Stream It Or Skip It?
We looked back at our Season 1 review of Foundation and noticed how much we hated how dense and inaccessible the show was to people who were not ardent fans of science fiction or Isaac Asimov’s source novels. With the show back for a third season, we were curious to see if the show had opened itself up to more casual fans or if it was as sprawling and jargon-heavy as ever.
FOUNDATION SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “If you live long enough, time can be a weapon,” says the voice of Gaal Dronick (Lou Llobell) as we see a celestial map of the Foundation. She explains that regular cryosleep have allowed her to live for centuries.
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The Gist: The Foundation keeps growing as the Empire shrinks, and as Gaal says, no one could have seen it coming besides psychohistorian and mathematician Hari Seldon (Jared Harris).
Kalgan, the “Pleasure Planet” is the key to the Middle Band for both the Foundation and the Empire. Gaal knows this, but she also knows that a pirate named “The Mule” (Pilou Asbæk, replacing Mikael Persbrandt), who haunts her stasis dreams, also knows this. We see his arrival on the planet, met by Archduke Bellarion (Ralph Ineson) and a massive battalion of soldiers and ships. In exchange for Bellarion’s daughter, the Mule wants Kalgan. When Bellarion is reluctant, the Mule uses his mind control powers to get all the ships to destroy each other and all the soldiers to shoot each other in the head.
Ten days before Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) is set to take over as Emperor from the self-exiled Brother Day (Lee Pace), Demerzel (Laura Brin) sees an inflection point in the psychohistory of the galaxy. A Galactic Council meeting is set to begin on Clarion Station, and Brother Dawn has other, more practical matters to deal with; fire wheat farmers are threatening to go on strike due to the Foundation’s tariffs, and Brother Dawn thinks that Empire can work to push back on that and take back the “breadbasket planets” from the Foundation. The hope is to get the Merchant Princes on their side.
Dr. Ebling Mis (Alexander Siddig) sees a rift between the Traders and the Foundation will cause the Third Crisis, and goes to New Terminus to ask Seldin how it can be stopped. Instead Seldin mentions that Empire has the Prime Radiant and he will come out of his exile in three days, “and let the chips fall where they may.”
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Foundation, created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman and based on Isaac Asimov’s novels, is as dense and headache-inducing as anything from the Dune universe or the 2000s version of Battlestar Galactica.
Our Take: While our Gist section isn’t supposed to be a whole-episode recap, we try to encapsulate most of what goes on in the first episode of a season or series. But for Foundation‘s third season, we only got about halfway through the first episode before we realized that we’d end up having a 1000-word summary if we kept going.
As fans of the series knows, Foundation has literally dozens of recurring characters, and is spread among many far-flung locations in the galaxy that the Foundation and Empire are battling over. In the third season, there’s definitely more action than we’ve seen before, but the series isn’t any less inscrutable than it was during the first season.
There is an overall theme to this season, with the Traders agitating to secede from the Foundation and join the Empire. That is seen in the person of Foundation Ambassador Quent (Cherry Jones), who is seen on Trantor with Brother Dusk (Terrance Mann), old adversaries who are now mostly allies. Brother Dawn, who is about to ascend to Day’s position, tells Quent that the fall of Kalgan to The Mule isn’t really on his radar.
But The Mule is definitely someone both sides of this eons-old battle will have to contend with, given the fact that he can manipulate the minds of hundreds of people at once. That, and Seldin’s role in the conflict, will be the thrust of the third season. At least that’s what we think it’s going to be. The first episode deals with so many characters and so many locations, with the help of Gaal’s ubiquitous narration to tie it all together, that we don’t even see a major player like Gaal until the very end of the episode.
Sex and Skin: None. This feels like a very chaste galaxy.
Parting Shot: Gaal wakes up from her cryosleep after having a nightmarish vision of The Mule. “The Mule is here. We’re out of time,” her narration says.
Sleeper Star: Lee Pace’s Brother Day walking around in a towel, already seemingly enjoying his retirement, was the highlight of the episode.
Most Pilot-y Line: Foundation has some of the densest jargon of any sci fi show or movie we’ve ever seen, and we’ve seen our share. It feels like the kind of show that only ardent sci fi fans would enjoy, and we wish it was more accessible to those who just want to watch an entertaining drama.
Our Call: STREAM IT, if you’re a fan of sci fi, an Asimov fan or someone who caught the first two seasons of Foundation and want to see how the story proceeds. But, like we said in Season 1, casual sci fi watchers are not this show’s target demo. We suggest they SKIP IT.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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