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Foundation
Where the Stars Are Scattered Thinly
Season 2
Episode 4
Editor’s Rating
Photo: Apple TV
Foundation is an interesting adaptation because of how it runs almost polar opposite to the experience of reading its source material. Whereas Asimov’s books dealt in grand scales, exploring big ideas largely from an argumentative standpoint and letting the action take place off-page, Foundation the TV show relishes in exploring all the smaller details the books skip. This includes showing the action and exploring the much smaller scale stories of the individuals involved in the big historical events.
So far, this season has been preoccupied with the importance of individuals when looking at the grand scale of humanity. Though the show — via Hari Seldon last week, and this week via Gaal Dornick’s opening narration — argues that individual people and their feelings don’t matter on some grand scale, they still matter when looked at the scale of the human heart, and there is value in that. The show cares about making the audience care about the individual people, even if most of the cast gets replaced with another time jump. That is why it is a delight to see Foundation not only deal with big, galaxy-changing events but also have time to do a little Star Trek episode starring Ben Daniels as a weary Starfleet exploring a strange new world and seeking out old life and old civilization.
This week, Daniels’ Bel Riose and his husband Glawen Curr do an extreme halo jump from orbit and land on Siwenna (the planet where Poly and Brother Constant converted the locals) to investigate whether the Foundation is a threat to the Empire. Most of this storyline plays out like a Star Trek adventure, with Riose and Curr just walking through the desert, meeting the locals and almost getting killed by them while learning about a new culture — before being beamed up to their ship. In this case, they meet an Imperial informant who shows them footage of Constant using a personal shield that should be impossible to get, and also footage of their jump ship, which is outlawed in the Empire.
Of note here is the idea that the informant collects banned books, specifically printed books, like what seems to be the Mahabharata, and that Curr seems very adamant about soldiers just following orders. I’m sure that will not become a source of conflict with Empire.
A war between Empire and Foundation has been teased since the end of the first season, and it seems that’s what is looming large over this second season. While the Empire is still sitting on its laurels and just investigating the situation, the Foundation is very clearly prepared for conflict, as Hari Seldon places his chess pieces and starts the game. Once they arrive at Terminus, Hober Mallow, the two clerics, and the leader of the Foundation enter the Vault, which is apparently just a place people can visit. Moreover, it turns out the Vault is a tesseract, an infinite space outside of time, and it can even manipulate molecules to make up random things, like food. Inside the vault, Hari appears and immediately recognizes that the Foundation has reached its anticipated religious phase. He fully plays the part, referring to Constant as his child, kissing her on the forehead, acting like the immortal prophet the Church reveres, and even confessing to Poly that he killed the Warden to add a little wrathful god to his image as a prophet. Seldon then sends them on different assignments to prevent the war.
This is the core of the Foundation series (both of them). Though we see space opera-style action at times, these are, for the most part, stories about how the biggest changes often happen not with a bang but with slow societal and economic decay. Though we know the Foundation has a massive warship, Seldon is not tasking his disciples to prepare an army, but to open diplomatic relations with empire, tasking Poly to sell Foundation to them like he’s been doing across the Outer Reach. We don’t really know where Seldon sent Hober Mallow, but he’s tasked with negotiating on behalf of the Foundation.
Though Brother Day is sadly absent from the episode, we still meet two of the three Cleons today through the story of Queen Sareth trying to figure out if her future husband and Emperor really murdered her entire family in a zeppelin crash. First, she flirts with Dawn to see if he thinks his older self would be capable of killing them. She also teases him and sows seeds of mistrust among the Cleons, pointing out that the two of them make a more suitable pairing than her and Day and reminding him that he will become obsolete and replaceable soon. She also convinces a guard to spy on her and find out the truth, as well as find out about the assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Dusk is trying to reconnect with an old flame, Sareth’s companion Rue who used to be a courtesan Dusk picked once.
As Foundation heads toward a major showdown, the contrast between the micro and the macro continues to be its bread and butter. We see how little Empire cares about big conflicts because the Cleons think of themselves as immutable and unending, while the Foundation is slowly taking away their territory. Besides, the fact that neither of the Cleons seems very preoccupied with security after an assassination attempt feels foolishly on point for them.
• For fans of the book, Riose’s story this week has plenty of references to the second book in the series, introducing Ducem Barr, using a quote from the book (the episode title) as a secret code, and even mentioning the importance of tea in Siwenna.
• Hari tells Hober Mallow that he’s part of the team because “a passing ghost dropped his name.” This seems to indicate that Seldon didn’t actually plan Hober’s involvement, so who did?
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