[DISCUSSION] Foundation S02E06 - Why the Gods Made Wine (Spoilers)
Premise:
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Day and Queen Sareth make an announcement. Tellem sows seeds of distrust between Gaal and Hari. Hober Mallow reaches his destination.
Directors:
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Alex Graves
Writers:
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David S. Goyer, Josh Friedman
| EPISODE | RELEASE DATE |
|---|---|
| S02E06 - Why the Gods Made Wine | Aug 18th, 2023 on Apple TV+ |
These last few episodes have really great. Seldon flash back was something I didn't know I wanted before. That ending left me wanting more!
The surge in quality is massive, the first few episodes were borderline unwatchable but this last one was great, it actually felt like they were trying to move to something.
The first few episodes felt like they'd gotten too many discovery writers.
It's nice to get that context for Seldon, but the whole 'life flashing before their eyes, deathbed flashback' trope took me out of the episode.
I thought it was more alluding to the secret that the Mentallic leader pulled out of his memories. We hear that he’s ashamed of something and not as perfect a man as everyone thinks he is and only find out what happened as his “dying” thought.
Plays well with Salvor theorizing that he was brought back to life to have some flesh in the game and him debating killing himself with the scientist during the stampede but deciding not to. He had a reason to live (and kill) before, so why not now?
Could be and probably is a fakeout. Tellem just wanted to put Seldon through that to wring whatever she could put of his mind. So in that sense the deathbed flashback trope was actually a literal plot point. It wasn't just us seeing those things, but Tellem. Maybe she'll learn something that changes her mind about Seldon.
In fact, I think whoever gave him a body again did it for exactly this purpose. A holo-Seldon would not have been vulnerable to Tellem, and thus wouldn't have succeeded in eventually winning her over. The whole resurrected Hari gambit is a strategy to win over the Mentalics.
Plus if they really were going to kill Seldon (again), they wouldn't have used it as a cliffhanger. They would've just killed him.
Getting whiplash with how many times Seldon is dying and being resurrected ATM. Even if this is a fake out, it's getting a bit much
Could be real this time, they don't need this Seldon anymore now that the seeds of the Second Foundation have been sown.
True, but from a storytelling perspective, it doesn't make sense to me to bring him back without explanation just to kill him off the next episode. Its jarring
He hasn't really told Gaal his plan yet, even though she saw most of it and can infer much from the prime radiant.
But I think he was given a body precisely so that Tellem would read him and see that he was actually not a threat to them but their greatest potential ally.
Jesus was dead for 3 days and then reborn.
Seldon is going for the opposite record.
Not as heavy in the Empire as I would have liked. Really interesting to see a darker side to Seldon.
I'll admit. The empire stuff is what is keeping me in the show. Lee Pace is excellent!
I also keep wondering how long they're going to sit on Demerzel before we find out her story. She's either the last of her kind, or there are many of them still out there hiding in plain sight. And she acts loyal, but it would be naive to think she didn't have an agenda of her own, possibly having something to do with the missing memories of all the Cleons.
How is the TV series compared to the books?
Barely connected.
I personally advise you to hold off starting till maybe this season finale, or just do the seasons in a binge.
The beginnings of the seasons seem really, really bad, borderline unwatchable at times, then somehow turn on a dime to pretty cool sci-fi.
They're very different animals. The series basically takes the books as a setting and a very general overall story structure, along with a few key characters, and the rest is spinning out very differently. And that's okay, because trying to do a 1:1 translation to the screen would not work at all.
Asimov was more interested in the big ideas than he was in the emotional lives of the characters, and this show is conversely more invested in the ways these situations affect its characters than to spending too much time on the big crazy sci-fi concepts which serve as its backdrop.