After the politics of episode 6 we’re into, not quite consequences, but certainly outcomes. If the scheming allowed certain decisions to be made then they’re now being implemented. For better or for worse.

What’s fascinating is that we see more here of Lan, more of Nynaeve and we also see the seams pull apart in the bonds between the friends from the Two Rivers.

Part of this has been coming since the first episode – and it’s now we’re reaping the rewards of some of the more hamfisted world building from those early entries. We get the sense that these friends are close partly because they’ve never known anything else, that they might not be even acquaintances if it weren’t for where they were brought up.

Mat in particular made choices, once he was freed from the confines of the smallest village in the world, that reflected the fact he was in a much larger set of circumstances. If you take people out of familiar circumstances, apply pressure in the form of violence, threat, hunger and so on it’s no real surprise when they fall apart. In the aftermath of his biggest choice the others are left wondering who they might be if Mat turned out not to be the person they thought he was.

The form this takes is really interesting, because what they argue about appears to be entirely unrelated to the issues at hand – the pressure valve being their relationships with one another instead of facing the threat to all their lives staring them right in the face. Who did what to whom and why that irritates the other. Nynaeve finally comes undone – not because she realises she needs to get with the Aes Sedai program but because her friends can’t bear to look at her.

All the patience of Moiraine, all the forbearance of Lan in the face of her unprompted anger achieved nothing near as much as her friends’ own disgust. In a show with a lot of monsters and danger this kitchen sink approach to building character is both welcome and surprisingly effective.

We’re near the end of season 1 and upon reflection I think the changes they’ve made in adapting the material from the books have nearly all worked (except for the fridging in episode 1 of course). The show has been at its strongest when it’s focused on individual characters, defining the overall story through their experience of it even if we shift from one perspective to another thread to keep up with everything.

The changes have been substantial in places and there is obviously debate about whether we’d be better off if it was more ‘faithful’ (i.e. literal) in its story telling. I don’t think so at all. I think the trend to criticise adaptations for not being line by line retellings is problematic all by itself, but if anything, this show demonstrates that good adaptations handle the material with respect and are successful because they’re faithful to the idea of the story rather than the individual scenes.

We also need to talk about the fight scene at the beginning of the episode – a scene which tells us huge amounts about the show. I’m the only person in my household to have read the books and, until a certain revelation at the end of the episode, not a single other person had guessed who the Dragon Reborn was. I consider that a victory on the part of the show runners – showing it was worth playing this way as well as the fact that it paid off in additional tension for those new to the story.

However, back to that fight. An unnamed, pregnant, woman is in a battle – well fleeing it. She is in labour and she then proceeds to fight several opponents while struggling with contractions. She has all my admiration.

The fight is thrilling, has a great use of a cape (although the person in question wouldn’t have worn it like that) and was really well choreographed. Indeed, it was exciting enough that it prompted a long discussion among sword fighting friends about the different elements. Fencers generally know what’s on screen is nonsense in terms of real combat, so it takes something engaging to pull us into that kind of discussion.

But the fight is more than just a fight – it’s a beautifully done piece of back story delivered without us ever being distracted by the plot dump.

There are lots of themes in this show – the roles of people, whether there’s such a thing as destiny, whether people are able to make their own choices or whether they’re only ever offered a semblance of freedom. None of these are deeply explored though they are clearly there in the characters’ decisions and agendas.

Yet the most powerful moments have all been ones about human interaction at its most raw – in grief and here, in this fight – a moment of utterly unexpected humanity between two people shown in the eyes of the Magdalena Sittova who plays the unnamed warrior. I’ve talked about the show finding its feet but this is now a series cruising along, comfortable with where it’s going and at ease with the story it needs to tell.

In the fight we see history at play, we see foreshadowing and we see questions we had about the main characters answered. It’s a superb bit of storytelling and is a sign of just how far we’ve come from the first episode.

Verdict: At some point we’re going to see large scale battles and I wait to see how they’re handled because the larger, outside, engagements have, so far, been a major weakness. If the show can bring some of its talent on the small scale to these larger palettes then I think it has every chance of becoming a show that stands the test of time.

Rating? 8 lost kingdoms out of 10

Stewart Hotston