Foundation explores the many ways an empire can decay
The Apple TV+ sci-fi drama is now officially a space opera, complete with a Death Star-like weapon.
TV Reviews Foundation
Foundation is now officially a space opera, and what better way to celebrate that shedding of any pretense otherwise than by including a Star Wars-esque secret super-weapon like the Invictus?
In “Death And The Maiden,” we learn that Phara’s actual actual plan with the settlers isn’t to take revenge (though that was a welcome bonus) but to gather a group of Encyclopedists fluent in ship mechanics and astronavigation to help unearth and repair a mythical weapon with which the scrappy group of dying Anarceons can wage war against the Empire.
Altogether, the battle on Terminus, Brother Day’s attempts to maneuver the Byzantine political landscape of one of the Galaxy’s major religions, and Brother Dawn’s own personal awakening made for an entertaining hour of television. But how the show clings to the thin remnants of the Big Ideas introduced in the first episode remains its weakest aspect—by treating characters as foretold agents of destiny in a grand mathematical formula. At some point, the show will actually have to reckon with the religion it’s making of math, and continuously having characters punt the comparison down the road by saying “No, it’s not!” has long since ceased being a satisfying answer.
There’s no shortage of the regular, old-fashioned kind of religion in this episode, however, as Brother Day visits the seat of one of the Galaxy’s largest faiths in order to assure the ascendancy of a leader supportive of the Empire. It’s always great when sci-fi invests in creating religion because when done properly, you can get so grand with the scope of the world-building.
Luminism, older than the empire, is centered on three moons that represent the trinity of goddesses themselves—of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Only Maiden is hospitable, and even it is an arid place, not dissimilar to the Middle East and dominated by salt mines that produce the faith’s signature religious trinket, the leviathan crystals. But more interesting than the arguably superfluous details of the faith itself is that Demerzel is one of its three trillion adherents. Why an android thousands of years old would choose to pursue faith, or even more basic, how it could do so are legitimate questions Brother Day raises. Demerzel’s answer is vague, but essentially no different than what you would receive from a non-robot believer.
Zephyr Halima (T’Nia Miller) is the heretical leader Brother Day meets upon landing on Maiden. She comes alone with no entourage to provide the expected level of pomp and obedience that would normally greet their arrival. It’s a power move and Halima is unwavering through the entire episode. Even after Day promises a massive infrastructure project to shore up support for the sympathetic candidate, Halima arrives at the funeral of her predecessor to provide some old fashioned testifying that decisively wins her the hearts of everyone in attendance. Most alarmingly, Demerzel herself bows down to the upstart Zephyr, with unknown implications for her future with The Empire.
We learn a little more about the ennui that seems to afflict Brother Dawn as well. Apparently, four hundred years of reproducing the exact same genetic code is beginning to produce galactic Hapsburgs. While initially it seemed Dawn wanted to hide his hunting prowess from Dusk because he feared his older brother, it appears that Dawn was afraid his older brother would be able to intuit that he’s color blind, which gave the younger man the edge against the camouflaged prey they hunted.
And while Dawn only admits to his emerging gardener paramour about his color-blindness, it seems it’s only one of a few possible afflictions Dawn experiences. He’s fully aware of the consequences of being deficient in any way, and he’s right to distrust Dusk, who deploys conscripted concubines from the gossamer court to spy on his siblings. Until now, we’ve only seen the three brothers act in tandem, deferring to the will of Day. This iteration of Dusk seems much more aggressive than previous versions, and it’s not difficult to imagine he would gladly sacrifice one generation of clones if it meant preserving the dynasty.
Things continue to be terrible on Terminus. In pursuit of the aforementioned Invictus, the Anacreons have killed a good portion of the settlers of Terminus. Thanks to the unexpected melee prowess of two of the scrappy kids we met at the beginning of the series, Salvor is freed from captivity and reunited with her father and Hugo. The trio execute a (fairly impressive-looking) raid on the Anacreons base in order to destroy the trio of ships the soldiers arrive on. They succeed, but at the cost of Salvor’s dad’s life.
The big moment from this scene, however, comes from a vision Salvor experiences just as she’s moving into position. She transports into Gaal’s body, or memory, or consciousness at the time of Hari’s murder and bears witness to the lead up between the two men. We learn that yes, as suspected, Hari knew he had to die. The main deviation is that he originally expected Raych to leave aboard the escape pod, making sure not to implicate Gaal, but not bring her along, either.
As it was, Hari felt his whole theorem would crumble if he survived and Raych and Gaal remained together; once again insisting on a very granular interpretation of his prophecy. As we know, Raych did not follow those orders and his own life was forfeit. However, this decision does explain why the ship Gaal landed upon was locked against her, which thoroughly discredits my thesis from last week’s review. How Salvor experiences these visions and how the Vault facilitates these psychic events remains unknown.
Hugo and Salvor return to Hugo’s ship, hoping to intercept it before Phara and her crew arrive. No such luck, and Phara, despite previously wanting to keep Salvor alive due to her connection to the Vault, decides the woman is too much a liability. Hugo cleverly locks the ship to Salvor, forcing Phara to bring the two along. Which should be fun for them, because who doesn’t want to see a spooky ol’ phantom ship?
- Despite Phara’s claim that imperial technology is good at keeping people alive, it was a bit of a coincidence that the one person they were looking for happened to be the one crawling around in the wreckage of the warship they destroyed last episode.
- Nice prop design work on the hunting rifles Brothers Dawn and Dusk used this episode. Some of the show’s costumes are a bit goofy (the gardener’s in particular bugs me), but the overall production design remains fantastic.
- The siege against the Anacreon corvettes was very satisfying. The lava effects at the end were a bit janky, but overall, some good spectacle.
- Congrats on the show for not having either character fall or get pushed off the balcony during Brother Dawn’s confession. The last 10-15 years of television has conditioned me to no setup being too easy for someone not to act on it.
- Salvor acts with the perfect level of ew upon learning her old man joined the Foundation to get laid.
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I won’t get to see this until tomorrow but I’m really enjoying this show so far and can’t wait to see how it grows and evolves.
I read these reviews, and I recognize nouns from the Foundation books (Gaal Dornick, Anacreon, etc.), but (irrespective of the quality of the show) there is no reason this show should be called Foundation at this point. This is like setting Dune in a jungle.
However, this decision does explain why the ship Gaal landed upon was locked against her, which thoroughly discredits my thesis from last week’s review. It does. The ship isn’t locked against her, its locked against anyone that isn’t an authorized user (Hari and Raych). Hari’s plan was to have Raych kill him and then flee to the pod, which would later be recovered by the ship, which Raych would be authorized to operate. Hari needed Raych to kill him, but didn’t want to ruin Raych life. Raych would have the ship to taken him to wherever he wanted (or where Hari needed him to go).Gaal wasn’t supposed to be involved or implicated and was supposed to continue with the Foundation. This changed because she happened to walk in as Raych was killing Hari. Raych (clearly emotionally distressed having just stabbed his surrogate father) saw Gaal and presumed that her presence would implicate, especially if followed the plan, escaped in the pod and left her behind. Instead, Raych sacrificed his life by giving Gaal his spot in the pod. Gaal eventually gets picked up by the ship, but isn’t an authorized user because it was never the plan to have her on it (only Raych).
If only Hari and Raych had thought of locking the door before the staged murder.
All correct, but I don’t understand why you’re saying this in opposition to the reviewer who just admitted he had it wrong. You misread his sentence by adding a negative, by any chance?
You’re right, I misread the sentence. My lizard brain added *not* between “does” and “explain”.
I like the way the Maiden-Mother-Crone relationship mirrors Dawn-Day-Dusk. The Triple Goddess concept is pretty basic to certain existing religions but so far as I know there is no real world male representation.And am I the only one who noticed Hari Seldon still alive at the end of the previous episode?
I definitely noticed.This is a total guess but I’m wondering if Hari had himself removed from the Terminus population because he was worried that he himself would become a godlike figure. He didn’t want to be a religious figure that people worshipped. So he became a martyr instead.But I hope they explain how he survived the stabbing until his “corpse” was put into his special space coffin.I wonder if Gaal realizes her parents are probably dead because it’s been 35 years. ooof.
I think Gaal already knew she would never meet her parents again when she left her planet. Not to mention when she embarked on a lifelong mission at the far side of the galaxy.
The bit with Hari was glitching in and out so I just assumed it’s a hologram not the living Hari?
There are several historical religions featuring a triple goddess, but the Maiden, Mother and Crone dichotomy was only invented in the 20th century.
On the one hand, it’s looked like a recording at the time because things were fading in and out. On the other, Lewis Pirenne said they put Seldon in a coffin of how own design and making which sure sounds like it was actually a disguised escape pod.
I thought this was the best episode of the season, as it leaned into the things that I think work on the show, and almost completely trimmed the fat of the stuff that doesn’t work. I think this is headed in the right direction towards a show that is simply good and fun to watch, rather than one that is a fascinating mix of extreme skill and extreme incompetence.Not “A” material, but I think this earns the “B” much more than previous episodes. I’d be thrilled if this was the new “normal” quality of an episode. There was no Gaal in this episode (apart from completely unnecessary voiceover), which given how she’s been written is the right amount of Gaal. We did however get a 30 second scene with Raych, which is 30 seconds too many. I cannot stand Alfred Enoch’s performance. It’s like he won the role out of a cereal box, all I see when I watch him is an actor acting (badly), not a character who I can suspend disbelief actually exists. I also think this scene should have been included a few episodes ago as it happened, rather than puzzle boxing it and then flashing back. It didn’t add anything to do it this way. Especially since the reveal of what happened was so lazy and ineffective (in part because we’d already been fed enough clues to deduce what happened, and in part because it didn’t have any significance in the moment it was revealed to Salvor—it couldn’t have been less important to her).I also thought the Hamila’s speech at the end dragged on wayyyy too long. The music and the pensive expressions were trying to tell me that this was a tense moment, but all I felt was exasperation that the lunatic preaching on the street corner wouldn’t stop blathering. They didn’t do a good enough job setting up the stakes of that scene to maintain tension through such a long speech. Edit down the Hamila speech, cut the Raych/Hari scene and have it be in the episode in which it actually happened, and I would have been gripped for every minute of this episode. For 98% of its runtime the show was firing on all cylinders.
There was no Gaal in this episode (apart from completely unnecessary voiceover), which given how she’s been written is the right amount of Gaal. We did however get a 30 second scene with Raych, which is 30 seconds too many. I cannot stand Alfred Enoch’s performance. It’s like he won the role out of a cereal box, all I see when I watch him is an actor acting (badly), not a character who I can suspend disbelief actually exists.100% agree, I find both characters annoying and the previous episode focusing exclusively on Gaal almost had me bailing on the show, she is not a great POV character. More Salvor and definitely more Demerzel, she’s fascinating!
If I recall, the speech was all about how we live and then there is an afterlife for our soul. She was very much damning Empire because he doesn’t die and doesn’t have a unique body. She was saying he has no soul.
I understood the point once she got to it eventually, but they already set up that spiritual belief system in the previous episode, including how it made them distrustful of the empire, so it’s not like it was surprising for her for to articulate it.
It wasn’t surprising, but it did a heck of a job selling the concept to the believers – including Demerzel.
They are already believers, why do they need it sold to them at all?The cam kept cutting to Demerzel, but it wasn’t obvious what she was grappling with emotionally. She had the basic tenets of her religion cited back to her and it looked like she just ate at Taco Bell and was fending off the shits, we cut back to her pensive flop sweat like 4 or 5 times, as the music dramatically escalates, and it’s just like, “so…. what should I be nervous about here? Is someone about to blow up another bomb?”The scene is made retroactively more interesting by Demerzel turning coat (she’s been one of my favourite characters since her initial appearance, I love the actress’s performance), but it felt like an eternity to get to that point. I just think the scene could have been a lot shorter without losing anything. It’s a relatively small critique of an episode that I thought was overall very, very good.
They are very much not believers in the concept of reincarnation and how it pertains to Empire being soulless. Those are the heretic seeds that Empire was sent there to snuff out. Did you not pay attention two episodes back?
“…and in part because it didn’t have any significance in the moment it was revealed to Salvor—it couldn’t have been less important to her.” Not at that moment, but having that vision just then would have to cement it in her mind for later. When she would, one would think, be the person to keep Gaal from being executed as an accomplice in Hari’s death by virtue of the vision.
It’s been a slow burn but it’s definitely growing on me.
The trick is not thinking of Asimov’s books too much. It’s just a “loosely inspired” kind of thing.
I’m not sure that “using the title and randomly assigning characters the names of characters in the source material” counts as even a “loosely inspired” adaptation.
People like “The Shining.”
It worked for Lucifer.
Why is that a trick? What purpose does it serve readers to achieve Stephen King levels of preciousness to source material they didn’t even write?
I like the subtlety with which they’re centering Demerzel. They’ll eventually be the focus character, I imagine. Their expressing faith isn’t odd in the overall context, given that they have a belief in humankind being able to transcend — plus it’s a way to make the Zeroth Law function. If Goyer sticks to the overall roadmap, Demerzel will eventually derail the Seldon plan by changing the nature of humanity.Also subtle: the presence of the Second Foundation. Again, if Goyer sticks to the map this will get *weird* in a fun way…and once the Mule shows up it’s already Weird City.“Making a religion of math.” Another bit of subtle foreshadowing. The Foundation has been developing trade in the Outer Kingdoms. The story of Gaal’s homeworld is also foreshadowing, as it hints at using science as religion to exert control and force progress. This couldn’t possibly backfire, right?
The one thing they can’t do at the moment, legally-speaking, is reveal Demerzel’s true identity from the books (“R. Daneel Olivaw”), since they don’t currently have the rights to Asimov’s Robot-stories (per David Goyer in last week’s Reddit AMA). But it’s possible that they could use the core principles of the Zeroth Law in some fashion on the TV series without actually referring to it by that particular name.
Yeah, a lot of it depends on which rights they have — technically they *could* reveal Demerzel as Daneel if they have rights to the prequels and sequels, but I think it puts Giskard off-limits as they’re not really part of the Foundation prequels. They can still go with Zeroth, but as something Daneel develops. It also weakens the Second Foundation link, as that connects with Daneel taking on Giskard’s psychic abilities.
he’s color blind, which gave the younger man the edge against the camouflaged prey they hunted.Does this even make sense? Dusk said you don’t even need to look for the animal’s colors, only catch the movement. So being color-blinded or not shouldn’t matter (not to mention the fact that hand-eye coordination is the key factor anyway). I honestly though Dawn was simultaneously flawed in some ways (the color blindness) and superior in others, but I guess they wanted to link both aspects together somehow.Also, of course Dusk is the more ruthless of the current three, he’s the one who committed double genocide when he was younger. Current Day, instead, is the one with the deepest attachment to Demerzel. We haven’t seen current Dawn interacting too much with her, whereas we used to see her with former Dawn/current Day all the time, being quite motherly.
Being color blind means that Brother Dawn has spent his whole life to be better than average at seeing movement to make up for the fact that he can’t see color. In this case seeing the color is actually a hindrance which makes him unreasonably better at the hunt.
Colorblindness making camouflage less effective is absolutely a real thing. Of course, me and Brother Dawn are screwed whenever someone tries to make something stand out by using red and green to “contrast” at the same value and saturation.
“Hari Seldon chose me to carry out his plan”.No, he didn’t, or at least he’d better not have, because that would completely contradict the entire concept of the Seldon Plan and the entire premise of the show.
Originally I though Azura was giving Brother Dawn the herbal remedy for bruising from his fall being halted roughly by his shield. But now I’m wondering if he is a hemophilliac.
This crossed my mind too. He just carries himself with a certain frailty – good acting!
Weird though — given Dawn’s genetic “aberrations”, I wonder if he’s being positioned to become the Mule.
I just noticed Jane Espenson in the opening credits for the very first time as an Executive Producer (presumably, a writing-producer). Was this her very first episode, or was I simply not paying as close attention as I probably should’ve up to this point?
Kinda lucky the Anacreons didn’t kill all the rocket experts they needed too. Ridiculous way to get the expertise they so desperately need.This show needs more sex.
Brother Dawn is left-handed, I noticed from a breakfast scene where he initially reaches out to a goblet with his left, before quickly switching hands.
I can’t help but feel that Asimov would be very mad about the way the show is developing. They have step on, kicked, smeared and discarded most of what makes Foundation what it is.I understand that they have to make changes. And I welcome most of those changes: they make for a most TV-able show, and a more modern approach to characters and so on.But… really? Make Demerzel a RELIGIOUS robot? Not to mention the fact that by design, and justified in so many ways within the novels themselves, NOBODY knew Demerzel was a robot. Here apparently everybody knows and it’s ok with that. And now they will surely try to use the fact that Demerzel is religious for… something…Like they did with Raych and his new background story where he is mad with Seldon… and kills him. Because… Dornick?I had my doubts for a TV adaptation of Foundation. When I started reading the very few info about that, and the apparently good ideas and compromise the producers had, I said: ok, it might be good.Now I hesiated almost a week to see last friday’s episode, and don’t really look forward to see the next one. I can’t leave the series like this, and I know I will at least finish the first season… but every episode erodes my will and joy to see it. And last one was a slap on the face. Of ASIMOV – worse of all – us, mere mortals, be damned.