I'm a big fan of historical dramas. The first dramas I ever watched were weekends late at night on the local Asian channel. Some of them didn't have English subtitles, but we would still watch them. So when I say that I really disliked this drama, it isn't because it's older or historical, it's because it's really not that good.

The acting overall isn't that great. It isn't terrible, but a lot of it is wooden or two dimensional. The Iron Empress herself is either wailing at the top of her lungs or looking angry. Both male leads aren't very good either, with the actor playing Gang Jo almost as wooden as you can possibly get. Lee Deok Hwa is one of the best parts of the drama, character-wise and acting-wise, but he has a tendency to be the shining part of an otherwise abysmal drama. King Gyeongjong was pretty entertaining, a little hammy in a Jang Hyuk kind of way, but the actor has charisma, so overall I liked the performance. The Khitan empress was also a good character and well-acted, to the extent that I started to wish the drama was about her instead. Some of the minor characters are surprisingly good but they don't have nearly enough screen time compared to more major characters.

The writing was inconsistent. The first several episodes made sense, and the characters behaved and grew as you would expect characters to evolve, but by the end of the drama, characters are making choices merely because the plot demands it, and not fitting with their character development, personalities, or previous actions. And honestly, too much time was spent on ministers arguing. If done right, as in Six Flying Dragons, the political maneuvering can be almost as engaging as the fight scenes, but when they're merely bickering along party lines the scenes are tedious and pointless. The antagonists are absolutely not sympathetic for the most part, and while a few of them briefly have moments, they quickly lose their character development and again become basically stock characters. It also felt like the writer was trying to whitewash some of the characters from history to make them more palatable, but in the process made them bland and unlikeable instead of complicated and interesting like they should have been.

At about episode 36 I started just wanting to drama to end. Some characters that I had started to like, I then started to strongly dislike and that didn't improve throughout the series. The plot would drag for several episodes at a time, sometimes there would be a good episode or two, then it would start to drag again. I think that total you could take all of the good parts/episodes and put them together and it would be about ten episodes.

The historical accuracy was also not on point despite the narrator butting in at times to tell the viewers about what was written in the Goryeosa. When you're altering events and characters but then explaining what really happened about other events, it gets a little schizophrenic. I'm fine with not sticking to history if you're making a compelling drama, but veering away from accuracy for no reason but to make characters look better, it starts to feel like fanfiction.

If I had to compliment anything about the drama, it would be that some of the battle scenes were on a pretty decent scale and were also decently if not amazingly choreographed. A lot of dramas skip over that type of scene, so it was nice to see them actually done for once. But any time CGI is used in a battle scene it is awful and laughable. The practical effects are miles better. I also had no issue with the soundtrack. I think that maybe it should've been more utilized, since it's a pretty solid sageuk soundtrack that reminded me a lot of Queen Seondeok. Any other way this drama could be compared with Queen Seondeok is really, really, really not favorable. And while I did complain about the historical accuracy, I kind of liked the random narrator moments where he explained the background of events and their significance. I don't know too much about Goryeo history so learning a bit was fun and interesting for me.

Really, I blame other reviewers and Kim Ji Hoon for convincing me to tackle this enormous beast of a tedious drama. I wrote this review specifically to warn other possible viewers to be prepared for what this drama offers. There is no humor, the romance is bland and annoying for the most part, the action is okay but not compelling. Overall, I'd honestly say it was more tedious and difficult to get through than watching most documentaries.

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Inconsistent but really fun

I avoided this drama for the longest time because of poor reviews. I honestly was a bit shallow wanting to watch it because I thought the guy was cute, but everyone was so against it I kept putting it to the very back of any consideration. I later heard that it got stupid/ridiculous toward the end. Then when I was busy and wanted something light and stupid, it happened to be available on Tubi and things just came together.

Within one episode me and my boyfriend were surprised at how much we liked it. It was stupid and ridiculous but I also adored the actors (most of them), the cinematography was great, and I really was invested in the plot. Yes, it's not a gritty, realistic take on Hallyu stars getting marooned. It started ridiculous, got a bit serious, got ridiculous again, then got serious and, ended ridiculous. So I can see why some people didn't like it. But for me, the changing tone wasn't too much of a problem. It kind of irked occasionally, but generally, I was fine with it, and the characters were so lovable that I didn't really care. I really, really shipped the romance, so I can also see the disappointment with that. But with how she looked at him, I'll just imagine what happens after.

This is not the drama to watch for something dark and realistic. This is some out-there, silly, crazy, violent, and just generally fun drama. If you don't want a completely soul-crushing drama, or something absolutely cutesy, I think I'd recommend it. It delivered for me and my notoriously hard to please bf, so I think that maybe it's worth a shot.

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