With five of ten episodes released, it’s time for a Foundation season 3 midpoint review
While it’s always risky to try to review a show before the end of a season, with five episodes done, the Foundation season 3 midpoint is an ideal time to take stock, and perhaps look forward as well.
What’s happened so far?
Assuming you have watched the first two seasons, all you need know is the story is set in the far future. Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) used his mathematics of psychohistory to predict the end of civilisation. To shorten the forthcoming dark ages, a new colony, the Foundation was established, with the assistance of Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell). They would be the catalyst for history. Things changed a little. While the Foundation did indeed start to grow as the Empire collapsed, a Second Foundation of the psionically gifted was formed to budge history in the right direction.
Meanwhile, the Empire struggled to avoid its doom. The cloned genetic dynasty of Dusk (Terrance Mann), Day (Lee Pace) and Dawn (Cassian Bilton) changed, and guardian robot Demerzel (Laura Birn) did her best to steer history to favour the Empire.
Meanwhile, something unexpected happened. A mutant named the Mule wasn’t catered for in the mathematics and presents an existential threat to everyone.
As season 3 unfolds, we see all this playing out. Gaal Dornick plays a large part than previous seasons, whereas Hari Seldon is largely absent — is this a reflection of budget problems (see this Deadline piece) which has previous stalled production? The Mule is an excellent threat and while here and there the special effects don’t quite reach the peak they have, everything looks good.
The decline of Empire lets Lee Pace really go to town on a decadent version of Day, but it’s Demerzel’s storyline we’d like to focus on.
Back to Isaac Asimov’s original ideas
When Isaac Asimov wrote the novels (the early 1950s), the idea of a Second Foundation came later. For a TV show, bringing it forward is more coherent. The books had no genetic dynasty of cloned emperors, but as a narrative device it actually works well. It also lets the cast have more to do and provides visual recognition for the TV audience.
We were previously less taken with how Demerzel was used in the show. The original novels didn’t tie into his robot novels. The idea Demerzel was a robot happened in the ’80s, when Asimov brought all his major works under one massive storyline. In the show, we had the idea of robot wars. Asimov did not write his stories to have robots and humanity be at odds. Now (in season 3) we learn of the Laws of Robotics, including the Zeroth law. The robot war was among the robots themselves over the Zeroth Law. It feels more Asimovian, and we applaud it. Now, we just need to see how the origin of psychohistory gets put back to the original version!
And the big twist
The storyline for season 3 is in line with the second novel, Foundation and Empire. There’s a twist in the end of that. All we will say is the pieces are mostly falling into place, and we look forward to seeing how well it works on screen. Meanwhile, this Friday we get to see what happens after Demerzel confronts Gaal Dornick. We can’t wait!