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


Werthead
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At no point during Empire’s fisticuffs with General Riose did either Lee Pace or Ben Daniels strip down to a sleek, sweaty, rippling mass. 

0/10. All my thumbs: down. 

1 hour ago, Ran said:

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.

I was thinking, “deus ex machina” as well, but it really isn’t. It’s already been established that the vault is powerful, that people can enter the vault and survive, and that the interior of the vault can be manipulated to whatever it needs to be. It’s kind of a clever reveal. 

Gaal’s illusion; that kind of came out of nowhere. 

The most significant development is the Spacer liberation. That screws Empire big time. 

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7 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

It’s kind of a clever reveal. 

The deus ex machina part is that the Vault can also simultaneously teleport everyone on the planet into itself instantaneously. Before, people always walked into it (or, if Salvor, went "in" via the Prime Radiant).

There's no rhyme or reason to it, but it's needed for the big cliffhanger planet-shattering to be rendered toothless, so it's done. The Vault does whatever the plot says it does, rather than the plot being based around the limitations of the Vault.

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6 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

The vault totally vaporized Holt McCallany in episode 2 without him actually entering it.

The fact that it has a null field that knocks people out was established. That it could vaporize one guy standing at the threshold is established. That Vault-Seldon can put out a projection of himself outside of the Vault is established. 

That it can literally instantaneously teleport thousands of people spread out over tens if not hundreds or thousands of miles around Terminus (we don't know where Glawen crash landed, IIRC) was established.... now, and it's nonsense. It's basically pulling a rabbit ouf a hat -- there's nothing that tells you it has infinite power.

An omnipotent Vault is boring. It's lazy writing. They should have let Seldon actually sacrifice all of those people because it was necessary and not because he knew that they were not in fact being sacrificed.

 

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44 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

The vault totally vaporized Holt McCallany in episode 2 without him actually entering it. And Seldon has appeared a few times without the vault actually opening. Not to mention the null field. The capacity for the vault to affect the world outside it is established. 

But what the fuck is it?  A pocket dimension?  Didn’t Foundation find it there when they got to Terminus?  Seldon is a mathematician… Not an engineer.  How was “the Vault” created in the first place?

Baring weird plots holes I agree this season was several steps above last season.  I’m really glad Tellem is done. I found Tellum really irritating for some reason.  

 

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7 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Hobor Mallow literally wears a teleportation device on his wrist ffs. I don’t know why we’re getting so excited about this. 

Yes, an object on his wrist that needs another object. Why does this mean the Vault can just snap up thousands of people spread across the planet instantaneously?

It is lazy writing, a cheap escape from a cliffhanger.

Like, if the Vault was in space and it sucked all the imperial fleet into its infinite pocket universe instead, would that, too, have been okay by you? Would you really not think it's kind of lame that this heretofor unknown capability was not revealed just to create a false drama?

 

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34 minutes ago, Ran said:

Yes, an object on his wrist that needs another object. Why does this mean the Vault can just snap up thousands of people spread across the planet instantaneously?

And an object that was previously demonstrated doing exactly what it does.

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38 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Yes.  Hence my question.  The Vault was there when the Foundation arrived on Terminus.  How did Sheldon get the Vault there before the Foundation.

They showed that. In season 1.

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Like, if the Vault was in space and it sucked all the imperial fleet into its infinite pocket universe instead, would that, too, have been okay by you? Would you really not think it's kind of lame that this heretofor unknown capability was not revealed just to create a false drama?

Moot. Because that didn’t happen.

I think it would be extremely weird for the Seldon avatar to boast about having superior technology, in a move that was obviously designed to provoke a response,  and then not be prepared for that response.

I think it would be extremely weird for an itinerant con man to have superior technology to the Foundation. 

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3 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

They showed that. In season 1.

No.  They didn’t.  It was this big mysterious object found when the Foundation arrived (by slow boat) on Terminus.  We didn’t know it had anything to fo with Seldon until the last episode.  

How it got there/how it was built is never explained.

Edited by Ser Scot A Ellison
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4 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I think it would be extremely weird for an itinerant con man to have superior technology to the Foundation. 

It was Foundation technology in the first place.

It also required touch. It transported one person. 

I had assumed that the Vault and Vault-Seldon would survive and use the destruction of Terminus followed by the Spacer-led destruction of the Imperial fleet to galvanize the seven worlds the Foundation had footholds on to expand and for the Imperial to quickly crumble to some remnant core. The genocide of the Foundation would create a new and greater Foundation, etc.

Instead, nope, magical world-wide instant teleportation.

It's really bad.

 

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10 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

No.  They didn’t.  It was this big mysterious object found when the Foundation arrived (by slow boat) on Terminus.  We didn’t know it had anything to fo with Seldon until the last episode.  

How it got there/how it was built is never explained.

You literally see it being launched and being built.

It travelled faster than the slow boat did. Like, literally 1 km/h faster. It got there 5 minutes before the foundation did. 

8 minutes ago, Ran said:

It was Foundation technology in the first place.

It also required touch. It transported one person. 

The castle-er had the device. The person being castled didn’t have to touch shit. 

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16 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

You literally see it being launched and being built.

It travelled faster than the slow boat did. Like, literally 1 km/h faster. It got there 5 minutes before the foundation did. 

How did Seldon build a pocket dimension that no one but he knew about?

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1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How did Seldon build a pocket dimension that no one but he knew about?

He’s Harry Seldon B) 

I’m not totally up to date on this thread. Is this a question that was being asked before the last episode?

Gene Roddenberry was once asked a question about the Enterprise’s transporters, “How do the Heisenberg compensators work?”

“Quite well, thank you.” 

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That question of how Hari was able to build something so far ahead of Empire's technology was indeed a question before this episode. Most of the Foundations other tech is improvements on what Empire has, although admittedly things they're not supposed to have had access to in the first place, but the vault is leaps and bounds beyond that.

That said I'm mainly critical of this choice for cheapening the sacrifice and softening Hari rather than actually caring about them having this tech. I can roll with "a wizard did it" when it's enhancing the story, but this writing choice is subtracting from it. It also cheapens their efforts to keep Constant alive - the decision is portrayed like that survivor is an important life boat, but actually there's no need for a survivor (as such) anyway.

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