I just binged the first season of GoT again after finishing up the first season of HotD, and I'm tempted to say that they're incomparable, but of course, comparing the two is unavoidable.

GoT season one is from 2011, over a decade old, and leaps and bounds better in every single way. It's astonishing, really. One would think that some experience had been drawn from GoT to make HotD even better, but it's an apparent regression in every area.

GoT is captivating from the very first scene, even after having watched it more than half a dozen times, and from then on the immersion never skips a beat and is kept in place while the rich world with its deep lore and many plot lines keep unfolding. Every episode about an hour long go by so quickly because of being so entertaining.

HotD on the other hand, a whole season has passed and nothing memorable has happened, and only in the last episode did it deliver a scene that was akin to anything as captivating or exciting as scenes delivered throughout every single episode of GoT. All of the episodes of HotD are worse in every way than every episode of GoT, even with season eight being so poorly received.

HotD has episodes almost exclusively revolving around the same handful of family members, having the same dreary conversations over and over, seemingly only interrupted by yet another birthing scene. Yes, it's the story of that one house, but GoT was the story of the throne and we still had plenty of insight into the adventures of several other characters and the world in general.

Somehow HotD managed to feel drawn out and rushed at the same time. What we got from the whole season could have been done in two episodes, but should have probably been two seasons with much more intricacies and a more flushed out world and differing perspectives of the house in question than what we got.

Skipping 10 years in the middle of the season was a big mistake imo. Suddenly relations between characters are very different without any explanation or apparent reason, leaving much to be desired regarding character development. This was certainly not helped by changing out several of the actors, causing much confusion. Additionally, it's apparent that the four actresses playing the central roles of the queen and the princess interpret their characters differently from one another, further clouding the nature of the relationship between the two characters, which is especially unfortunate for the progression of the storyline. And the choice of changing the actresses seems so unnecessarily unfortunate, as well as additionally confusing, because of them being adults when other adult characters look like they haven't aged a day and yet others have been aged with makeup or CGI. It was really a disastrous decision that went a long way in sinking the whole season.

Probably the most surprising thing about HotD so far though is that the CGI is so much worse. The development on that front has been astounding even since the last season of GoT, and then we get this from a top tier production which is based on dragons where CGI needs to be on point but instead looks like a season of Merlin (2008). Such a shame.

I was considering binging the season of HotD since I'm not a fan of weekly episodes to get a more continuous storytelling experience, but it's just not entertaining enough to binge, not captivating, not exciting. Just the same darkly lit backdrop with the same unexpressive faces having unsurprising conversations.

Nobody gets along, so there's plenty of tedious drama, but there's no real intrigue or clever deception. Never did I think "Oh, I didn't see that coming", which is so characteristic of GoT, but rather sighs of fatigue due to having to sit through the dumbed down dialogues of uninteresting characters that are either killed off before we're invested in them or obviously protected by plot armour and quarrel like seniles at an elderly home. Watching my nieces of 5 and 2 arguing over who has the right to play with that one doll is more intriguing and has a more flushed out storyline than who in the house of dragons has the right to the throne.