Jet Propelled Ravens: Travel in Game of Thrones

Six episodes into Game of Thrones Season Seven, this is my main take away so far:

ICE DRAGON THEY HAVE AN ICE DRAGON THERE'S AN ICE DRAGON NOW IT’S GONNA GO OOOOOFFFFFFF.

GET HYPE.

However, I was stunned (stunned I tell you, stunned) to find the vast majority of online chatter concerns not the glory of the ice dragon, the sweetness of Dany and Jon making gooey eyes at each other and the satisfaction of Cersei still pulling strong despite pre-season dismissal, but how long it takes for ravens to get from A to B. Have they all ingested some sort of jet fuel? Did the lesser known Tony of House Stark create tiny propellers for them? Is there a Westerosi Amazon Prime that we don’t know of? Because Season 7 is rattling along at a breakneck pace and, unfortunately, it’s shed some of its magnetism along the way.

Let’s look at how Game of Thrones used to show travelling. In the first season, Ned and Robert take the Kings Road from Winterfell to Kings Landing. Characters were carefully developed (this is the first time Joffrey is shown to be absolute oike of the first order) and relationships were established an enhanced. It took a hefty chunk of screen time, but by the time the party got to King’s Landing, not only had the scale of continent been established, but so had the characters.

This took about 3 episodes

Moving further on, one of my favourite parts of Season 5 was Verys and Tyrion cooped up together in a carriage winding its way across Essos towards Daenerys. Along the way, they wax philosophical, crack jokes and become such good company that, when they all separated, fear of death for the characters was outweighed by the knowledge that they wouldn’t share any more screen time together. 

This took the best part of Season 5

On a much smaller scale, take Cersei’s walk of shame from the Sept of Baelor to the Red Keep. Two major landmarks in the city are connected and the viewer was given a sense of scale of King’s Landing. There is the Sept, here is the castle, in between are the commoners. It showed that a person could walk the distance easily (in terms of distance that is, that walk was brutal) and also established the two power houses in King’s Landing, more so than the funerals and weddings in the Sept had before.

Seems less horrifying from this angle, too!

Taking time to travel, using these scenes as character and setting development, made Game of Thrones was it is. The world was shown to be big, gritty and populated. It showed that Westeros is not an easy land to travel. Shortcuts could not be found and, when characters went travelling, you knew that there was a very good chance they wouldn’t make it back. Basically, it added to the realism and jeopardy and it’s a vital part of the show’s DNA.

Now let’s look at travel in Season 7. Ayra Stark starts in the Riverlands (bumping into Ed Sheeran along the way), stops at Hot Pie’s gaff, meets her dire wolf in the snow and ends at Winterfell. The important difference from previous Ayra travels is that she is doing this alone. Where before she had Gendry and later on, the Hound, now she has no one to talk to, missing out on developing key development. When she gets to Winterfell, her go getting, ‘slay the enemies of my family’, can-do attitude hasn’t moved on from the end of Season 6.

However, she is now psychotically mistrustful of Sansa, terrorising her with faces and daggers and creepy, creepy games – how did this switch happen? Wasn’t she supposed to be all for family? The show has Petyr Baelish plant an incriminating letter as a catalyst, but it would have been much more successful for a travelling companion to change Ayra’s steadfast opinion on her family, as it would have done in previous episodes quite naturally. As it is, the viewer is expected to accept a massive character shift from Ayra with very little to work with.

And the ships! Euron Greyjoy goes from King’s Landing to Casterley Rock in what seems to be an afternoon. What previously took episodes worth of time is now covered in a single hour. The scale of the continent and the jeopardy of crossing it are sacrificed in order to get to the action quickly; this is not the Game of Thrones of old.

One episode. One. Episode. 

Which brings us to episode 6 of Season 7. Ooft. Let’s break it down. In the time Jon Snow and his Merry Men are stuck in a stand-off against the Night King (with no obvious supplies and the chill of winter literally surrounding them): Gendry runs back to the Wall; a raven is sent to Dragonstone; Daenerys argues with Tyrion; she flies beyond the Wall to save their frozen behinds.

How long were they there for? It was at least one night, as Thoros of Myr dies in his sleep. By that point, Gendry has reached the Wall, but after that, a raven needs to be found, sent and dragons need to come back. Was it another day? Exposed, with no food and no water? Characters weren’t shown to sleep, eat or drink, things which, again, would have been shown in earlier series. The realism of being trapped on a frozen lake is lost, and without the realism, there was no real tension.

It's been remarked upon by Alan Taylor (the director) that, whilst fans will happily eat up White Walkers, dragons and faces in bags, we’ve become quite the sticklers for time keeping. And though it is fun to nitpick, it means an important facet of the show has been lost. No longer do hero characters sleep, eat, or travel. They land where they need to be, do their thing and go home again. The glory days of Tywin Lannister needing the loo seem to be behind us. They don’t act like human beings anymore.

It’s not a deal breaker though. We’ve have years of these people travelling, talking, eating and sleeping. We’ve (well, myself at any rate) have come to know them like our own families. I trust the showrunners to stick the landing, tie the loose ends and have someone finally tell Jon Snow what his parent situation is.

Hopefully though, not by jet propelled raven.