In 1984 David Lynch released the much anticipated movie version of Frank Herbert's Dune, and, as hardcore fans of the whole Dune series, my mom, my sisters, a friend of mine and I all rushed out to see the first showing on the first day. (My mom even gave us bogus doctor's notes to get us out of school for the blessed event, although my friend had to come up with his own excuse for getting out of class.) This was a pilgrimage for us, a hadj, and even though the special effects looked a little iffy in the trailers, the movie itself was bound to be cool beyond words.

Midway through the film I was already making apologies to my friend (who was the only one among us not familiar with the book), and promising that the film could only get better from here. It didn't. From the point of view of my uninitiated friend, the story seemed needlessly complicated and convoluted (when we took our seats in the theater, we were handed printed factoid sheets that attempted to explain some of the story's background — which in retrospect was probably not a good sign). Characters that were introduced as if they were important (most notably Sting's character) in the end mattered very little in the film, and the crappiness of the special effects and music (particularly in the “worm-surfing” scenes) was so bad as to be a distraction. From the point of view of the Dune faithful, the apocryphal (and sometimes inexplicable) changes from the original story were hard to take — I could live with the secret sound weapons the movie introduced, for example, but why at the end of the film does the hero Paul (who becomes emperor of the universe on account of his control of the giant sandworms on Dune) acquire godlike powers and make it rain — especially since, as every Dune geek knows, water kills the sandworms? And on a lesser note: how hard could it have been to round up some Arabic-looking actors and extras to play the Fremen? Or a kid to play Paul as a child?

Needless to say, the film was a huge flop. Two years later, Frank Herbert died — and who could blame him? After years and years of different offers and false starts, his award-winning novel was finally translated into film and it was a disaster. Worse, Dino De Laurentiis (the producer of the David Lynch debacle) held the film rights to Dune, so even if someone else wanted to have another go at the film, they couldn't. The sleeper had to remain asleep.

In 2000, though, another producer interested in making a new Dune movie figured out that film rights are not the same thing as TV rights, and set about making a miniseries version of the book for the Sci-Fi Channel. I'm mostly unaware of the Sci-Fi Channel myself, but there was so much hype for this that even I caught wind of it. Sure, the trailers looked a little TV-ish in terms of special effects, but as a miniseries it had all the time it needed to tell the story more or less faithfully — and as long as it did that, how could it miss?

Well, having seen the Sci-Fi Channel version, I have to say that I now have a new appreciation for the David Lynch version.

It's not that the TV Dune was bad — certainly it had a lot of improvements over the film version — but as close as it strove to be to the book, its storytelling was ... well, boring. Maybe it needed the characters' mental monologues from the book to add drama and interest to the story. “Your stillsuit is fitted desert fashion,” Kynes declares of our hero. In the book this is bristling with meaning, enmeshed as it is with Fremen millenarian mythology (which predicts the coming of a foreigner who “shall know your ways as if born to them”). In the miniseries, though, this is simply an empty observation that adds nothing to the story or its drama. And for all the miniseries' faithfulness, some characters didn't seem to come out like they did in the book: Jessica, the hero's mind-controlling witch-mother, is now mostly a damsel in distress, and the villainous Baron, a plotting evil genius in the book à la Robert the Bruce's bandaged father in Braveheart, is in the TV version as comically over-the-top as he was in the film version, such that he seems more of a buffoon than a real threat to anyone.

The costumes, too, were disappointing. The one good aspect of the David Lynch film is its costuming, ranging from Hellraiser-esque get-ups to a kind of World War I European monarch chic that looks modern while still conveying feudal authority — both of which dovetail perfectly in Dune. But the TV version goes for a sci-fi high Renaissance look that quite frankly makes the whole production look like one of the many Star Trek spin-offs.

Still, the TV Dune had its nice touches: it was fun seeing an ornithopter with more or less flapping wings, for example, and the Matrix-like maneuvering of the “weirding ways” came off well. But for all the little improvements and attention to the details of the novel, the only one that will probably be remembered is Barbora Kodetova, who was a fairly convincing Chani (the hero's girlfriend) and, more importantly, looked good topless (at least in the TV version; in the more “adult” version, she appears to have never worn a bra her entire life). I haven't seen her in any other film (most of her film and TV work was done in Italy and the Czech Republic, where she's a mildly bigger deal than she is here), and I'm not sure how appealing she'll actually look without the blue-on-blue eyes, but if I ever see the Sci-Fi Channel's version of Dune again, it'll be to watch Barbora and for no other reason.

Also sprach Golem.
(More recent commentary below)

“Barbora” or “Barbara”?
It's been called to my attention that the Sci-Fi Channel (the one place Americans have any exposure to Barbora) spells her name "Barbara", whereas everywhere else on the web her name is spelled "Barbora". According to IMDB.com now, "Barbara" is the name she was born with, but she also works as "Barbora" and "Bára". According to some folks who've emailed me about the issue, "Bára" is short for "Barbora", and "Barbara" is simply the Western version of her real name.

Film

• Den Starkare (1999; aka “The Stronger”) .... Nora
• Rivers of Babylon (1998) .... Lenka
• Ucitel tance (1995; aka “The Dance-Master”) .... Lydie

• Children of Dune (2003) .... Chani
• Frank Herbert's Dune (2000) .... Chani [nude only in non-U.S. versions]

Cyber Temples

• Barbora Kodetova Nude Celebrity Movie Reviews
  Mr. Skin
  Bio, filmography, and nude stills and clips from her films

Miscellaneous

• Barbora Kodetová Filmography
  Internet Movie Database
  Always up-to-date filmography
• Barbora Kodetová
  Wikipedia
  Barbora Kodetová in wikireality