Foundation 2.5: The Original Cleon and the Robot

I'm not going to review every episode of the second season of Foundation, unless it strikes me as adding something really important to the story.  So, I didn't review last week's Foundation 2.4.  But tonight's 2.5 is at least doubly important, so here's my review:

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

First, we get to the meet the original Cleon.  Dawn and Dusk call him forth in their (mainy Dusk's) need to find out if Day has edited Dawn and Dusk's memories.  Dusk provides a good succinct explication of their dilemma: if their memories were really altered, how would they would they know that?

The original Cleon is of course played by Terrence Mann, who plays Dusk, and he does a good job of it.  The original Cleon has a vibrance, a presence, a wisdom, that Dusk doesn't have.  Other than that, the original offers no surprises, urging Dawn and Dusk not to rock the boat.  But now that we the audience know that the original Cleon can be summoned, that adds a powerful resource for the Cleonic triad.

The other great discovery is made by Sareth's family:  Demerzel is a robot!  We of course already knew that (from earlier episodes in the TV series, and of course from Asimov's novels). And the Cleon clones know Demerzel is a robot, with warm, organic flesh -- indeed, in tonight's episode, Demerzel reassures Dusk that she would have memories of everything, even if Day somehow edited some out of Dusk and Dawn's minds.  

But speaking of Asimov's novels in a review of this episode of the TV series, it needs to be mentioned again that Demerzel was a male robot in the novels, who basically gets Hari Seldon started on psychohistory, and gets Dors (a female robot) married to Hari, where she continues as his protector.  If this sounds more intriguing a story than what we've seen of Hari so far on the screen, I'd say that's because it is.  At this point, the Seldon story still hasn't come close to what's happening on Trantor, but I continue to watch in hope.

See also Foundation 2.1: Once Again, A Tale of Two Stories ... 2.2: Major Players ... 2.3: Bel Riose and Hari

And see also Foundation 1.1-2: Mathematician, Man of the People, and Cleon's Clones ... 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

 

 

new anthology, with my novelette "Robinson Calculator"

Foundation 2.1: Once Again, a Tale of Two Stories

Foundation is back on Apple TV+ with the first episode of its second season.  Here's a review, with no big spoilers.

Here's what this first episode of the second season is most like: the first season of Foundation on Apple TV+.  Here's what it's significantly not much like: Isaac Asimov's novels, upon which this series is supposed to be based.  But you knew that, and I said that, already.  In fact, I just did, when I said the first episode of the second season is most like the first season.

And, to be clear. as I said in my reviews of the first season back in 2021, the dissimilarity of this TV series to Asimov's novels doesn't mean that it's all bad.  But nor can I help not being disappointed, not missing the trilogy that I read and loved three times, and the sequels which I read once and loved not as much but well enough.

Once again, my favorite part of the TV series are the Cleon clones and Demerzel -- Cleon wasn't cloned in the novels and Demerzel was very different, but their rendition in the TV series is often superb.  This continues in episode 2.1.  Lee Pace as Brother Day is once again a powerhouse.  Same for Laura Birn as Demerzel.  And Terrence Mann as Brother Dusk is simmering and outstanding, and Cassian Bilton as Brother Dawn is memorable.  All told, they tell an exciting, high intellect, high octane story vividly.  And, yeah, they're the bad guys (I guess).

The good guys, who are supposed to be Hari Seldon and the Foundation, are not nearly as impressive. Jared Harris is a great actor, but he's been put in a box in this TV series, and even when he screams and yells he barely breaks through.  And as for the rest ... Gaal and Salvor, well, I don't think I'd mind at all if they were almost unrecognizable from the characters with their name in the novels, if they'd been given a riveting story.  Instead, we get mental gymnastics and proclamations of profundity with not much substance or appeal.

But I'll keep watching, because I enjoy the clone story, and I still have some hope somewhere that the TV series will deliver some of what I most enjoyed in the novels.

See also Foundation 1.1-2: Mathematician, Man of the People, and Cleon's Clones ... 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

 

Foundation Season 1 Finale: Right Up There

It's a little after 1am, Friday, 19 November 2021, a few miles north of New York City, as I write this.  I just saw the season 1 finale -- episode 1.10 -- of the Foundation series on Apple TV+.  It came on the screen at 12 midnight, as the day began.  Unlike Paramount Plus, which says a show (such as Star Trek Discovery) begins on a given day, but doesn't make it available on the East Coast until 3 in the morning of the stated day.  I just wanted to give a shout-out to Apple TV+ on that account.

And there are other, more profound accounts, when it comes to the Foundation series.  It says at the end of this episode that the series is based on the novels of Isaac Asimov (in the same size letters as the other major credits).  And that's why I started watching this series.  I had hopes, but I didn't expect all that much.  I saw on Reddit that there's a Soviet adaptation of Asimov's The End of Eternity, to this very day, still my favorite time travel novel, which I first read in the summer of 1959. I'll watch that, too.  It has English subtitles.  A series made in 1987, in the steep twilight of the Soviet Union.  I really doubt that I'll love it as much as the novel, but I'll watch it.

As I watched the first ten episodes of the Foundation series.  And it far exceeded my expectations.  I didn't enjoy them quite as much as I enjoyed the first novel in the Foundation trilogy, but then again, I loved and still treasure the second novel a lot more than the first.  And there were things that I loved in first season of this Foundation TV series, which bore vibrant, compelling fruit in the season finale.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

Like the triple Cleon clone story, a standalone masterpiece.   Day's willingness to bend and accept Dawn despite his differences; Demerzel killing Dawn anyway, in defiance of Day; and Day learning that his DNA was tampered with, possibly not likely even Dusk's, was brilliant drama.  And Demerzel, for whom killing seems to be all too easy, though she rips off her human face at the end, is a powerful piece of storytelling, even if it defies Asimov's laws of robotics (at least the first three laws, maybe not the zeroth law).  Given, however, that the clone story has almost nothing to do with Asimov's Foundation stories, I find that breach of Asimov permissible.  (Again, kudos to Lee Pace and Terrence Mann for their performances as Day and Dusk.)

Now as to the story that has much more to do with Asimov's writing:  I like that Gaal and Raych are Salvor's parents.  Makes sense, a nice way to tie Salvor to Hari, who is her grandfather.  And a nice way to set up the mentalism of the Second Foundation.   As to all the prior action that took place on Terminus and its environs, some of it was closer to Asimov, some of it was not, none of it was all that great, anyway, in my opinion.  But as I said before, Asimov's first novel was the least splendid in the original trilogy, so that's ok.

Making this first season of Asimov's masterwork, which I consider the best science fiction ever written, was difficult.   Making it as good as Asimov's masterwork was impossible.  The Foundation series first season succeeded in the first, and could never succeed in the second.  But it got up there, in that rarefied atmosphere, by offering an alternate history of Asimov's Foundation stories, and a story of the beginning of the dissolution of the clonal Emperor which is the best clone story I've ever read or seen.

So I'll take that, happily, and be back with reviews of the second season as soon as it begins, back on the screen at the stroke of midnight in New York, at the time of day it's supposed to be seen.

See also Foundation 1.1-2: Mathematician, Man of the People, and Cleon's Clones ... 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

Coming Tuesday, 23 Nov 2021 -- a conversation with Cora Buhlert, Joel McKinnon, and me about the first season of Foundation.  If you're not familiar with their work, here's where you can get to know them:

Cora Buhlert's reviews of the first season of Foundation ... Joel McKinnon's Seldon Crisis podcast ... Joel's What I Like about the Show on Reddit.

Note added 24 Nov 2021:  And here is the interview:

 

 

Foundation 1.9: Vindication and Questions

Well, quite a penultimate first season Foundation episode -- 1.9 -- which as I think about what I just finished watching, I'd say is the best episode so far in this series.  I said that about episode 1.7, didn't I?  Does this mean that I think 1.9 is therefore better than 1.7?  No.  I think they're equally the best at this point.  Is that a problem?  Not in a story in which triplicate clones of different ages are as much or even more of the riveting story than is the adaptation of Asimov's original tales.  So I'll stick with the equal bests, separately aged, and see if the season finale makes the analogy even better with a triple equal.

And I'll tell you just one more thing before I invoke the cover, aka alert you, that spoilers will follow.  For the first time in this series, Isaac Asimov's name is the same size as the other credits that appear on the screen before and after.  That cannot be an accident.  I've been a little annoyed that the size of his name in the opening credits was smaller.  I wonder why this injustice was rectified in this particular episode. Is it because one of Asimov's most famous quotes -- "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" -- was clearly spoken in this episode?  Maybe.  (Though I'm pretty sure there were exact quotes from Asimov in the first episode.) Or perhaps [but this goes into spoilers] --

[Huge spoilers ahead ... ]

Perhaps it's the thrilling ending of this episode: Hari Seldon's hologram -- looking much better than the Hari hologram on 1.8's ship, by the way -- walks out of the vault and speaks on Terminus!  Asimov's vision realized at last!   But what's going on?  Was the Hari hologram we saw last week defective for some reason?  Or, is the Hari on Terminus tonight somehow the real Hari?  Not likely.  But the vindication of Asimov in the Hari holograms opens up all kinds of intriguing questions.

Defects in copies is what the other superb part of tonight's episode was all about.  We learn why Dawn is defective.  Not because of some accident, or deliberate move of Demerzel.   But because of an ingenuous plot by the underground on Trantor to infiltrate the Triumvirate (I did say in my review of Foundation 1.6 that I was suspicious of that gardener, because in Asimov's prequel written in the 1980s, a gardener surprises Hari by killing Cleon).  And in an excellent twist on a twist, Dusk representing the true Cleon DNA pulls the rug out from under the underground anyway (great acting by Terrence Mann as Dusk, by the way).  These kinds of surprise moves on surprise moves in the galactic chess game are exactly what propelled Asimov’s original Foundation writing. Yet as I've been saying, these clones, not a part of Asimov’s writing,  are a first-rate science fiction story, a triumph in itself.

One more episode left in this first season.  I'll see you back here very soon with my podcast review of this episode, and with a review of the season finale minutes after it's on next week.

See also Foundation 1.1-2: Mathematician, Man of the People, and Cleon's Clones ... 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 Season 1 Finale: Right Up There