I just rewatched S3E10 (the last episode so far) and I'm honestly confused (and a bit annoyed).

SPOILERS INCOMING:

We leave Gaal fighting The Mule (the actual one, not Pilou Asbæk) and seemingly having the upper hand, because of the balladeer. She's clearly winning.

The show then cuts to the Cleons, but when we return four minutes later, Gaal is on the run, jumping off the space station doing a Tom Cruise move to catch a ship mid-air.

I mean, what the hell is going on? This strikes me as some of the worst writing in this show across 3 full seasons. Having some happen shit off-screen without any explanation is a "Pitch Meeting" episode waiting to happen.

I really, really didn't like it. What's your opinion?

I think the shrinking of the scale of this story is starting to show some wear and tear. The Foundation, as it was sold to us in season 1, was supposed to be a small refuge compared to the empire that preserved the empire's knowledge and skills through a 1000 year dark age.

In the books, the galactic empire had 25 million worlds, so 800 world nation was a mirco nation in comparison, but now they shrink the galatic empire by magnitutdes and this 800 world foundation(more than 10% of the world the empire own) is starting to seem more like a immediate replacement instead of a small refuges that last through the dark ages and rebuild the empire a new.

Edit: I don't think people understand what I'm pointing out here. I'm pointing out by shrinking the Galactic Empire, the Foundation doesn't look like a small refuge like it was compared to an empire with 25 million worlds. And this shrinkage is undercutting the narrative weight and purpose of Foundation. At this rate, the Foundation will be able to take on the Empire conventionally.

I was just watching the scene where she has Queen Sareth's fertility examined and she tells her that she was the one to kill Sareth's family.

First things first, Laura Birn has an incredible ability to produce a number of Mona Lisa-like faces where you can read 10 possible emotions into her at once. She has absolutely DEVOURED this role and plays Demerzel extraordinarily well. I hope one day she gets an award for the role.

Regarding the scene, it's absolutely fascinating. Obviously, to examine a potential empress' fertility, the best medical environment is not one with dozens of people in the room. And in the year 50000, well, surely they could have made the examination painless. But the examination was both painful and humiliating for Sareth. Which works really well for Demerzel's character on a number of levels.

Obviously, the simplest way to read to scene, on a rewatch at least, is that Demerzel is bullying Sareth and treating her as poorly as possible so that she'll get emotional and careless. Nudging Sareth, already somewhat of a hothead, to feel anger and strong negative emotions. Which will make her more likely to make mistakes, politically speaking. Especially by telling her about having killed her family, she's psychologically breaking this woman, lowering the union's chances as much as possible. I haven't said it yet, but obviously all of this is so that the marriage will fall through and the Cleonic dynasty continues.

However, Demerzel is more than her programming, so it stands to reason that Sareth having learned about her robotic nature, and having talked about it in public, would have pissed her off too. For anyone, to have some brat loudly spilling your secrets would piss you off. Also, she's probably mad that Sareth found out about this without her (Demerzel's) knowledge. She's irritated that this girl is as capable as she is. And if robotic psychology is anything like a human's, she's primed to dislike Sareth on the grounds that she represents everything she's programmed to hate. And if you're gonna have someone killed, it serves a certain purpose to literally dislike her.

And I just love the number of ways you can approach all of Demerzel's scenes. Knowing her nature changes the viewing experience of the first two seasons SO MUCH!! You can pick apart any scene, any look, any dialogue, and find a way to interpret what she's thinking and why she's saying what she says.

Take the Brother Day of this age. Before he first attempts to sleep with Sareth, his scene with Demerzel is HILARIOUS. She's cheering him on like he's a dog lollll.

I also find SO FASCINATING the relationship between Demerzel and each Cleon. For example, on season 1, I fully believe she deeply hated Cleon 13. She would NEVER forgive him for ordering her to kill Zephyr Halima. That broke something in her. She loves every Cleon, not just because she is forced to by programming, but because she's their mother. She's raised every one. But him commanding her to needlessly murder a woman she considered holy.... Shit got personal after that. I truly do believe Cleon 13 is her least favorite, after Cleon 1. And I think part of the reason she killed Cleon 14 in the exact moment she did was to hurt Day!!! She was never gonna let him live, he had been altered to stray from Cleon 1's design. But she killed him right after Day said he wanted him to live. I think part of it was to hurt Day for what he'd made her do.

Regarding Cleon 17, Season 2's Day, I don't think she hates him in the same way. I think she feels contempt for him, and she did call him "A sperm led by its waving flagellum, mistaking its random motion for complexity," which might just be the best read in science fiction lollllll. But she clearly felt some kind of pity for him, she considered she had failed in raising him right. She hated the kind of man he'd become, but she didn't consider his poor character to be his fault. She treated him like one would a mentally ill pet, or something like that. Whereas Cleon 13, a man capable of some degree of empathy and kindness, having ordered her to kill a woman she admired, just as payback for her having knelt when Halima spoke heresy against the Cleons.... She hated him more, exactly because he was more than a "waving flagellum".

Anywaysssss, rant over lol. I just love Demerzel so much, I could talk about her all day

Why did Kalle give Hari a human body?

I am rewatching and, well, I have to assume the whole Kalle/Earth robots storyline will be explored further in Season 4. But I still wonder if anyone has any idea why Hari was given a human body, specifically. Also, I wonder how old he's supposed to be? Is he the same age he was when he died? Because that's kinda pretty old. Maybe his body is somewhat younger? So he'll live longer? He could have been given a robot body, I guess. Although that would have raised too many questions and would have given away the nature of Kalle. Also, well, there's the whole argument of "are you still you without your body?" So maybe if bringing him back was some sort of favour to him, a robot body wouldn't have brought the actual Hari back, but simply given this copy of him a robot body.

So yeah, if anyone has any ideas or theories or whatever, do tell!

I just finished season 3, and I am absolutely obsessed with the entire premise- in particular the concept of Hari Selden and his continuing presense. Ive dabbled in Asimov 's work before- but I have never devoted the time to the whole series.

Any advice for making sure I get the most out of it?

Comments
1) OMG. Literally the best sci fi show ever for me.
2) Love the different manifestations of Day. From Napoleon to the Dude was amazing. That actor stole the show. Also Demerzel... chef's kiss.

Questions
1) Not sure I understood the Mule's ending. Did she die? Find out in Season 4?
2) Are the books as good as the show?

Why does it feel like the longer the show has gone on, the more the characters have devolved into what feels like saturday morning cartoon characters? Absolutely over the top silly acting as the show progresses, whereas when it started, only a few of the actors were meh.

Rewatching episode 5 of season 1, something I don't think is given enough weight in the story, is how Hari invites Gaal to Trantor to, well, essentially kidnap her into the Foundation. Not literal kidnap, of course, that was Empire, and she could have lied about psychohistory being true and be free to live whatever life she chose.

But the thing is, that didn't happen. Seeing Gaal's life on Synnax and how quickly she had to pivot from living on Synnax, studying in secret, and joining the Foundation, she basically never had any freedom at any point. Hari used Gaal for his psychohistory purposes, and it was honestly quite evil from him. He definitely deserved getting stuck for 100 years while she traveled to Synnax.

She trusted him, to finally be free to pursue knowledge, and his intention was to immediately coerce her into joining his cult. And then when she arrives at his ship instead of Raych he has the gall to be mad at her!!! His intention was to bring her from a water planet to a freezing planet and have her die of old age establishing the Foundation, but he never thought of what she might want! She never gave him informed consent!

Yes, he was doing it all to save humanity, but..... He was still a huge asshole. I think his wife would have been disappointed in him. I don't know why exactly Kalle (aka Earth's robots) was so sympathetic to him, to the point of bringing him back to life. The man is very morally nuanced. He might be doing things for the greater good, but he's not being in any way ethical about the way he does them.

Also, good on Gaal for manipulating New Terminus Hari on season 3!!! "Oh I don't like living in a box for hundreds of years" well, you put yourself there!!!! Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? I don't! Looking back, Hari is so much more manipulative than he first appears. Definitely not any kind of hero.

EDIT: actually, I forgot something huge. HE TOOK AWAY HER OPPORTUNITY OF SAVING SYNNAX. The people of Synnax had been indoctrinated by their priest class into doing nothing about the global worming that would kill them. If Gaal had been free to become something she chose, a scholar at a university or something like that, she could have tried to save her home, her people. But they all died, and if Hari hadn't immediately recruited Gaal into the Foundation, their culture could have been saved. In this sense, Hari is indirectly responsible for a whole ethnic group's disappearance

Could not understand the reason why Gaal Dornick refuse to bring Hari Seldon? As I understand, real Hari has died a long time ago in S1, the Hari who was asking at end of S3 basically is a living AI program. Why would Gaal refuse to bring a set of knowledge with her? Did she feel threatened by the existence of Hari Seldon as an AI?

We know Cleon the 1st enslaved Demerzel in his dusk form, and we learn thats when he solved the succession question by implementing the cloning system. So how did Cleon the 2nd work? Was he a baby and Demerzel was regent until he reached brother Day form? Or did they go straight into making a Day form clone and a Dawn clone? Or was it something entirely different?

EDIT: I HAVE NOT READ THE BOOKS. THIS IS ENTIRELY ABOUT THE SHOW

I'm rewatching the show after having finished it. There were so many twists, details, resolved mysteries, shocking revelations.... It all gets a bit muddled.

I'm on episode 2 right now, and Hari intends to kill himself so he can become two AIs of himself. He intends for Gaal to live and die on Terminus, which she won't. He also wants to found a Second Foundation, on a location that is ultimately not where it is founded.

He is able to predict a whole bunch of things thanks to psychohistory, the Prime Radiant specifically.

So, did he and his wife build the Radiant? Or did they get help from Kalle (which is to say, the robots who now inhabit Earth)?

In any case, he's about to make a grand speech, swallow a pill to copy his mind... Into both a knife and his coffin? And he knows the AI in the coffin will lack information about the Second Foundation and whatnot. But it also will be able to transform his coffin into a 4-dimensional ship of sorts. That part becomes confusing to me. How is that supposed to work? How does he know how to do that?

He's also said psychohistory can't predict the behavior of individual people. And yet, he knows about the future Mule? Or does he not? I'm not sure.

He also lied to Empire about his plans. He doesn't intend for humanity to go through a period of 1000 years of darkness, right? His actual plan is to build up the Foundation (and I guess the second foundation or whatever), to rival the Empire, yes? Although his calculations about the Empire and humanity's fall without his intervention are still correct, as I understand it. Gaal confirmed he was right about the math.

Then there's Demerzel, who believed that Hari was correct in his calculations, even though she hadn't examined psychohistory (the Radiant) herself. In any case, she was willing to destroy the Star Bridge, and frame people from Anacreon and Thespis, so that Cleon XII would believe Hari was right and would give him the ship to go to Terminus and carry out his plan (I think Demerzel believes Hari is telling them (Empire) the truth about his plans, even though he isn't).

And then, how do the Mentallics play into all of this??? Are they uniquely able to change the course of events? Obviously they are telepaths, but Gaal can also see the future. And you have her, Salvor, and the Mule, at least, who play major roles in the different crisis.

Is there something I'm forgetting? Something else that I should be taking into account while rewatching this?

I want to understand, with my retroactive information, what exactly is going on, who is planning what, at any given time. Thanks!! 🩵🩵

MY GOODNESS WHAT A SHOW!!!! Every season was just so good! And I loved season 3! I thought the Mule twist was pretty unnecesary, but whatever. It does make the Mule more threatening.

In any case, the reason I am here is to talk about Demerzel!!!! My love!!!! She's dead 😭😭😭. How dare they!!! I've always been particularly invested in robot and AI characters, and honestly, she might have become my favorite one of all time. Obviously, I need to let the show marinate in my mind for a bit. But she was GLORIOUS.

As saddened as I am about her death, it was a fitting end for her character. So tragic! God, what a fascinating concept for a robot character. A real, full person, forced by their programming to do monstrous things. And she had already managed to get free from her initial programming!!! Only to then be immediately enslaved again by Cleon I!!! Btw, it's on sight for Cleon I. My god, what an evil, egocentric, ridiculous, monstrous man. Episodes 9 and 10 of season 2 were so good!!!! The explanation of Demerzel as the mastermind behind the throne.

And now she's dead!!! And she was so close to freedom, too! But her character is extremely morally complex, and tragic, and so her ending is very fitting indeed. As satisfying as it would have been to see her finally freed, and as fascinating as it would have been to see what she would do with that freedom, it would never have been as interesting as the trapped Demerzel. Her dying according to her programming is a fitting end. But oh, so tragic.

Although, if the show lasts more than 4 seasons, which I highly doubt, it would be great for her to come back! She certainly could! When she died her programming chip had been melted off, and she could have the ability to change bodies. It's certainly more interesting than Hari Seldon being resurrected again lol.

In any case, what an incredible hidden gem of a show!!!! A sci-fi masterpiece, truly!!! What do you guys think? It wasn't perfect, imo, but whatever, nothing ever is. And the highs are so high, aren't they??

So just binged the entire show in three weeks! Asimov is my favorite author, but I avoided the show. I heard it was bad. I heard wrong. Even though it’s different, I loved the major changes and the story! It’s like RDM’s Battlestar Galactica.

The first season had some twists at the beginning that were annoying, but they were mainly due to the story being a little too nonlinear. I didn’t care about Hari or Gaal until after their backstories were fleshed out. This is a common writing mistake though. A show needs characters you like in order to entice the viewer to keep watching.

The other problem with the way stories were presented is that they didn’t start and end with episodes. This is a problem with streaming, though. Medic executives want you to keep the service, but they think you’ll cancel if you are given a complete story. So stories are drawn out and never get logical conclusions until the end. This makes it more space soap than space opera. That’s a problem with many different franchises from NuTrek to Star Wars. That’s why they work much better when binged than when watched once a week.

I was thinking about the next season. I actually hope they finish the show there on a high note.

So far Brother Darkness only hit Empire worlds with the black hole bomb. Maybe he can only hit places with a jump gate? In that case, I foresee some worlds destroying their jump gates while the Mule destroys the others as she conquers toward Trantor. This would rapidly cause the Empire to shrink to a handful of worlds. With much less resources, there will be a lot of unrest. I can see Darkness fleeing while the Mule takes advantage to invade at that time. Mad, Darkness intends to destroy Trantor so everyone goes to the black hole bomb to stop him.

Given how they wrote the show, I can see Vault Hari seemingly going evil. Maybe he joins the Mule. But it’s ultimately a ruse. Both Empire and the First Foundation need to fall to have a chance at something new. So maybe he sabotages everyone’s jump drives? A thousand separated worlds means a thousand experiments to make a successful return of humanity. The second foundation spread throughout the galaxy when worlds were separated. Given their telepathy, they could guide worlds back. The second foundation as a whole acts as a check-in case they go rogue. And the Robots on Earth act as a check on the Second Foundation itself. Maybe they are the ones who spread the second Foundation, since they have the ability to travel planet to planet without ships.

Maybe the Vault’s four dimensional nature provides a way into the black hole ergosphere where Gaal finds herself in four months. Maybe that’s how she survives. Gravity is weaker in higher dimensions. Give the gravitational time dilation around the black hole, it’s likely she emerges thousands of years after the fall so we can follow her to view the results of the Seldon plan. (Basically the opposite of Andromeda.)

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SEASON 3. TV SHOW ONLY ALTHOUGH BOOK READERS MAY HAVE SOME INSIGHT.

Hoping this is far enough down to avoid spoilers appearing in the preview….

(I can’t fix the editing in this post. It is possessed and will not conform. I apologise in advance)

1. Okay… so we know who the puppeteer is… do we know who the puppet was? Why he was chosen? At first I wondered if he was the abandoned sibling, is that abandonment didn’t really ever take place and if neglected child took the baby with them…? I also wondered at one point if Magnifico was the abandoned baby as his love for the Mule was so deep seated. And I guess, does it matter? But could the puppeteer have used anyone as a puppet? How did the puppeteer control the puppet over planetary distances? Tellum needed her people nearby and

didn’t

1. seem able to occupy more than one body at a time. Also, the conversations Bayta had with Magnifico about being good at making people like them seemed odd with hindsight. Did he really not know who Bayta was? Or why the Mule was the way he was? Is that why his mind is childlike? It’s been overly controlled and manipulated? Maybe the first

person

1. warped into the love for the

Mule and it has terrible long term effects? Dunno, just spitballing here.
2.

1. Why did the Mule cause physical damage and pain to Toran Mallow? And not manage to take over his mind? Was it because the “Mule” wasn’t really trying and just being performative? Who was really in control there? Did the puppeteer want one single person to love them honestly? Was he permitted to escape? Why send him in to begin with??

Up until season 3 of foundation I had always been someone who just watched the foundation since it seemed interesting. I never read the books but heard it was similar to Dune so figured I'd give it a watch. It was honestly a surprise to me that the Cleons story line was not part of the books. Instead it was a show original and it was quite literally genius. A perfect way to maintain story pacing, remove confusion introduced by actors changing, reduce need to keep switching actors and introduced a new dynamic to the story. Best part? These guys are also the most interesting part of the show, somehow the more faithful part of the show was the least interesting? That's new.

But even then I was never really that interested, Cleons were interesting but that was it, the brothers dynamics were well written. Then season 3 came around and they hit the ground running. Great CGI. Large galactic plots around the Cleons. The weakening Dynasty. Hari Seldon being a larger player. Every single episode was phenomenal. Made you wonder why is season 3 all of a sudden so good compared to the previous two.

And then episode 10 came. We went from galactic level dynasties, armies being destroyed by the mule, planet busting, etc... to... a lil swat team skirmish on some space station to get the mule... What the heck. How did they make the MAIN PLOTLINE they've been alluding to in every episode so anti climatic. Seriously them attacking the mule was just like 2 smoke grenades and them running at each other. What the heck. Hell the prior season pre cog scenes of them fighting in a burning world looked more interesting. What happened.

I swear to god the genius writers behind the show created two writer camps. Those focused on the Cleons and those focused on Gaal Dornick and the Cleon people were the better writers.

Just finished the show, curious to hear anyone’s thoughts on my takes below. I liked the show a lot, I did not LOVE it.

I’ll break it down in pros and cons and I’ll start with the pros. I did not read the books, but I’m familiar with the sentiment here that the show is foundation in basic premise only and that the books themselves are nearly unadaptable.

PROS: The execution of the idea behind three identical rulers only separated by age is a novel idea that is pulled off to absolute perfection in my opinion. To have such a potent idea and to perform it so well is something incredible, but it’s only magnified 10x behind the mystery of Demerzel and the performance of Laura Birn. It’s the best acting and execution I’ve seen someone do as a robot in any sci-fi I’ve seen in my life. Pair in Lee Pace’s performance as Day, each a slightly differentiation of the same egomaniac in each season… It’s absolutely electric television. Demerzel’s storytelling “I have been a leader, and a soldier..” gave me chills and still does when I think about it. The idea of “unvoicing” and Gaal/Salvor’s abilities were well done. By the mid point of season three the show really found its groove in being able to have the characters use these powers at appropriate times for appropriate reasons. It was very tasteful. Ultimately the show did really well at surprises, I never found myself at a point where I could accurately predict what was going to happen next or who was going to do what— and that to me means they were able to capture the complexity of each character well.

CONS: This show needed 10 more episodes in each season. Although a lot of things happen in each episode, the time skips led to a feeling of it being slightly disjointed in my mind. I don’t like how much thinking I had to do to keep track of the brothers and who would be what at any given time jump, or what happened to the characters we’d come to be familiar with from the past season. I understand that in order for the show to work they have to jump around properly to cover each crisis, but I think the solution would have been to allow us more time with each cast of characters.

I did not like the vague explanations behind Sheldon’s “psychohistory”, whereas every time it was brought up Jared Harris’ character would repeat its definition but wouldn’t expand on the factors that lead him to draw the conclusions he does. NOW, I also understand that “To see the future is to affect it” and that he can’t outwardly say anything that would cause someone to take a different route than they may have otherwise.., but the only times we get a glimpse into Seldon’s thinking is when he’s like “Oh you’re going through your religious phase?” Or “I see the tensions between the traders and the bureaucracy has come into play”.. I just wish I could understand more about the calculations that were so critical to the backbone of the story

This is a follow-up of my previous post about the Rossem film location in Czechia:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FoundationTV/comments/1owc55t/rossem_film_location_s03e07_spoilers/

So I went there and it's really THE place, just no space ships, giant harvesters or planets in the sky :)

Hey guys, looking for any set news or pics from season 4?

Been googling around and it seems almost imposable to find info. There are leaks from Neuromancer, but not Foundation?

Just finished episode 9, as the title says first time watcher.

I’m enjoying it so far, Lee Pace’s performance has been as advertised and that’s been a welcome surprise.
Not often an actor’s performance was as properly lauded as his.

So- the thing. When Salvor unlocks the vault at the middle-endish of the episode, the foundation survivors all wake up, then the thespians show up with Hugo.

It’s a 2-1 standoff (2-1 ship advantage) with Foundation survivors and thespians allied against the Anacreons. And by all accounts the numbers have the Anacreon’s dead to rights.

Then, in the most predictable fashion I’ve seen in a long time watching tv… Phara shows up in her single ship and instantly everyone starts shaking in their boots.

She takes out a ship due to surprise, then lands and walks off the landing pad and the music and characters’ demeanors rapidly shift on a dime as if this single person instantly shifts momentum back to her side. … what the hell?

She takes an arrow to the neck soon after, which I felt a little vindicated by. But that was just a super weird, poorly written moment.

Like I said, I’m actually enjoying the show.

But I don’t care if John Cena is the one walking off that ship, there’s no way anything significant would change by the entrance of a single person- let alone to the degree the framing of that moment would like us to believe.

It’s sci fi fantasy I get it, it doesn’t have to be “realistic” to me necessarily but this was more of a poor and unearned redirection attempt imo

Just finished Foundation Season 3 and yeah… Season 4 is looking promising.

This is one of the few shows that’s actually kept me hooked across multiple seasons. Sure, it has its fair share of slow episodes and obvious filler, but it somehow always pulls you back in with the sheer scale, politics, and those well-timed twists.

Also, the Empire storyline continues to be the most consistently interesting part. Every time the focus shifts there, it just hits differently.

And Demerzel—what a character. That balance between being a robot and having a kind of consciousness is so well done. A prisoner of her programming, yet incredibly powerful at the same time.

The world-building overall is great too, when it works, it really works.

I’m still fully invested. Feels like everything is finally converging, and Season 4 might actually be where it all pays off.

Cautiously optimistic… but also kinda excited to see if they stick the landing

10 months late, only just finishing season 3 now. Just wanted to say the similarities between the actors playing the Mule were absolutely insane. I knew exactly what character I was looking at from literally the first second he showed up on screen.

Only other show I've seen with that type of casting is Dark, and that's a high fucking bar.

In season 2 episode 4 when mallow enters the vault and seconds later the church brothers follow, mallow says it has been 2 days, however when the governor follows them he appears instantly!!! Shouldn't he appear at least a few hours later? 😕

I’ve been a fan of Asimov books for decades, and I finally got around to watching most of season 1. I just have 1 more episode left.

Honestly, I could barely sit through this season. The flow was choppy, things jumped around all over the place, there was absolutely crappy writing, sooooo much palace intrigue that has nothing to do with the foundation, and completely avoidable crises that were generated by repeatedly inane decisions. Oh, there’s the magic foresight that Gaal and Salvor have, which seems antithetical to psychohistory.

I want to enjoy this show so much. I don’t even mind if it changes things from the books. But I’m finding this not just unenjoyable but actively irritating.

So, is it worth continuing? Talk me off the ledge.