I could see the new enjoyers of Pern flat out giving it up when the twist happened. Plus, I wouldn’t trust the show’s makers to not trash the politics of the holds.
spoilerFantasy -> sci-fi is a pretty big change for a tv audience, I think.
That’s the reason most books can’t be adapted exactly as written. Unless the writing is so horribly stilted (X went to Y, X said Z to α, X had β happen to him because of α…) that you wouldn’t want to read it in the first place, you’ll need a large amount of narration and/or characters speaking their thoughts out loud, which doesn’t work most of the time and gets worse if they’re doing it solely for the purpose of the viewer getting into their headspace.
What's a sci-fi or fantasy book or series that you want to see adapted as a movie/television series?
I didn’t read this series when I was a kid, but I finally got around to reading Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber....
Which books have the worst video adaptation?
For me it’s definitely the Dark Tower, but the Golden Compas was also a huge letdown.