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In the beginning of Dune 2021, Chani tells us:

At nightfall, the spice harvesters land. The outsiders race against time to avoid the heat of the day.

Later after having taken over management of Arrakis from House Harkonnen, Duke Leto Atreides and son Paul observe a spice harvester in operation. It's broad daylight.

Despite the change of management, it would have presumably been the same people, or mostly the same, doing the actual harvesting. And their standard operating procedures would likely not have changed. So why were they not also harvesting during the nighttime to avoid the heat of day?

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  • Because you can't see wormsign?
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 5, 2022 at 6:35
  • Makes sense, but then you would wonder how the Harkonnens see it at night? Maybe being filthy rich they can afford night vision goggles.
    – Batperson
    Commented Apr 5, 2022 at 6:44
  • 2
    It may be that they were so far behind their quota that they had to switch to 24 hour (or Arrakis equivalent) operations.
    – tbrookside
    Commented Apr 5, 2022 at 13:51
  • Lots of people left. Maybe they can't fill their shifts.
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 5, 2022 at 18:40

1 Answer 1

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Because it was early in the morning. Should be safe to assume that the particular crew we were seeing was finishing off their harvest run after a long night.

Transcript from the linked scene:

Dr. Kynes adjusts the stillsuits of the Atreides before the scene they go to observe the harvest.

Dr. Kynes: A stillsuit is a high-efficiency filtration system. Even this early in the morning you wouldn’t survive two hours without one of these.

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    They did say they had almost a full load of spice.
    – Batperson
    Commented Apr 7, 2022 at 5:57
  • 2
    @HFOrangefish added a transcript of the scene in case the video would not be available anymore.
    – Shade
    Commented Apr 7, 2022 at 6:29

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