Season one of Game Of Thrones gives us Cripples, Bastards And Broken Things, the episode which famously has Daenerys crazy older brother Viserys having a cosy bathtime pillow talk conversation with slave Doreah about his ancestors and dragons, before he forgets that hes actually a haughty, slightly psychotic douchcanoe. While viewers tried their hardest to forget that the show was once again marrying a scene of exposition (telling us all about dragons) with sex to make the bitter pill slip down easier, they may have missed the fact that one of the dragons that Viserys reels off wasnt invented by Martin or the writers of the TV show. Thats Vermithrax, also known as Vermithrax Pejorative, to give him his full name the antagonist from 1981s big screen fantasy epic Dragonslayer. Famous for its impressive special effects of the time (created by George Lucas Industrial Light & Magic firm, the first film theyd worked on that wasnt a Star Wars movie), and for casting the weird little guy from Ghostbusters 2 and Ally McBeal as the romantic dragonslaying hero, Dragonslayer would go on to be nominated for Oscars for its score as well as its special effects. Producer D. B. Weiss shoved this reference into the episode as a nod to one of the great fantasy movies of the 1980s. Perhaps we could have a Krull reference next, then? Oddly, the names Tyrian and Valerian also turn up in Dragonslayer, but bear no relation to their near-namesakes in Game Of Thrones. We suspect thats just a coincidence.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
