Foundation explores old mysteries and new discoveries
“Mysteries And Martyrs” has a ghost ship, digital ghosts, and even more revelations.
TV Reviews Foundation
There is a narrative device that occurs frequently in entertainment that I have never seen attached to a name. It’s the convention where you feel your sympathies aligned with an objectively terrible person because all of a sudden, they’re cornered by a newer, more aggressive opponent.
For lack of a more succinct descriptor, I call it the Homer vs. Patty and Selma Principle. As a rule, on The Simpsons, Homer is always wrong (before his third act change of heart, at least). Should Patty and Selma be around to witness his buffoonery, they call him out on it, but in such a cruel and cutting way, that the viewer’s sympathies shift back to Homer, despite him behaving so selfishly.
It creates a weird dissonance in the viewer, and one I experienced in full effect watching Brother Day verbally spar with Zephyr Halima. Day is a jerk; a narcissistic, iron-fisted ruler incapable of envisioning the galaxy thriving if he isn’t at the center. But somehow, I found myself annoyed with Halima as she condescendingly informed “Cleon” that he has no soul. And she’s right! Not necessarily about him having a soul, but that his myopic vision and self-preservation above all things will certainly hasten the destruction of the galactic empire.
But whether it’s sincere or a very skillful deception, Halima’s brand of true-believer zealotry doesn’t provide the galaxy a better alternative. Regardless, the speech she gave in the previous episode has cemented her place as the front-runner to head the Luminarians, and for now, she’s not budging on any of Day’s bargaining. Day recalls Hari’s promise that his equation showed a major religious defection, and he’s willing to subject himself to a brutal ritual pilgrimage in order to quell it. Though, this is as much to salve his ego as anything.
“Mysteries And Martyrs” makes good on its title by ensuring one or both are featured in every storyline. Salvor and the Anacreons arrive at the Invictus. It appears Phara and her crew had already discovered the 700-year-old “crown jewel of the Galactic Fleet,” but the ancient ship’s defenses are still functioning and have already destroyed two Anacreon corvettes. The cannons protecting the ship from assault are unable to lock onto smaller targets, however, so everyone has to suit up and individually propel onto the ship’s surface.
It’s a beautiful scene, with the diffuse light of a nearby sun filtering through the asteroid field in which the ship is resting, but it was not very dynamic set piece. Salvor just kind of drifts along through space before a quick edit deposits her on the Invictus’ hull in a superhero crouch. Everyone else then just gently lines up behind her. Everyone but Hugo, that is. Salvor’s lover makes the descent one degree off and as such goes idly catapulting off into space. It was an onscreen “death” with no build-up and barely any execution that it seems obvious his disappearance has more to do with the old mining communication systems he and Salvor had noticed earlier in the episode than an offhand and ignoble end for a major character.
The interior of the Invictus makes good on everything you want from your ghost ship. It has hallways jam-packed with floating desiccated corpses and ice-crusted debris piling up in the corners as though it were an abandoned farmhouse. The otherwise stillness of the ship is disturbed by semi-regular interval of pulsating lights. One of Terminus’ tech experts brought aboard to repair the ship deduces it’s a signal indicating when the ship will make another interstellar jump.
Some accident aboard the ship nearly a thousand years ago caused the jump drive to malfunction, causing it to pop across the galaxy at regular intervals as the stranded crew starved to death. Now, Salvor’s people and their captors have four hours to fix the drive before the next jump occurs, possibly sending them into the heart of a sun, or just so far away, they too will never be heard from again.
While this is not ideal, neither is Phara’s plan to get the ship working so they can kamikaze the Invictus straight into the surface of Trantor. She and the Anacreons have no intent on surviving this scheme; they just want to take the center of the galactic empire with them. Learning this forces Saldor to wrangle the aged, non-combatants in her group to fight back against their captors. They all duke it out above the ship’s sludgy-looking cooling tanks, but they are quickly subdued. The catwalks everyone fought on were distressingly closed to the bubbling, toxic liquid that’s been fermenting for over five hundred years, and the setting alone made for a tense fight scene. Let’s hope Hugo is out there finding help and not just pulverized against the face of an asteroid.
Not content to merely provide a phantom ship, this episode also gives us digital ghosts. Hari lives again, in a manner, as an incredibly sophisticated digital package of Hari’s memories and experiences that’s also able to react with surprise to events he didn’t know about, and deduce the answers to ones he suspected. He can also change his clothes. As a piece of speculative technology, it’s very broad and not particularly convincing in the world the show has presented so far. As a means to give us more Jared Harris, it was perfectly lovely.
Hari confesses to Gaal that Raych murdered him because he was afflicted with a neurological disorder that causes rapid, severe mental degradation. This device of someone learning of their own mortality and therefore becoming more willing to sacrifice their life in a manner of their own choosing feels a little too pat here, but Hari’s continued explanation that him going senile would irreparably damage people’s willingness to continue following the Seldon plan makes some sense.
He understands how tenuous his vision is, and is unwilling to contribute to its harm. The whole conversation Hari has with Gaal about the power of myth to drive people forward is maddening because of the show’s ongoing insistence to dodge the religious nature of Hari’s plan. When Gaal mentions to Hari that the Foundation isn’t a religion and he isn’t a god, Hari weakly responds that gods are impervious to knives. It’s a weak response because the thing about gods is they die all the time. It’s rebirth that make them so special, and we are witnessing Hari’s rebirth. This tension is the fulcrum the whole show balances on and they act like they don’t know it.
Hari and Gaal go back and forth over the events of the night of Hari’s death to try and figure out how Hari’s plan went so wrong. He specifically planned everything to take place while Gaal was doing her nightly swimming laps. The big reveal for the episode is that Gaal knew to come to Hari’s chamber because she’s gifted with some psychic ability. Hari may have suspected this, but wasn’t confident enough to factor the possibility into his plan. How Gaal’s abilities and her place 34 years into a future she wasn’t meant to see is going to be the next great mystery.
Stray Observations
- I didn’t touch on Brother Dawn’s story. He deepened his relationship with Jacenta, and the two even shared a brief, chaste, flora-infused love scene. We learn that, yes indeed, he is a genetic anomaly and the Empire apparently even keeps spare clones behind tasteful, genital-blocking art deco walls in case one of them is defective. It’s odd to think there are apparently layers of clones like shark’s teeth. It undermines the very ritualistic nature of heredity we’ve witnessed with previous incarnations of the brothers. But I guess it is more practical.
- Also, apparently bra clasps have not changed in 12,000 years?
- It was neat to see a bit more of the scar, and to see a regular person like Jacenta navigating her life there. Her suggestion that Dawn could just drain his nanobots, change his face, and just lose himself in a new life seems absurdly naïve, though.
- Day is furious at Demerzel’s heresy by kneeling to Zephyr Halima. Demerzel counters that if her action was truly in opposition to The Empire, she would not physically be capable of bending her knees. It’s a fun little puzzle about the nature of faith and the hard interpretation of rules, and the kind of snippet I wish the show explored more deeply.
- Day also had a good point about Demerzel not exactly being in a good position to judge anyone else’s soul either.
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Warning: Viewers looking for a even slightly faithful adaptation of the Foundation series will be sorely disappointed. This is a story loosely, just barely based on Foundation. Blah. No thanks. I’m just gonna watch that episode of DS9 where psychohistory is apparently invented (and ignored). Even that’s more faithful to Asimov than this junk.
During the scene with spacemen flying around from ship to ship, I thought to myself, “Man, this is more Lucky Starr than Foundation, isn’t it?”.
They did that a couple of times on the Kelvin Universe Star Treks, and maybe on Disco too, so I groaned when the did this on Foundation this week.
If people were looking for an even slightly faithful adaptation of a 70 year old talky and outdated scifi book series in a big budget flagship-level epic modern scifi TV series they should have expected to be disappointed.
I’ll concede it’s not a great show, but it’s failings are nothing to do with any perceived disloyalty to the source material.
This has everything to do with disloyalty to the source material. There are no magic there. There is definitely not superpowers that allow somebody to “see the future” (that is very different from psicohistory!). They needed to change some things, fill some gaps, in the source material. But they are just taking the names and doing whatever they want with them. Shame on Asimov’s state that allows this to happen.
“It’s not like the book, therefore it is bad.”
What is even the point of this comment? Like, what do you think you’re achieving here? A totally original take that no one has already posted here before ad nasueum?
You’re not actually criticising anything, just pointing out that it’s different which you take for granted is bad.
Asimov was a great idea guy, but his prose always left a lot to be desired, yet his fanboys act like he wrote holy scripture, and god forbid anyone change it to make it more intelligable for a serialized tv drama that has to be rooted in characters rather than interesting ideas.
“just barely based on Foundation”Yet you cannot provide even a single example of discrepancy, let alone refute the entire adaptation.
well…. “psychic powers” before [spoilers], for example… hm, but i guess things do get retconned… where do the 2F Mentalists come from, anyhow?
Psychic powers were cultivated by Hari Seldon in his university-group literally decades before they ever got exiled from Trantor (see: Forward the Foundation). Plus they go back literally tens of thousands of years in groups like the Solarians (after they go underground), as well as the Gaians (in Foundation’s Edge and Foundation and Earth).
The description of the “cultivation” of psychic powers in Forward the Foundation directly contradicts the explanation given in Second Foundation that states that the psychic powers are actually inherent in the human brain and that their use is more a matter of training than of genetics. The Gaians’ group mentality in Foundation’s Edge is, as I have explained, a retrofit in which Asimov attempts to acknowledge that the justification for the Seldon Plan given by the First Speaker in Second Foundation can be read as a justification for fascism by presenting as an alternative the ultimate form of communism (“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”).
that’s right. But it is utterly retconned… and these powers are more “Kwisatz Haderach” than “Second Foundation”, aren’t they
…Have fun with your literal fantasy-adaptation with 1940s white men talking in rooms for hours and hours and hours, then! LOL.
Yeah, admittedly it’s been a while since I read the Foundation Trilogy, but I don’t recognize hardly anything they are talking about, beyond the names. I’d rather they didn’t do it, than do it badly. Hard pass. Hard pass on almost all Asimov adaptations, particularly I, Robot, and Bicentennial Man (which was one of his weaker efforts anyway). I hate when people write their own shit, and then buy someone elses IP and sticks the name of that IP on something that has virtually nothing to do with it.
“Also, apparently bra clasps have not changed in 12,000 years?”Yet more proof of Empire’s stagnation.
There will be bra clasps for as long as women like to laugh at men struggling with bra clasps, i.e. forever.
I absolutely mentally applauded that decision. Bra-clasps are perfected technology, and nothing better will replace it in 12 000 years!
“The big reveal for the episode is that Gaal knew to come to Hari’s chamber because she’s gifted with some psychic ability”Only if you were completely blind and deaf would this be a reveal.
My #1 fascination with this show continues to be that Gaal is positioned as the lead protagonist — unquestionably in the first couple episodes, and then maintained as a persistent presence even in the episodes she doesn’t appear, with her unnecessary narration at the beginning and end. Yet she doesn’t make anything happen; she is like a plastic bag blowing in the wind (cue American Beauty music), constantly befuddled at what is going on or why. So the revelation that she can “sense the future” is just so ridiculous to reconcile with the plotting of her character up to this point (that Usual Suspects style montage was laughable… please forgive the back to Spacey movie references). If you told me that was true of Salvor (and it still might be), I would totally get it—she is intuitive, confident, routinely a step ahead, and has that cool trick calling coin flips. But Gaal? Come on. Before and since she solved a math problem that had no practical significance, off screen, she’s been useless.
I can only hope this will mark a transformation of Gaal’s character into someone more assertive and less clueless. Because I’m enjoying just about every other aspect of the show, particularly the non-Gaal plot threads that the past two episodes have leaned into (the mere sight of Raych irritates me, but I think he is truly dead and gone, now). Jared Harris is always compelling on screen, and he at least lifts up some of those scenes with Gaal. Their dynamic is interesting enough, if he remains a part of the picture going forward.
Ironically there was no narration in this episode was there?
Gaal was actually in the episode. I think she’s only been narrating the episodes in which she doesn’t appear. They have been ludicrously unnecessary narrations.
From listening to the podcasts, apparently Apple was appalled that one of the planned protagonists were not heard from from episode 3-5, so I feel like the narrations were shoehorned in there as a concession so we don’t forget about her existence. It’s sounds like a regrettable studio note imo as the intention behind this series seems to put a serious trust in the viewers comprehension and ability to keep up.
I’m about 1 1/2 episodes behind here since I’m watching this only when I a. have got nothing else to watch and b. don’t mind turning my brain and suspension of disbelief off, but I’ll take it a bit further.Gaal has bothered me since the first episode when her apparently encyclopedic, one in a multiple trillion command of math is shown in a Lisa Simpson “Girls Just Want to Have Sums”-esque touchy-feeley way. It bothered me more when her backstory got revealed and we discover that she’d somehow learned all this by working through pretty pictures for a few months and then used her brilliance to win Hari Seldon’s contest. And it kept bothering me when she was able to use her l33t math drawing skillz to get the ship’s computer to tell her where she was going. That she apparently now has super duper magic on top of her super brilliance too is not surprising in terms of just how poorly her character has been developed; she’s not just special but super special, except we don’t really see why in terms of that besides that we’re told that by the show rather than shown.You know what bothered me about the backstory most, though? That if you’re going to drastically blow up the novels with religion – which is perfectly fine for an adaptation if it’s done right – if her Chosen One-ness showed up in her job for as an acolyte for the Sleeper, we don’t see her evolution from zealot to scientist, or even much internal conflict to provide depth. Instead, she just figures everything out superbrilliantly and leaves flyover country behind.I agree with your assessment; I’m not hate watching this as much as being bemused by how a show that can be briefly compelling at times can be routinely terrible too.
So hologram Jared Harris can be an active member of the show no matter how many centuries the show will cycle through? Very good!
Very clever I thought, plus it fits in with the novels where he left behind help to guide the foundation.
You think only that? All this freaking show only shares names with the novels. With last night’s episode they have officialy say: screw, we don’t care what Foundation novels are about, what Asimov thought and believed, and we are only happy to get the rights to use the names.Last night was probably the last episode I watch of this train wreck
I found the lack of Jared Harris in the previous four episodes disturbing.
Yes, that’s good to have the actor. That’s *very bad* for the show and whatever they wanted to follow on the original ideas at all. I love Jared Harris and definitely wanted to have more of him on the show, but this is not the way. They had 2 whole novels to choose to (prelude and forward) if they wanted to have a single set of characters to follow.Inventing a digital consciousness and pairing it with a witch that can see the future has nothing to do with Foundation. Last night’s chapter was the last nail on that coffin.
“a witch that can see the future has nothing to do with Foundation.”The psychic abilities of Second Foundationers are established in Second Foundation.
This are no psychic abilities, at least not in any sense of what Asimov wrote. Mentalists did not foresee the future, not anymore than what Psicohistory and it’s math gave them predictions, which was established since page 0 to be of societies or very large groups of people and never around specific individuals. Not to mention fortituous events (i.e., remember The Mule?) The “I can see that the micrometeorite is going to kill me, I better get some shield” has nothing to do with anything Asimov wrote on any of the Foundation books (and I usually read the 7 novels once every 2 years or so).I can’t get the idea behind the writers doing this kind of changes. I am sure there are a lot of things to improve on the books, specially to fill the gaps and making a more TV-friendly narrative. But re-inventing this kind of stuff is just them having an idea for a show and using Asimov’s characters names just for kicks.
With the exception of that micrometeorite, none of the things that Gaal sensed are actually the future. They are abnormal things happening to people in the moment.The Mentalists of the Second Foundation used their abilities to manipulate individuals to reduce outlier events. (This included manipulating The Mule himself in an event that took a lot of setup since as a Mentalist himself he would ordinarily have defenses.)
The show actually spends some time on this last episode recapitulating the places before where Gaal has shown her ability to see the future. And even if it was just the micrometeorite, what’s the point? Either she can see the future or not, and having an individual that can see the future, specific things to happen to people or things – for instance, when the starbridge collapses, she says “Look Hari, the sky” before anything explodes… which was very strange to me when it happened, I assumed it was an editing error, but no!, she WAS seeing what would happen – is against the set of rules established by the showrunners as far as the public can know. They are probably setting up Dornick as the origin of the Second Foundation, but not by mathematicians that can talk mentally between them and with extensive training modify minds… but super-humans that can see the future. And if that’s the case then… why do you need Psicohistory on the first place? Why Seldon and all of that? You could have started the show stating that Seldon is a witch that can see the future, maybe trying to justify that with “maths” for the Empire and the commoner, but us, the audience, know that’s just a smoke screen.What they are doing is just mixing magic with “sci-fi” and that is just “bad sci-fi”.
The same with the digital Seldon. Not to mention the fact that having a Seldon “live” eternally, and “compute” as the original human, goes against the original idea of Asimov… the way the resolve that is: ok, we need something to keep him alive… let’s quantum-transfer his brain somewhere! That, in one episode. With no previous cases so the public can know that it’s something possible in this world, not to mention the implications about that, nor how that would go or interact with the original idea of the show. Why then is it that the Cleons don’t use that? Or the rich and powerful (assuming that should be something expensive to do?). I mean, there is another TV show where they have that: Altered Carbon. You can see what kind of issues a society where that was possible would have. Here… well, we have a way to justify keeping Jared Harris appearing for as many episodes as they want.
And yes, of course, everything “hurts” more because I can’t assume or see this as if it had nothing to do with what Asimov wrote: The show is called Foundation!… But even if it was something not related to that, by name at least, this things they are doing are just creating drama for plot-reasons and inventing solutions to problems that don’t exist to extend character lifes and creating more drama afterwards.Just my 2 cents. I hope at least somebody gets interested on the original books because of this show and discovers them. I would love to be able to read them again for the first time, and every time I can, recommend them to people who doesn’t know them.
I’ve been really enjoying this show overall. It looks fantastic and it’s not gone where I thought it would which was a pleasant surprise. I can’t wait to see what they do next in terms of introducing things like The Mule and all of that.
It’s going to be a while given the pace they’re going at.
David Goyer confirmed on his Reddit AMA a week-and-a-half ago that the upcoming second season will focus upon Hober Mallow, so probably the Mule will eventually show up in the third season (if they continue the pattern of one main ensemble per season, apart from Hari Seldon and maybe Cleon and Demerzel).
“Lewis, fall back! Fall back, Lewis! You’re too close. Two meters!”Oh my triple goddess, Lewis is. the. worst. He can’t even WALK right!
his relationship with JacentaI don’t think Jacenta is the character you think she is, because she was on the Invictus with Salvor and the others.Also, I don’t think there’s anything particularly strange about a digitized conscience that inhabits a ship’s computer being able to project a hologram wearing different clothes.
There are a million things that bother me about this show every week. This week something I had a hard time with was Brother Dawn going on about how he’s watched all the time and never alone and his brothers watch his every move and would know immediately if a single thing were amiss etc etc, WHILE SHOWING HIS SECRET GIRLFRIEND AROUND UNDOUBTEDLY RESTRICTED PARTS OF THE PALACE. And having long conversations about the particulars of his execution-worthy genetic differences. Also sex. Like, do they not have the far future equivalent of security cameras in Trantor?? Microphones? Tiny drones? Nothing? I somehow doubt that in all the work of the Cleons they somehow neglected to create a sturdy surveillance apparatus designed to pick up exactly this kind of shit. And it defies reason that our Brother Dawn, so paranoid already, wouldn’t be more careful if such an apparatus existed, which he has implied that it does. Idk, it’s just lazy writing and there is so much lazy writing on this show.
Shows without all the CCTVs make me go Arrrggghhhh…!
Yeah, couldn’t quite square “I can’t show anything” with “lets make secret love and here’s my genetic copies” either.
My interest for this show has started to go down. I was interested in the originality at the beginning, but it’s now bogged down to typical sci-fi tropes and action. Gaal’s story is the only one I still find interesting. The rest feels like Sci-Fi channel stuff. I’ll still stick around for a bit because it’s just a pretty looking series and hopefully it veers towards the weird again.
So is Gaal going to found the Second Foundation? Is that the point of all this? Including them from the beginning of the story would definitely be a departure from the text.
“He deepened his relationship with Jacenta”Jacenta is a Foundationer. Azura is the gardener on Trantor.
Also, apparently bra clasps have not changed in 12,000 years? Actually, it’s more like 23,000 years (the Foundation novels take place around 25,000 A.D.), but yeah, that kinda caught my attention too.
It undermines the very ritualistic nature of heredity we’ve witnessed with previous incarnations of the brothers. But I guess it is more practical.
I kind of disagree. The purpose of the ritualism of the genetic dynasty and the purpose of the clones-in-vats is the same: to control the Cleons and the genetic dynasty (and by extension, the Empire). The purpose behind everything in the genetic dynasty is to perpetuate itself, and so it absorbs logical inconsistency in order to do so.
It also serves to underline the way the Empire defines what being a Cleon is. Like, being able to properly conform to the ritual is what makes a Cleon a Cleon – and so a clone that’s imperfect (i.e. color blind, etc.) is defined by the very rules of the ritualistic genetic dynasty as being not-a-real-Cleon, and un-Cleon, if you will. Or, a Cleon being injured and dying before being able to complete the ritual of going through the three phases and dying of old age, would also undermine the ritual itself. The sudden death/disappearance of a Day/Dusk/Dawn would interrupt the cycle and thus give the population cause to doubt the sublime nature of the genetic dynasty.
And so having a clone of all the Cleons in a vat, able to immediately step in with no one the wiser, actually upholds the ritual. There would be a collective forgetting of the death, and everyone would buy into the illusion that the ritual continued unbroken, which would then strengthen the myth of the genetic dynasty.
I found this episode surprisingly good. The Cleons storyline continues to be more compelling than it has any right to be, the scenes of Gaal sparring with the Hari Seldon hologram were fun. Even the Hardin/Anacreon storyline was more entertaining than usual.It helps to let go of the original stories and just try to view this as its own story. In many ways, the TV series is exact opposite of Asimov’s version. But, then again, Asimov already pissed all over the original stories with his 80s sequels and prequels, so I can’t really get too worked up about Goyer doing the same.
Just want to add there, it drove me crazy the FIRST thing Gaal didn’t do was ask glitching Hari FOR THE DAMN PASSWORD.
I always thought the blood (Hari’s) on the blade would open all doors and authorize all computer commands.
There is no “password”. The computer is encoded to respond to Raych only (the knife / blood lock excepted – presumably to ensure that Hari was really killed?).
The Invictus feels like a trifecta of derive concepts. Planet destroyer (Star War’s Death Star), Random Jumps (Stargate Universe’s Destiny), Lethal security system on a deserted ghost ship (a number of Star Trek episodes). As a connoisseur of science fiction, I had fun with this episode. Overall, I like the slow pace because it gives me time to absorb the ideas in the show.
Having Dune come out while the Foundation series is running finally made me come to the realization that the two sagas are mirror opposites. While both universes are controlled by an emperor or empire, and span thousands of years.
Dune is about the religious prophesied messiah (who has the ability to see into the future) who will destroy and become the emperor, coming to the realization that to save humanity, humanity can not be predetermined or stagnant, humanity must be free from prescient vision, and there must be conflict for civilization to continue to flourish, nor ruled under one religion or ruler.
Foundation is about the mathematically prophesied end the ruling empire (and the peace the empire enforces), the rise of the concept, and development of the Foundation by Hari Seldon (who is seen as a savior?) and The Plan, with the endgame being that to save humanity and civilization, humanity must develop prescience and then themselves into a hive mind, which would then create peace and no conflict.Not exactly right I know, but the points are there.
Bring back Hugo, you bastards! Did any essential-to-the-Anacreons’-plans Terminus people die in the fighting? Are their plans fucked anyway? Ha!
I find it a bit interesting that it’s presumably easy and intended for the viewer to dislike Brother Day and think more fondly of Zephyr Halima but like the aspect of their interaction you hit on her thinly vailed haughty derision and self-righteousness directed at Cleon is pretty well right in line with her more of the same towards the other front runner and she’s either not aware of Seldon’s proclamation or equally dismissive of it. Cleon may be a self serving jerk but he’s as much a self serving jerk (I’d argue maybe less even) as he’s also trying to stave off a 1000 year reign of darkness and death. This Cleon being the Brother Dawn of before has shown signs of doing whatever he can to be better than his predecessor and whatever he can to ensure Seldon’s total collapse and utter despair don’t come to pass. Halima just want’s to overthrow the status quo (and likely gain more power for herself) with at best the consequences in her mind being only good (though more likely consequences be damned) and both the viewer and Brother Day know that his is precisely one of the steps on our way to a 1000 years of decimation and oblivion.
is it only me or is the invictus’s inside a tad too influenced by the Event Horizon?i mean the cross symbols, the frozen carcasses, the sudden power spikes… it’s one thing to have an hommage, but very much another to just saying “make it like the Event Horizon”