Welcome to the Take the Black, the weekly chat show where we discuss the big questions on the minds of philosophers, politicians and scientists around the world, questions like: why wasn’t the second season of House of the Dragon as good as the first? Was it a good idea to add Tom Bombadil to The Rings of Power? Read any good books lately? And so on.

Okay, you caught us, we actually talk about all things sci-fi, fantasy, movies, TV and books, which I’m sure some leading philosophers, politicians and scientists care about as well. We start the discussion this week with the House of the Dragon panel at New York Comic Con, where the cast members shared what they could about the upcoming third season and had their words misappropriated and taken out of context by people on the internet.

But the main topic of the day is: adaptation. What is it, who’s got it, and is it a good fit for you and your family? Specifically, we look at the four biggest fantasy dramas currently on the air — House of the Dragon, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Witcher and The Wheel of Time — and try to determine which of them is doing the best job of adapting its source material.

Does it matter whether a TV show is faithful to the source material so long as the show itself is good? Why do some changes rankle more than others? Does a good adaptation try and adapt the events as described in the source text, capture the spirit of the original work, or both? We dig into all of it on the new episode. Watch below!

After that, we still have room to quickly share what we’re watching and reading (welcome back, What We Do In The Shadows!) and run through a super-sized version of the WiC News Lightning Round, where we give our 20-second opinions on stories we couldn’t get to in the main body of the show. What happens if we go over 20 seconds? There will be grave consequences.*