HBO’s Dune: Prophecy is a combination of several things I really love: visual adaptations of the Dune universe (I originally fell in love with it through the 2000s miniseries with James McAvoy) and fictional matriarchal systems. However, the show simply doesn’t work. It’s not very fun to watch, it doesn’t deliver many satisfying payoffs with its characters, and it doesn’t create the sense of a cohesive universe. Is Dune: Prophecy worse than many other scifi TV shows? Not really—I’d say it’s an overall average bit of entertainment, better than,say, your average episode of Stargate. But part of the problem here is the extended universe, in this case Denis Villeneuve’s movies, which happen to be very, very good.

I want to pause for a moment before we dive into the details, then, to reflect on the reasons for creating this show specifically after the success of those recent films. To me it seemed somewhat of a strange decision. Surely it would be easier to adapt some piece of the sprawling Dune canon, which includes sequels and prequels written not only by the original author but also (alongside Kevin J. Anderson) his son? Prophecy is set about two generations after Great Schools of Dune, a book trilogy that came out between 2012 and 2016, about the origins of the universe we’re introduced to in the first Dune novel. Why not adapt that dramatic story about humanity’s war with machines, and the forming of various key institutions?

If the goal was to create original material that wasn’t a direct adaptation, why not create a Game of Thrones-esque series about the battles between the Great Houses? It could speak directly to fans of the movies and include various Easter eggs about familiar characters and their origins.

Instead, we have a completely original text about the Bene Gesserit. This feels like some kind of attempt to capitalize on “girl power”—here’s a show about a whole bunch of women who secretly control the universe and have their own secret language and powers—while at the same time focusing on an organization with questionable ethics, and even more questionable means.

Even when the show was announced, I wasn’t sure how the creators planned to navigate around those obstacles and what tone they wanted to take: Would the point be to show that a sect of powerful women was rotten at its core? Would the Bene Gesserit be villains (as they arguably are in Dune)? Would there be the kind of moral complexity that doesn’t go hand in hand with the Dune movies, where patriarchy would be presented as a Catch-22 that doesn’t leave women with many “moral” choices if they want to gain power?

The answer is, the show doesn’t bother with any of that. It doesn’t even bother with the very basic question: Why are there only women in the Bene Gesserit?

Instead of diving into the inner workings of the Bene Gesserit school, the answers we get about this mysterious organization are mostly nonsensical. How did the Bene Gesserit develop “the Voice”—a way of speaking that forces people to obey them? Well, one of them accidentally discovered she could do it as a teenager (before she ever became a Bene Gesserit) and, when she became part of the order, she taught her friends how to do it (how did she teach them? We don’t know). What are the lessons Bene Gesserit learn at their academy that allow them to do things like selectively choose the sex of their children in the womb? The only lessons we see on the show are things like drawing or reading.

None of these skills involve use of the spice, by the way. You would think it would be central to Bene Gesserit abilities, as it’s shown to be the key to superhuman traits in the movies, but no. The most we see the Bene Gesserit do with spice is sometimes brew it into their tea, for good health.

So, what is this show about? Arguably it’s about how the Bene Gesserit discovered that mixing genes from an Atreides father and a Harkonnen mother gives the child (if they are male) special powers, such as setting people on fire with one look and the ability to survive better than any foreigner on Arrakis in particular. The child in question is also extremely paranoid, prone to visions, and violent, mirroring what we know about Paul Atreides, who remains 10,000 years in the future of this show; but at this stage the Bene Gesserit have no way of discovering whether those are properties unique to the person in question.

For me, the problem with that revelation is that time gap. We see in the movies as well as the show that the Bene Gesserit freely acquire pretty much any genetic material—in the show one of them already has a grown son with the Emperor—so how could it take them thousands of years to cross these genes again to achieve whatever result they wanted?

Speaking of their breeding program, we’re made to understand that someone with special powers, the Kwisatz Haderach, was the end goal. So, you would assume that, before the order knew these powers were even possible, there would be no elaborate breeding program? Especially, as here, less than 100 years after the founding of the Bene Gesserit?

But no, in the show the breeding program is already in full swing, and the goal is apparently to create a “good leader” who will not allow humanity to enter a massive war again. There are so many things about this that don’t make sense; where does one even begin? We could start with: How is genetics going to help with that goal, as opposed to things like education? We could continue with: If genetics is somehow the key to this kind of leadership, why keep this project veiled in secrecy? Surely that’s a goal everyone could get behind?

But: Remember what I said earlier about the tension between “girl power” and an extremely morally dubious organization? Well, it is not so morally dubious if the goal is actually to prevent another world war.

I could continue to list the many things about the show’s worldbuilding that don’t add up, or talk about how the whole thing ends on a kind of cliffhanger, or talk about the choice to show the Atreides clan as a bunch of shirtless men with Scottish accents living in tents in a forest (a choice I’m not complaining about, to be clear).

But instead I want to talk about what I absolutely loved about this show, and that is mainly its cast. Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Tabu, so many actresses over fifty who had main or supporting roles in this show and were absolutely fantastic. It was a joy watching them interact; they each made an absolute meal of what they were given. I would happily watch another twenty episodes of Watson and Williams having angry sister fights about things that happened when they were teenagers, all while running a large magic cult together.

In some ways the show reminded me of two other TV shows that portrayed women in magic schools: The Wheel of Time with its White Tower, and the The Witcher with Aretuza. What I loved about the White Tower is that it was a complicated organization full of intrigue and power struggles, all happening between powerful older women. What I loved about Aretuza was the acknowledgement of the cruelty and harshness of magic, in a world where even the most powerful sorceress still has to fight for her place at the head of the table against a patriarchal power structure.

What I loved about the Bene Gesserit school was … that there were a lot of female characters in it. That’s about all I can say to this show’s credit, because every other creative decision seems to have been made poorly. The plot doesn’t work, the worldbuilding doesn’t work, the character drama is passable at best. And most of all, so much of the show’s narrative weight rests on questions to which we already know the answers. Will the Emperor lose his power? No, we know his line is still in power in the Dune books. Will the Harkonnens rise to become a Great House? Will the Atreides? Of course we already know. So what’s left of this show to enjoy? Having lots of women on screen.

Make no mistake, it’s always an uphill battle—always a miracle—when a show with multiple actresses over the age of fifty gets made. So I want more, not fewer stories about organizations filled with powerful older women who are trying, at least in their own minds, to make the world a better place. (How much do I want these stories? I once made a whole podcast episode about matriarchal worldbuilding and its pitfalls and how much more of it we need.) But hopefully we’ll get a better written one next time, and one maybe not set in the Dune universe.