Foundation: A Necessary Death Books Included

August 25, 2023 7:05 PM - Season 2, Episode 7

Salvor begins to question the Mentalics' motives. Hober Mallow's proposal to the Spacers meets resistance. Brothers Constant and Poly stand trial.
posted by Kyol (14 comments total)

Poster's note: I'll be out of pocket for at least the next one or two, if someone else wants to pick up s02e08 in my absence, that would be appreciated.
posted by Kyol at 7:06 PM on August 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Brother Dawn, Brother Day, Brother Dusk, meet Brother Constant.
posted by pwnguin at 9:39 PM on August 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

The threat of the mule gave the show a kind of dramatic imperative that it hadn't felt since the first half of season one, and yet by now it seems totally dissipated for me. I'm curious as to what other people get out of this, as I'm really here for the hard SF stuff, and yet I keep getting soft soap opera - the family connections (the long lost daughter! The dead pregnant fiancé! The star-crossed lovers!) that isn't as motivating as the program thinks it is. Are they trying for the same kind of thing that Game of Thrones had?
posted by The River Ivel at 8:34 AM on August 26, 2023

I was more engaged by this episode than I have been in a while. Hari Seldon talking with Empire was a powerful scene; the alienness of the spacers; Sareth and Dawn plotting against Day. Only the Gaal / Salvor subplot feels boring... the old "captives of secretly evil new age space hippies" canard.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:21 AM on August 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

I love how smugly self-impresssed Day looks when he explains his, in his mind, brilliant plan to dodge psychohistory: I'll just have a kid! *smugface*
posted by some loser at 10:04 PM on August 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I spent the first half of the episode pondering whether Hari would survive long enough for Salvor to find him -- I guess if you're familiar enough with the tides, you can chain someone there as torture and give them a fighting chance -- so of course when Salvor does find him, he is apparently already dead and she apparently follows. Apparently. We didn't have a pulse monitor or anything.

I'm pretty much always excited for more Sareth. I really like her as both someone constrained by circumstances that Empire arranged and someone who is manipulating the strings of Empire in her own right; as someone who is rather fearlessly navigating her way to the heart of a conspiracy and someone who is occasionally terrified and sick with grief. I don't buy that she cares for Dawn, just that she's revolted and furious with Day and thinks this is the safest and simplest way to subvert his plans. It is interesting to see this looks to be the successful betrayal, compared to the one Hober Mallow tries to broker that leaves everyone worse off.

Demerzel is scary.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:51 AM on August 27, 2023

Demerzel is scary.

I just realized: we saw her last season repairing damage in front of a beauty mirror. This season she had her head sliced off and repaired it. So, can she not simply remake herself in the image of Sareth? If she does, and officially becomes empress, does her "serve empire" programming become moot?
posted by pwnguin at 11:41 AM on August 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I loves me some space opera, but if I was bingeing this I'd have given up by now. But watching weekly gives us viewers some space to forgive the show for trying to centre Gaal even though she is well away from the action and well behind the plot (like a certain Mother of Dragons), when all the fun is at Trantor, especially now that Constant and Poly are there too. Hober Mallow and General Riose and the Spacers were good too - like GoT, the show is at its best when the threads cross.

I guess everything is being set up for war to break out at the end of Season 2? My tip (I read the books decades ago) is that the element Brother Day doesn't realise (and that psychohistory forecasts in a general sense) is that the pressure of war will see the otherwise dominant Empire side fracture - it'll be the Foundation vs Brother Day vs General Riose vs Queen Sarith+Brother Dawn - making the fragmentation and fall of the Empire dramatic.
posted by jjderooy at 5:29 PM on August 27, 2023

it'll be the Foundation vs Brother Day vs General Riose vs Queen Sarith+Brother Dawn

But where in that division does Demerzel land? The rather blatantly obvious focus on Dusk and her at Day’s line “using an old man and a girl” suggests there might be a fracture point there too.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Day die and Dawn attempt a not so bloodless coup.
posted by coriolisdave at 4:46 AM on August 28, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOHfbDnkPEI this pinned down exactly why I didn't like the series, it doesn't sound like it's improved.
posted by Sebmojo at 6:44 PM on August 28, 2023

I mean, it's definitely true that the first season contradicted the original Foundation book's premise about no great men and Salvor's principal of non-violence, but the whole Second Foundation mentalics already contradicted the "emergent behavior of dynamic systems" psychohistory relies upon, so unless you slavishly adopt the episodic nature of the original story line, your parables will be contradicting one another quite quickly.

Season two seems to be doing an okay job at adapting the next two crises into a coherent plot on the general themes of faith, loyalty and trade. It doesn't dwell too long on the "religion is a tool to trick rubes into worshiping your power" aspect, thankfully. Though maybe a denunciation from the pope would have boosted ratings.

On the plus side, the Empire plot is good. If the first season introduced the Roman Triumvirate, more or less from whole cloth, this season introduced Cleopatra.
posted by pwnguin at 9:19 PM on August 28, 2023

Having never read the books, I admittedly lack the perspective of how well the show adapts the original stories, but I've found the show to stand on its own pretty solidly on its own merits overall. Blade Runner is a terrible adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but that doesn't stop me from thinking it's pretty good, after all.
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:14 PM on August 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

A lot of pieces moving in this episode but nothing really exciting. I cannot remember anything about the books but it is unclear to me why Harry was so insistent on Hober Mallow when his mission seems to be a complete failure, although it now occurs to me that the swarm queen may have acted out of concern for her daughter rather than the big picture.

I like both the characters of Harry and Salvor and I am not sure if I am going to be disappointed or relieved when some Harry Ex Machina revives them next week.

Foundation was written during a time when historians took seriously the idea that the broad swath of history was inevitable, extrapolating that into the future didn't seem like a totally crazy idea. Chaos Theory completely ruined that idea so I can see why a modern show might need to lean into the mystical aspects of Seldon's prophecy.
posted by AndrewStephens at 7:42 AM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Foundation was written during a time when historians took seriously the idea that the broad swath of history was inevitable, extrapolating that into the future didn't seem like a totally crazy idea. Chaos Theory completely ruined that idea so I can see why a modern show might need to lean into the mystical aspects of Seldon's prophecy.

"History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."
posted by fairmettle at 9:56 PM on October 29, 2023