TV REVIEW. The Game of Thrones season 8 premiere signals that this Neverending Story will have an end.

The following review contains a few unavoidable spoilers regarding the Game of Thrones season 8 premiere.

At Monday morning's Nu Metro big-screen cinema screening in Cape Town at 03:00 of the premiere episode of the 8th and final season of HBO's Game of Thrones on M-Net (DStv 101) someone won a set of GoT dinner plates - perfect for the season's first episode that didn't, and couldn't, feature a lot of action as the fantasy series had to start to (re)set the table to tell the last part of the story.

After an absence of 20 months, viewers are getting their first new Game of Thrones episode and it didn't disappoint although it might feel slightly "average" compared to what came before.

It's necessary since characters need to be reintroduced to the audience and each other and literally moved to new places on the sprawling Westeros map - as illustrated by the magnificently updated and changed Game of Thrones opening sequence that looks terrific.

The season 8 premiere episode starts off formally with an army marching into a new home at Winterfell, has a cutesy - maybe too-cutesy? - Neverending Story-like dragonriders sequence in the middle, and then a horrific and scary part at the end just to remind viewers what they're actually watching and that is foreshadowing the brutal clash that is surely coming between Westeros' humans and the undead White Walkers led by the Night King.

The first episode can definitely be classified as a reunion and includes some must-do visual and verbal exposition from dungeons to dragons and Jon Snow (Kit Harington) being told about his true parentage. Viewers see several old friends, frenemies, family members, family frenemies and foes meet up, reunite with some actual time for discourse and discord.

Thought things would be fine and stay fine between Jon and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke)? Sorry but this ain't that kind of fantasy story. Thought things would be fine between brother Jon and sisters Arya (Maisie Williams) and Sansa (Sophie Turner)? Clearly it won't be.

And in the final moments of the season premiere, a deliciously ominous "reunion" between Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) who he tried to kill years before, shows how the opener is setting up physical showdowns between enemy and enemy, in various forms, who are all finally going to come face-to-face with each other.

Dragon-parts, done well. Some dry humour parts, done well ("Poor girl, the pox will take her within the year"). A spider-like, spiral-mural horror-scene, done extremely well.

There are not really grand visual statements, massive surprises, gory ends to main characters but as the knives, forks and dragon glass forged weapons are being laid out, you know they're coming as surely as the undead army is advancing from beyond the now broken wall.

"Nothing lasts," declares the character of Varys in the episode - signalling that this fantasy Neverending Story does and will have an end and that viewers better enjoy the last of the quieter times before the final chapters featuring all-out battle sequences and with it the horrific devastation that is looming.





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Game of Thrones just finished filming a battle scene for the 8th and final season that took a daunting 55 days - or make that nights - to shoot.

It certainly qualifies as a daunting TV production record that will likely never be broken: The fantasy drama series Game of Thrones just finished filming a battle scene for the upcoming 8th and final season that is set to broadcast sometime next year - a gargantuan night time production effort that took an unbelievable 55 days to shoot.

The Game of Thrones producers, calling themselves "The Producer Types", wrote a thank you and recognition note to the crew and cast of the show for filming the longest battle scene in television history, stretching over 55 consecutive nights and 3 locations - including Toome and Magheramorne in Northern Ireland and an unknown third location.

The execution of the elaborate shoot and its pre-production that must come with an astronomical production budget, literally took over a month and a half - for just one Winterfell battle scene.

Jonathan Quinlan, an assistant director on Game of Thrones took a photo of it and posted it on Instagram with the caption "Says it all. 55 consecutive nights. 11 weeks. 3 locations. You'll never again see anything like it".

The Instagram note was quickly deleted, but not before Watchers on the Wall saved a copy.

"This is for the Night Dragons. For enduring 55 straight nights. For enduring the cold, the show, the rain, the mud, the sheep shit of Toome and the winds of Magheramorne."

"When tens of millions of people around the world watch this episode a year from now, they won't know how hard you worked. They won't care how tired you were or how tough it was to do your job in sub-freezing temperatures."

"They'll just understand that they're watching something that's never been done before. And that's because of you."

Filming for so long for a battle scene doesn't just make it the longest filming and most expensive battle scene for Game of Thrones but likely in all of television. Ever.

The 8th and final season of Game of Thrones, the world's most pirated TV show, will debut sometimes in 2019 with no broadcast starting date yet set by HBO.

What is a certainty, is that M-Net (DStv 101) that has been showing Game of Thrones seasons Express from the US, will definitely do so again for South African and African viewers on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform.

For the past seasons M-Net showed Game of Thrones episodes at 03:00 in the morning at exactly the same time as in the United States for rabid viewers who simply couldn't, followed by late prime time airings within 24 hours after broadcast in America.

Star Trek The Next Generation Season 8: The shape of things which could have come if the sci-fi drama had an eight season.

If there were an eight season of the highly acclaimed science fiction drama series Star Trek The Next Generation, what stories would there have been, what awaited the beloved characters, and where were the writers looking to boldly go with the unfolding space saga next?

Some tantalising clues are offered up in the season 3 Star Trek The Next Generation Blu-ray box set, where in the "Insider the writers' room" extra, where Seth MacFarlane asked some of the Trek writers just that.

"We started laying pipes for if there were a season eight. Picard's cloned son was back," said writer Naren Shankar.

"We had started talk about more stuff to do with Troi, with Gates [McFadden, dr Beverly Crusher]," said Naren Shankar.

"I miss the characters," said writer Ron Moore. "We can get together once in a while. You can see the actors every once in a while. I don't get to sit in a room anymore and talk about Picard. I don't get to sit and talk about Worf and his backstory."

"When you're spending that much time with those characters they really are like people. You have this very intimate relationship with them, and their loves, and their fears, and their history. And I miss that. I miss sitting there and talking about who's Picard? What's his dream? What's he afraid of? How does Troi see him?"

"You kind of put yourself on the bridge and your there with them. And I miss that."

"Part of what you get at the end with the series finale is the sense that the ship is still going," said Naren Shankar. "And that's a nice place to leave a show. And we were all very happy with that at the end."

"Everybody misses that show ..." said Seth MacFarlane, "... in a landscape dominated by Hunger Games dystopia."