Summary: Salvor begins to question the Mentalics’ motives. Hober Mallow’s proposal to the Spacers meets resistance. Brothers Constant and Poly stand trial.
This thread can contain TV spoilers up to season 2 episode 7.
Air Date: August 25th 2023
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I love both plot lines because I have no idea where the show is taking them.
They’re leaving the fate of Hari Seldon suspiciously unresolved.
Also, I love the how the spacers and the fate of the empire are being explored. The books are on my favorite series but I love the idea of fleshing out new stories in the same universe.
I don’t understand the point of giving that seldon a body in the previous episode only to kill him in the next one.
I know the show doesn’t lend itself to this kind of silliness and it shouldn’t really happen, but I like to imagine that that pool will gain one additional floating dead body at the end of every episode for the rest of the show.
Any chance of a last minute rescue for Salvor?
Tellem Bond is a nasty villain.
My favorite new characters this season are Brother Constant and Cleric Poly.
The Spacers are cool as fuck.
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But I do not understand why they drowned Hari Seldon, just after he got a body for some reason. There was some mystery that has been killed off. And now they killed Salvor Hardin. Weird.
Yeah this got me too. At the end of last episode, I wasn’t really all that moved by Hari being killed because I thought “Oh they’ll just find some way to explain that he didn’t actually die” whether that be his consciousness being back in The Prime Radiant, him inducing a state of suspended animation to appear like he was successfully killed, or by some other means. I suppose its not completely too late, if he was transferred back to the prime radiant we wouldn’t know it just yet (since I believe it was on their ship that the sighters took off with?) - and they did make a point of telling us Hari has two bodies, the second one being kept in the dark about some of the things regarding Foundation. Maybe it’ll tie back into that somehow.
What I can’t explain however is what they’re going to do with Salvor, she may actually just be gone now.
On a bit of a rant-y tangent, I wasn’t really a fan of how it all played out. I know with TV, they expect you to engage in “Suspension of disbelief” but I find it really hard to believe that Salvor would think its reasonable to go off on her own when she thinks the situation is suspicious and has found The Sighters to be keeping secrets since day one. I’m also shocked that Gaal, whose terrified of her vision of Salvor dying, would also be okay with her just chasing ghosts in the dark by herself. Normally I wouldn’t be all that surprised since Gaal is well… Gaal, but considering the past few situations they’ve been in?
In a lot of shows I can remind myself that the audience is generally aware of a lot of pieces that the actual characters of the show aren’t privy to, but basically one half of the show is literally dedicated to that half of the characters predicting the future using math and other heuristics. Maybe it’s just me, but the whole thing just comes across in bad taste for me.
Tellem and the Emporer are not dissimilar when it comes to the ruthless way they are enacting their vision. This is reflected in the hand gesture that Tellem Bond uses to incapacitate Salvor (not sure it actually killed her). Almost identical to how Empire gives the command to execute someone.
I am also waiting to see what comes of the difference in memory sizes between Cleon I and the clones. What is being edited out of their memories? Is Demerzel the caretaker of this (assuming this was Cleon I’s design). Or, is Demerzel playing the long game. I suspect she may be behind the genetic tainting of the line and perhaps even the assassination attempt.
I’m kind of hoping we get something a little different. Maybe that Cleon 1’s memory is larger because he’s still around to add to the heap via some assistance from Demerzel.
The clones are around as useful idiots and to introduce a level of sanity checking to make sure Cleon 1 isn’t left to his own thoughts.
We’ve already seen how opaque the process is for managing memories and editing them are.
Blatant speculation that references the books and may spoil the ending of the season
About ending imperial cloning: I don’t think brother Day, or even any Cleonic exponent, can do so.
As Demerzel says, she is loyal to Empire. Right now, that means being loyal to Cleon XVII. Thus she follows his wishes of arranging a marriage and letting him procreate. However, as the memory of Cleon I mentioned to XVI and XVIII back in S02E05, the temperament of XVII had already been accounted for. Therefore I think that when XVII hits 60, the age at which he becomes brother Dusk, Demerzel’s loyalty will automatically shift to XVIII; she is likely programmed to do so.
So all this trying to end genetic cloning is going to result in is demonstrating to Empire that even he cannot end it. And that is exactly what Hari Seldon wanted when he called upon Empire to (try to) end imperial cloning.
This fits in nicely with the overarching theme of psychohistory (and indeed with the theme of Bel Riose in the books): there’s no such thing as a Great Man, no-one is special and outcomes are for the most part fixed and can be known through some fancy math.
I hope the writers are smart enough to go this route, but I have doubts.
Also I don’t think Tellem actually rescued all those people, at least not the way they depicted. I think she just implanted those memories into them.
Sorry, is this a TV programme based on the Asimov Foundation books? How have I not even heard of it?
Yes it is. Loosely based on it at least.
It’s on Apple TV+. Not a super popular streaming service, at least among my peers and family
Ah, I didn’t actually realise Apple TV was even a streaming TV channel thing, I just sort of assumed it was a physical TV that Apple made and paid no further attention.
Still, I guess it’ll eventually be shown on normal TV or at least some other TV service thing.
Well, it’s based on the books to about the same degree as “Starship Troopers” was based on its book. Not that this should stop you from enjoying it.
I quite liked the Starship Troopers film, though I only read the book years later - but I remember people being cross about it not being like the book.
The Foundation books I’ve read a few times each over the years, but I suppose it depends on the extent of changes - the books cover a huge period of time, and from such a “macro” view, so there’s plenty of stories that can fit in those universes without contradicting the original material.
I liked the recent Handmaid’s tale TV series, having read the book at school (and for fun, some years later) - that totally did its own thing after the end of the book, but I thought it followed a pretty realistic path, and carried the spirit of the original.
I’ll definitely give the Foundation series a try if they show it on something else at some point :)
This was a surprising turn for some, really rooting for princess Vespa, and the scene with constance and hober about getting down just took on a morbid tone.
Also, Hari needs to get gud, his k:d ratio is just barely 1.
I like that they’re growing the universe better, this season started out terrible and now is really filling out.
I dunno; there are leading characters that I don’t like such as
- Gaal is a mathematician who acts mostly on emotion.
- Tellem is too cunning, and I don’t see any chance Gaal and Salvor are going to get ahead of her unless with a weird chance.
- Queen Sareth does not look like a queen but is a delinquent student from a YA book.
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