Summary: Enjoiner Rue confides in Dusk about her distrust of Demerzel. Hober Mallow pulls a daring move. Day sets course for Terminus and the Foundation.

This thread can contain TV spoilers up to season 2 episode 8.

Air Date: September 1, 2023

  • Car@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
    12·
    2 years ago

    This has been my favorite episode of the entire show.

    The good: learning about the secrets between Cleon I and Demerzel continues to move in unexpected directions.

    The bad: Hober Mallow acts as a Deus Ex Machina at the most convenient of times.

    The ugly: keeping track of the mentalics story is a bit much for my normal brain. It’s been a long, slow burn with conflicting information given to the viewer at several points.

    • Gabtraf@startrek.website
      6·
      2 years ago

      Agree, great episode. While I’m sure the show would do interesting things with it, I kind of hope the direction with the mentallics isn’t for this Tellem to try to move conscious into Gale, but Gale be dominant mind and just making Gale super powerful. Just wouldn’t feel earned.

        • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
          7·
          2 years ago

          I bet Salvor will burst in with those brain wave suppressors turned on to eleven. Then everyone will get a massive headache and drop to the floor.

          • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
            3·
            2 years ago

            Right during the transfer so she falls into the chasm.

            The moment they talked about those disruptors I thought “what a convenient checkhovs gun!”

        • joneskind@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 years ago

          And by Salvor Hardin you mean VAR Hari Seldon

          I realised the anagram a few days ago. I tried to find information about this on the internet but couldn’t find any. I can’t remember if it’s mentioned in the books but it can’t be a coincidence.

          Also, yes. Salvor definitely will save the day.

          • healer_56@lemmy.world
            3·
            2 years ago

            did i miss something ? Salvor Hardin does not have an e in it so how can it be an anagram to hari sEldon ?

            • joneskind@lemmy.world
              1·
              2 years ago

              True, but my guess is that Asimov removed a silent e in Salvor(e) Hardin(e) to make the anagram less obvious.

      • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
        41·
        2 years ago

        This is literally the first time Gaal has been remotely useful, interesting watchable, or just… remotely functional, the rest of the time she’s either crying or just being contrary just because.

        • Batmancer@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 years ago

          I was very upset with her in the previous episode when she was demanding trust from Salvor with the obvious problem being she is not trusting Salvor or her hunch and about the boats history being erased.

    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
      2·
      2 years ago

      Loved the end of the episode when Dawn and Dusk discover that Demerzel is the Empire. It was something I was talked with my wife since season 1. I guess that for the end of season 2, Demezer is going to get rid of all the Cloud Dominion staff, Dawn and Dusk and retrieve new ones with forged memories. Funny how this season all three brothers were in love of someone different.

    • Batmancer@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      I have this fear that the leader of the mentalics is in fact the mule in her whatevereth iteration.

    • Axiochus@lemmy.world
      10·
      2 years ago

      I personally dropped it, since it suffers from committee-approved writing: there must be random action scenes, love interests and personal stories of exceptionalism. If you don’t mind the plot sometimes taking second place in favor of illogical standard Hollywood fare, it’s well shot, with okay acting, and an overall nice aesthetic.

      • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        it suffers from committee-approved writing: there must be random action scenes, love interests and personal stories of exceptionalism

        You’ve just described literally every piece of genre television made since the beginning of the medium.

        • Axiochus@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 years ago

          Eh, I’d say that this one is fairly blatant about it. You can tick boxes without sacrificing plot coherence and world building.

      • agedbeef@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        I agree with you somewhat, but I’ll just say in my opinion, it wasn’t as disruptive to my watching.

    • Car@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      I’d say so. I have more faith in Apple keeping this show alive longer than Amazon or Netflix would have.

      I think we’re up to 5 or so different plot lines occurring at any given time per episode, so chances are you’d be interested in at least something going on.

    • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
      21·
      2 years ago

      Wait.

      The beginning of the seasons are… so painful, truly unwatchable. There’s smelling your own farts, and then there’s whatever the hell this is, like GoT S8 kind of stuff.

      But then something crazy happens around ep 4-5 and they turn absolutely on a dime to become actually pretty interesting.

      2x08 was the best of the show, kind of by far. It’s still a bit in the hole, but it has 2 more episodes to redeem the season.

      Basically don’t watch this show unless you’re binging, it’s cruel otherwise.

    • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
      42·
      2 years ago

      Ok, do not, I repeat DO NOT, watch this show while it’s airing(releasing).

      Binge the seasons, then ignore it till the next season is done.

      The beginning of the seasons are TRULY abominable, like Jon Snow: “I DUH WANNIT” bad, or Michael Burnham season 2. Then midway suddenly the writing stops smelling its own farts and becomes decent, then actually good.

      They just put SO much horrible, horrible, truly awful, it’s not buildup, it’s this nasty pretense to force the illusion of mystery at the beginning of the season, like they disorient you on purpose to seem smarter, but halfway through they stop and the whole thing becomes semi-coherent again.

      As for the books, first: It’s more than the standard trilogy, it takes so much from Asimov’s extended universe, including where he joined his Caves of Steel series into the Foundation way later on, like the 80s.

      There’s definitely connections, but also, it’s getting there by a different route, I don’t hold this against them, you need room to create, just trying to make a near cult-scifi pulp book from the 50s into a show is silly.

      • HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works
        31·
        2 years ago

        OK, thanks. I’ll finish the books and wait until the series are released into DVDs to book them at mynlocal library

    • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 years ago

      Iirc, Gaal had a vision of the future, where the Mule mentioned that Hober Mallow had pierced the side of Empire. She told Salvor about this, and Salvor told Hari in the Vault, and Hari wrote it on the exterior, which told Constant and Polly to seek Hober out. Everything in the timeline with Constant and Hober takes place after this.

      It’s confusing at first because the audience expects that events are happening simultaneously, but it turns out that the whole Constant plot line is actually a flash forward.

      So Hober Mallow’s interference in everything is really a predestination paradox stemming from Gaal seeing the future. Without her vision, he never would have met Constant and wouldn’t have had any reason to rescue her from Tractor, and thus wouldn’t have punched a hole in Empire’s aura, so to speak.

  • Shalakushka@kbin.social
    14·
    2 years ago

    I wish they would have just made their own scifi show and called it something else. This isn’t Foundation, and I don’t even see how that’s a profitable enough property to do this kind of cash grab with.

    • zefiax@lemmy.world
      6·
      2 years ago

      Meh, they had to make the changes. The book cycles through characters every few chapters. You can’t make a show without characters people can invest in.

    • GerryMandering@lemm.ee
      21·
      2 years ago

      I’m a massive fan of the books, and it took me a while to accept the abomination this show is. But once I accepted this is a completely different tv series with only a loose resemblance to the books, I started to actually enjoy it.

      If they’d just called it something else I’d have been fine with it.

      It’s not foundation but it’s also not that bad. It’s not that good either, but good tv is hard to come by

    • Izzy@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      I feel this way about a lot of things. It seems like there are near infinite movie and tv show scripts to make things from, but if it doesn’t have some association to a thing people can recognize it is barely worth anything. Which is sad because there are likely countless amazing things sitting there unmade. Studios used to take more risk with low to mid budget stuff.