Episode seven of House of the Dragon, “Driftmark”, was an important one. Not only did Rheanyra (Emma D’Arcy) finally get it on with her uncle Daemon (Matt Smith) – gross – but young Aemond Targaryen (Leo Ashton) claimed Vhagar, the largest most battle-hardened dragon in all of Westeros and a useful weapon in the civil war Rheanyra and Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke) are about to wage against one another.
Both of these were game-changing developments. But hardly any viewers actually saw any of it happen.
Twenty minutes of this week’s instalment of the Game of Thrones prequel was aired in almost total darkness. Just a black screen with barely discernible shadows moving around and, due to the nature of the sex and dragon-robbing scenes, very little dialogue. Needless to say, fans are furious.
I watched the episode on my phone on a busy train – not the environment showrunners Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal intended, yet on a small Super Retina XDR screen (with the brightness at full whack), I had no problem seeing every detail of Rhyneara and Daemon’s midnight dalliance. Others watching on brand new OLED TVs or new-fangled laptops and tablets also didn’t face a problem. But the majority of viewers, watching on a TV a couple of years old, were plunged into pitch black.
HBO Max has defended the lighting (or lack thereof) as an “intentional creative decision” – it transpires that the shoot itself was filmed in broad daylight, with the scenes darkened post-production. It makes sense for these moments to happen under the cover of darkness (stealing a dragon and having sex with your niece are two things looked down upon even in Westeros) and nighttime is visual shorthand for mystery and mischief. I’m sure there are some boring technical or logistical reasons why the scenes weren’t shot at night, too.
But the fact remains that many of us couldn’t see what was happening. With few audio clues as to what was playing out and the rest of the episode, if not the series, hinging on these two important moments, it was an alienating, confusing and disappointing watch. On a more practical level, aren’t those dragons expensive to make? It would be great if we could have watched Vaghar’s bonding with her new master…
Frustratingly, we’ve been here before. “The Long Night”, episode three of the final series of Game of Thrones received plenty of criticism for its lack of light. Set as the Army of the Dead descended upon Winterfell overnight, almost the entire episode was too dark to see, and many viewers wound up with no clue who was dead or alive. The director? House of the Dragon co-head honcho Miguel Sapochnik (who is, coincidentally, stepping away from the series after series one).
Given that final season of Game of Thrones is considered one of the biggest flops in television history, one would think that everyone, from the showrunners to the props department (remember that rogue coffee cup in “The Last of the Starks”?) to the editors would be on high alert, meticulously pointing out and fixing any problems before each episode aired to millions of fans, some of whom are expecting – if not waiting – for it all to go wrong. And yet we’re still having to tolerate amateur issues such as poor lighting and, as in an earlier episode in which King Viserys’s (Paddy Considine) missing fingers were still visible in a green screen glove, blatant mistakes.
I’m a House of the Dragon apologist. I have enjoyed every episode and I’ve been gripped by even the most wordy, conjectural scenes of court bickering. I think it is brilliant television, with exquisite performances, and that’s exactly why it is so frustrating to see it let itself down with clumsy, sloppy choices. Being a House of the Dragon fan is starting to become a defensive job, and a show with such a rich source of character and storytelling shouldn’t be this much work.
The story has already been planned to run over three or four series, and the second instalment has officially been given the green light by HBO. If the lack of care for viewer experience continues, House of the Dragon will soon see even its most loyal fans turn against it. Unwatchable scenes and easy-to-spot (and fix) mistakes are simply not good enough for a show that reportedly costs $20m (£17,595,900) an episode. If Condal wants to keep our attention, it’s time he started listening.
