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Episode 6 – “Why the Gods Made Me”
You get the impression that when Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) first devised his maths-based theory of psychohistory that he must have bloodlessly and impassionately put it all together, convinced that while he was saving humanity, the actual affairs and emotions of people would have any real people impact on the trajectory of the future. Oh, people were integral to it, no doubt, and he is doing it to save them, or at least their civilisation, after all, but he seems to move on so effortlessly no matter the pain meted out to him that you can help but wonder if he feels anything deep down? Well, in “Why the Gods Made Me”, as something quite traumatic happens to it, we discover that deep beneath the near-narcissitic outward coldness of Hari Seldon beats the heart of a man who felt deeply, who loved and was loved and who saw a future, a personal future, where intellectual curiosity and affairs of the heart comingled to euphoric effect. The humanising of Hari Seldon, which had been slowly gathering pace in the last few episodes ramped up considerably in this episode on the planet where he, Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey) and Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) were “guests” of the Mentalics, people with extreme psychic abilities who have been gathered into a sanctuary safe from the galaxy by Tellem Bond (Rachel House) and who, it turns out, will do anything to keep themselves safe from prejudiced people who are hellbent on literally killing them.You can understand why Tellem is protective of them and why she will do anything to ensure their safety, but what transpires in this episode reminds you that it takes not much for the persecuted to become the persecutor, or at the very least, to meter out dark and terrible deeds in service on what they see as a necessary and righteous end. While Tellem does terrible things for others, or says she does anyway, Empire aka Brother Day (Lee Pace) is busy doing things purely for himself, his grasp of power and semblance of a strong empire resting in the hands of Queen Sareth (Ella-Rae Smith) who seems to have a charismatic mind of her own and is far from afraid to use it. While Empire needs her, far more than he will admit, she doesn’t need him other than to exact vengeance and it will be interesting to see how this plays out. She may be confident of success but Empire is Empire and often gets his way as Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas) discovers when he meets the Spacers and things don’t work out as envisaged and Brother Constant and High Cleric Poly Verisof (Isabella Laughland and Kulvinder Ghir respectively) get to Trantor on their mission, have a lovely time of it until, well, they don’t … one thing that does emerge in this episode is how far people will go in pursuit of their goals, which are held by them, naturally enough, as just and right no matter what needs to be done to achieve them. Good old delusional humanity well and truly at work … oh, and the title? The gods created wine for those unable to afford vengeance …
Episode 7 – “A Necessary Death”
Those of us with a fine, thudding beating heart of highly empathetic proportions might, quite rightly, view no death as necessary. That presupposes a cause worth sacrificing for, and while there are indisputably come noble causes out there, too often in the broken world of humanity, nobility is a corrupted concept, too often tainted by peoples’ inability to tell horrific intent from self-serving necessity. The ends justifies the means is having a busy time of it in this episode in which Tellem enacts a terrible deed to once again protect her people, one Salvor is at the unpleasant receiving end of, and Gaal begins to believe she may be the future of psychic humanity. Salvor tries to convince she is being played far more enthusiastically, though with a characteristic quietly ferocious darkness, by Tellem than she ever was by Hari but she doesn’t listen and in a place that feel more Borg than human with all the psychics eerily connected, she could very well lose her way and have a great cost exacted for a lack of judgement. You can understand why she’d fall for Tellem’s snake oil saleswoman charm; rejected by her parents for who she was, embraced by Hari but only for his own ends and foreseeing an horrific future where Hari some sort of civilisational salvation and feeling like Salvor won’t embrace the dream of safety with their own kind, she’s easy pickings for Tellem who, you suspect, only wants her because she alone knows where the Prime Radiant is hidden on the ship. She wants to but what Tellem is selling, very, VERY much, but it’s becoming clear she is about to be used once again and the necessary death that results may not be hers but it will hurt her just as deeply … meanwhile, Constant and Verisof have a less than diplomatically successful visitation with Empire thanks to some hidden Hari duplicity and Mallow is betrayed big time by the very people he wants as allies all while Sareth discovers that what she suspected about her parents is true and that the gliding ancient robotic agent of death, Demerzel (Laura Birn) is another who sees certain deaths as warranted in the service of the “greater good”, which is a rubbery and self-serving idea, easily molded, and justified, by whoever is in the murderous driving seat. It’s high drama and epic in scope, all beautifully brought to life by cinematography which continues to luminously enthrall, but at its heart, it’s the story of people making all kinds of excuses to justify their quite terrible behaviour and while Foundation doesn’t condemn anyone, it’s style of enrichingly involved, nuanced storytelling effectively lets people hang themselves in ways that you suspect they won’t understand the true consequences of until much further down the track …
Episode 8 – “The Last Empress”
When you experience abusive trauma, you have two choices, not always conscious ones – you either become the monster you feared in an attempt to ensure no one can hurt you again, or you strike out into kinder, gentler climes, seeking to be the absolute antidote to the hellscape unleashed upon you. It would be to think that Tellem (Rachel House) is the former, so twisted by the way she was treated by “normal” people that she’s become a monster to keep them at bay for good. But as she admits to Gaal (Lou Llobell) she was actually treated as a god by her people, placed on an actual and literal throne and venerated; she didn’t love it with each day feeling like an eternity but she didn’t want to give it up either and so she found a way to pour her consciousness into another body, a specially chosen child who gave up their consciousness for hers, perceived as a great honour by a people too enthralled to realise how badly they were being played. She, of course, defends this monstrous behaviour, this crushing of another’s individuality and personality by invoking the need to care for her fellow Mentallics but you get the feeling she does protest too much and that somewhere along the line all that worship twist her humanity well and truly out of shape. So much so that Gaal is her next appointed vessel and as the episode ends, the only thing that stands between her and oblivion is Salvor who is ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- NOT dead and captive in a pit that silences all her psychic powers. How she gets out is best left to the watching of an absolute cracker of an episode which manages to keep Foundation‘s broodingly intense narrative approach intact while ramping things up a fantastically good bone-rattling degree. In short, the show places the Whisper ship pedal to the metal and bolts hard toward the end of a season where working out who the monsters are and who they aren’t has become a sport unto itself. Day (Lee Pace) naturally is a clear cut monster and almost gets away with killing off Verisof and Constant (Kulvinder Ghir and Isabella Laughland) in a highly theatrical execution high atop the palace until Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas) swoops in in a rescue gambit so epically dramatic that it is hands down one of the best things you will see all year. Watching the look on Day’s face when it becomes obvious his vaunted untouchability has been breached is a thing of pure joy, and while he sets off to exact revenge on Terminus – by stopping the killings, Mallow effectively declares war on behalf of the foundation – oops! – with Verisof in tow, he is diminished by the humiliation of an Empire attacked and bested. Someone who looks eager to take advantage of that is Sareth (Ella-Rae Smith) and Dawn (Cassian Bilton) who are getting it on in the service tunnels under the city and Dusk (Terrence Mann) and his old love Enjoiner Rue (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) who discover that the power behind the throne all along has not been the cloned Kleon dynasty but — wait for it! – Demerzel, lone survivor of the Robot Wars who may be playing THE longest game of revenge in history. There is a LOT going on and Foundation episode 8 barely pauses for breath but some retains its meditative sense of a great storm slowly building as the story rushes to its final two episodes for the season and what is likely to be the mother of all reckonings for all manner of people who have erroneously thought they sit upon the power pile …
Foundation is currently streaming on AppleTV+