I must agree, the cinematic Dune was a spectacular failure, but the visual feel of the film, the textures of the interiors, the tech, costumes, Arrakis itself, were eerily like how I had visualized them while originally reading the novel. It was telepathic, either the production designer of the film thinks exactly the way I do, or Herbert had found a way of conveying the appearance of the Dune Universe accurately through prose.

The TV version was dramatically superior, still spectacularly beautiful, but that’s just not how I imagined it would be like.

I despised the deLaurentis movie with a passion that’s unabated. The subject always brings unbidden to mind the iconic image of Sting in a leather jockstrap, and I can’t decide whether to hurl or scratch out my own eyes.

I think the miniseries pulled off the near-impossible task of translating the story to the screen. Dino killed the movie with too many liberties (my god, rain on Arrakis??), but too few can be just as bad. Syffy’s version, to my mind, reworked the story just enough to keep it intact as it moved from one story-telling system to another. I noticed differences in places, a few events reordered for clarity, but I never noticed it being wrong.

I’d call myself a “Dune freak” too, though of the purist variety. Maybe it’s because I read Dune at such an early age, a first edition in 1965 when I was an impressionable ten years old. As a 10yo boy I was particuarly struck by Paul’s ordeal of the gom jabbar, and took to heart the lesson that the measure of a true human is the triumph of intellect over instinct.

Fear is the mind killer, Grasshopper.

I am not a huge Dune fan

Same thing happened with Lost.

But I’ve seen this with “Lost”. I swear they wrote each episode weakly with no idea how it would end. That’s what gave us the dismal cop-out ending we didn’t deserve.

We’ll see what happens with the next season….

I sometimes think that SyFy is afraid to take on the classics without overspending as they did with the Dune mini-series (and still wound up with a bad product).

Everyone seems to forget that Outer Limits and Twilight zone were low budget and highly successful. I am sure the suits would say “that was then and this is now”.

Which also reminds me, the best TV done has been anthology. Wonder why we never see it anymore?

Philip K. Dick liked “Blade Runner.” It can happen.