Made for television... NOT!

Last night marked the first episode of a new made for television series based on the works of author Terry Goodkind. I had been looking forwarding to watching the series for a while now. Having seen various television and movie adaptions of novels in the past I had already prepared myself for the numerous deviations from the book, or so I thought. I do not believe any amount of preparation could have properly braced me for the nightmare I witnessed. I understand not being able to follow the book exactly. I understand dropping, changing, or merging scenes in the interest of time. All of this taken under consideration the series bears not resemblance to the books other than the title and some of the characters names. It ceases to be an adaptation when even the fundamentals of the story have been changed. The foundation of the story and its characters are so different with a quick change of names you could write a brand new book (albeit a bad one) from the screenplay. Imagine if you will making a movie about brain eating zombies from outer space that infect and destroy mankind. Set it on the 4th of July, name you characters Scrooge, Cratchet, and Tiny Tim and then title A Christmas Carol. That's the gravity of the injustice in my opinion. I met Terry Goodkind once, and its hard to believe he could have seen this and said, "Yeah that's pretty close alright, produce it!". He really seemed to believe in his writing and lamented that the perception of Science Fiction as a genre seemed to stereotype and downplay what would otherwise be a fantastic work. I suppose its not my place to question his motives and reasons. After all it is his intellectual property to do with as he pleases. It just saddens me that he chose to lend his name to something so far from his own creation. Overall I guess I'm just disappointed.