If we stick to the chronology that makes Dune: Prophecy the prequel to Dune (Frank Herbert's novel, Denis Villeneuve's feature films), we can consider Quest for Fire to be the prequel to Spartacus. Ten thousand years separate this series, based on Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert (son of) and Kevin J. Anderson, from the films starring Timothée Chalamet.

But in this distant future, time lasts a good while, and in this account of the early days of the empire invented by Frank Herbert, there are costumes (the long black robes of the Bene Gesserit, the monastic-political order whose origins are at the center of these six episodes); last names (Atreides, Harkonnen); and customs (the use of spice, the narcotic produced by the planet Arrakis) that will prevail 100 centuries later.

Dune: Prophecy offers an excursion into almost familiar, yet exotic, territory. The series, created by two women, Diane Ademu-John and Alison Schapker, recaptures the dramatic and graphic figures of space opera and dynastic tragedy. But it moves far enough away from its rivals – stories from the Star Wars universe, those inspired by Game of Thrones – to bring a breath of fresh (and often chilling) air to the galaxy.

This season begins a few decades after humans crushed the uprising of artificial intelligence and banned the manufacture and use of thinking machines. Spaceships still manage to transport the spice to its consumers, and humanity has conquered the galaxy, federated into an empire led by a sovereign whose haughty bearing masks his weakness (an exercise that Mark Strong, who plays the emperor, sacrifices with brio).

Sisters Valya and Tula from a discredited lineage, the Harkonnens, set out to turn the religious order to which they belong into a political instrument, placing a nun beside each ruler of a great house. Valya (Emily Watson) has taken on the emperor but is faced with the arrival of a scarred warrior with supernatural powers (a spectacular Travis Fimmel). In the Dune universe, these mystical abilities compensate for the absence of artificial intelligence.

More than the exercise of these powers, whose effects are often horrific, the series' charm lies in the staging of life in the convent of the monastic order that will give rise to the Bene Gesserit. Set on an icy planet, it's part boarding school, part witch academy, part Jesuit seminary.

Watson takes obvious pleasure in inhabiting her role as a mother superior, ready to do anything to maintain and increase her power over men. Olivia Williams, who plays her younger sister, Tula, paints a more ambiguous portrait of an ill-born woman obsessed with revenge.

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