Winterfell has been burnt to the ground, the Imp has been stripped of power, and Stannis has been defeated – but there’s so much more that didn’t make the final cut, and more still to discuss and debate, regardless of its inclusion or omission.

There’s so much to wrap one’s head around, in fact, that a tidy little roundtable I had planned tripled in size and had to be split in two halves. For this first part, a crack panel of George R.R. Martin stalkers and TV critics tackled the inherent quality of the source material, A Clash of Kings; the filmmaking chops of Game of Thrones showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff; and the dopiness – or lack thereof – of the average HBO viewer.

Dramatis personae:

Marc N. Kleinhenz – freelancer and author of It Is Known: An Analysis of Thrones, Vol. I. Elio García – co-founder and editor of Westeros.