When I first time viewed this episode, I was shocked because straight from the beginning it felt that they had taken lessons from WestWorld or maybe even from David Lynch, because the abstract madness strikes you from the beginning as you see the shadow of Harry Seldon going absolutely raving mad bonkers.
He shouts, spits, curses, raves at everything, before the greater madness is brought forward with the four dimensional prison. I mean, it's one thing to read about it, as a lot of you might not remember that Gaal put Seldon's digital ghost in the Prime Radiant. In the essence, he's ghost-in-a-machine, except it's almost nothing he can do about it.
Not until he starts to see glimpses of sober clarity, when he encounters another digital ghost. Another mathematician called Yanna Seldon, who cares and soothes Harry to a point, where he starts to really understand the problem of his environment. That he's never going to get out unless he's let out, despite his cleverness.
They are all the scenes that I would have cut out, because of abstract madness that confuses the average viewer. It is most certainly art and should be seen as such.
The other Mathemacian and Warden. Mum and Daughter. Two survivors stranded in Gaal's home world that had drowned almost all the evidence that once upon a time there was a civilization there, and not just an ocean.
I loved that from the beginning, Salver confessed that she'd been following her instincts, which led her to hunt down Gaal without ever knowing where she really was, or even if she was alive. All because she felt that she needed to be there, with her, to do something. A calling that she couldn't resist, because for some reason their faiths are aligned.
They both need each other, even if Gaal tries to deny. She most certainly isn't ready to accept the mum bit, but Warden isn't looking for that kind of figure. Instead, she knows that if her beloved Terminus is going to survive, then she needs to bring Gaal to the Terminus and introduce her to the first Foundation.
Gaal, mum, however, is the opposite. She wants to forget the whole Foundation business and that she provided the proof for the Empire that Seldon's thousand-year Crisis and the end of Empire is happening.
It is when Warden makes her to open the Prime Radiant and show the map for the future that they realize how effed they are, because instead of having one, they're facing a series of them. All spiralling down to the oblivion. Almost as if it was meant to be. And all of it happening because Gaal never made it to Terminus and become the one Hardon wanted her to be. All happening just like Harry's digital ghost told her in the last season when they approached the Second Foundation.
Maybe it really means that the future cannot be predicted.
It has been 180 years since the fall began, when the space-elevator came crashing down on Trantor. I was stunned by the rings. And I cannot comprehend how they made them, nevertheless how they stay in place against the planetary gravity well. But all in all, I have to say Empire technology is magnificent.
It is as if they don't care that they are in a Crisis, and instead of trying to fix all the problems in Empire, it is the Genetic Dynasty who wants to show that there's no trouble. That instead of it the Empire is in business and there's no trouble.
Which is a lie. The same kind Brother Day has been telling himself since Cleon started the clone business. And in his madness, he has decided to wrap himself, as usual, in the blanket of lunacy by starting from bonking Demerzel.
It is not told whose idea was it, but it most certainly follows the traditional way of Day's behaviour, when the coitus is interrupted by a league of assassins entering the bed chamber as he uses the droid to avert the first strike. Thus, Demerzel loses half of her head and the Empire is in trouble.
His aura doesn't work. He's cock is flapping out in the fight business. And yet, he puts down most of them, until the last one slashes is chest and Brother Day drops on floor, struggling to put up a fight as the last assassin comes over him to finish the deal. He almost drives a dagger in Day's chest, before he's executed by the droid putting her arm through his chest.
A GoT like scene, but the series is nothing like it.
The next one with the droid carrying and dunking the Emperor in a health pool(?) and tells the doctors Cleon has "12 seconds before edema leads to brain stem death," as she cures him by injecting a counter-agent and then disappearing for most of the episode to make herself whole again.
When Brother Dawn comes to investigate, he tells the Soulless Man that they have an internal security problem, and he should hire outside help. Day scoffs it off as they reveal that the assassins had no eyes. He has no interest in it, because "the internal security can handle it."
Instead of acting rationally, he tells Dawn that he feel like a singular soul. And therefore he's next business is a marriage, thus erasing the Genetic Dynasty due to his paranoia.
As the future Empress descends on Trantor to meet the men, Brother Dusk roast Day for abusing his position by bonking the nanny. He's not happy about the assassination attempt, or the fact that he's looking at the bride, who most likely is going to kill Day off as soon as she can.
Day claims that he's doing it because they are drifting further away from clone standard, and thus it's his only choice to secure the future of the Empire by embracing the old ways. It is later when the bride brings very well-thought-out gifts that Day reveals how his lacking a soul through his hypocrisy of gifting a Trantor ornament made in brass to his bride.
He claims to be idealism but nobody is buying it. Not even his brothers.
Terminus and its orbital battle-station. You can also see in this shot that the Foundation has spread to a large part of the planet, and they have really advanced themselves instead of living in a colony ship.
Instead of it, they have spread a very futuristic city around the Vault. They have tens of thousands living under the protection of new Warden, when the Vault gives a warning that it's getting ready to open.
Only Harry never comes out. Yet, they understand that it is a warning that the Empire is coming.
arstechnica.com
gizmodo.com
www.sffchronicles.com
