Quick note: We’re skipping S1E09 for now; it’s the only episode I don’t have notes for from its original airing. S1E10 tonight before midnight, when the first episode of season 2 drops.
Watching Foundation – S1E08
Spoiler Alert, as always just in case you haven’t seen the episode yet!
So, here we go! Joseph’s random thoughts about S1E08. Simultaneously published at StarsEndPodcast.com.
Anacreon looks like the Genesis Planet. We see Phara as a child and her trauma during the Empire’s retaliation. I didn’t need to see that. Assholes. This is one of those things that is better left to the imagination.
Phara: “It blinked into orbit like a prayer. …the gods did not just approve of my plan to destroy the empire they engineered it.” “You simply have no concept of revenge, do you? I don’t care about mankind. This ship is going to be my voice.”
Hari and Gaal. Investigating “Feeling the future.” Gaal talks about her dream of a wave destroying her world. It drove her to learn math. Hari; “(math) proved that it wasn’t a dream at all it was a premonition.“
Gaal has an “Intuitive processing ability that puts you ahead of the math.” Hari wants to keep Gaal in the Dark. “This prescience of yours has the potential to skew psychohistory completely.” So the math can’t tolerate other predictions? This seems like magic trumping science. And mathematics in this show has already been too magical.
Hari says that the Foundation needs a second Foundation. On Helicon. And he calls Helicon “Star’s End” according to the closed captioning. That Apostrophe annoys me.
Where’s Hugo? He’s narcing on the Anacreonians to the Thespins. This is anticlimactic. This guy is no Han Solo; I expected something more dynamic.
But the mood of futility here isn’t bad. Standing in the desolation, crying out into the darkness, “Does anybody read me?”
We see C13 walking the spiral. A Trek of over 170 km with no food no water no rest. No nanobots or toys. A quick calculation, that’s over 100 miles. That’s not survivable. Did they flub the arithmetic again?
At the end of the Spiral, there’s a cave called the Womb that has water. If the Mother is willing the pilgrim will see a deeply personal vision.
C13 breaking Demerzel’s salt bracelet is a dick move. He wants to keep her with him but she looks stricken.
The crowd thins out quickly. Too quickly, since they implied about half made it to the end of the spiral. We meet a charming companion for C13. It would be nice if 13 could learn some compassion here. He gets some information about what others have seen.
C13 lies and says he’s from Baltaros. The gentleman is from “the manufacturing planet.” Badly polluted by making things for the Empire.
Back to Hari and Gaal. The Foundation was designed to draw fire. The Second Foundation must be kept secret.
Gaal: “If you’re not willing to trust me, then I am not going to Helicon.” Gaal is going to take her brain and go home. What starts off as a strong confrontation with Hari degenerates into a tantrum.
Now C13 is doing a Jesus imitation. And he falls to one knee. The wavy images of burned feet are a bit much. The pilgrim helps him up.
Back to the Invictus. Salvor’s finally trying something other than violence. Trying to peel off some of Phara’s men. She argues the plan will lead to the extinction of the Anacreonians. “Phara sees herself as a hand reaching out of Anacreon’s grave. But Anacreon children are still being born today.”
Phara does the Hawkeye thing with aplomb. Pretty good. “You do luck, I do skill.”
These computer components remind me of 2001 and TNG.
Salvor tries violence again. Gets herself and Lewis onto the bridge with no Anacreonians. Someone else got killed. Is this progress?
The individual work pods look cool but seem like form over function. Lots of circles on this ship. Significance?
They find the navigation pod. “Folding space is as much intuition as it is science. It’s like making a wish.” More magic over science. This seems especially anti-Asimovian.
This is a pattern. Gaal has an intuition that obviates mathematics. Humans can guide jump ships with wishes, “A cognitive leap that only a human brain can perform.” This is displacing science in favor of mysticism in a way that’s very non-Asimovian.
Salvor’s going to sacrifice herself to guide the ship to Terminus. And she gets snarky. “It might as well be the outlier.“
Terminus. The null field is expanding.
The Spiral. The old man gives up. C13 looks stricken. Grieves that the pilgrim will no longer be with him. Does he show some compassion for the pilgrim here? Maybe.
Alas, dear Yorick, I will smash your skull.
Here’s some more of the Shakespeare quote. “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?”
Reflecting on the demise of the Pilgrim maybe? Also, are skulls really that fragile?
But 13 makes it to the cave. He’s pretty messed up. And alone. “Fewer than half make it?” That must be the tourism bureau. People certainly wouldn’t sign up for the real rate of attrition.
Maniacal supervillain laughter as 13 enters the cave.
To the tribunal, C13 repeats the story the pilgrim gave him about the swirling salt. He claims to have seen a “birthroot flower.” A signal to the luminists that the world could sustain life. And a metaphor for three lives created out of one.
“Just like my brothers and I!” “This is a holy vision.” The tribunal decides his soul is not mired in stagnation. “…from this day forward no other Zephyr will stand in your way.“
This is pitch-perfect political manipulation on C13’s part. It stands in stark contrast to his largely inept and tone-deaf early attempts. That makes this hard to believe. Or maybe it’s his ineptitude that forces his lies. There’s certainly a history of political leaders getting ahead on lies and nothing else!
Gaal resorts to hysteria and violence. Again. Gaal threatens suicide to get off the ship. At least we’ll get to see Synnax in 138 years. It will be wet.
Back to the Luminists. C13 is strutting oddly. “Zephyr Halima, thank you for inspiring me to take this journey of transformation.“ Twisting the knife.” Asshole.
Demerzel visits Zephyr Halima, she is visibly upset as she does it. Demerzel claims that she did not coach 13’s performance. Halima comes across as wise now.
Halima: “I’m not going to leave this room alive, am I?” Demerzel: “I must not be in possession of a soul, otherwise I might be able to disobey his commandments.” This was petty and cruel. And it implies a lot about Demerzel. She may not have the capacity to be the mastermind we were thinking she might be.
The Invictus. “Jumping into a planet’s orbit requires absolute precision.“Or luck. Remember who you’re dealing with.” Magic over science yet again.
What is moving the Invictus to Terminus supposed to accomplish? What’s the next step that will magically happen with Salvor presumably dead? “That’s all there is in a crisis, trying.” Once again an unimpressive aphorism from the formerly quotable Salvor Hardin.
The Anacreonians break into the bridge and shoot Lewis. Another casualty of Salvor’s attempts to save the day. She seems pretty slow to pick up this pattern.
Salvor’s gun misfires. So much for luck. Interesting.
And the Invictus jumps. It’s possible that showing Gaal awake during the jump in episode one was to tell us Salvor can survive this.
The spinning ship bothers me. It looked dumb when they did it on the Discovery and it looks dumb now.
Demerzel reports to C13. Killing Halima was unnecessary. “Your lack of understanding does not obligate me to explain, says C13. What an asshole. So much for developing compassion. From that little kid who might develop kindness, we end up with someone even more villainous than before.
Demerzel realizes that C13 saw that flower on her vanity. “Seeing nothing, I would not wish that emptiness on anyone.” Is the implication here that the Cs have no souls? It certainly positions them as an other in a way it would not have before. And it makes the allusion in the title a little too obvious.
The thought clearly festers. We see C13 feeling cold without vision. As if it wasn’t already obvious enough. I didn’t need to be told this twice but I get the writers wanting to show us this visual. I’ll excuse it for the emphasis. And we’re done.
I didn’t remember many of the things in this episode that annoyed me.
All Images from Foundation on Apple TV+.
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