Apple's TV show based on Asimov's FOUNDATION, starring Jared Harris

[Ran]

This was almost entirely a good episode, start to finish, which is a bit of a shock -- even the Salvor-Gael part of the story was interesting! Has nothing whatsoever to do with the books anymore, which I think is probably for the best given how badly they have done with it, but they've invented interesting stuff. Especially the whole Demerzel business -- really eager to see the next episode, even!

And the twist that Salvor leads to the inciting incident on Terminus at the start of the season was pretty cool. Also, that whole sequence was great -- Jared Harris was really selling Seldon's genius, figuring out his own plan, all in that weird non-Euclidean space inside the Radiant (which production design and VFX have done such a cool job with).

Still a spectacular-looking show -- I love seeing the light effects whenever the whisper ship jumps. 

A theory about where the mentalic story is going:

Spoiler

Mentalic cult leader gets her plan to take over Gael foiled... and ends up moving into the little boy who tried to help them, and "he" will then be the mule.

 

[karaddin]

28 minutes ago, Ran said:

This was almost entirely a good episode, start to finish, which is a bit of a shock -- even the Salvor-Gael part of the story was interesting! Has nothing whatsoever to do with the books anymore, which I think is probably for the best given how badly they have done with it, but they've invented interesting stuff. Especially the whole Demerzel business -- really eager to see the next episode, even!

And the twist that Salvor leads to the inciting incident on Terminus at the start of the season was pretty cool. Also, that whole sequence was great -- Jared Harris was really selling Seldon's genius, figuring out his own plan, all in that weird non-Euclidean space inside the Radiant (which production design and VFX have done such a cool job with).

Still a spectacular-looking show -- I love seeing the light effects whenever the whisper ship jumps. 

A theory about where the mentalic story is going:

  Hide contents

Mentalic cult leader gets her plan to take over Gael foiled... and ends up moving into the little boy who tried to help them, and "he" will then be the mule.

 

Yeah that would be my guess as well. I really liked this one as well, great episode. 

The title sequence remains fantastic every episode as well, that hard "1 2 3 4" beat hits as the 4 Empire battleships jump in, then the camera pivots around them and they blur into a war banner is *chefs kiss*.

[karaddin]

That was not at all how I expected that episode to end when I start it. Lots of revelations, lots of development, lots of remaining questions. I really enjoyed it.

Also an incredible verbal burn from one character to another that I really wasn't expecting.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

The next episode can’t come soon enough. 

It seems

Spoiler

Demerzel is bound to Empire in a way that she’s off the hook (leash?) once the generic dynasty ends. She’ll be free, but she seems more than a little hostile to the idea. In the one hand she wants freedom; on the other, she’s bound to Cleon’s legacy, which ends with the dynasty. I like how this is developing. 

 

[SpaceChampion]

Regarding Tellem

Spoiler

I was liking this idea she would become the Mule, but that is entirely off the table now for sure, right?

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Spoiler

Did Day actually leave Seldon’s “office”?

 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Whoa.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

  Hide contents

Did Day actually leave Seldon’s “office”?

 

I don't think

Spoiler

We would have gotten all the perspective shots from people on the planet if it's just a fake, this also applies to the idea that Gaal arrived in time to just show Day it happening - bearing in mind their plotline is weeks behind the Terminus one (they escape the same day Vault!Hari asks for Hober).

At the same time that's a really huge event that wipes out all the development the foundation has had up until now, so also feels it can't have happened.

I think they're the martyrdom that galvanises the rest of the outer rim to truly become an alternative to Empire and it's real. Vault!Hari is probably in the radiant which is with Day and the rest of the foundation fleet we expected them to have are simply elsewhere.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

I don't think

  Reveal hidden contents

We would have gotten all the perspective shots from people on the planet if it's just a fake, this also applies to the idea that Gaal arrived in time to just show Day it happening - bearing in mind their plotline is weeks behind the Terminus one (they escape the same day Vault!Hari asks for Hober).

At the same time that's a really huge event that wipes out all the development the foundation has had up until now, so also feels it can't have happened.

I think they're the martyrdom that galvanises the rest of the outer rim to truly become an alternative to Empire and it's real. Vault!Hari is probably in the radiant which is with Day and the rest of the foundation fleet we expected them to have are simply elsewhere.

 

We’ll see.  I will say this… I think the second season has been better than the first.  More or less cutting loose from the novels has helped…

[Gronzag]

This is getting better but they undersold the Foundation itself. After 100+ years they all lived like an outpost on Antarctica? Huge missed opportunity to showcase new enlightened civilization development and its contrast to stagnating empire. Maybe we will see it with the second Foundation.

It would be really ironic, and frustrating, if they cancelled the show after right after they turned it around so successfully.

[Ran]

Finally got to see the episode. Like @karaddin, that did not at all go how I expected. Oh, the Demerzel part of it, sort of... though I had expected Demerzel's story more-or-less (though my notion that she had caused the Empire to exist in the first place seems off), but Terminus? Bonkers.

I have no idea where the show is going with this.

[karaddin]

4 hours ago, Gronzag said:

This is getting better but they undersold the Foundation itself. After 100+ years they all lived like an outpost on Antarctica? Huge missed opportunity to showcase new enlightened civilization development and its contrast to stagnating empire. Maybe we will see it with the second Foundation.

It would be really ironic, and frustrating, if they cancelled the show after right after they turned it around so successfully.

That's why I think

Spoiler

It's intentional martyrdom (from Hari, not the people living there). They were expecting to build ships copying the Invictus within 18 months but all we saw were a handful of whisper ships.

Day isn't an outlier, so this is the expected outcome and it's got to be a trap of some kind.

Also

Spoiler

the 2nd foundation was meant to be a check on the 1st foundation, not a backup for it so I just can't see this as a failure of the 1st.

 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

5 hours ago, Gronzag said:

This is getting better but they undersold the Foundation itself. After 100+ years they all lived like an outpost on Antarctica? Huge missed opportunity to showcase new enlightened civilization development and its contrast to stagnating empire.

How much development should there be? There’s definite progress when it comes to the settlement but then they were putting their efforts into other things (ships, aura’s, emissaries, staying a secret).

-

Harry tells Day (in the throne room) that if they go to war, it’s a mathematical certainty that Empire will lose.

There’s something not on the level about the battle in the last episode. 

 

[karaddin]

That line is why I kept thinking it was a fake out right until it hit, I was sure something was about to change lol.

[DireWolfSpirit]

On 9/24/2021 at 3:35 PM, Werthead said:

Two episodes in (only three were released today).

Easily one of the most visually impressive TV shows ever made. Outrageous production values and a very high-tier cast. Lee Pace and Jared Harris are, of course, magnificent, but a great appearance by Alexander Siddig as well. It made me wonder if that was a nod to the DS9 episode Statistical Probabilities, which was highly influenced by psychohistory.

The visual design is also exceptional: it looks like they took the definitive Asimov covers - the Elson and Foss covers of the 1970s - and melded them with a lived-in look to create something that's quite impressive. In the first episode alone, there are a dozen amazing SF images.

It's truer to the books than expected in some areas (including being fairly slow and talky), but it adds a lot of new material to fill in the immense, yawning gaps of the original narrative. Splitting Emperor Cleon XII into three clones is an interesting idea, and the idea of a 9/11-style mega-terror-attack as a symbol of the beginning of the Empire's fall works quite well. Also having the knowledge of robots being more widespread and having the Spacer culture still existing (rather than having faded out millennia earlier) are intriguing changes.

The ending of episode 2 was really weird though. Interesting to see how they resolve that.

Very excited to be starting this series soon as I finally have AppleTV.

Reviews like this- 

"Easily one of the most visually impressive TV shows ever made. Outrageous production values and a very high-tier cast."

Are exciting.

I will have to avoid the thread till I can catch up on the viewing.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

The prologue of s2e9 sheds some new light on this scene in particular:

Spoiler

 

She should never have been able to do that. Did she do it just to see if she could?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

 

[karaddin]

Strong finish to the season. The Demerzal plot line was nicely emotional, everything else seemed reasonable outcomes from what was set up. Some of the very end was a bit cheesy, but Hober and Bel was also excellent.

[Ran]

I'm not sure this finale entirely landed for me, but still, the second season as a whole was an improvement on the first, so that's forward progress. Wil they get a third season, though? No clue, but if they do, I'm guessing that'll be the last one.

Laura Birn and Terrence Mann were particularly great this episode. Yeah, the Demerzel story is terrific and I enjoyed the dilemma that she's in, and you could almost get the sense of the titanic conflict between her desires and her programming as she literally trembled with anguish and grief.

The quite-literal deus ex machina of the Terminus story was less successful. Basically, the Vault can do anything as the plot requires, and that's sort of boring.

Salvor Hardin apparently being ushered off the mortal coil isn't something I mind, I'll be honest. I found it weirdly convenient that Gaal could jut drop an illusion onto a dead body -- it's telepathy, she has to actually send it into people's minds

As I said, a real improvement on last season, but mostly it depends on just completely abandoning the books.

I wonder what the 152-years-later future will look like for Empire.

[karaddin]

Yeah I wanted to keep things vague for my first reply but everyone being alive in the vault didn't work as well for me. That's part of the fall off at the end of the episode. I did see plenty of people guessing that's what would happen, so I consider it set up but it cheapens the plan and unnecessarily softens Hari.

Demerzal/Dusk - fantastic.

Day/Bel/Hober/The Spacers - also fantastic. Also strong emotion in recontextualizing when the main spacer vessel delivered Hober it was also the Spacer leader saying goodbye to her daughter knowing she was going to die. Also nice pay off to the Chekhov's castling device - there was a lot of speculation about how it would be used and this was a low stakes but high satisfaction use for it.

Dawn/Sareth/Demerzal - excellent still. Nice pay off for quite a few of the spinning plates and sets up a lot of future conflict.

Gaal etc - agree with you on the illusion being weird, but I think it's kinda consistent with what we saw done to Gaal and Salvor. Didn't need Tellum's dying gasp but also fine with losing Salvor. Thought Hari counselling Gaal on how to keep living was quite effective as well and pays off that happening. The last scene didn't feel so needed though.

And nothing to add to your feelings on the vault.