With one episode remaining, Foundation becomes needlessly messy
The penultimate episode of the season, "The First Crisis," is very busy, but hardly has anything worthwhile to say
TV Reviews Foundation
Title sequences have long since reached a level of sophistication that allows them to stand on their own as a legitimate creative companion to the shows they introduce. In some instances, they even manage to express the dominant themes and emotional notes better than the show itself. Foundation’s title sequence by Imaginary Forces studio, with score by Bear McCreary, isn’t better than the show, but it does capture a feeling of grandeur and scale the show does not. The depiction of great shrouded monuments haloed in perfect geometry, intricate mathematical puzzles held like exalted relics, and the iconography of an over-extended empire dissolving into the sands of time manifests a collage of profound cosmic events. It’s graceful and succinct.
Anyways, “The First Crisis” is kind of a mess. A lot of stuff happens; too much stuff. Brother Dawn’s personal crisis introduced a massive subplot that seemed to build towards a fundamental shift in the direction of the show, only to be snipped off completely here. Salvor and Phara’s ongoing dynamic of taking turns capturing and escaping each other—which began as a tense battle of wills between two seasoned hunters—has escalated to cartoon levels of two characters chasing each other back and forth off-screen, only to return brandishing increasingly larger weapons.
All of this frenetic activity is meant to feel like a deft navigation of the characters to guide them in place for the triumphant return of Hari Seldon and the vindication of his psychohistory model—like a narrative sharpened to the point of a spear. But instead it just feels like a whole lot of noise leading to Hari’s smug ghost informing the gathered crowd, “I meant to do that.” Adding Gaal’s redundant narration to the episode, and hopefully, “The First Crisis” got all of the show’s worst tendencies out of the way before next week’s final episode.
The episode culminates the crisis Brother Dawn faced within the palace. Unlike his predecessor, Brother Dusk has not grown more introspective or understanding in his old age, and defiantly remains the same bastard he was when he bombed two planets into oblivion in his youth. Not all of us have the resources to lay a trap for our unsuspecting clone siblings in the form of an elaborate fresco, but that’s exactly what Dusk does when baiting Dawn with an intricate portrayal of the pair’s hunting expedition.
Dawn only sees the three birds he claimed as his kills and only when alone, wearing color-correcting enhancers, does he see that Dusk painted the full number of the kills, rendering the extra in a palette and pattern invisible to Dawn’s naked eye. Knowing he’s been discovered, Dawn is led through an intimidating hallway lined with digital renderings of Cleon that pivot to watch you pass. Deciding it’s his only chance; Dawn attacks Shadow Master Obrecht (Mido Hamada) and escapes into The Scar.
I assume The Scar is supposed to read as some kind of overpopulated favela; all stacked high and full of Trantor’s forgotten masses. But it seems awfully pleasant. The population looks well-fed, their smudged, dirty faces artful. There’s even a grassy courtyard with some trippy ’70s glowing domes you can gather around and quietly criticize the entrenched aristocracy.
Dawn makes his way to Azura’s (Amy Tyger) home where he learns all her affection has been a ruse, and she was setting him up to be captured. This is where it could have gotten interesting, but got very dumb instead. It seemed unavoidable from the beginning of their mismatched courtship that Azura was setting Dawn up, or at least terribly naïve about what it would mean to try and abscond into hiding with one of the central pillars of the galactic dynasty. But as Cleon sees his own face looking down on him as he’s about to get knocked unconscious, we learn it’s something much more convoluted instead.
As it turns out, our Dawn isn’t just a random genetic errata, but the product of a long-in-the-works guerrilla movement to taint the bloodline and incept the idea into the imperfect Dawn’s head that he chose to escape with the help of the random palace gardener he happened to fall in love with in order to be captured so his nanobots could be given to the clone of the emperor who rebels have also managed to make on their own in order to switch the two and place an agent who will bring down the Empire from the inside.
As absurd as that is, even more so seeing it written out in a string of escalating improbability, the idea of a rebel Empire on the throne has worthwhile story potential. Granted, the same thing could have been, and may possibly yet be accomplished with the Dawn we know choosing of his own volition to rebel. But why make something graceful and character-driven when you can make it a tangled bolus of a plan worthy of the Robot Devil? But whatever. Regardless, it wasn’t meant to be. As soon as rebel Dawn’s plan is all laid out bare, he gets his throat slit and his companions are executed. What an unnecessarily complicated bit of nonsense to introduce just to die off. Azura is left alive, so this story isn’t over. But it’s already exhausted.
Thanks to the sacrifice of the last of the Terminus scientists, the Invictus’ next jump takes it back to Terminus. Salvor, the first to awaken, attempts to make contact with the surface, but it appears the nul-field has grown to encompass the entire settlement. She’s able to make it planet-side where her still undefined psychic connection to Gaal gives her the insight to unlock Hari’s giant d20 Die of Galactic Math.
The Vault sheds its outer skin and splits apart, revealing a crystalline beacon shining with light and, presumably, knowledge. While the remaining Anacreons are growing weary of their suicide mission, Phara is not. She escapes her bonds, steals a Thespin warship, blows up the other Thespin warships and begins to fire on the Vault. After escaping capture and death a truly absurd number of times, this last act is finally too far and Salvor shoots the huntress in the neck with her own bow. Not to make a highlight of the show someone getting killed, but Phara being brought down by her own instrument of war is about as poetic as anything the show has done. Now leaderless, the Anacreons are adrift. Salvor recommends the three peoples band together and take the Invictus as a very dangerous symbol of this new coalition. Then some version of Hari steps out of the Vault and tells everyone that it’s all happening just as he planned!
And now, only one episode remains. I dearly hope this was a plate-cleaning episode and the finale can be uncluttered, thoughtful, and engaging. This season has been a mixed bag of good and bad qualities, but this episode is uniquely head-shaking. Just remember, there’s a plan! Brighter days are ahead.
Stray Observations
- I didn’t go into how Hugo’s suggestion he and Salvor cut and run prompts her big monologue about embracing the plan and her role as an agent therein. It was a clumsy mission statement and felt too broad and tacked on. Again, I mostly like this show, but it’s about as subtle as a John Phillip Sousa march.
- Apparently, nanobots are only good enough to repair wounds you get from receiving nanobots.
- Instead of just one little clone of Dawn, what if there was a whole community taking refuge in the Scar? Every one of the Empire’s aberrations, defectors, mutants, and outcasts living in one place. How great if there were just a bunch of lumpy-headed Brother Days looking to Dawn to lead the rebellion?
- Speaking of which, if you’re trading your force field for a jacket to wear as a disguise, try and get your money’s worth and put the hood up.
- I’m assuming this version of Hari is similar to the archived hologram that engaged with Gaal on the ship. He was making little puffs of dust as he walked through the sand, but for obvious reasons the show has never made an effort to make the hologram projections look like anything other than just a regular person in the room.
- Brother Dusk’s hunting scene was very cool, though.
61 Comments
Unrelenting navel-gazing, math words, and gobs of money does not a watchable show make.Maybe they needed more math. I bet that was it.Needs more math.
iirc the books are at least 2/3rds math, Action Math!
You are remembering correctly. The math is strong in this series.
Hari Seldon like:
Alternately: You’re a mathmagician, ‘Ari!
I cackled out loud, well done.
I’m pretty sure book 3 is just one long equation.
This series gets episodic reviews, but Squid Game doesn’t? What the H?
And Cowbells.Seriously, I was out after 1 hour of ep 1.
It saved the day more than once on Star Trek: Lower Decks, even in hostage negotiations.
Needs more nudity, but then again… Apple.
I assumed that since they bothered to announce that there was a “door”, that this was HoloHari from Helicon (HeliHoloHari? Triple H?)
Full disclaimer – have not seen show.The more recaps of these I read, the more confused I get. As…none of this seems remotely similar to the Foundation novels I have read and loved over the years. I recognize…none of this. Except for a few people and place-names here and there. And it doesn’t even seem interesting. If you’re going to adapt something, at least tell a good story and do it artfully?The more I think about it, the more I think they should have tried starting with “Prelude to Foundation” and going from there. That book is much more amenable to being told in show-format and would (I think) be relatively entertaining with some solid opportunities for social commentary and slightly less math.Ah well. I’ll just re-read the books instead of try watching this!
It definitely leans heavily on “inspired by”. I might be in the relatively small camp that doesn’t hate it as an adaptation. The source material is just so dry and vignette-like and difficult to bring to screen with true faithfulness. I would say the show is “selectively faithful” to the big ideas of the novel(s) completely at the expense of everything else.Like, if seeing a robot effortlessly break the first law of robotics bothers you, or if it bothers you to see Salvor Hardin – the mayor in the book whose famous catchphrase was “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”, which is now relegated to something her dad tells her instead via flashbacks – win the day by firing a giant arrow through the neck of her opponent while their back is turned, this show probably ain’t for you.But if you’re interested in seeing one of the few attempts out there to paint a galaxy and empire at the kind of scale that Amisov imagined, and explore his ideas of what stagnation and decay does to our humanity, it’s a mostly-fun ride.
There are a lot of little angry people running around pointing at things and shouting “Not like the books!” and things they are most angry about are literally from the books.
Almost nothing in the show, good or bad, is from the books. The core plot of the first episode is taken from “The Psychohistorians”, but after that, they’ve left the books mostly behind.
Yeah, it went to shit. I mean whole lets-just-leave unconscious baddies lying around makes absolutely no sense. Not that most of the twists do, but that’s the most obvious. I mean they could have made the first crisis short like in the book. Or atleast try to use even small portition of the budget for script. Even littlebit more than the catering.
Still salvageable, but I’m not terribly optimistic.
This is a frustrating show because you can see a great show buried under layers of typical TV tropes. The best version of this show is one that focuses 75% on Empire and just follows them through the rise and long fall of the empire. The ever-cycling trio is absolutely fascinating, and major kudos to whoever came up with that, because it’s not in the books (apparently… I’ve only read one of the Robot novels, long ago). Let’s just fly through history and see how this trio evolves over time and grapples with Seldon’s prophecies. For the non-Empire characters, let’s just keep them to two or three-episode arcs. We’ve already used the hologram and suspended animation solutions for keeping characters around longer than their normal life-span. It’ll be exhausting to either continue to stay in this time frame, or worse, come up with more ways to keep characters around in different eras. Just let the characters do their thing and then move off the stage, just like they do in real history. Let their impact and legacy be how their presence lingers on. But as long as this show wants to be Game of Thrones, or more accurately, attract Game of Thrones-level audience, it’s going to have to pander to dumb action sequences and stereotypical sci-fi action storylines. This show can’t appeal to both. It’s too thinky for lazy action fans, and it’s action is too stupid for those fascinated by the deeper historical and sociological ideas this story conjures up.But it’s definitely a pretty show.
This is a frustrating show because you can see a great show buried under layers of typical TV tropes. Which is doubly frustrating, because the whole point of Foundation is to push back against the basic principles of Western storytelling. The typical sci fi or fantasy story hinges on some climactic act of violence by a lone hero. Think Luke Skywalker destroying the Death Star. In Foundation, the solution to a Seldon Crisis is always to just lean into the flow of history. Salvor Hardin pushes the Anacreons off Terminus simply by pointing out to the other three kingdoms that the Foundation still has atomic power, so no one wants to let Anacreon have control of that. Bel Riose has the Foundation surrounded, but is defeated by his own success, which makes the Emperor suspect him. Replacing that with a set of tired storytelling devices is a sad missed opportunity.
Am i the first to argue, that this is somewhat…. ok with me?
I think they did a pretty good job. World-Building – very good.
Character-Bonding – took an inch too long.
Expansion of the original concept and image of a galaxy under one rule (as it is even possible in a TV-Show) – A+.
I despised this show after the first two episodes, but … this is the new B5!
As it turns out, our Dawn isn’t just a random genetic errata, but the product of a long-in-the-works guerrilla movement to taint the bloodline and incept the idea into the imperfect Dawn’s head that he chose to escape with the help of the random palace gardener he happened to fall in love with in order to be captured so his nanobots could be given to the clone of the emperor who rebels have also managed to make on their own in order to switch the two and place an agent who will bring down the Empire from the inside.I’m out.
Yep, that whole plotline stopped making sense about when he tried to kill himself without taking off his easily removable aura. When he first jumped I figured it was a nanobot thing, but then he just hands it to her so they can chill on the window ledge?
NOW you’re out?? LolPlus that twist regarding Brother Dawn’s genetic provenance just made the B story far more compelling, frankly.
The scene with the “trick” painting in FOUNDATION is not good — it’s monumentally stupid. THAT IS NOT HOW COLOR BLINDNESS WORKS. Brother Dawn would be perfectly capable of seeing all the birds that Brother Dusk painted — it’s just that he would see some of them in color and some of them in shades of gray. Assuming for a moment that Brother Dusk has no idea how color blindness works, either…which is also pretty stupid…if he actually did pull this stunt it would completely fail, because Brother Dawn would know immediately what he was trying to pull and could launch into a conversation about Brother Dusk getting the number of birds wrong.
I actually quite enjoyed this episode. Every critique in the review is fair, and I would agree that at a macro storytelling level, it is a slop of nonsense. We can start with Dawn’s decision to run away with the gardener being something that was orchestrated, which—you’ve seen the show—I don’t need to tell you how ludicrous that is. Then let’s talk about the decision of the Anachreons, Termini and Other Guys We Just Met deciding to form a coalition to pirate the death star because it’s so irresistibly “logical”. Also, it’s part of Hari’s prophecy/plan. What? Or how Hari’s math die/puzzlebox wound up being the key to transforming the vault from dark and evil to bright and good, and somehow Salvor’s mom got within 10 feet of the thing, die in hand (a) as if she knew that was what would disable it, and (b) as if she was dramatically more immune to its effects than anyone else (remember, the field was expanding). The writers backed themselves into this corner where Salvor would need to solve the decades-old puzzle of the vault it in a matter of minutes, with the entire village knocked out cold. There was no brilliant way out of that corner, so they just dropped the MacGuffin die at her feet, triggered Salvor’s psychic link / Apple TV+ subscription, and voila it just kind of opened. But despite all that, at a scene-to-scene level, I thought it was all really well done, and worked as visceral entertainment. The term “space opera” is a spin on “soap opera”, and I think this has that soap opera quality of being flamboyantly absurd, in a way that stretches your suspension of disbelief, but is fun. Of course Dawn’s dreamy girlfriend betrayed him, of course there was an unauthorized clone ready to replace him, of course his genetic abnormality and tryst with the gardener were plotted decades ago. It’s all kinds of absurd, but it moves along quickly enough that the motion blur makes it harder to spot the flaws (until you’re reflecting on it after it’s over, as we are here), and all you can really make out are the familiar shapes of TV and sci-fi tropes: love, betrayal, heroes overcoming adversity, villains being smugly villainous (Dusk), villains getting their comeuppance (Huntress), etc… and it’s fun.
Certainly more fun than those interminable scenes with Gaal pouting, which are mercifully absent from this episode. If we’re taking inspiration from Game of Thrones, then may Gaal take after Gendry, who rowed off into the sunset and went unseen for the next 3 seasons.
interminable scenes with Gaal poutingOr narrating via platitudes. “History is a countable or uncountable noun that’s defined as the aggregate of records…” OH SHUT THE FUCK UP, GAAL!
I’ve started to delight in hearing Gaal’s inane narration at the start of an episode, because I take it as a sign that she herself will not be appearing in the episode. I am, how, somewhat terrified that we’re going to get some kind of Westworld / Dexter Season 6-style rug pull, and Gaal and Salvor will somehow turn out to be the same person. Salvor has Gaal’s memories, has her ability to sense the future (which Gaal herself has entirely seemed to lack, apart from the dialog claiming she has it), and now in this episode has Gaal’s ability to stay awake during a jump. And one of Gaal’s inane narrations referred to it as “my story”, in the middle of a timely flashback where Salvor was apparently wearing Gaal’s clothes.
Gaal and Salvor will somehow turn out to be the same person.I think there was a throwaway reference to everyone’s genetic material being stored on the original ship to Terminus, I’m betting Salvor is adopted, and Gaal is her biological mother.
This has been my theory for a while. It makes too much sense.
My fear is that this will turn into a series of mind transferences so that these actresses can continue to show up over the long span of the show. So, yes, some sort of Westworld thing is about to happen.
rug pull, and Gaal and Salvor will somehow turn out to be the same personI never thought that, but I had been assuming for quite a ways into the first couple episodes that they were mother and daughter, first in one direction, then the other. The two storylines definitely seem to be setting us up for a time-period switcheroo.
Gaal and Salvor will somehow turn out to be the same person. *Spoilers for the season finale*Almost! But much more soap-y! 🙂
The whole reveal of the decades-long plot to take over Empire which then unravelled in minutes because, you know, Empire isn’t an _idiot_, was highly entertaining. The impossibly naive gardener turned out to be not at all naive, and then _even more_ impossibly naive, all in the space of a scene or two.
Ha I actually wrote some solid criticisms of the show but deleted it once the episode ended because hey. Phara deserved to go down with her own bow. I actually really enjoy the show. It’s somehow appointment viewing for me.Phara really sold she just wanted to die, in the end.
The end clinches that the writers missed the entire fucking point. Hari’s hologram only appeared AFTER the crisis had been resolved. Because, y’know, foreknowledge would affect the outcome. Idiots. That’s how they knew that things had gone off the rails when the Mule appeared later on – Hari’s message had nothing to do with what they’d just experienced.
I assume The Scar is supposed to read as some kind of overpopulated favelaYou assume unbelievably wrong. Azura talks of it as you would of a great blue collar neighborhood with tasty food and loud but warm people. We see kids play on the streets and marketplaces and stuff. It was contrasted to the shiny but sterile, artificial and muted world of the imperial palace. The Scar is described as a place to run to and be free and happy, not a place to run away from. A place where you can see the stars.Where did you get the idea that it was supposed to be a favela beats me. It was even shown as not being so. Twice!
It’s a generation or two after the Star Bridge fell, so the Scar has had plenty of time to transition from freshly devastated to flourishing abundance of cheap real estate.
Next step: Upper middle class gentrification and skyrocketing real estate prices!
No that’s just Toronto, the Canadian New York City!!
Clearly Azura is a trustifarian
It didn’t take long for the Scar to be gentrified
Azura sure lives in a huge apartment, and I expected a cubicle.
To make it understandable, I recommend turning on the Audio Description track. The directors have been too close to the material, assuming people understand everything they show on screen, and there’s no time in the few episodes for exposition. I’ve done the same when watching Invasion. Big budgets, big egos, and short seasons make for muddled episodes.
What episode did you watch, because this was the best of the season so far! It actually had a presence, high stakes, the best action of any episode so far, and genuine heartbreak, regarding Brother Dawn’s situation.Plus, the conclusion of the episode was better than I would have thought: enemies working together for a better shared future is a powerful idea (and also holds more true to the spirit of the book), one that is somehow considered taboo nowadays, both in popular media and in real life, sadly.This episode gave me more hope for the future of this show (based on Apple already renewing it) than any previous episodes. Now all they have to do is fire David Goyer and get a better showrunner, and we’re good to go.
I agree, but then again, wouldn’t the idiot Anachreons shoot Hari first, questions later?
The notion that science and math can be used to precisely predict the nature and especially the timing of future crises decades into the future is, of course, ludicrous, but the show has shed any aura of plausibility for the sake of stretching things out of a season-long narrative for a single crisis and cranking up the drama and plot twists to eleven. I fully appreciate the show creators’ choice to veer away from the source material — the first book is only 250 pages long and covers the founding of the Foundation and the first four crises, with significant time jumps between most of them. One decision — the inclusion of the genetic dynasty — was especially inspired, and no doubt will provide much needed continuity between seasons. Seldon as a full-blown AI rather than just a recording makes sense in a modern scifi setting, and presumably the very early reveal of the Second Foundation was done to help flesh out the rather barebones original story. That last choice is a bit of a shame because I thought the much later reveal of the Second Foundation was one of the best moments in the whole Foundation series.In the end, I have to agree the show is a bit of a mess, but not because it’s veered away from the source material so much. It’s just not that good of a show in terms of plotting and story telling. It looks fantastic, but all the money in the world can’t make up for a shaky script.
The notion that science and math can be used to precisely predict the nature and especially the timing of future crises decades into the future is, of course, ludicrousIn the original stories, Asimov based his psychohistory on what he’d learned in good old statistical mechanics: you can’t predict the motion of an individual atom, but if you have a sufficiently large ensemble, you can predict its properties. And in the later stories (I hope I can be forgiven a spoiler for something published more than 70 years ago), it’s made clear that Seldon knew that he couldn’t predict things precisely (even without something like the Mule), and he set up the Second Foundation to make the appropriate course corrections along the way.One of my great regrets is that I didn’t write Asimov the letter I was thinking about while he was still alive (although given his health, even then, it might have been too late): in Forward the Foundation, he had Seldon discuss the problem that the accuracy of psychohistorical predictions diminishes with time because of the chaotic nature of the system (he didn’t make the analogy, but that’s the reason that weather forecasts are useless more than ~2 weeks into the future). It occurred to me that Asimov had in his hand the key to explaining psychohistory, and he missed it. If you have a large number of coupled pendulums, the system behaves chaotically, but every once in a while, all of the pendulums reach a stationary point simultaneously and there’s a moment at which the entire system comes to rest. Seldon’s first great insight in pure mathematics could have been that he developed a method for predicting when those stationary points would come, even in a chaotic system, given a knowledge of the starting conditions. His second great insight was that the same mathematics could be adapted to predicting the future of humanity, given a knowledge of the starting conditions – hence the Seldon Plan. Each “Seldon Crisis” corresponds to a stationary point in a chaotic system; and since the knowledge of the starting conditions would not have been perfect, the Second Foundation was necessary to add the appropriate fudge factors as the the true starting conditions and of the implications of the deviations from the original predictions became known.I would have been really interested to know what Asimov would have thought of my conjecture, but at the time, I had no idea of how poor his health was.
Fascinating and on point analysis/commentary.
The notion that science and math can be used to precisely predict the nature and especially the timing of future crises decades into the future is, of course, ludicrousI don’t think it’s ludicrous. I mean, it’s probably not true, but of all the things we’re asked to believe for the sake of TV shows, I think psychohistory is not a big stretch. The nascent field of cliodynamics has begun to identify quantitative trends in history. Give them another 10k years to work on it.Now, the notion of a Galactic Empire is pretty ludicrous.That said, I largely agree with your take. The plot gyrations of the Salvor Hardin storyline are particularly tiresome. I am fully on board with departing from a literal interpretation of the books. The genetic dynasty is a brilliant innovation (though a stupid phrase; all dynasties are genetic). Casting black women as Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin? Fantastic. Introducing the Anacreon/Thespis conflict in the pilot? Wonderful.After the first episode, though, I think the choices have been mostly bad. The early reveal of the Second Foundation is puzzling. The whole Terminus storyline reminds me that, even if Asimov wasn’t the greatest writer, he’s a lot better than he’s given credit for. “The Encyclopedists” is a lot more elegant than the mess of Phara and Salvor. I understand that a holographic Hari Seldon in an auditorium might be underwhelming for modern audiences, given that we could pull that off with today’s technology, so I get the move to holodeck Hari Seldon. But the whole Seldon arranging for Raych to kill him, so that his hologram can go back to his home planet, where he sets up the Second Foundation, because… I just don’t get it. They seem to be taking their cues from Asimov’s later, overly plotted novels.
Salvor shoots the huntress in the neck with her own bow
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent” – Salvor Hardin
Since psychohistory is about predicting the actions of groups, the import with respect to the Seldon Crisis is violence engaged in by groups, i.e Anacreon and Thespis warring, threatening to invade Terminus, etc. The obvious critique of psychohistory is that the action of groups are made up of the actions of individuals, but we seen here Salvor cancelling Phara each other out allowing the group interest to resolve the Seldon Crisis.
The obvious critique of psychohistory is that the action of groups are made up of the actions of individuals,But that’s not a coherent critique. The motion of a cloud of gas is made up the motion of individual molecules. You shouldn’t need to shoot a particular molecule with its own bow to predict where the cloud will end up.Psychohistory should be able to predict the general outline of what happens without needing to know anything about Phara or who is holding which weapon.
“The motion of a cloud of gas is made up the motion of individual molecules.”The individual molecules of a gas are identical. They behave stochastically and independently, but with the same distribution. Individual people have widely varied distributions of behavior, which also change over time.
The individual molecules of a gas are identical. They behave stochastically and independently, but with the same distribution. Individual people have widely varied distributions of behavior, which also change over time.Sure, that’s why the Ideal Gas Law cannot be directly applied to human behavior. Certainly human societies are more complex than clouds of gas. So you need a science that can theorize about those time-varying distributions of behavior. That doesn’t mean that humans are special mystical snowflakes who can’t be accounted for by general mathematical laws.
Glad I came across this review, it’s very well done.As a viewer who started watching the series on a “they’ve desecrated the books” crusade, episode 9 was the first time I felt I could let myself loose of the shackles and be entertained. The Empire Bros subplot has now reached full spin-off capacity but I have the contrary feeling that rather than have all the convoluted revelations cut short it’s just the start of something bigger. I have a doubt about something that no one has verified – I could swear that a few episodes ago Gaal’s narrative voice was suddenly different and sounded like a New Zealander.
Well, entertainment is such a subjective thing. I thought this episode got the mix of different plotlines and narrative rush to finally strike a cohesive tone.
The series has now introduced a number of different technologies and possibilities that all the episode’s revelations can be explained without feeling forced.
If this is the groove they’ve been trying to get into, then I look forward to where they go next. Also, the music’s magnificent.
Mass-murdering Anachreon takes over Thespis warship and needs said ship to be unlocked for her? Sure, go ahead. You’re gonna die anyway, Thespis pilot. WTF was that? I got tired of Phara very early on. And how big was the Brother Dawn clone conspiracy? Why is Gaal even going home? It’s all under water now, right?
“Needlessly Messy”…?Huh?I think it’s been getting better and better with every episode.So long as they pay off all the stuff they’ve set up and explain the different levels of tech and robotics (which I know are explained in the books) for the TV audience, I think the show is doing great so far. It’s not easy to translate an Epic as big as this with so many moving parts and backstory laid as a… ….err….Foundation, but they seem to be mostly pulling it off.
This is where it could have gotten interesting, but got very dumb instead.
The whole show summed up in one sentence.
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Some reason for not publishing my post?