Denis Villeneuve wasn’t directly involved in the making of “Dune: Prophecy,” but the series has clearly taken its aesthetic cues from Villeneuve’s films, from the costumes to the architecture to the blue and red glimmer of shields. This somewhat compounds a problem already present in the “Sisterhood of Dune” novel: that virtually nothing has changed in the Imperium’s power structure and which families comprise the great houses in 10,000 years. During the same time period in our own history, humans went from domesticating animals for the first time to putting robots on Mars. 

The stalls in technology are down to an event called the Butlerian Jihad, in which “thinking machines” were wiped out (hence the families in “Dune” instead relying on human computers called mentats). Still, the halt in technology doesn’t explain why the Bene Gesserit didn’t switch up their look over the course of 10,000 years. Perhaps there was a period between “Dune: Prophecy” and “Dune” where they tried wearing purple flares and it just didn’t work.

The six-episode season of “Dune: Prophecy” is set to premiere on HBO in November, and will stream on Max. The cast also includes Travis Fimmel, Jodhi May, and Mark Strong.