What I like about this series - is the writers deftly show that they are capable of gracious and even kind acts in the midst of the cruelty.
Absolutely. The Day whom we first meet as a child in the pilot during his "pilgrimage" on the spiral mid s1 doesn't abandon the stranger whom he befriended when the man breaks, and there's just the two of them, he has nothing to gain but still tries to save the man and once he fails to do that gives him a dignified burial before continuing. The same day, once he's completed the pilgrimage and thus bested the ambitious priestess Halima, still orders Demerezel to kill her, presumably because he was still angry at Demerezel for having bowed to the woman. It's not an either/or, it's a both, he's capable of both.
re: Hari Seldon, it's fascinating to see how the two digital copies of him who behaved extremely similar in s1 diverge more and more in s2 in their behaviour, and that can be pretty clearly traced to the very different experiences they make and positions they're in, of which one of them getting a new body is but one. The Hari in the vault doesn't feel the time passing, he doesn't experience pain, he's treated as a superior being by the people on Terminus whenever he contacs the, and he's capable of killing a man just to make a point (the Warden at the start of s2), which as Poly points out in a tag scene to s2 other reviews told me wasn't filmed for budget reasons (because the background would have been the surviving Foundationists arriving at and settling on their new planet of residence) is a very Empire kind of thing to do. Meanwhile, the Hary with Gaal and Salvor has experienced time passing, behaves much more emotional even before getting reembodied as a result, the people he's with don't treat him as superior or listen to him if he doesn't have actual good arguments, they distrust him, and the renewed closeness at the end of s2 has to be earned through the season. He's of course also capable of killing (and does), but in anger and defense, not to make a point. He is as fixated on his plan as the other version of him in the Vault, but note that Gaal talks him out of his original idea (let her make it to the Mule era in cryo sleep and let him live out his second life establishing the Second Foundation and eventually die) and into a different plan (both of them go into cryo and check out once a year on how the Second Foundation is doing until the Mule era) by an emotional appeal - that she does not want to be alone in the future. I don't think Hari-in-the-Vault would have had the compassion to listen to Gaal, and being in the elevated, untouchable and powerful position he is in the Vault, he has no need to.
=> yes, power brings out cruelty.
Dusk frees her from one cage only to put her in another one, making me think that he waited to free her until he could figure out how to make her his personal cell mate. I'd say prisoner, but I honestly think he felt he was in a prison and desired a companion who would co-exist in it with him for eternity (of sorts).
Yes, I think that was his motivation and how he saw it. As for Demerezel, I think when she first saw that child of course she wanted to motivate it to free her, and much of their interaction through the decades until he eventually did was designed for that purpose. At the same time, unless there's something we don't know yet, he was the first person she talked to in 5000 years, so of course she came to genuinely care for him, and that's why in that brief time between stepping out of her cage and him reprogramming her, she did not kill him, or even just push him away in order to run. As he realises later, he'll never know whether she loves him because he doesn't ask until he has made it compulsory for her. And Demerezel and the Cleon clones through the centuries are another story again. We've seen her manipulative with some (the s2 Day who has sex with her, obviously), tender to others when there was nothing to gain (the first Dusk we meet in s1 during his final days, preparing for his death, or her singing to the unborn clones) and killing the colorblind Dawn near the end of s1 to end the argument between Day and Dusk over him upsets her so much that she claws her human skin off her skull and screams in the privacy of her quarters where no one but the audience sees her. And she very evidently does not want to kill Dusk and Rue in 2.09 while still doing so, so here it's clear that her emotions don't come from her protect-the-dynasty program but are rather in conflict with it.
no subject
Absolutely. The Day whom we first meet as a child in the pilot during his "pilgrimage" on the spiral mid s1 doesn't abandon the stranger whom he befriended when the man breaks, and there's just the two of them, he has nothing to gain but still tries to save the man and once he fails to do that gives him a dignified burial before continuing. The same day, once he's completed the pilgrimage and thus bested the ambitious priestess Halima, still orders Demerezel to kill her, presumably because he was still angry at Demerezel for having bowed to the woman. It's not an either/or, it's a both, he's capable of both.
re: Hari Seldon, it's fascinating to see how the two digital copies of him who behaved extremely similar in s1 diverge more and more in s2 in their behaviour, and that can be pretty clearly traced to the very different experiences they make and positions they're in, of which one of them getting a new body is but one. The Hari in the vault doesn't feel the time passing, he doesn't experience pain, he's treated as a superior being by the people on Terminus whenever he contacs the, and he's capable of killing a man just to make a point (the Warden at the start of s2), which as Poly points out in a tag scene to s2 other reviews told me wasn't filmed for budget reasons (because the background would have been the surviving Foundationists arriving at and settling on their new planet of residence) is a very Empire kind of thing to do. Meanwhile, the Hary with Gaal and Salvor has experienced time passing, behaves much more emotional even before getting reembodied as a result, the people he's with don't treat him as superior or listen to him if he doesn't have actual good arguments, they distrust him, and the renewed closeness at the end of s2 has to be earned through the season. He's of course also capable of killing (and does), but in anger and defense, not to make a point. He is as fixated on his plan as the other version of him in the Vault, but note that Gaal talks him out of his original idea (let her make it to the Mule era in cryo sleep and let him live out his second life establishing the Second Foundation and eventually die) and into a different plan (both of them go into cryo and check out once a year on how the Second Foundation is doing until the Mule era) by an emotional appeal - that she does not want to be alone in the future. I don't think Hari-in-the-Vault would have had the compassion to listen to Gaal, and being in the elevated, untouchable and powerful position he is in the Vault, he has no need to.
=> yes, power brings out cruelty.
Dusk frees her from one cage only to put her in another one, making me think that he waited to free her until he could figure out how to make her his personal cell mate. I'd say prisoner, but I honestly think he felt he was in a prison and desired a companion who would co-exist in it with him for eternity (of sorts).
Yes, I think that was his motivation and how he saw it. As for Demerezel, I think when she first saw that child of course she wanted to motivate it to free her, and much of their interaction through the decades until he eventually did was designed for that purpose. At the same time, unless there's something we don't know yet, he was the first person she talked to in 5000 years, so of course she came to genuinely care for him, and that's why in that brief time between stepping out of her cage and him reprogramming her, she did not kill him, or even just push him away in order to run. As he realises later, he'll never know whether she loves him because he doesn't ask until he has made it compulsory for her. And Demerezel and the Cleon clones through the centuries are another story again. We've seen her manipulative with some (the s2 Day who has sex with her, obviously), tender to others when there was nothing to gain (the first Dusk we meet in s1 during his final days, preparing for his death, or her singing to the unborn clones) and killing the colorblind Dawn near the end of s1 to end the argument between Day and Dusk over him upsets her so much that she claws her human skin off her skull and screams in the privacy of her quarters where no one but the audience sees her. And she very evidently does not want to kill Dusk and Rue in 2.09 while still doing so, so here it's clear that her emotions don't come from her protect-the-dynasty program but are rather in conflict with it.