Foundation travels “Long Ago, Not Far Away” and blows up its own premise

Season 2 of Foundation is currently streaming, so I’m doing episode by episode reviews again. For my takes on previous episodes, go here.

Warning! There will be spoilers under the cut!

“Long Ago, Not Far Away” was a really good episode of Foundation. Well, at least ninety-five percent of it were really good. Unfortunately, the last five minutes or so not only ruined the episode, but the entire series.

But first things first. The episode begins with Cleon I or rather his hologram recounting the story of Demerzel and of how Cleon found her to Dusk a.k.a. Cleon XVI and Rue, who stumbled upon a secret room in the palace last episode.

We get a flashback to Cleon I as a young prince, son of the Empress and her consort. I don’t think the kid that plays young Cleon is the same kid that played young Dawn in the first two episodes of the series, which seems like an oversight. One day, while playing, little Cleon stumbles upon the hidden staircase and the hidden chamber, where he finds Demerzel, sliced into pieces and held in stasis. At first, he thinks she’s a display piece or statue, but Demerzel begins to speak. First she asks little Cleon to set her free and then, once she realises he’s a child, Demerzel promises Cleon to tell him stories, because she knows a lot of them.

Cleon never tells his parents about his encounter with Demerzel, but he keeps coming back for more stories about robots and humans, about the Empire and Earth. There’s a time jump and Cleon is a young man, now played by Cassian Bilton, who plays Dawn. His mother, the Empress, has just died and he will succeed her, but his advisers won’t let him out of their sight and Cleon is afraid he won’t be able to visit Demerzel anymore. Demerzel tells Cleon that he is the Emperor now and can do whatever he wants. She also tells him that she has been a general and has seen many things and would make a great adviser, if Cleon were only to let her go, but Cleon won’t have any of it. He still keeps on visiting.

There’s another time jump and Cleon is now middle-aged, played by Lee Pace. He finally deactivates the stasis mechanism and puts Demerzel back together, but he still keeps her imprisoned behind a force field, because she is a potentially dangerous robot. He also brings her clothes, so she won’t have to be naked anymore.

During Cleon’s meetings with Demerzel, we learn a bit more about her. She is eighteen thousand years old or was at the time of Cleon I and has been imprisoned for five thousand years. She uses the name Demerzel, because she has a female body now, but she had a different name and body once. I guess we all know what it was – she was called R. Daneel Olivaw once and had a male body. The one who imprisoned Demerzel was a former Emperor who was both fascinated by Demerzel and wanted to figure out how she worked, so he could build more robots (apparently, the Empire had already lost that ability by that point), and also delighted in torturing her. After he died, he kept her imprisoned and eventually forgotten, until little Cleon stumbled upon her.

Does any of this fit in with Daneel/Demerzel’s history in the books? Well, obviously there was no robot uprising in the books, because Asimovian robots do not rebel due to being bound by the Three Laws of Robotics. And no, the Three Laws cannot be switched off or altered as easily as they are here. But otherwise, this version of Daneel/Demerzel’s history does not explicitly contradict the books, because we simply never learn what R. Daneel Olivaw did between gaining telepathic abilities and appointing himself protector of the humanity at the end of Robots and Empire and when he pops up again on Trantor in the double role of Eto Demerzel, First Minister to Cleon I (who is male in the books), and journalist Chetter Humin thousands of years later. And what we learn about Daneel/Demerzel’s origin does match the books, as the Stars End podcast and Paul Levinson both point out.

Fast forward once again and Cleon is an older man, now played by Terrance Mann, who plays Dusk. Demerzel asks Cleon about his impending marriage, but he tells her that he called it off, because he only wants one woman in the universe, namely Demerzel. Demerzel tells him that he needs an heir and that she can’t provide that, but Cleon has a solution for that problem as well, namely the genetic dynasty.

Cleon finally lets Demerzel out of her forcefield cage. He asks her if robots had to obey certain laws and if the first law was that a robot must not harm a human. Demerzel replies that this was so. Before she can do anything more, Cleon installs a patch in her positronic brain. Where in the galaxy he found someone who could program such a patch – Demerzel is the last robot, after all, and even five thousand years ago, humanity had lost the skills and knowledge to build robots – we don’t know? I guess the writers hope that we won’t wonder about this.

The patch forces Demerzel to obey Cleon and prevents her from harming him, though she can (and will) hurt other people. Demerzel tells Cleon that this isn’t freedom, but Cleon is oblivious to her distress and unhappiness and tells her that she will always be there right by his side, right by the throne, ruling the galaxy with him. Cleon even drops down to his knees to offer Demerzel a universe she never asked for and a role she does not really want. The various Cleon clones of the genetic dynasty will be their children. Of course, the memories of the Cleon clones must be edited, so they do not know what is going on. At any rate, Cleon I confirms what Dusk and Dawn figured out last episode – that the Cleons are just figureheads and Demerzel is the true ruler of the Empire.

Dusk is not at all thrilled at learning that he and his fellow Cleons have just been figureheads, but Rue reminds him that Demerzel’s Empire will be over along with the genetic dynasty, once Day marries Sareth. Of course, Cleon I, though dead and a hologram cannot let this happen. And since Dusk and Rue unwisely stepped into the forcefield cage, he just reactivates the forcefield, trapping them in a part of the palace no one else except for Demerzel (who is en route to Terminus with Day) even knows about. It’s quite possible that in a few centuries, once the Empire has fallen and Trantor is reduced to some peasants keeping cattle among the ruins and a bunch of telepathic nerds, someone will dig up the skeletal remains of Cleon and Rue.

Meanwhile on Ignis, Salvor Hardin has escaped from her telepath proof prison and she’s pissed. She heads for the temple, where Tellem Bond is about to reenact the end of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse with Gaal and knocks out a guard to steal his rifle. Then she storms the temple, where the mind transfer ceremony is about to reach its climax. Salvor uses the sonic devices that were used to cancel out her psychic abilities to knock out the Mentallics, grabs Gaal, who is already partially possessed by Tellem, and slaps her to drive out Tellem’s malevolent spirit. Then they make a run for the Beggar.

However, Salvor has only managed to knock out the Mentallics for a limited amount of time and once they recover, they set off in hot pursuit of Salvor and Gaal. Salvor tells Gaal to fire up the Beggar‘s systems, while she deals with the pursuers, chief among whom is Tellem’s right-hand man, the black guy with the scars who had tricked Salvor into believing he was her ex Hugo Crast before. This leads to a seemingly endless fight in the mud between Salvor and the scarred dude. And yes, that fight really does feel endless, especially since the episode cuts back to the mud wrestling several times, usually from scenes which are a lot more exciting than two people wrestling in the mud. Worse, scarred dude pulls the trick of appearing as Hugo and telling Salvor that he loves her several times. And Salvor falls for it again and again, hesitating at the crucial moment rather than taking out the scarred dude. This doesn’t really ring true, because Salvor is not stupid. And while she may have fallen for the Hugo trick once, after the first time, she’d know that “Hugo” was not real. Never mind that I also find it difficult to believe that Salvor loved Hugo so much, considering that she left him to travel 134 years into the future to search out a biological mother she’s never met at the end of season 1. The endless mud fight finally ends when Salvor lures the scarred dude into the Beggar’s airlock, seals it and vents the oxygen, suffocating him. And this time, she does not soften, when he turns into Hugo one last time.

Meanwhile, Gaal is firing up the Beggar‘s system, only to find herself faced with a very angry Tellem Bond. Tellem wants Gaal to surrender, because she still needs Gaal’s body, and uses her telekinesis to throw Gaal around the ship like a rag doll, while random consoles explode. Tellem then enters Gaal’s mind to find her worst fears. At first, she appears as Gaal’s father who tells his daughter how very disappointed he is that she left Synnax and has forsaken their fundamentalist anti-science religion and removed the stones from her cheeks. Gaal screams that he is not her father and the scene changes to Gaal’s flash forward to the Mule’s conquest of Terminus and Salvor’s death. Tellem clearly wanted to use a traumatic memory (in this case of something that hasn’t yet happened) to break Gaal, but the strategy backfires, when Tellem looks into the eyes of the Mule and screams, knocking her and Gaal back into the real world. This would seem to prove that Tellem is not the Mule herself, but may well know who he is. Either that or the Mule just out-mentalliced Tellem.

Salvor has made it into the Beggar by now and there is some more fighting as Tellem uses her telekinetic powers to throw Salvor and Gaal around like rag dolls. Honestly, the fight on Ignis goes on way longer than it should, considering that there are much more exciting things happened elsewhere. And then Hari Seldon the Second shows up – proving that he’s neither dead nor a hologram – and proceeds to bash Tellem’s brains out with a log, a scene that Paul Levinson finds quite satisfying. And in many ways it is, because Tellem Bond was a terrible person and scary villainess for all her faux hippy dippy niceness. Is this the end of Tellem Bond? Time will tell. After all, it’s possible that she pulled a Mabuse and sent her spirit into a new host body.

However, the IMO most interesting part of the episode happens in and around Terminus. The Imperial fleet under the command of Bel Riose is in orbit around Terminus, while Day and Demerzel are en route to Terminus and Hober Mallow and Brother Constant are prisoners aboard Bel Riose’s flagship. Hober asks Constant which prison cell was nicer, the one on Trantor or the one aboard Bel Riose’s ship. Constant replies that the cell aboard the ship is much more cozy.

Bel Riose himself comes to see them and we get yet another variation of the debate between Bel Riose and Ducem Barr in “The Dead Hand/The General”. In fact, Bel Riose actually utters the words “the dead hand of Hari Seldon” on screen. Bel Riose also agress that the Empire will fall eventually, but not just yet. Constant, ever the true believer, points out that maybe the spirit of Hari Seldon brought Bel Riose to Terminus, so he could see the Foundation and what they’re capable of with his own eyes and be convinced that the Foundation has more to offer than the Empire. After all, this is how the Foundation conquered the various worlds – Anacreon, Thesbis, Smyrno, Askone – it now controls, namely without bloodshed. Personally, I think that Constant grossly overestimates the appeal of Terminus, which is still a largely barren frontier outpost at this point, albeit one with very impressive technology. That said, Constant is not wrong either, because the best course of action for Bel Riose would be to defect to the Foundation and throw Day out of the nearest airlock. However, since Bel Riose is very much a tragic figure, he won’t do the logical thing out of misplaced nobility and disloyalty. And yes, considering that the show is ignoring the books in pretty much every other way, I’d hoped that maybe they’d ignore the books in the case of Bel Riose and his ultimate fate, too. But I fear we’ll have no such luck.

Bel Riose’s interrogation of Hober Mallow and Brother Constant is cut short when he is informed that Brother Day has arrived with Demerzel and Poly Verisof in tow and is about to dock with the flagship. So Bel Riose heads to the bridge to meet Day and Demerzel. He tells Day that they could end this conflict peacefully, since the Empire has the bigger fleet and the upper hand. Day actually agrees and decides that being known as “the Cleon who chose peace” would look good in the history books. So he will personally travel down to Terminus himself to accept their surrender. Demerzel very much disagrees with this idea, but Day overrules her. Bel Riose’s crew scans the surface of Terminus and find that there is a lot of power being consumed inside a specific building that appears to be a church.

Meanwhile on Terminus, Director Sernak (who gets a first name in this episode, Sev), Councillor Jorane Sutt, Jaim Twer, who is the new warden since Hari Seldon disintegrated the last one, and a bunch of citizens are standing in the town square, looking up to the sky and the battleships in orbit around Terminus. So they are finally aware of what is happening. Sernak orders the bald man we’ve seen a few times in the Terminus scenes – apparently his name is Brigadier Manlio – to go aboard the Invictus, the Imperial battleship the Foundation appropriated at the end of season 1.

Day lands on Terminus and disembarks his shuttle with Demerzel and Poly Verisof in tow. He is met by Director Sernak and his staff. Day tells the director that they are returning Poly Verisof to the Foundation as a peace offering. Director Sernak asks Day and Demerzel to come into the Foundation’s government building a.k.a. the converted spaceship on which the colonists arrived on terminus 150 years before. However, Day doesn’t want to go there and instead points at the building with the enormous power consumption. “That’s a church”, Sernak says, somewhat disconcerted. However, Day insists on going there. After all, he is but a humble pilgrim and which god would deny him visiting a church. Because Day going on a pilgrimage for someone else’s religion was such a great idea the last time around.

It’s very clear that the Foundationers don’t want Day to go into the “church”, because – surprise – it’s not a church at all. It’s a factory where the Foundation manufactures all of its miracle technology. Though for some reason, the place doesn’t even look like a twenty-first century factory – where you’d see fewer humans and a lot more industrial robots – but like a mid twentieth century assembly line. In fact, the place could be a 1940s wartime factory full of riveting Rosies (which would be oddly appropriate, considering when the original Foundation stories were written) only that the workers are all wearing monk’s robes.

So Day learns what everybody else already knows. The Church of the Galactic Spirit is a sham, science and high-tech disguised as religion. To say that Day is not pleased would be an understatement. He rants and raves and demands to know whatever happened to the Encyclopaedia the Foundation was supposed to compile. Director Sernak replies that there is no Encyclopaedia and that the Foundation has widened its scope, but that they’re still working to preserve and develop technology for the welfare of humanity. This is of course completely correct, though the Encyclopaedia Galactica does get created in the books and provides the epigraphs for every story or chapter. However, it doesn’t convince Day and he rants and raves some more.

Poly Verisof tries to calm Day down by pointing out that yes, he and his fellow missionaries are putting on a show to convince the rubes, but the spirit is real and psychohistory is real and it is inspiring the Foundationers to create and build weapons and tech way beyond the Empire’s capabilities.

“Convince me”, Day replies, “Put on a show. Convert me.” So Poly does put on a show and we get to see a scene from the books that I didn’t expect to get to see anymore at this point in the season, namely the iron into gold transformation from “The Wedge” (based on a real experiment from 1941). Now that particular scene has always been a personal favourite of mine, because it’s very cool and also a perfect example of how the Foundationers dazzle and bamboozle everybody else with science, so I’m really glad we got to see that scene. The transmutation device Poly Verisof uses is that ever popular SF movie prop, an ice cream maker. I’m not sure why ice cream makers are such popular science fiction film props, probably because they’re readily available, yet not something everybody has in their kitchen, and look suitably futuristic. Though the iron into gold ice cream maker in Foundation might simply also be a Star Wars reference.

Poly Verisof succeeds, too – well, it is science – and transforms Director Sernak’s chain of office (if that’s what it is – it’s an ostentatiously big pendant, at any rate) into gold. Unlike the elders on Askone, Day is not overly impressed, probably because he has plenty of gold himself. “Alchemy”, he exclaims and tells Poly that the atomic ashtray was a better gift.

Then someone accidentally knocks over a box full of personal forceshield bracelets and Day gets utterly furious, because only the Emperors are allowed to use such technology and yet the Foundation is selling knock-offs to anybody who can pay. “We’re not selling them, we’re giving them away”, a female missionary points out, which makes Day even more furious, because how dare the Foundation just give away something that Day always viewed as his privilege? And so Day stabs Director Sernak and orders his soldiers to capture the scientists, shoot the priests and missionaries and bag up all the Foundation tech which Day feels should belong to the Empire.

While all this is happening on Terminus, up in orbit Bel Riose and his bridge crew get their first glimpse of the Invictus. Initially, they think it’s a quaint relic from the Empire’s past, but then they realise that the Invictus is fully operational, when it starts firing at the Imperial fleet. And the Invictus packs a lot of fire power. The Empire fires back, while the Invictus is joined by a fleet of Foundation whisper ships. “I thought they were supposed to be merchants”, Bel Riose exclaims and scrambles his own fighter squad, commanded by Glawen Curr. Bel Riose even hands his dog tags (they’re still using dog tags in the far future?) to Glawen Curr for good luck, even though that sort of thing never bodes well for a character. And so we get that most un-Asimovian of science fiction trops, a giant space battle.

Now there actually are space battles in the original Foundation stories – however, they take place off page. Just as space battles were actually pretty uncommon during the so-called golden age of science fiction – the modern space battle is a phenomenon of the 1970s. That said, modern audiences expect to see a space battle, when there is one, so I don’t mind those scenes. Though I do mind the outcome, because even though the show has done a lot of work to make us sympathise with the Imperial fleet, I’ll still always be on the side of the Foundation.

The Foundation initially has the upper hand due to their superior technology. However, Glawen Curr figures out that the brain activity the Imperial scanners are detecting at the rear of every Foundation ship is not a second crewmember, but the ship’s central computer using artificial brain tissue and directs his squad to concentrate fire there. And so the Foundation whisper ships are destroyed one by one.

The Imperial fleet then concentrates its fire on the Invictus. Glawen Curr pulls a Star Wars style trench run and manages to fatally wound the Invictus. However, he’s no Luke Skywalker and so his fighter craft spirals out of control towards the surface of Terminus.

Meanwhile, back on the surface of Terminus, Day has set his sights on the Vault and wants to go there. Demerzel doesn’t want him to, but is once more overruled. Frustration with Day seems to be Demerzel’s constant state in this episode. Meanwhile, Poly Verisof, who has miraculously escaped the order to mass murder Foundation priests and is still alive, warns Day that Hari Seldon has his defences. And indeed, I hoped that the Vault would incinerate Day. Alas, no such luck, even though Day takes off his personal forceshield and armour, running around only in a gilded chainmail shirt with nothing underneath. Ouch, that’s got to chafe.

So Day, Demerzel and Poly Verisof make their way to the Vault, passing the flags planted  around the Vault. Day asks what those flags mean and Poly replies that it’s a dare for the kids of Terminus. Then Day positions himself in front of the Vault and yells at Hari Seldon to come out and face him, only for Hari or rather his hologram to pop up behind him.

Hari invites Day and Demerzel into his study. It’s very clear that not only have Hari and Demerzel met, but that Hari knows what Demerzel is. And indeed, in Prelude to Foundation, Demerzel was the one who persuaded Hari to turn psychohistory into more than just a theory. Considering that this episode revealed that Demerzel has her own agenda, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same had happened in the TV series.

It’s also pretty obvious that Demerzel is the one Hari really wants to talk to and he actually addresses her though most of the discussion. Day is just there as an annoying appendix. Though Hari tries to persuade Day to call off the attack, because war between the Foundation and the Empire would only kill a whole lot of people, but wouldn’t change the outcome for the Empire in the long run. However, that’s very much not what Day wants to hear. Because Day is absolutely convinced that he has beaten Hari Seldon and his predictions of the fall of the Empire by abolishing the genetic dynasty and marrying Sareth.

Hari replies that outliers happen and are difficult to predict (foreshadowing the Mule?), but that Day isn’t one. And whether Day marries Sareth or not, it won’t change the fact that the Empire is destined to fall, though not yet. Indeed, it’s very typical of this Day that he focusses solely on Hari Seldon’s claim one hundred and fifty years ago that genetic dynasty means stagnation and eventual decay for the Empire, even though that was just one point in a long laundry list of things that are wrong with the Empire and clearly not the worst. Because the main problem with the Cleons is not that they’re clones, but that they are megalomaniac tyrants.

Hari also offers to show Demerzel how to operate the Prime Radiant, so Day can see the future for himself and can see when the Empire will fall. But once again, that’s not what Day wants. Instead, he wants Hari to admit that his math was flawed. And when Hari refuses to do that, Day leaves in a huff and orders Bel Riose to drop the stricken Invictus on Terminus. Bel Riose points out that a) crashing the Invictus onto Terminus would probabyl destroy the planet due to the Invictus’ singularity drive, and b) the overwhelming majority of people on Terminus are civilians and not a threat to the Empire. However, destroying Terminus is exactly what Day wants.

Day and Demerzel take a shuttle back to the Imperial flagship. Aboard, they happen to pass the cell where Hober Mallow and Brother Constant are still locked up. Hober calls Day “Yesterday”, which must sting, though it’s not the worst thing someone will say to Day in the course of this episode. Nonetheless, the damage is done. Day notices Hober and Constant and realises that Hober Mallow was the one who crashed Day’s execution ceremony – quite literally – and sicced a bishop’s claw on Day. “You smashed into my home and now I’ll smash into yours”, Day says and orders Hober and Constant to be taken to the bridge to get a balcony seat for Day’s final attack on Terminus.

While they’re heading for the bridge, Demerzel suddenly gets a message – likely triggered by Dusk and Rue stumbling into the hidden chamber in the palace. She tells Day that she must leave now, because there are matters she has to attend to. Day doesn’t want her to go, but Demerzel’s programming clearly supercedes Day’s commands. She reminds him that she sometimes has to take off on other errants and that she was away a lot on such other errants when Day was a child and that this is probably the reason why he turned out the way he did. Demerzel then tells Day that she initiated a sexual relationship with him, hoping that she could fix his flaws that way. However, Day is beyond fixing. Demerzel tells him that she is very sorry that she couldn’t help him and leaves. And that right there was the worst thing anybody said to Day during this episode, worse than Hari Seldon telling him that he’s not an outlier or particularly special and worse than Hober Mallow calling him “Yesterday”, though Hober certainly gets points for the most creative insult.

On the bridge, Day orders Bel Riose to fire at the stricken Invictus and cause her to crash into Terminus. Bel Riose clearly isn’t very happy with that, but orders are orders. Then, just before Bel Riose is about to give the order to fire, his shop receives a message from the surface of Terminus. It’s from Glawen Curr, who survived crashing his fighter on Terminus, but is now stuck on the planet. Which is a problem, not just because the Foundationers likely aren’t friendly inclined towards the man who shot down several of their ships and fatally wounded the Invictus, but also because the Invictus is about to crash on his head.

Bel Riose tells Glawen Curr that he just received an order from Day to crash the Invictus into Terminus. Glawen tells him to go ahead and not defy Day’s order, because defying Day would mean severe consequences for Bel Riose and his crew and would make things worse for everybody in the Empire. He’s wrong, of course, because destroying Terminus and the Foundation will make things much worse for everybody, because it means ten thousand years of darkness rather than a thousand. Glawen Curr says that his little life doesn’t really matter in the big scheme of things. He then quotes the Bhagavad Gita, while a teary-eyed Bel Riose gives the order to fire on the Invictus and make her crash onto the planet below.

Leaving aside the fact that I find it a little hard to swallow that a galactic civilisation some twenty five years in the future, who don’t even remember the location of Earth, will remember the Bhagavad Gita of all things? Though they could do a lot worse, even with regard to mythic and religious texts. Regarding the Bhagavad Gita, is quoting it in western movies and TV shows a thing now, cause it also happens – with historical justification – in Oppenheimer. Finally, why does Glawen Curr refer to the prince and his charioteer, when they both have names, Arjuna and Krishna. Did the writers think that the audience does not know who Arjuna and Krishna are? But then people who don’t recognise the names are unlikely to know what the Bhagavad Gita is either. And in fact, I wasn’t sure which scene Glawen Curr was referring to, when he started talking about the prince and his charioteer – I read the Mahabharata a long time ago, when I was way too young for it, and didn’t offhand remember which part was the Bhagavad Gita – but when I realised he was talking about Prince Arjuna and Krishna, I immediately remembered which scene he meant.

But quibbles about Hindu epics aside, the entire scene between Bel Riose and Glawen Curr, though well acted and written, is also an excellent illustration of everything that’s wrong with the Foundation TV-series. Because much as I feel for the doomed couple Bel Riose and Glawen Curr, the Imperial fleet is about to destroy Terminus and the Foundation, the most important place and focus of the entire series and humanity’s last best hope against ten thousand years of darkness. That’s a terrible prospect and something that should have everybody on the edge of their seats. Yet the writers feel the need to use a doomed couple of Imperial soldiers to generate some emotional impact, even though the impending destruction of Terminus should already have more than enough emotional impact. It’s just like the flash forward scenes of The Mule expect us to care more about the potential death of Salvor Hardin than about The Mule, unstoppable conqueror of the universe who’ll sap your will and manipulate your mind, even as you try to kill him.

The main problem here is that the Foundation TV series simply focusses on the wrong parts of the story. Because in the books, the focus is very much on Terminus, even if the story takes us to Anacreon, Askone, Korell or Siwenna or even to Trantor. Terminus and the Foundation are the focus, they’re the people you’re supposed to sympathise with and root for. And I at least did. The TV series, on the other hand, spends so much time on the Empire – whether it’s the Cleons or Bel Riose – and on Ignis, Synnax as well as on characters like Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin, whose role in the story has passed, that Terminus isn’t as much the focus point as it should be. This is a persistent problem in the TV series and is notable in reviews from people who are not familiar with the books and care much more about the Cleons, Bel Riose and Glawen Curr or Salvor and Gaal than the story we should actually be caring about. Because in the show, Terminus often comes across as bland compared with the other settings.

As the Invictus descends towards Terminus, we see the inhabitants of Terminus City, look up at the sky in horror, including the severely wounded Director Sernak (Day isn’t very good at stabbing people) and his son. Glawen Curr also looks up at the sky in resignation and Poly Verisof finally places the little flag into the ground around Vault that he failed to place all the way back in the very first episode. Then the Invictus crashed into the planet almost directly above the Vault and we see what looks like Terminus breaking apart from the bridge of Bel Riose’s ship as well as the jumpship carrying Demerzel back to Trantor.

Is it possible that Terminus somehow survived a point-blank impact by a very large spaceship with a singularity drive? I guess it is and the Vault does have a forcefield, after all. And the Foundation capital could always relocate to  Anacreon or Thesbis or Smyrno. However, the final images of the episode looked damn final to me. And even if it’s not final, the Foundation just lost a big chunk of their political and scientific leadership.

Up to this point, I had generally enjoyed the episode, but the ending made me go, “What the hell! You bastards just blew up Terminus.” Because as I mentioned above, Terminus is the main focus and setting of the Foundation stories, even though they occasionally visit other worlds. And to just blow up Terminus is literally blowing up the entire story and its premise, because Terminus is the Foundation. I also have no idea why the writers chose to do something like that. Is it because Terminus is bland compared to Trantor or even Synnax or Ignis? Well, then make it fucking interesting.

For me, the biggest mystery about Foundation is how a show based on a beloved series of science fiction stories, with good writers, an excellent cast (many of whom I suspect are fans of the books, because we see a lot of very well known actors in small roles) and a huge budget can turn into such a complete and utter mess. Also, I wonder why Apple Plus bothered to buy the rights for Foundation, only to make something which only bares a very cursory resemblance to the original stories and often fails to understand the premise of Foundation.

And yes, I know that adapting the original stories as is would have been a nigh impossible task, because we are talking about almost eighty-years-old stories that are very dated in places and very talky and not all that cinematic. So yes, some changes would have been necessary, e.g. in 2023 the Foundation‘s superior technology clearly couldn’t be based in nuclear power and the almost entirely male cast of the first book wouldn’t have flown either. Nonetheless, an updated adaptation that still remains fairly faithful to the original stories would have been possible IMO. Cause only the first story “Foundation” a.k.a. “The Encyclopedists” is so talky that it would require a lot of changes. “Bridle and Saddle”, “The Wedge”, “The Big and the Little” and “The Dead Hand” all tell solid stories and would make for good TV, especially if the action scenes that often happen off-page were dramatised.

One more episode to go, so let’s see if the showrunners managed to salvage the series from the apparent destruction of Terminus. Though my review of the season finale will probably be delayed, because there is a lot going on in my life right now.