Podcast: Foundation 2nd Season: Cora Buhlert, Joel McKinnon, and Paul Levinson discuss

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 361, in which Cora Buhlert, Joel McKinnon, and I talk about the second season of Foundation on Apple TV+.

Relevant links:

• our discussion of the first season of Foundation
• my reviews of the 2nd season of Foundation (with links to reviews of the 1st)
• Cora Buhlert's reviews of the 2nd season of Foundation
• Joel McKinnon's Seldon Crisis podcast

Check out this episode!

Talking about Foundation 2.5 on the Stars End Podcast

 
I was a guest this past Saturday on the Stars End Podcast talking about the Foundation series on Apple TV+, episode 2.5

Podcast: Foundation 1st Season: Cora Buhlert, Joel McKinnon, and Paul Levinson discuss

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 215, in which Cora Buhlert, Joel McKinnon, and I talk about the first season of Foundation on Apple TV+.

Cora's reviews of the first season of Foundation are here  ...  also check out Joel McKinnon's Seldon Crisis podcast and his What I Like about the Show on Reddit

Talk to us on Twitter:  @CoraBuhlert @JoelGMcKinnon @PaulLev

Enjoy the video of this podcast episode.

• earlier Paul Levinson podcasts about Foundation:  November 19, 2021 Review of Foundation 1.10 ... November 12, 2021 Review of Foundation 1.9 ...  November 5, 2021 Review of Foundation 1.8 ... October 29, 2021 Review of Foundation 1.7 ... October 22, 2021 Review of Foundation 1.6 ... October 15, 2021: Review of Foundation 1.5 ... October 8, 2021: Review of Foundation 1.4 ... October 1, 2021: Review of Foundation 1.3 ...  September 24, 2021:  Review of Foundation 1.1-2 .... July 17, 2021: Thinking about Asimov's Foundation Series on AppleTV+ ... March 12, 2009:  Asimov's Foundation and Herbert's Dune Trilogies as Sources of Philosophy

Postcard from Isaac Asimov to me in 1979 about the Foundation trilogy

In addition to Asimov's novels and autobiographies, these three books were discussed ed in this episode:

• Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee (see also review)
• In Pursuit of Truth: Essays on the Philosophy of Karl Popper edited by Paul Levinson
• Practical Criticism by I. A. Richards

Check out this episode!

Foundation 1.1-2: Mathematics, Man of the People, and Cleon's Clones

I've been saying on Twitter and Facebook and anyplace with an eye or an ear that I've been waiting most of my life to see Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy and then series on a screen.  That's surely a prescription for disappointment.  But I just watched the first two episodes of Foundation on Apple TV+ and I thought they were superb.  Not perfect, but more than enough to be not disappointed but thrilled.

First, let me say that, in general when I review a movie or TV series based on a novel or story I previously read, I try not to get tied up in comparisons.  The screen and the page are, after all, very different media, with different necessities of expression and portrayal.   But Asimov's stories are so incandescent, it's not possible to ignore them when thinking about the television series.

And I think the first two episodes of the series do capture the best parts of the Asimov stories.  The primacy of mathematics in predicting the broad currents of history, but not the actions of individuals, come through powerfully in the first two episodes.   Especially in the stunning ending of the second episode.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

That would be Hari Seldon murdered by his adopted son Raych, on the ship to Terminus.  I don't know if I liked that -- actually, I do know, I didn't -- and I'm not sure it was well enough motivated.   But it certainly was traumatically shocking, and amply demonstrated the unpredictability of individual behavior.

Cleon's clones, though, on the other hand, were somewhat predictable, certainly the cruelty of Brother Day.  But the relationship between the boy (Dawn), the old man (Dusk), and Day was interesting, even fascinating, and one of the best parts of the TV series not in the Asimov stories.  

I also really loved the scene on the ship to Terminus with Hari talking to the workers in the laundry room.  It was good and comforting to see the esoteric mathematician being such a true man of the people.  Seldon was never fleshed out on Asimov's pages, and Jared Harris did a fine job of doing that in the first two episodes.  As I was watching them, it occurred me to me that Foundation in these first two episodes was most like David Goyer's Da Vinci's Demons, which makes sense, since Seldon and Da Vinci were both geniuses who predicted the future. The trial of Hari was also effective, as it was in Asimov, evoking Galileo on trial for his life and ideas in the Vatican.

In addition to Harris,  Lou Llobell does a fine job as Gaal Dornick, who has an excellent expanded role in the TV series as not only a mathematician but a human being.  And Lee Pace is powerful and believable as the powerful Brother Day.   Robots played no role in the original Asimov trilogy, and an increasing role in the sequels.  I'm not sure what I think as yet of Laura Birn's Demerzel on the TV screen.

I'll tell you more when I review the third episode right after I see it next Friday early morning.  And here's my audio podcast with some further thoughts about the first two episodes:

See also Foundation 1.3: Clonal Science Fiction, Hari Seldon as V. I. Lenin ... Foundation 1.4:  Slow Hand, Long Half-Life, Flipped Coin ...  Foundation 1.5: What We Learned in that Final Scene ... Foundation 1.6: Folded Variations ... Foundation 1.7: Alternate History/Future ... Foundation 1.8: Divergences and Convergences ... Foundation 1.9: Vindication and Questions ... Foundation Season 1 Finale: Right Up There

Podcast: Thinking about Asimov's Foundation on Apple TV+

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 186,  in which I consider the history, implications, and possibilities of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series debuting on Apple TV+ this September.

• See the trailer.
• 2009 podcast episode: Asimov's Foundation and Herbert's Dune Trilogies as Sources of Philosophy

Check out this episode!

Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine

The scientific wonder in Da Vinci's Demons 2.3 is a submarine, based, as were many of the real Da Vinci's sketched inventions, on his anecdotal study of the natural world, in this case, fish and other creatures of the sea.   Nature is indeed a wonderful and wondrous template for our technological endeavors, a theme which I explore in my doctoral dissertation "Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media" and many of my books, including The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution.

In Da Vinci's Demons 2.3, Leo uses the submarine to commandeer a sailing vessel suitable for his forthcoming voyage to the New World, where much of the action will presumably shift.  But there were some exciting developments back in Italy, most especially the revelation that the seductive spy Lucrezia is actually a Pope's daughter.

Indeed, her father has been locked in the catacombs of the Vatican by the current Pope, one of the arch bad guys in this story.  I was happy to see this revelation, because it puts Lucrezia's treachery in a much better light.  Yes, she betrayed Lorenzo, and in doing that betrayed Leonardo, but she did that on behalf not of the current evil Pope but her imprisoned father.   This shows that Leonardo's love of her was not thoroughly misplaced.

But what will happen to that and all else brewing in the Italian city states when Da Vinci makes the voyage to the New World?  Since, in our real history, Leonardo never sailed to the New World (as far as we know), the narrative of this series has a wide open canvas in the New World.

So far this season, David Goyer has been doing a great job of setting this work of art in motion.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Rado

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Rado

 
Interested in a story with a passing reference to Leonardo?   Try The Plot to Save Socrates ...

Da Vinci's Demons: History, Science, and Science Fiction

I caught up on the first three episodes of Da Vinci's Demons on Starz last night - the latest offering from David Goyer (of Flashforward television fame) - and I found the series superb, a full-bodied, top-of-the-line player in the surge of outstanding historical dramas that are lighting up television these days.

In time and place, Da Vinci's Demons is closest to The Borgias - in fact, in the exact same places in Italy, and only two decades or so years earlier.  You'll find familiar family names - such as the De Medici's and the Sforza's - as young Da Vinci (25 years old) contends from Florence with the Pope and his nephew. The lovemaking and nudity is also in good supply - even a bit more with Da Vinci, as befits his Renaissance-man talents as a painter and anatomist - and the ambience is as lush and captivating.

But Da Vinci's Demons has far more than political and erotic intrigue.   Da Vinci was a scientist and inventor far ahead of his time - sketching helicopters and tanks that could well have been built right then and there had the needed collateral technology been at hand.  Like Heron of Alexandria 1400 years before him and Charles Babbage 400 years later, Da Vinci belonged to the very small group of visionaries who literally saw the future in their fundamental understanding of the world around them.  Indeed, Da Vinci is easily at the top of this class, and his scientific pursuits, which included not only anatomy but botany and geology, are amply portrayed in the series.   Da Vinci's Demons in its scientific story lines is akin to Vikings on the History Channel, and its excellent depiction of Norse advances in ship building - though the Viking science of ship building is one-dimensional in comparison to what Leonardo wrought.

Such extraordinary range and depth of real scientific knowledge logically spills over into science fiction and fantasy, or speculation about what deep wells of knowledge are feeding this world, and reside beyond.  The possibility that the ancients knew far more than we give them credit for has long been a theme in my own science fiction, and figures in such popular culture triumphs as The Da Vinci Code and Rimbaldi in Alias.   Da Vinci's Demons features an ancient (fictional) Book of Leaves, which contains knowledge of the universe that goes well beyond science.   As the young Leonardo begins to learn of this book and its secrets, he comes into conflict with the Vatican and its desire to contain it and keep it from the world.   As is the case with all good science fiction, there is a proximity to reality which gives it punch:  Leonardo comes across a map of a continent which no one recognizes but he somehow knows is true.  It's a map of South America, a few decades before Columbus, a time when other historically unrecorded voyagers could well have made the trip across the Atlantic, as the Vikings in fact had done some 500 years earlier.

Da Vinci's Demons thus has everything a devotee of historical fiction and science fiction could ask for.   In its fantasy elements, the series also has a kinship with Game of Thrones, but the situation of Da Vinci's Demons in our real world makes it more compelling in my book.

                                        

FlashForward 1.17: Mark, Demetri, and Hari Seldon

Robert J. Sawyer - author of the novel FlashForward on which the TV series is based - told me in our interview at the I-Con science fiction convention in Stony Brook, New York at the end of March that, before the season was over, I'd be standing up and cheering for Mark Benford.  I don't know if tonight's episode - 1.17 - was the one Rob had in mind, but I was certainly cheering.

The fate of Demetri hung in the balance tonight.  In FlashForward time, tonight was March 15, 2010, the day foretold and seen by Nhadra (Behrooz's mother from 24) as the day of Demetri's death.   Zoey's flashforward vision of their wedding, after March 15, which she realized was Demetri's funeral, added credence to what Nhadra saw.  So did the fact that Demetri had no flashforward vision at all.

Gibbons/Frost is holding Demetri prisoner, tied-up in a get-up of wires connected to a gun pointed right at his heart.   Any movement by Demetri, any attempt to put something in way of Demetri and the gun, will cause it fire.

It's not 100% clear what Frost wants out of all of this, but it has something to with stopping his own death, which he has also foreseen for this day.    Frost leaves a set of clues with Charlie, whom he talked to on the bench in the amusement park.

Mark first races brilliantly to get to Frost, in the best action sequence so far in the series.   He gets to Frost with just a little time left to save Demetri - Frost has left Mark a literally ticking clock - and Mark gets the drop on Frost-

Only to see Frost shot to death by Alda (female terrorist) who has escaped.   The Frost's death part of Frost's visions for the day has come true.   Will Demetri's?

Mark risks literally fulfilling Nhadra's vision - Mark killing Demetri with Mark's gun - by trying to turn the gun at least a little away from Demetri.   With seconds left - and with Demetri's life literally up for grabs by fate, because we've seen that most of the flashforwards do come true - Mark succeeds.   Demetri's death didn't happen, just as Gough's death did, both contrary to all the flashforward visions that have irresistibly, recalcitrantly,  come to be.  All that's shot is Demetri's picture on the timeline Frost has created on the wall.

It's a timeline that shows events well into the future - teeming with interconnections, like a Hari Seldon psychohistory map (see Asimov's Foundation novels) - come to life in today's Los Angeles.   But as soon as Demetri leaves the chair to which he's been confined, that map turns to sand and dissolves into the instant like an emptying hour glass.   One last trick of Gibbons/Frost.

You couldn't ask for anything more from this top-notch episode - written by David Goyer and Lisa Zwerling - except more tricks to come in the future.



7-min podcast review of FlashForward

See also FlashForward Debuts and Oceanic Airlines as a Portal Between FlashForward and Lost ... 1.2: Proofs and Defiance of Inevitability ... 1.3: Conficting Visions and Futures ... 1.4: FlashForward Meets Shaft and House ... Drunk FlashForwarding in 1.5 ... Across the Universe in FlashForward 1.6 ... FlashForward 1.7: The Future Can Be ... FlashForward 1.8: The Nightie as a Grain of Sand ... FlashForward 1.9: Shelter from the Storm ... Olivia Benford at Harvard in Flashforward 1.10 ... Flashforward 1.12 Parts 1 and 2 ... FlashForward 1.13: Aaron's Daughter, Mark's Gun, and Magpies ... FlashForward 1.14:  Somalia, LA, Fate Irresistible and Resistible ... FlashForward 1.15: Who's That Lady? ... FlashForward 1.16: Mark's Gun and Demetri's Wedding

Listen to 40-minute interview with Robert J. Sawyer

Listen to podcast about Asimov's Foundation series

Save Flashforward!! - Let ABC know you love it!

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The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book 

Olivia Benford at Harvard in FlashForward 1.10

FlashFoward 1.10 - the finale episode in the first part of the season, with the series to resume in March 2010 - was as fine as the series premiere back in September, which is to say, packed full of action, surprise, paradox, emotion, and scientifically implausible but maybe not impossible possibilities - or science fiction on television at its best.

1. Olivia and Lloyd talk about Harvard and alternate universes. Lloyd was a student there, Olivia almost was, but got entwined with Mark instead. Lloyd met his wife in a building next door - which is where Olivia would have stayed had she gone to Harvard. The implication: perhaps love conquers all, including alternate realities or universes. What Olivia and Lloyd may be just beginning to feel about each other here, now, in "our" universe, may be an expression of a transcendent love which prevailed a little earlier in the Olivia-at-Harvard world. The kidnapping of Lloyd in the last scene (which I did see coming - something about the manner of the ambulance guys - but it was powerful nonetheless) leaves Olivia with Dylan, which is a big step closer to Lloyd, wherever his kidnappers may be taking him.

2. Mark and Demetri defy Stan and go to Hong Kong to find the woman who told Demetri of his death. I think of her as Behrooz's mother, after Shohreh Aghdashloo's memorable performance in 24, but her name in FlashForward is Nhadra Udaya, and she tells Mark and Demetri the astonishing, unbelievable: Demetri's assassin is Mark, who will shoot Demetri three times with Mark's gun (Nhadra knows its serial number). Mark vows not to let this happen, and I believe him, but .... what significance do vows to prevent the future from happening have in this, our, flashforward universe? Mark says to Nhadra, "this isn't over". She replies, "it never is". But the only evidence we have that the future can be changed is Gough's suicide - not very reassuring. (Good, by the way, to see Michael Eealy of Sleeper Cell in the Hong Kong business as a CIA agent.)

3. But back to the recalcitrant future: Perhaps the biggest payoff in fatality tonight was Zoey's realization that she was not at Demetri's and her wedding in her flashforward, she was at his funeral. Lots of fans had been suggesting this as an explanation. I'm still wondering why she didn't feel herself being profoundly sad in her flashforward - not an emotion she would likely be feeling at her wedding - but ok, at least this resolves the conflict between her vision and Demetri's lack of vision. And with the testimony of Behrooz's mother in Hong Kong, this is tightening the vise of future death around Demetri ever more convincingly ...

4. Still, there are grounds for hope. Demetri is now in possession of Mark's gun - after Stan removes Mark from service - which means that gun is at least one person removed from firing at Demetri. And Simon is revealing himself as maybe not the worst character in the world, and indeed someone who can actually help the good guys get to the bottom of this. For example, he's the inventor of the strange device we saw in that 1991 photo of facilities in Africa - except Simon says he didn't invent the device until 1992. Explanations wrapped in paradox, or maybe just time travel ...

5. Simon also throws of little light on D. Gibbons, one of the mysterious men wide awake during the blackout. And we see him near the end with Nahdra (Behrooz's mother), which to some degree throws everything she's told Mark and Demetri into doubt ... So, maybe that's good, too...

Hey, if you don't like complicated, watch Heroes - though, come to think of it, that's pretty complicated too. All good and great irresistible television is. And tonight's FlashForward was up there with the best. It was written by David S. Goyer (co-creator of the series) and Scott M. Gimple. Can the show keep up this level of story telling in 2010?

I'm betting it will even be better. The compelling story told so far demands it.

8-min podcast review of FlashForward


See also FlashForward Debuts and Oceanic Airlines as a Portal Between FlashForward and Lost and 1.2: Proofs and Defiance of Inevitability and 1.3: Conficting Visions and Futures and 1.4: FlashForward Meets Shaft and House ... Drunk FlashForwarding in 1.5 ... Across the Universe in FlashForward 1.6 ... FlashForward 1.7: The Future Can Be... ... FlashForward 1.8: The Nightie as a Grain of Sand ... FlashForward 1.9: Shelter from the Storm

Listen to 40-minute interview with Robert J. Sawyer

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The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!