy trilogy and the standalones To Find and Wake the Dreameri and Bamboo Horses. After suffering a bout of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, he wrote a candid memoir about the experience, Cancer Patient (2005). Unfortunately, the disease returned and he passed away in 2008.

Discussion of his fantasy masterwork was kept alive by both ardent fans and also a new generation of fantasy writes who cited Cook as an inspiration. China Mieville, leading doyen of the New Weird fantasy movement, wrote an introduction for a reprint of the fourth volume in the series, The Walrus and the Warwolf (which Scott Lynch once cited as the greatest title for a fantasy novel of all time). Adrian Tchaikovsky has also revealed himself to be a major fan, penning introductions for two of the books in this reprint run.

A decade ago, I summed up the series in its entry in my History of Fantasy project thusly:

Few could accuse New Zealand novelist Hugh Cook of lacking vision. In 1986 he published The Wizards and the Warriors, the first novel in a series he called Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. Cook's plan was for this series to run to twenty volumes, to be followed by two series of equal length, Chronicles of an Age of Wrath and Chronicles of an Age of Heroes. The sixty-book plan was overly ambitious despite Cook's high speed of output, but ultimately he only finished the first half of the first series (ten novels in six years) before it was halted due to lack of sales.

Unusually, the series was not one massive epic story. Instead, it was more episodic with some novels taking place simultaneously alongside others, with events varying depending on who was witnessing or instigating them. The books used unreliable narrators and a prose style that could vary significantly from volume to volume. The books also eschewed a lot of epic fantasy tropes, with the books not following a set chronology and not having a central hero or villain. The books featured whimsical humour and influences from sword and sorcery as well as planetary romance. Some books were reminiscent of the later New Weird movement (Adrian Tchaikovsky, China Mieville and Scott Lynch are big fans). Some books were more like roleplaying games, with Paizo Publishing reprinting one of the volumes, The Walrus and the Warwolf, as part of its Planet Stories line.

After the series concluded (prematurely) Cook published several more books before sadly passing away in 2008 from cancer. His massive mega-series was never finished, but its breadth, vision and general batshit insanity remain intriguing (and echoes, intended or not, of the tonal variations, dark humour and continent-skipping structure can be found in Steven Erikson's Malazan novels).

All ten books in the series are now back in print and available from the local Amazon of your choice and nationality:

1. The Wizards and the Warriors (1986)
2. The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (1987)
3. The Women and the Warlords (1987)
4. The Walrus and the Warwolf (1988)
5. The Wicked and the Witless (1989)
6. The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers (1990)
7. The Wazir and the Witch (1990)
8. The Werewolf and the Wormlord (1991)
9. The Worshippers and the Way (1992)
10. The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster (1992)

Splendid news indeed.

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Dispatch

Robert Robertson III is the third person in his family to take on the persona of "Mecha Man," using a powerful mech suit to fight crime. During one particularly tricky battle, he suffers a crippling defeat to the evil Shroud. His suit is put out of commission, and he is instead recruited to work for the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN) as a dispatcher, using his knowledge of superhero tactics to help the dysfunctional guys and gals of Z-Team work better together. But Robert is also working hard to repair his mech suit and bring Shroud to justice, once and for all.

Twenty-two years ago, veterans of the LucasArts adventure game team regrouped to found Telltale Games, a company dedicated to furthering the adventure game genre, a genre rooted in good writing and storytelling. Thanks to the massive success of their 2012 Walking Dead game, Telltale went on to enjoy a prolonged period of success. Unfortunately, the company ended up over-exploiting their style of gameplay with increasingly limited innovation, and the company almost completely fell apart as disillusioned developers left. One such group of devs founded AdHoc Studio to carry on the Telltale style of gameplay, but also being bolder in how they would approach the genre.

Their first game, Dispatch, has been a deserved, high-profile success. The premise is simple: an ex-hero becomes a dispatcher, basically a 911 (or 999, in the UK) call receiver who determines what help to send. There's a lot of different, competing priorities, forcing the player to make hard choices when they can't solve every single problem simultaneously. This premise also gives the game an interesting structure we haven't quite seen before: a key gameplay loop as well as the interactive storytelling the team had perfected back in the Telltale days.

The game is divided into eight episodes, with each episode usually spanning a day and a night. Each episode has lengthy, high-quality, professionally-animated sequences that look as good as any modern 2D cartoon, as well as gameplay sequences using a map of the area showing where crimes are taking place and what heroes are available to deal with them. The gameplay sequences are relatively basic, but do increase in complexity as the game goes on, with Robert having to not only send heroes to trouble spots but sometimes has to more directly intervene to provide assistance through hacking surveillance networks or disabling the bad guys' tech. As the game goes on, the roster of heroes changes (sometimes due to Robert's actions, such as deciding which under-performing heroes to fire or which potentially useful ones to recruit), and their suite of skills and synergies with other heroes accordingly.

This core gameplay loop is interesting, but perhaps a little under-developed. It feels like you could flesh out these mechanics and make a more in-depth and interesting game entirely out of this stuff, but they wanted to retain their traditional adventure format as well. This requires taking part in conversations, choosing replies which may or may not make characters feel well-disposed towards you, navigating possible romances and trying to make the best calls to bring the team together, rather than driving them apart.

The episodic structure gives the game a pacy feel, with each episode presented as an episode of a TV series, roughly an hour long (a bit more for the finale), with a different story and character focus in each episode whilst also furthering the overall story arc. Plot and backstory revelations follow at a steady beat, with some fun twists to the story and characters. The writing is humorous without being too contrived, and the humour falling on the slightly darker edge of the spectrum is refreshing. There's some smart writing choices, and the old Telltale problem of the game not fully responding too all of your choices granularly is there but not as big an issue. There are several major choices you can make resulting in different endings, different rosters of heroes and even different missions appearing as the game goes along. Voice acting is excellent throughout, as I think is now widely-known, and at a bit under nine hours, the game has a decent length without outstaying its welcome, but is short enough to welcome replays to see other story outcomes.

This is an adventure game where the story is the main focus, rather than the city crime-solving gameplay, and sometimes the latter has a tendency to end just as it's getting interesting, which can grate a little. The game could also perhaps flesh out the team a bit more. As it stands, it feels like three or four of the characters get a ton of development, two or three more get a moderate amount and the rest can feel a little under-used.

But it's hard to criticise Dispatch (****) too much. The game is fun, funny, well-written, well-acted and has a lot of heart, even if it's not a game you're going to be sinking hundreds of hours into. The game is available now on just about every platform going.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Brandon Sanderson's COSMERE setting picked up for adaptation by Apple TV

Apple TV+ has closed an "unprecedented" deal to bring the Cosmere universe from American fantasy author Brandon Sanderson to the screen. Apple has apparently prioritised the deal and is planning to develop the Mistborn sequence for film and the Stormlight Archive series for television.

Sanderson's Cosmere setting is the home of almost all of his adult, original fantasy fiction. So far he has published seven novels in the Mistborn sequence (with at least six more planned), five in the Stormlight Archive series (with five more planned), and one each in the Elantris and Warbreaker series. He has also released the White Sand graphic novel trilogy in the setting, and the stand-alone novels The Sunlit Man, Isles of the Emberdark, Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. A new standalone Cosmere novel, The Fires of December, will be published this year, and a further Mistborn trilogy is planned for release in 2028-30, before he resumes work on the Stormlight Archive. He also has a further trilogy, called Dragonsteel, planned, which will expand on the setting's expansive backstory. In addition to this he has a short story collection in the setting, Arcanum Unbounded, and several short stories and novellas published since. Sanderson has sold over 50 million copies of his books, and raised almost $100 million in crowdfunding projects related to the Cosmere setting, including the most successful project in Kickstarter history.

The Cosmere setting incorporates numerous planets, each with its own extensive worldbuilding, history, cast of characters and different magic system. These worlds are home to different types of magic, derived from different "shards." In the distant past, all the shards were united as one god or entity, but these were shattered by a catastrophic event. The various books explore what happens when the shards are destroyed or gain new owners, who become gods at the expense of their own souls.

The setting has been optioned for both film and television before, but budgetary concerns seem to have stymied producers on how to get them on screen. Sanderson also seemed to become wary of adaptations after working as an advisor on Amazon's Wheel of Time TV series (Sanderson co-wrote the final three novels in the Wheel of Time series after the original author Robert Jordan passed away, using Jordan's notes and outlines). Sanderson felt that the Wheel of Time TV series made too many unnecessary changes to Jordan's source material and lost a lot of the feel in the story in the process.

Sanderson's deal with Apple suggests he will be more closely involved in the process, and will have more approval over scripts and writing choices. He may also write some scripts himself, and will executive produce all the projects. This level of control is unusual, to say the least.

Apple have already put The Stormlight Archive into development, assigning production company Blue Marble (run by Theresa Kang) to make the project a priority. However, I'd be surprised to see anything on-screen this side of 2028 or, more likely, 2029.

RIP Jean Rabe

News has sadly broken that fantasy author and tabletop RPG legend Jean Rabe has passed away at the age of 68. She is best-known for her contributions to the Dragonlance fantasy setting and Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.

Born in Ottawa, Illinois, Rabe was a keen gamer as a child, starting with checkers and chess and moving up to wargames as a teenager. In 1974 she was introduced to the newly-launched Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. She worked in journalism through the 1980s before leaving the field to join TSR, the publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, in 1987.

At TSR she ran the RPGA Network, wrote articles for Dragon Magazine and penned novels and adventure modules for D&D and Gamma World. She became particularly noted for her contributions to the Dragonlance series. In 1996 she penned the books marking the start of the Dragonlance Fifth Age gaming era.

She also edited a BattleTech magazine, MechForce Quarterly, worked for Imperium Games and wrote fiction in other D&D settings as well as the Star Wars and Shadowrun universes. In 2005 she served as a juror for the Andre Norton Award for YA Fiction; she knew Norton and had co-written multiple works with her. Rabe also was the business manager and editor of the SFWA Bulletin until 2013.

After a hiatus in the early 2010s, Rabe returned to writing and publishing with the successful Piper Blackwell Mysteries urban fantasy series, which extended to six novels published from 2018 to 2023. Her last novel was The Love-Haight Case Files, cowritten with Donald J. Bingle, published in 2024.

Rabe's Dragonlance novels include the Dragons of a New Age trilogy, Maquesta Kar-Thon (with Tina Daniell), the Dhamon Saga and The Stonetellers series. She also wrote the Forgotten Realms novel Red Magic, three Endless Quest novels, the Shadowrun novel Aftershock, and multiple books with Andre Norton, including Return to Quag Keep, a sequel to the very first D&D-based work of fiction.

Rabe was also a prolific editor, editing sixteen anthologies from 2001 to 2013, mostly for DAW.

As well as gaming and journalism, Rabe was a keen animal-lover. She is survived by her husband Bruce Rabe. She will be very much missed.

BLAKE'S 7 reboot in development

It's that time of the decade when somebody decides to try to resurrect classic dystopian British space opera Blake's 7. Blake's 7 ran for four seasons and 52 episodes from 1978 to 1981 and attracted a cult fanbase and critical acclaim for its dark themes, ruthlessness to characters and endlessly quotable dialogue. The show has recently been reissued in a remastered format on Blu-Ray, with new visual effects.

Since the show ended - on a famously apocalyptic note - various attempts have been made to relaunch the show. James Bond director Martin Campbell helmed an attempt in 2013, though that petered out. Based on their plot synopsis (which turned Blake from an engineer into a generic soldier), it appears they didn't entirely "get" the property in the first place, so that may have been for the best.

This new attempt is being led by Peter Hoar, best-known for directing the Last of Us episode Long, Long Time, and producers Matthew Bouch and Jason Haigh-Ellery. They have set up a new company Multitude Productions to get various projects onto the screen. Intriguingly, they suggest they are targeting a low-budget model to attract UK and European funding, and also want to dispense with the showrunner model, which they feel has not worked as well in UK television production as it has in American.

Multitude plan to develop some scripts and then seek international partners. However, Hoar in particular is keen to see the show air on the BBC in the UK, as the original did.

The project is in its very early stages.

Next MALAZAN novel, LEGACIES OF BETRAYAL, slated for October 2026 release

Legacies of Betrayal, the third Tales of Witness book in the Malazan world by Steven Erikson, has received a tentative release date of 1 October 2026. The book is the second half of No Life Forsaken, the two books being planned as one novel and then split in two for length when Erikson went long (not an uncommon occurrence).

Erikson is currently writing the final Kharkanas Trilogy novel, Walk in Shadow, which he hopes to finish this year before writing the fourth and final Witness book.

Meanwhile, Erikson's collaborator Ian Cameron Esslemont is writing the fifth Path to Ascendancy prequel novel in the same world, The Last Guardian, which does not have a release date as yet.

A Preview of A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS

On Friday night, I attended the London premiere of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the latest foray into the Known World of Westeros and Essos. The six-part show starts airing tonight in the United States and tomorrow in much of the rest of the world.

This six-part series adapts George R.R. Martin's 1998 novella The Hedge Knight. Like the novella it sees the newly-dubbed hedge knight Ser Duncan the Tall seek to make his name and fortune at the great tourney at Ashford Meadow, eighty-nine years before the events of Game of Thrones. Dunk runs into problems proving his identity and legitimacy to take part in the tourney, but taking on an unusually resourceful squire, Egg, soon sees him succeed in his mission. Unfortunately, Dunk earns the ire of a powerful foe and has to fight for his honour and even his life in a brutal melee.

Martin would follow up the novella with The Sworn Sword (2002) and The Mystery Knight (2010) (all three collected in 2015's A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), eventually mooting anything from nine to twelve stories in total that would follow the life stories of Dunk and Egg across the next fifty-one years, through tumultuous years in the Seven Kingdoms as the authority of the now-dragon-less Targaryens is increasingly tested.

At the premiere we saw the first two episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and it was interesting to note that the first season of the show is no less than the eleventh season of television set in Westeros. However, the show still manages to feel fresh. The tone is a little lighter than the two preceding series and there is no immediately foreboding feeling of full-scale civil war about to erupt. The entire season takes place in a field and the neighbouring castle (though some flashbacks do take us to King's Landing), and if the show is cheaper than House of the Dragon and the later seasons of Thrones, it's very clearly still not cheap. There are some superbly-staged jousts and melee scenes, crowd scenes with hundreds of people in shot at once, and a lot of spectacular location footage. Some may bemoan a lack of hardcore dragon action, but there's still a lot of visual spectacle.

The casting is exceptional, with Peter Claffey as Ser Duncan the Tall and Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg both being incredible finds. Claffey embodies Dunk's mixture of resolve and naivete to perfection, and Ansell is as impressive a find as Maisie Williams was for Arya fifteen years ago. Bertie Carvel is outstanding as Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen, Daniel Ings is a very different Lyonel Baratheon from the book but a compelling performer, and Youssef Kerkour excels in a small role as the blacksmith Steely Pate.

One criticism I do have is that the pacing of the show can be best described as "relaxed." After two full episodes we still hadn't reached the event that kicks the plot of the novella properly in motion (Prince Aerion's disagreement with a performer over a story about his family). Some of the new scenes introduced to expand the story are excellent, such as more action for Lyonel Baratheon, but others feel a bit overdone. A new subplot about Dunk seeking advice from some camp followers who feel sorry for him feels weird, at best. Taking a 100-ish page novella and turning it into six episodes of TV (even six episodes that are somewhat shorter than the Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon norm) has required a lot of invention and for some people maybe too much invention; how the remaining four episodes handle this remain to be seen.

The more-humorous tone is also an interesting choice. There are a couple of moments that veer from dark comedy or character humour into outright slapstick, and one scene that makes use of the stirringly epic score of Game of Thrones to comic effect only to undercut it in the basest way possible, is both funny but borders on the too much side of things. Again, seeing how the rest of the season handles this will be interesting.

Ultimately, I think that the first two episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are a promising start. The production values, acting, sets and action setpieces are outstanding, and after House of the Dragon's increasingly wild swings from the source material, it's a refreshing relief to find a lot of scenes here translated 1:1 from the book to the screen, complete with Martin's laser-sharp characterisation and dialogue. Some of the new scenes to fill out the runtime are well-judged and handled, a few less so, but not disastrously. The more humorous tone starts off promisingly but by the end of the second episode, I was ready for them to reign it in a bit.

Kathleen Kennedy steps down as the boss of Lucasfilm

After fourteen years, Kathleen Kennedy has stepped down as the head of Lucasfilm, passing the reigns to Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan.

Kennedy has had a storied career in Hollywood, which began in the late 1970s working in TV before becoming John Milius's assistant. Through Milius she met Steven Spielberg, who employed her as a secretary but was impressed by her grasp of storytelling. She gradually got bigger roles, going from assistant on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) to producer on E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). She co-founded Amblin Entertainment with Spielberg and her future husband Frank Marshall in 1982.

She worked closely with Spielberg on most of his movies, and some with husband Marshall. In early 2012 she was recruited by George Lucas to become co-chair of Lucasfilm Ltd. when it was still an independent company. On 30 October that year, Lucas sold the company to Disney and retired, with Kennedy becoming President.

Charged with succeeding George Lucas and revitalising the success of Star Wars, her approach of identifying talented film-makers and giving them creative freedom initially achieved success: The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017) were smash hits at the box office (the former still being the biggest movie ever at the American box office), and the former received critical acclaim (despite concerns over its conservative approach to the Star Wars greatest hits). The Last Jedi took much bigger creative swings but only achieved mixed critical success, becoming the most divisive of all Star Wars films. Rogue One (2016) was a success on both fronts, and the first live-action Star Wars TV series, The Mandalorian (2019 - present) was also a hit on her watch and helped launch the Disney+ streaming service to great success.

Unfortunately, The Rise of Skywalker (2019) received a critical drubbing and the film only achieved half the box office of The Force Awakens. Even worse, Solo (2018) had already become the first Star Wars movie to lose money at the box office. TV shows The Book of Boba Fett (2021), Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) and The Acolyte (2024) also all underwhelmed. Outside of Star Wars, other Lucasfilm properties stumbled: the TV series Willow (2022) was written off as a tax exercise and removed from Disney+ altogether just a few weeks after release, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) underwhelmed at the box office, despite a reasonable critical reception.

To what degree Kennedy should be blamed for these failures remains a fierce point of contention among fans, with it being pointed out that changes in leadership at Disney with wildly different demands for the amount of content caused problems for not just Lucasfilm but also Marvel. More recent Star Wars projects have also been more successful: Andor (2022-25) has been critically lauded as the best Star Wars work of all time in some quarters, whilst Skeleton Crew (2024) was also warmly received critically, though its viewership on Disney+ was not strong (but at least it hasn't been removed from it).

Kennedy confirmed the transition period actually began two years ago, with the plan being to split her role in two: Dave Filoni will take over creative control of the franchise and Lynwen Brennan, formerly of ILM, will handle business affairs. Filoni started work on Star Wars on the Clone Wars TV show (2008-14, 2020) and Star Wars: Rebels (2014-18) before moving over to live-action as a writer, producer (and sometimes actor) on The Mandalorian.

Kennedy also has a foot in the door on forthcoming projects: she is a producer on The Mandalorian & Grogu, a movie spin-off from The Mandalorian due out this May, and Star Wars: Starfighter, due in 2027.

During her departure interview with Deadline, Kennedy also gave a brief update on other percolating projects. James Mangold's is on hold, apparently taking a wild swing with the Star Wars universe. His script is rumoured to be the Jedi origin story, set tens of thousands of years before the rest of the franchise. Taika Waititi has submitted a comedic script but the greenlight has not been given. Donald Glover has also submitted a script, and Steve Soderbergh and Adam Driver are pushing a script written by Scott Burns expanding on Kylo Ren, although this project is believed to be on hold. Simon Kinberg's project is still in active development, with a recent total rewrite of the treatment. More intriguingly, Kennedy confirmed that conversations have happened with David Fincher and Vince Gilligan over them doing takes on the franchise.

Pluribus: Season 1

The entire world has changed. Every human being has become joined into a hive mind, the result of an alien signal received from a distant star system. Almost every human being. Thirteen people have found themselves naturally immune to the process, including Carol Sturka, a Romantasy author living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The joined seem to be happy with their lot: every war in the world has ended and a lot of pain and hardship has gone with it. But this is at the cost of individuality and freedom. Aware that the joined are trying to find a way to convert her and the remaining immune, Carol sets out on an ambitious plan: to find a way of reversing the process and saving humanity. She just doesn't know where to start.

Back the 1990s, Vince Gilligan was a staff writer on The X-Files, writing many of that show's best and most-acclaimed episodes. In 2008 he created Breaking Bad, the story of a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin by oppressive American healthcare costs. He followed that up with Better Call Saul, a prequel/interquel/sequel, that expanded on the character of Jimmy McGill, who became noted criminal lawyer Saul Goodman, which many critics rated as being even better than its parent show. That project also introduced Gilligan to actress Rhea Seehorn, whose quiet but powerful performance as Kim Wexler was astounding. Seehorn and Gilligan have now re-teamed for Pluribus, a distinctly different kind of show.

The genre here is science fiction: an alien message from 600 light years away has been decoded by secret government researchers and found to include the ingredients for genetic material. This material is basically a virus that rewires humans into a single entity, a hive mind formed by the life experience of all almost-eight billion people on the planet. The logical ramifications of this idea are entertainingly explored: any single person on the planet can do anything that any other human being can do, instantly. A fast food server can fly the most complex aircraft on the planet, a school gym teacher can perform brain surgery at the very highest level achievable. Gilligan is a master of detail, the slow burn and thinking through the logical ramifications of situations, and employs that here to impressive effect.

Carol's continuing immunity to the alien virus is basically a chaos grenade that the hive mind struggles to deal with. The thirteen immune people can still impact the infected: displays of anger or physical violence towards the infected can send them into a fit, so the infected cannot themselves use violence or force to cajole the immune into cooperation, though they claim not to be able to do so anyway due to inherent pacificism. Testing the limits of what the infected can and cannot do becomes an interest of Carol's, as she looks for a way of freeing people from the virus, or even if the individuals still exist on that level.

It's richly interesting stuff, but it feels like the sort of premise you can explore in a novel better than in a TV show. The first episode, depicting the total chaos of the virus taking over and Carol's bewilderment at not knowing what the hell is going on, is dynamic and action-driven, with phenomenal performances and setpieces. The next couple of episodes, which explore the ramifications of both the hive mind's arrival and how Carol can coexist with it, as well as the identities of the other dozen uninfected and what their stories are (and how some have a radically different view of what the joined are than Carol does, with some subtle nods at the American mindset versus that of other cultures), keep up the pace.

Things flag somewhat mid-season and one detects a note of wheel-spinning as the show indulges in flashbacks and plot misdirections: one massive "gotcha!" plot revelation turns out to not be a big deal after all. Things ramp up towards the end as we make more discoveries about the hive mind and what its ultimate goal might now be (it turns out that Carol's ability to strike a good deal with every single lawyer on Earth on the opposite side might be a tad optimistic), and Carol discovers that one of the other uninfected might be even more driven and ruthless in freeing the people than she is. These are strong story elements but seemingly exist only to ramp up to an inevitable cliffhanger ending.

Pluribus's reception has thus been divisive due to its love of the slow burn. In an age of "second screen" viewing, seeing a show happy to take its foot off the gas and just vibe at times with some great cinematography of the New Mexico desert or the jungles of the Darien Gap can be refreshing. But sometimes you feel maybe the show needs to get a move on. When Breaking Bad decided to have a slow episode, it could still use its time to explore character or the details of Walter's drug operation or something else. One of the best-rated episodes of the show is a budget-saving piece of filler featuring Walter and Jesse battling a persistent fly. Pluribus can't quite do this because there are effectively now only fourteen characters alive (the thirteen unjoined plus the hive mind), so you can't bring in a guest character or some newcomers to the regular cast to keep things fresh.

Still, the problem can be a little overblown. The season is only nine episodes long (it might have been even better at seven or eight, a rare thing to say these days), the episodes aren't hugely long (many clock in at around the 40-minute mark) and the show does have superb cinematography, location filming and acting. Rhea Seehorn is absolutely nuclear-hot and we can hope this show gets her the awards she inexplicably missed out on for Better Call Saul, and the rest of the cast is excellent, especially those playing the infected, who all effectively have to play the exact same character expressing itself through different bodies. The show also works well on a thematic level by not lingering on any theme like a TED Talk. There are ideas swirling around here about interconnectedness, loneliness and the morality of enforcing any one ideology on anyone else. So far the show has presented being joined as a bad thing, forced on people against their will, and the desire of the hive mind to add Carol is wrong, but we so far haven't had the other side of the argument: are the people in the hive mind genuinely happier and better off, and would suffer at being separated? Is Pluribus a four-season exploration of the ideas presented in the Star Trek: Voyager episode Tuvix? This remains to be seen.

The first season of Pluribus (****) is beautifully-shot, written and acted, with phenomenal acting, attention to detail and a logical exploration of the premise. Midseason, it definitely slows down so much that the show risks losing the audience's full attention, but it does rally and come back strong for an interesting ending. Whether Season 2 can up the ante to make a longer-form story out of this limited premise viable remains to be seen. The season can be seen worldwide at the moment on Apple TV+. A second season was commissioned at the same time as the first but, slightly inexplicably, is still to enter production.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.