Thought the same thing, Drogon was a sitting duck. Also very sporting of the Night King to give Drogon a chance to get airborne instead of letting loose with his second javelin as soon as he had it in his hand.

I'm OK with them picking up the pace, jumping around a bit from one set piece to another and skipping some of the travel and exposition. Certainly at the pace GRRM is going this could drag on for another 10 series of they didn't make that choice. But it does seem like they're being unnecessarily sloppy with the plot and are hoping viewers will be so enthralled by the big scenes they won't care or notice. Having them sit surrounded on the island while Gendry ran back to the Wall, sent a raven 700 miles (apparently) to Dragonstone, and then Daenerys flew 700 miles north was ridiculous. More to the point it was also unnecessary - would have been simple enough to either take a raven with them to save Gendry running (I assume they work like homing pigeons) and/or find a plot device to have Daenerys already at the Wall when the news arrived.

I'm all for willing suspension of disbelief and I'll be glued to the screen for the remaining episodes both to get closure on the plot and to enjoy what are still the highest production values and effects I've ever seen in a TV series. But I do feel like the series is in danger of jumping the shark and that even allowing for the accelerated timeline the plausibility has taken a big drop.

Maybe the Night King deliberately let them go? I know he took what looked like a half-hearted stab at spearing Drogon when they were all in flight, but maybe that was a ruse and he wants them all to be in a state of near-panic as he and his army make their way south? Perhaps it's an Armageddon-type scenario he's after?

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I think the Night King likes toying with his prey a bit. He pretty much let Jon and his gang go during that episode two seasons ago, in which the Night King was like "Look what I can do, bitch!" and resurrected all the dead wildlings.

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Nah, I'm going for sloppy writing. Given how many wights those dragons incinerated in a short space of time, he'd take out as many as he could if he had the chance. Plus even if he didn't know who Daenerys was, the fact there are 3 dragons and only one rider is enough to tell him that killing her likely nullifies the whole dragon threat. If he wants to spread panic then letting a few survivors get back on foot after seeing the dragons turned to wights would do the trick.

That was a great line, that and the exchange between Gendry and the Hound when Gendry was going on about Melisandre trying to sacrifice him: (motioning to Beric) "He's been killed six times already, you don't hear him bitching about it!"

As far as the story being compressed, I guess I've grudgingly accepted it at this point, knowing that it is going to be moreso in the final season where there will be only six.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

Jon Snow's group was presumably on that little island for a couple of days waiting for word to get back and dragons to come to the rescue. The Night King could easily have just sent in his army to kill them all during that time. Then you don't get a big dragon battle, you don't get a dragon killing, you don't get a wight dragon you don't get the drama of Danerys leaving Jon in the water, etc.

I know it's foolish to say this to GoT fans, but you really can't think too hard about it.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

I thought the same thing. Compression is a necessary part of storytelling in these sorts of fantasy epics (we saw it in LOTR quite a bit as well), and I figured Jon Snow and his A Team ( ;-) ) were on that island for a few days before Dany and her dragons could get to them. I get the feeling that spot wasn't all that far from the Eastwatch portion of the Wall, either, judging from Gendry and his running skills. LOL!

Game of Thrones A-Team - YouTube

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

So what terrors has Yara been experiencing? Inquiring minds....

Oh, the usual. Torture with hot iron pokers, the rack, violation in various unspeakable ways. I don't think ol' Uncle Euron is very warm and fuzzy, for some reason.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Tormund: I have a beauty waiting for me back in Winterfell... if I ever get back there. Yellow hair, blue eyes, tallest woman you've ever seen. Almost as tall as you.
The Hound: Brienne of Tarth.
Tormund: You know her?
The Hound: You're with Brienne of fucking Tarth.
Tormund: Well, not with her yet. But I see the way she looks at me.
The Hound: How does she look at you? Like, she wants to carve you up and eat your liver?
Tormund: You do know her.
The Hound: We've met.
Tormund: I want to make babies with her. Think of them, great big monsters. They'd conquer the world.
The Hound: How did a mad fucker like you live this long?

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“Read the transcript.”

Not a chance. Sansa is dumb as a stump. A couple seasons ago, I was pulling for her death.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

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You think fire?

As we noted earlier, Vanity Fair describes that an ice dragon can "breathe cold, a chill so terrible that it can freeze a man solid in half a heartbeat.

http://www.refinery29.com/...rion-dead-ice-dragon

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

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Yeah, ice dragons might be able to spit ice, Viserion is not an ice dragon. It's an undead fire dragon. Whilst I readily admit to not being an expert on dragon biology, I think it's doubtful that a dead fire dragon would be able to shoot columns of ice after it was reanimated.

Last season there was a bit of fan talk about there being an ice dragon under the wall, which would be really cool (no pun intended), but I think that's just wishful thinking.

On a related point, I've had a moment of clarity. I can't believe I'm arguing about whether a mythical creature which is subjected to a fictional process will metamorphosise into a different subset of mythical creature (an undead dragon turns into a fucking ice dragon due to necromancy). I'm off to have a word with myself.

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Swim. Overbike. Walk.

man i wish there was a like button for posts on here...

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ishi no ue ni san nen | Perseverance will win in the end. | Blog | @nebmot | Strava | Instagram |

Would you rather bitch about Trump?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

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Who's that?

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Swim. Overbike. Walk.

I know, I get all that and can easily gloss over the smaller things. As I said though, in that particular case it would have been pretty easy to either have taken a raven with them or arranged for Daenerys to already be at the Wall and then the elapsed time wouldn't have been quite so silly.

That doesn't feel like a result of timelines being compressed, it feels like the result of the script writers just not bothering to try and make it add up any more, which is a shame.

So what's the reason for sending Brienne to Kings Landing? Is she going to try and kill Arya? Everything in GOT has significance, right?

Also, the Scorpion bolt didn't kill Drogon when hit in the shoulder area, but that ice spear did kill Viserion when hit in around the same spot (albeit a little more on his side as I recall). Did the Night King choose Viserion because he was smaller and didn't think the spear would kill Drogon?

It looked to me like it got him in the meaty underbelly towards the side and tore a spear sized hole.
That whole scene/idea was completely ludicrous to me. There is really no way that Jon would ever think that was a good idea to go get a white walker after seeing what he has seen. In my eyes that whole thing was completely unbelievable.
Mark

Quoted for posterity.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Reality in Fantasy??

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

I thought the white walker idea was to convince Cerci or the others that they are real and they all need to unite to fight the common foe. Sort of like elves , dwarves and humans coming together to fight Sauron and his army.

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"I think I've cracked the code. double letters are cheaters except for perfect squares (a, d, i, p and y). So Leddy isn't a cheater... "

Since this thread has (d)evolved into arguing about minutiae and believability, the idea was for the Magnificent Seven to retrieve one of the dead. The White Walkers are the guys who reanimate the dead; there's no way they would be able to capture one of them. Sam killed a White Walker; Jon killed one at Hardhome and again in the skirmish before the big battle in this past episode.

And where did Jorah get the dragonglass weapons, and only he seems to have them?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

My guess was it was made from some of the dragon glass they were mining at Westeros (?). Of a lot of the rushed things this season if we are delving into the minutiae I would buy they had time to make some weapons out of it. Kind of explains why they are using small weapons like daggers. I can't remember which character it was, maybe the hound, who dropped the hammer and pulled out the daggers.

On the subject of GOT weapons I am going to nerd out a little. The flaming swords are pretty cool.

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"I think I've cracked the code. double letters are cheaters except for perfect squares (a, d, i, p and y). So Leddy isn't a cheater... "