In its finale, Foundation narrows the entire galaxy down to two people
"The Leap" offers glimpses of suffering on an unimaginable scale, but for those working to preserve the galaxy, the scale diminishes to a precious few.
TV Reviews Foundation
What does the idea of the Foundation mean to David S. Goyer and Josh Friendman’s show? It seems telling that the only real rumination on the unimaginable scope of the galactic empire is couched in the monologue Brother Day recites to Azura when he lays out the truly awful punishment he’s administering for her role in corrupting Brother Dawn. He makes certain to frame it clinically, that this is a requisite measure to keep word of Cleon’s tainted bloodline safe, but it’s obvious from the dark satisfaction Day takes in informing Azura of the completeness of his cruelty that his actions are not security, but revenge.
The idea of killing 1,551 people with the wave of a hand is terrifying, and also one of the few moments in the show that allows us to visualize the sheer scope of the galactic empire. The other came right at the start of the season with the terrorist attack on the Star Bridge. When it comes to tearing down the entire universe, no amount of bodies are enough, but when it comes to putting it back together again, it narrows down to just two.
In one of her many redundant voice-overs, Gaal states that “It takes more power to build than to burn” and that seems to apply to the show itself. We are given glimpses of suffering on an unimaginable scale, but for those working to preserve the galaxy; the scale diminishes to a precious few. It’s unfortunate that the story should contract down to the destiny of two characters as the season draws to a close. Not because their stories are bad, necessarily, but because it’s a narrative that is already being done in countless instances elsewhere and doesn’t play on the singular qualities of a property like Foundation.
This finale hinges on the the visit from Hari Seldon. As first mentioned in episode 5, Hari’s coffin was no mere vessel, but a bio-mechanical Chia Pet that utilized Hari’s own body to build the very Vault that’s been idling on the surface of Terminus since the Encyclopedists arrival. The brief scene of Hari’s corpse being subsumed by the expanding tendrils of his own coffin was as trippy as anything the show has done. The Vault is less a collection of galactic knowledge and culture than the server running Hari’s advance AI; which he built and put into place so at the right time he could emerge dramatically and inform everyone he lied to them.
As it is, the citizens of Terminus are not there as historians, but to be forged by the inhospitable climate into hardened survivors who can take back the galaxy. Also, with no proof to back up his assertion, Hari immediately dispels the narrative around the crime that caused the initial blood feud between the Anacreons and the Thespins hundreds of years ago. He does this in hopes of calming the hatred between the two peoples so they will choose to form a coalition. Despite having an unknown number of their own very recently murdered by the Anacreons, the Terminans are also down with joining the two rogue planets. Ever a pragmatic people.
The first season is now complete, and Foundation has decided it’s absolutely not going to explore the god it made out of Hari Seldon. He’s a semi-interventionist deity who descends out of his floating sky palace to offer a few cryptic words of encouragement before disappearing again. He can even flat out change the directive of his plan to his followers and they just accept it and move forward. This series has never leaned overly hard into themes or subtext, but what there has been has dropped away quietly through the season, leaving little in its stead.
For everything ghost Hari does know, he has no idea who Salvor is, or why she receives psychic images of Gaal. We learn that due to the Encyclopedists’ policy that everyone drop their eggs into a communal bucket and birth whoever they pluck out like a reproductive key party, Salvor is actually sort of Gaal’s daughter. The psychic reverberations Salvor experienced throughout the season were not a result of a conduit to Hari, but her inheriting the same psychic ability as her mother (one of them). This knowledge makes Salvor antsy and she decides in the middle of the night she’s going to skip out on her inauguration as mayor of Terminus and bounce off the planet.
Hugo intercepts her just as she hops aboard the ship and gives her a character-defining talk about her fierce independence and restless spirit so worn out, he may as well been quoting Pee-Wee Herman to her. It’s a tired speech that also happens to contradict the tired speech Salvor gave in the previous episode about her new found dedication to the plan. Perhaps it’s due to a lack of imagination on my part, but it only feels like plot maneuvering that would compel her to give up her life and her family to hunt down a person she never met who is floating unknown in the infinite ether of the cosmos.
As is frequently the case, the episode’s best stuff all came from Empire. Brother Day’s decision to torture Azura wasn’t just because she had the audacity to attack his lineage, it’s because she took something from him, a nurturing relationship. Day had begun to view his younger counterpart as more of a son, and the knowledge that his genetic purity is compromised has destroyed that.
Dusk, being the old bastard that he is, remains incensed by the whole ordeal and wants Dawn eradicated immediately. When Dawn arrives to learn his fate, the two brothers are in the clothing of their office. This is an official Imperial matter, not a disagreement among siblings. Unexpectedly, Day not only balks at killing Dawn, but cites Hari’s prediction in doing so. He argues that there is merit to an unchanging bloodline curdling into atrophy, and it may very well strengthen the Empire to allow for change. Apparently, Day’s time in the Maiden’s Womb affected him more than he lets on.
This very concept infuriates Dusk so much, he starts landing blows on Day. While the two literally fight it out, a frightened Dawn takes solace in Demerzel’s arms where, with no warning or hesitation, she snaps the young man’s neck. She is loyal to the Empire and Cleon’s bloodline, and being a millennia-old robot, this allows for a longer view than it may otherwise. Dawn remains just one link in an unbroken chain she’s served for centuries. This does lead to the absolute most bitching scene in the episode, though. When alone in her chambers, Demerzel succumbs to a very un-robotic emotion and pulls the skin away from her mechanical skull while screaming to the sky.
What’s more, it was all for nothing. Day learns that it was Cleon I whose genetic code that was tampered with, and it occurred long enough ago that Day himself is likely an impure clone. The repercussions of this fact remain to be fully understood, but it does result in Day smashing the vacuum-sealed sarcophagus his genetic forebear is sealed in.
Now we jump 138 years into the future where Gaal awakens from goo sleep orbiting her childhood home. Whatever reason she chose to come here is irrelevant as she discovers whatever ecological disaster that threatened her village has consumed it almost entirely. She spots a beacon under the ocean and investigates. She discovers Salvor’s ship—long since turned into an ocean habitat—and in the center, Salvor herself. On the surface, kind of mother and kind of daughter meet for the first time.
The whole season has shuffled Gaal around from one place to another in order to ultimately position her with Salvor. As such, she never managed to come into her own as a character and I can’t say I’m anxious with curiosity for what awaits her next. She now has ownership of Hari’s psychohistory model, but to what end? For me, everything I’m curious about what the show may approach with its second season is the entire galaxy except those two, though I’m very happy to be proven wrong.
This has been a fairly fun season of television with great production values and some clever ideas sneaking in at the periphery. My biggest hope for what comes next is the show’s ambitions grow to accommodate the setting. Not in term of set pieces, or spectacle. But simply in grappling with how very large the galaxy is, and what that means for the countless people within it.
Stray Observations
- Thanks for watching season one of Foundation with me. What are your hopes for the second season?
- As it concerns the Anacreon/Thespin/Terminan consortium, are the small groups of armed soldiers who landed on the planet in enough of a position to forge treaties and alliances with other parties? I know a lot of the planet was wiped out in Empire’s revenge, but I assume there’s still a governing body that’s not standing in the dirt and pointing rifles at a bunch of ragged settlers.
- I like how the bridge of the Invictus shifts from a cool, dead blue to a warm copper when Hugo activates the bridge.
- The more I think about it, the more I can’t get over the design for the life pod Gaal was suspended in. All I can think looking at it is how the big, generous view portal on the front has to let in a whole lot of radiation over a 138 years.
- The show made a point to linger on giant alien fauna in a way it hasn’t this season. Day points out some four-eyed ungulate in the palace gardens, on Terminus, we see one of the giant predators lurking on the outskirts, and Gaal is bothered by some manatee/manta ray hybrid. It’s neat and all, I very much enjoy the Star Wars-esque alien establishing shot, but I wonder why they all showed up this episode when the previous were mostly absent of any major wildlife?
- I do wonder how Gaal and Salvor are getting off that planet. Hopefully that submerged ship is salvageable.
62 Comments
It’s been a pretty good season of Sci-Fi. Not an amazing show, but far more interesting than ST Discovery. The long passages of time, and radical changes in characters (apart from Hari and the clones) over multiple seasons is going to be a tricky one though.
Oh, remember that time when Hari Seldon turned into a giant crystal as part of his master plan? What book was that, again? PreRicklude to FounMortyation?The goodbye between Salvor and Hugo fell completely flat on me because I couldn’t figure out why it was being framed as a “goodbye forever” speech. Salvor herself had no idea where she was going, and what going there even entailed, so I’m not sure why both of them assumed she was never coming back, more than they could assume she would come back next month. (Also, apparently, once you build a ship or an escape pod in this universe, it’ll just remain operational for hundreds of years without refueling or maintenance needed. And technology remains more or less the same throughout the centuries, on a galactic scale even. It’s the same as the heroic fantasy settings where it keeps being the 14th century for thousands of years). And the whole “this is something I/you need to do alone” is such a meaningless trope. It’s just a blatant way for the writers to barely justify splitting characters.I swear every episode where Gaal appeared had her in a swimsuit of sort. Reading the scripts, Lou Llobell must have thought this was some kind of Space Baywatch.I keep expecting Demerzel to reveal she has a grand plan of her own, the way R. Daneel ultimately did in the books. But considering how little Asimov is in this show, I’m starting to think she’s just meant to be the Empire’s majordomo. I can’t even tell if she’s supposed to have a positronic brain. They just said she’s programmed to serve and never harm the Empire, which is just basic robot stuff. You figure a show based on Asimov would want to mention the Three/Four Laws of Robotics at some point, but they never did.
In the books Demerzel IS R. Daneel but not so here as Denerzel is clearly not a 3 Laws robot.
“I keep expecting Demerzel to reveal she has a grand plan of her own, the way R. Daneel ultimately did in the books.”Well, we all know this show plays fast and loose with the original material. What I got out of that scene with her tearing off her skin (ew), was that her programming could no longer allow her to maintain her position as advisor – what with all the killing and stuff – to the Empire. This is actually similar to Forward the Foundation, where Demerzel decides “he” can’t function properly on Trantor and presumably goes off to establish Gaia.
It’s not that implausible that after tens of thousands of years we might just… have discovered everything. For most of human history, technological progress was extremely slow; we just happen to be living in a period where it’s insanely fast – we’ve pierced through one horizon, as it were, and are racing to the next. But we could well end up in effectively unending stasis.That said, the later novels kind of disprove this, since the Solarians and Gaians and Second Foundation clearly have abilities/technologies that the Empire never learned about…
I keep expecting Demerzel to reveal she has a grand plan of her own, the way R. Daneel ultimately did in the books. But considering how little Asimov is in this show, I’m starting to think she’s just meant to be the Empire’s majordomo. I can’t even tell if she’s supposed to have a positronic brain. They just said she’s programmed to serve and never harm the Empire, which is just basic robot stuff. You figure a show based on Asimov would want to mention the Three/Four Laws of Robotics at some point, but they never did.Unfortunately, they’re not legally allowed to use/cite any references to or characters/events from Asimov’s Robot-stories (David Goyer mentioned this in a recent Reddit AMA), so they’re doing something slightly different here.
She’s just a Terminator clone. They needed one to go along with the Luke Skywalker clone and the Hunger Games lady.
There is a rumor going around that they don’t have the rights to the robot series, so they can’t use the three laws of robotics explicitly.
that s oke, the i robot movie (remembers sitting shocked and then screaming) had even less attachement to his work
Pros: Genetic Dynasty, Hari AI, and cryo suspension of Gaal and Salvor are great concepts to keep familiar faces across such a long story. And there were some fine visuals.
Cons: Han Salvor and Hugo Harrymudd, r Demerzel Olivaw the serial killer, psychic messages…But the final nail in the coffin of this show was when I realized Cleon is an anagram of clone. That’s just lame.
Blame Asimov. The names are about all that’s left from the books.
He was, however, named Cleon in the books too. Not a genetic dynasty, a normal-hereditary one, but there were a bunch of emperors named Cleon. Named after the Athenian general.
Then someone read his name sideways and got the idea for the GD.
Only two, as it happens. Cleon I was the emperor when Seldon was formulating his science (so, Prelude), while Cleon II was the emperor who came closest to restoring the empire (so, Foundation and Empire).
Cleon is an anagram of clone. It’s just a coincidence, though. They didn’t come up with that name. Neither did Asimov, to be honest (who didn’t have any clone in his books). It’s just from Greek history.I’ll let you to judge if it was a fortunate or unfortunate coincidence. There’s an argument to be made whether or not they should have actually changed the name the moment they decided to go with clones.
But the final nail in the coffin of this show was when I realized Cleon is an anagram of clone. That’s just lame.Is “Duncan Idaho” better or worse? I can’t tell.
Is the Hari AI on Terminus the same one that was on the ship Gaal escaped to? Are there multiple Hari AIs? wasn’t that one on the way to Hari’s home planet to start the second Foundation?
Hoo boy. The last 2 episodes were pretty dang terrible in my opinion (everything except a couple of good Lee Pace moments). Plot holes, unearned melodrama, rushed storytelling, the fate of the universe resting on completely improbable coincidence. Bleh.Gaal sure was lucky she had a transparent insta-canoe in her interstellar cryo-pod. (Can’t believe I just wrote that sentence).
Gaal sure was lucky she had a transparent insta-canoe in her interstellar cryo-pod. (Can’t believe I just wrote that sentence).
I mean… If you’re landing on a human habitable planet you’re either landing on land or on water. Any responsible designer of a life pod would include some basic survival gear for both.
More Doc Smith than The Good Doctor.
Narrows the entire galaxy to two people…if there’s ever a simple way to show why this show has nothing to do with Foundation, this is it. The whole point of psychohistory is that one or two people are meaningless. Until, well, later.
“So, the premise of our new show is that people are meaningless”.“Great! Great! But… except could we expand that to include making one or two brave, defiant individuals absolutely pivotal to history through shear force of will and/or genetic superiority?”“Sure!”Kind of reminds me of the American studio heads talking to Pratchett about Mort, his novel about Death getting an apprentice: “We love it! But can we lose the ‘Death’ bit?”
The whole point of psychohistory is that one or two people are meaningless.Except Hari Seldon, who can predict the exact date of his arrest and the outcome of his trial using psychohistory, and hand-pick the precise people needed to bend thirty millennia of history within a single lifetime.
Nice try, but that’s not what happens in the books. Terminus is one of the possible outcomes, he says it right in the book.
as with the i robot movie(and dune) there are 2 groups of viewers, 1 the people who read the books and are at best confused or most likely upset, the 2nd group did not and thinks its a bunch of sketches in a story without a clear storyline. Lee pace is awsome though, the way he told azura how he would erase her was bonechillingI guess books and film are to different for most of them to be easy to turn them into the movies or tv. in that way starting from scratch is a better way to do it.
actually common sence will tell you that if you ask questions about the infalible rulers they will smyte you and for part 2 well you would need the basic people to run a colony and scientists, not really nothing he would need pschohistory for
its like they said, lets make a movie about the bible, and it ended up with a story about a wineshop that went bankrupt because some douche started to give wine away
Does the bridge of the Invictus remind anyone else of the bridge of the Event Horizon?
I thought the exact same thing when I saw the cross shaped window!
constantly. and knowing that its nav system failed, and it kept jumping here and there……and the sheer number of dead people aboard……but anyway. the more event horizon the better. i’m not one to complain here.
The acting by the female leads is bad…very bad. If it wasn’t for Lee Pace, I would have given up on this some time ago.
I feel the same way. The series is beautifully shot and the sets are amazing, but casting is a problem. For every Lee Pace and Demerzel (and a few more recognizable and good actors), there are some comically bad acting from a lot of central characters.
The Terminus scenes are a tough watch because it’s a lot of SYFY channel level of acting. Plus, the action scenes are just perplexingly amateurish.
A lot of the scenes are anchored on Salvor Hardin and the Grand Huntress, and it’s a tough watch everytime. The Brother Dawn and Azura storyline is another.
The show is a weird mix if high and low quality film making.
Exactly my thoughts. The actresses playing Gaal and Salvor were just terrible. Frowning faces in every scenes, and aweful lines. The plot surely didn’t help them either.
Honestly, this show is a terrible, shitty adaption of the novel series. It undermines the central theme of individuals not mattering by giving us a pair of audience surrogates coded as very, very important to the salvation of blah blah blah.That said, apart from the actual foundation stuff I’m quite enjoying it. Empire is a great character and actually has wonderful depth, unlike the rest of the cast who charitably can be said to be doing their best. The production design is top notch.I don’t actually think Asura’s entire orbit was annihilated. I think Day was just being particularly cruel to her. I think that the attempted turn toward empathy by saving Dawn shows that much growth from the time in the Spiral. Great nightmare fuel though, and a great scene.
I’ll give them credit – the visual direction and staging have been great. Plotwise, even divorcing it from the source material, it sure feels like, despite so much happening, the season amounts to almost nothing that impacted.
I enjoyed my time with season 1. It’s inevitable that season one of eight of a millennia spanning story will be a lot of world building and setting the pieces in place for what will happen later. There’s so much to like here that it’s easy to forgive the things that didn’t work. Mostly anything to do with Gaal.
I almost felt like Salvor’s mom was the audience surrogate, venting his frustration over being lied to, wondering what the point of it all was, and resigning herself to the fact that she’s going to keep carrying on with the plan anyway. As average as the show/plot is, it is an absolutely beautifully designed/filmed/stage show that I really enjoyed looking at every week.
the 2 minute opening credits must have cost more than some movies
“We learn that due to the Encyclopedists’ policy that everyone drop their eggs into a communal bucket and birth whoever they pluck out like a reproductive key party, Salvor is actually sort of Gaal’s daughter.”They only extracted fertilized eggs, with the plan to reimplant them once it was safe to go through with a pregnancy. Salvor is quite literally the daughter of Gaal and Raych.
The Genetic Dynasty being tainted is, from a practical standpoint, a very easy problem to solve. Just use the current Brother Dawn or Dusk as the basis for all future clones. They’re technically not exact copies of Cleon I, but they’re so similar that they’ve lived their entire lives without anyone noticing any differences; not even Demerzel noticed. Nothing necessary to the clone emperor concept has been lost.
What’s more, it was all for nothing. Day learns that it was Cleon I
whose genetic code that was tampered with, and it occurred long enough
ago that Day himself is likely an impure clone. The repercussions of
this fact remain to be fully understood, but it does result in Day
smashing the vacuum-sealed sarcophagus his genetic forebear is sealed
in.
I kind of got the impression that this might have been a bullshit ploy pulled by Dusk. Day’s mercy with Dawn made him decide that they’ve become weak and he needs to clean house.
We’ll find out next season that luckily he was the last “pure” clone of Cleon I, and so the genetic dynasty had to be reset with him as the genetic source.
The clone dynasty was one thing I was okay with regarding changing the books (as long as they underplayed it instead of becoming such a central focus). Letting one actor be the face of the empire over 300 years would have been a nice touch. But this show is such absolute garbage, and such a complete insult to the books, that I just can’t stand any of it anymore.
I recently figured out the main problem with season one, and it blunted the impact of the finale. After establishing the Foundation, the non-Empire part of the show essentially forgets all about it and turns into Stargate Universe rehash (uncontrollable spaceship jumping randomly through the galaxy) for several episodes.What the second half really needed was a good Foundation-focused plot where the tension between the older generation wanting to focus on their encyclopedic endeavors and the younger generation, headed by Hardin, tackling the growing problems with Anacreon.At least then the reveal of Seldon’s lie would have landed with a lot more impact on Foundation and it’s residents had we gotten to know them a lot better. Instead, the growing tension was given about ten minutes of screen time mid-season and then an unknown number of Foundation citizens were slaughtered, only to be conveniently swept under the carpet by the end of the season. (I’m not even arguing they should have hewn closer to the books, just something to make us care about the fate of Foundation more.)Also, the reveal of the Second Foundation was completely wasted. This was a major twist later on in the book series and used to good effect, but here it was used as a throw away plot device to give Gaal Dornick something to do.The Empire stuff was much better, especially the idea of the genetic dynasty, and how it played out, but it’s not supposed to be the focal point of the show. That belongs to the Foundation, and at the end of season one, I am underwhelmed.
(I’m not even arguing they should have hewn closer to the books, just something to make us care about the fate of Foundation more.)Agreed. I’m totally down with departing from the books, as long as they hit the right themes. We should be shocked to find out that the Encyclopedia was a ruse. We should be shocked, a few seasons from now, when a certain character comes along to upend things again. We should be surprised by the Second Foundation.But above all, the theme of the books is that history is not about brave acts of violence by singular individuals, but about broad historical forces. The Foundation succeeds by riding the waves of history, because Hari Seldon has a really good surf map. It’s a difficult concept to do on TV, which tends toward the heroic individual model. The show’s solution is to… largely abandon the idea and just give us a standard space opera action show, mixed with Hari Seldon as a puzzle box.
Also, the reveal of the Second Foundation was completely wasted. This was a major twist later on in the book series and used to good effect, but here it was used as a throw away plot device to give Gaal Dornick something to do.On that one, I’m actually betting that Jared Harris’s mentioning of Helicon as being the home of the Second Foundation is going to still end up being a massive feint for the audience, since Future Gaal™ mentions The Mule in the very first episode, and I can’t imagine that the producers won’t want to keep Asimov’s huge twist intact for that storyline, here.
It’s unfortunate that the story should contract down to the destiny of two characters as the season draws to a close. Not because their stories are bad, necessarily, but because it’s a narrative that is already being done in countless instances elsewhere and doesn’t play on the singular qualities of a property like Foundation. It doesn’t just “not play on” the qualities of the Foundation series, it’s antithetical to them. Seldon’s mathematics are supposed to predict the survival of his Foundation based on the actions of whole populations and very pointedly not rest on the actions of individuals (which the show itself tells us a few times!). In fact, the actions of an individual are eventually what threaten to ruin everything. The Chosen One trope has no business anywhere near it. Salvor Hardin is such a cool character in the books because of brains and shrewdness, but the show has reduced her to a gun-toting, karate kick-throwing knot of action movie cliches. And don’t tell me you can’t effectively do a brainy hero on TV.
The whole show is an affront to the books, and frankly Apple should cancel the series and issue an apology.
Thats just your opinion and you shout it all over the place. Calm down. I didn´t like the show after the first three eps, but after the whole season i have to say – its pretty brilliant. Especially in contrast to the hot garbage that ST:Discovery continues to be…
Did anyone else find it funny how the episode ended the same way The Force Awakens did? “I came all this way and I finally found you! Now I’ll hold out this object that used to belong to you while you stare at me soulfully and the camera does a revolving helicopter shot.”I wonder if Season 2 will begin with Gaal dismissively chucking that puzzle box thing over her shoulder and into the water.Also, Salvor had visions of Gaal and Raysh because what, she inherited genetic memories from them? Why doesn’t any other human in the universe have visions of their parents?
i’m enjoying this, even though it departs from Asimov’s books (how could it not, really — they had to make it a compelling, visual series, and the books are not really set up for that). i’m thinking of it as high concept sci-fi in Asimov trappings. there’s a lot of interesting things to chew on. for instance, did Demerzel kill Dawn because her duty is to preserve the Empire? or did she do it out of revenge to get back at Day, because he forced her to kill the religious leader she personally revered back at the desert Haaj planet? or was it a mix of both? there’s a lot more to Demerzel than we understand at this point. i think the series is just getting started, so i hope it gets the full 8 seasons they hope for.
What is with the Hari Seldon of this universe. He has access to technology that is so nigh-magical that none of the Foundationers understand it and even think it might be alien in origin (and the old generation emigrated from Trantor, the capital of the galaxy, and had scientists and engineers!). He was able to fake his death and build the Vault on autopilot, and even give it novel and unexplained psychic powers. How does he do all of this by himself, in secrecy, with literally nobody in the Foundation able to suss out what’s going on? Not to mention he somehow knew where the Invictus was, and the secret of the conflict between the two warring planets (unless that was more bullshit).I could maybe buy all of this somehow being engineered on his behalf by Demerzel/Olivaw (assuming they’re even keeping that alter ego), but if so that really deserved to be made clear this season, or at least foreshadowed. And Demerzel is so far such a departure (pretty adept at violating that First Law) it’s hard to imagine that she’s made the same connections with Hari as Daneel did in Prelude to Foundation.
I simply cannot currently see this series getting the supposed 8 seasons the producers want. I think it will be lucky to get 3; I’m almost surprised it got a 2nd one, but Apple TV+ has been doing that with the vast majority of its productions. I doubt that will continue.*
Sunk cost fallacy. This show is going to suffer greatly from the break between seasons because the fans of the books simply hate the show and something new and shiny will be out when Season 2 comes out.
The more I think about it, the more I can’t get over the design for the life pod Gaal was suspended in. All I can think looking at it is how the big, generous view portal on the front has to let in a whole lot of radiation over a 138 years.Although, considering that these books and TV series are set some 22,000 years in the future, I’m betting that someone finally managed to design a radiation-proof window designed to last indefinitely at some point during that span of time.
It’s made of transparent aluminum.
I wish Azura had killed herself in the three seconds it took Brother Day to leave the pond. Why let him have his way with her endless torture?I read the novels decades ago, so I don’t remember much, but viewers have said Asimov’s novels didn’t have female characters, and this season ends with two young women being the most important characters. That is a huge change, and a good one, I’m sure.So a big flash forward next season?
People who say the books have no female characters don’t know what they are talking about, both “The Mule” and “Search by The Foundation” have women as the central characters.
With all the world building done in the first season, abandoning it to follow two people seem foolish and given the timeline of 1000 years, it’s hardly a blip to follow seeing as it’s only been 100+ years into that timeline.
I think we’ll see how much the Anacreon/Thespin/Terminan group grows in the coming season(s). How much indoctrination of the following generations there is towards building up to the coming war and fight against the Empire (a group they will have had zero interaction with). This is the narrative I have the most problem with.
I do wonder what Gaal/Salvor have to do with Hari’s plan, if anything. Hari didn’t know who Salvor was. He didn’t know Gaal would be on his ship or escape it to float about the universe for 100+ years. How does their involvement play into his 1000 year plan? Does it at all? Or will they be the monkey wrench/chaos factors that throw it all off kilter?
Another thing to consider is how important the clone dynasty narrative was played up. How there’s a movement against that… and how Gaal/Salvor’s mother/daughter factor into that. How important is it that they’re related, but through surrogate? Does it matter at all? It feels important, or it likely wouldn’t have been focused on.
I like how the show betrayed the spirit of the books at every turn. Killer robots. “War is inevitable.” Great stuff. Asimov is rotating in this grave so fast he could alter the spin of the Earth.
“The more I think about it, the more I can’t get over the design for the
life pod Gaal was suspended in. All I can think looking at it is how the
big, generous view portal on the front has to let in a whole lot of
radiation over a 138 years.”I also thought it was weirdly convenient that she had a… portable, collapsible canoe?
It’s even more implausible that it moves faster than light (although we don’t see that as such, the show is vey coy about what ships that aren’t “jumping” are doing exactly).