Alas ST, hooray Foundation
Aug. 1st, 2025 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakStar Trek: Strange New Worlds: Alas, the last two episodes were so incredibly mediocre that I can't bring myself to properly review. I'll watch the rest of the season, but if it doesn't pick up in quality soon, that will be it for me. Shame, I like the characters, but now they're really going for the laziest storytelling and took completely the wrong lessons from what worked before. On to the sci fi tv show which keeps enthralling me:
Foundation 3.04.:
To start with what was least interesting to me in this episode (which doesn't mean it was dulll, just that I found the other parts more interesting) I finally understood Space Nick Fury's name, which is Pitcher. In addition to being a Mentalic and Second Foundation agent within the First Foundation, he now is revealed to be Gaal's new love interest. Well, he's handsome, but when he started throwing around marriage hints, and even dared to say Salvor would have wanted this for Gaal, I was as put off as Gaal, who immediately retorts that a) he didn't know Salvor, and b) they spent a total of 38 days together in the last three years, so hardly know each other. That, and the Mule has been in his head, Gaal, so yeah, be on your guard. Maybe go for the First Speaker instead, he seems a cool and interesting guy. And you have some chemistry with Dawn as well.
Gaal mentions here she's been trying to project herself into the future since waking up but keeps ending up in the same vision she's been having 180 years ago, nothing further than that, which answers a question I didn't have but should have had, given what's been established about Gaal's abilities in the past. Presumably this will only change once whatever needs to be done to avert the Third Crisis ending up in the annihilation of the human race has happened.
Meanwhile on Trantor: Demerzel has another session with her newly recruited therapist/priestess, who can sense there's something major Demerzel wants/needs to confess but hasn't yet, presses on, and then comes indeed a real bombshell (in more ways than one): a mystery reaching back all the way to the pilot of the show - i.e. who destroyed the starbridge (thus triggering Cleon XII's response, which otoh was the destruction of the two planets held responsible but heavily hinted not to be, and otoh to commute the sentence on Hari Seldon and Gaal from execution to banishment, complete with permission for Hari to go with a whole ship of his followers). Turns it it was Demerzel, who did it because she thought it was the only thing that would scare the then Brother Day (Cleon XII) into letting Hari live and the Foundation grow. While Demerzel at first says it was because at the time she thought helping the Foundation into existence would ultimately benefit the Cleonic Dynasty, her confessor suggests a different motivation, i.e. Demerzel tricking herself or rather the program making her prioritize the Genetic Dynasty above all else, because while the Foundation's existence might in the short term help the Cleons, in the long term it's a rival capable of toppling it, and by supporting it into existence Demerzel has sped up the process of the Dynasty's fall, after which she will be free, while being able to justify this to her program as help. Demerzel denies that interpretation but not very convincingly, and the priestess goes for another angle, going back to their conversation in the season opener where Demerzel said that as a robot, she is excluded from the death and rebirth experience Lumenism holds central and sacred. The priestess points out that Demerzel has already been (to her, the priestess' knowledge) several versions of herself - the original robot subject to the Three Laws, the general fighting in the robot war obeying the Zeroth Law instead, and current Demerzel who has to prioritize the welfare of the Genetic Dynasty above all else - and that each of these could count as a different person, and thus, as an experience of death and rebirth. To underline this, she asks whether what General Demerzel would do if encountering current day Demerzel, and Demerzel replies her old self would kill her current one. (No kidding, since the welfare of humanity and the welfare of the Dynasty at most times are two very different things. Millions died when the Starbridge was destroyed, as the priestess also points out.) Whether evolution (as in Original Robot to Zeroth Law Robot) or reprogramming (as in when Cleon I. reprogrammed Demerzel) counts as death and rebirth is an unanswerable question, I think, but I also think it's fascinating the show brings it up.
Demerzel wasn't wrong in her judgment of what would motivate a Cleon (no wonder, given that even back then, she already had a millennium of exposure to variations of the same basic personality), and this reveal adds another layer to what she then told little Dawn (future Cleon XIII) as they were faced with the results of the executions - "You always choose this". But her solution, all those deaths, and the fact she who cannot forget remembers each of them was/is so appalling that it underlines both what she tells the priestess - that she's not human - and the self loathing inherent in her reply to the question of what General Demerzel would do to current Demerzel.
This season really leans into Demerzel's backstory, something also brought up when current Day shows up at her quarters after having paid the remnants of Cleon I. a visit (in a scene that offers a mini acting showcase for Lee Pace as he gets to be Cleon 23 and Cleon I in the same room) to quiz him about both the robot cult Song belongs to and about Demerzel. Losing Song seems to have snapped Day out his drug fog, and heigtened his cunning, as he gets the intel he wants in both scenes, with the later offering news to the audience as well, when Demerzel describes interlinking with other robots and/or their network as the robot equivalent of human affection. As far as Demerzel and the audience know, she is the last robot in existence, but as far as the audience knows, she is NOT the last or the only artificial intelligence - there is Vault!Hari Selden, and whatever the being usually taking Kalle's shape is which we saw first in the Prime Radiant when talking to Hari Prime (now - temporarily? - gone). So I'm wondering whether there is some interlinking there in Demerzel's future. This particular information doesn't seem to have been what Day was actually after, though; he steals one of Demerzel's repair tools (which the hologramm based on Cleon I's memories has told him original Cleon got from the Myconians for Demerzel), and I am assuming he wants to trade it or rather Demerzel herself to Song's people in exchange for her.
That Day has it in him to be as duplicitious and smart as any Cleon ever was and actually is able to play the long game - more than that, was already able when on drugs all the time - is highlighted by the final sequence in which he makes good of his escape plan with the bodyguard he bribed. I expected the bodyguard to turn against him in the last moment and/or reveal himself a spy, but instead, Day beat him to it. Losing to him and the other soldiers in their card games having been intentional, I had guessed, but not the purpose (to familiarize himself with all their tells - I had assumed it was out of sheer self destructive nihilism); and the offer of his nanobots for the guy's sick daughter was always a ruse as the real plan was to kill him, pump the nanobots into the dead bodyguard's body and thus buy himself time to escape as Demerzel would first track the body with the nanobots. This mutual backstabbing with Day revealing himself as the superior backstabber is the kind of Byzantine maneouvre I watch this show for, and it heightens my respect for and interest in the character to no end.
Also turning more interesting: the First Foundation's ambassador on Trantor, who when informed that the Cleons and Demerzel had the Prime Radiant ever since the Second Crisis goes all in and gets Dusk to show her the Prime Radiant (after a hilarious first failed attempt with barely hidden subtext). Given the current Mayor still is a barely seen uninteresting character, I was hoping for someone interesting to represent the First Foundation, and since Alexander Siddig's character only returns this episode and Pritcher is actually from the Second Foundation, my hope now rests on the Ambassador being it. Her being an older woman played by an actress allowed to look unglamoursly normal is great, and now she actually gets stuff to do, and I am here for it.
Lastly: Day isn't the only one leaving Trantor, as Gaal persuades Dawn to come with her. I'm not quite clear as to why because right now, it looks to me like he'd have been more useful to her on Trantor where he is about to become the new reigning Day (as he points out), but it could be she's aware the Mule will go after Trantor in the very near future (never mind four months, in the very near future meaning far closer than that) and then of course it makes sense for the most powerful of the three Emperors to NOT be there to be captured.
Another excellent episode, and I can't wait for next week!
Foundation 3.04.:
To start with what was least interesting to me in this episode (which doesn't mean it was dulll, just that I found the other parts more interesting) I finally understood Space Nick Fury's name, which is Pitcher. In addition to being a Mentalic and Second Foundation agent within the First Foundation, he now is revealed to be Gaal's new love interest. Well, he's handsome, but when he started throwing around marriage hints, and even dared to say Salvor would have wanted this for Gaal, I was as put off as Gaal, who immediately retorts that a) he didn't know Salvor, and b) they spent a total of 38 days together in the last three years, so hardly know each other. That, and the Mule has been in his head, Gaal, so yeah, be on your guard. Maybe go for the First Speaker instead, he seems a cool and interesting guy. And you have some chemistry with Dawn as well.
Gaal mentions here she's been trying to project herself into the future since waking up but keeps ending up in the same vision she's been having 180 years ago, nothing further than that, which answers a question I didn't have but should have had, given what's been established about Gaal's abilities in the past. Presumably this will only change once whatever needs to be done to avert the Third Crisis ending up in the annihilation of the human race has happened.
Meanwhile on Trantor: Demerzel has another session with her newly recruited therapist/priestess, who can sense there's something major Demerzel wants/needs to confess but hasn't yet, presses on, and then comes indeed a real bombshell (in more ways than one): a mystery reaching back all the way to the pilot of the show - i.e. who destroyed the starbridge (thus triggering Cleon XII's response, which otoh was the destruction of the two planets held responsible but heavily hinted not to be, and otoh to commute the sentence on Hari Seldon and Gaal from execution to banishment, complete with permission for Hari to go with a whole ship of his followers). Turns it it was Demerzel, who did it because she thought it was the only thing that would scare the then Brother Day (Cleon XII) into letting Hari live and the Foundation grow. While Demerzel at first says it was because at the time she thought helping the Foundation into existence would ultimately benefit the Cleonic Dynasty, her confessor suggests a different motivation, i.e. Demerzel tricking herself or rather the program making her prioritize the Genetic Dynasty above all else, because while the Foundation's existence might in the short term help the Cleons, in the long term it's a rival capable of toppling it, and by supporting it into existence Demerzel has sped up the process of the Dynasty's fall, after which she will be free, while being able to justify this to her program as help. Demerzel denies that interpretation but not very convincingly, and the priestess goes for another angle, going back to their conversation in the season opener where Demerzel said that as a robot, she is excluded from the death and rebirth experience Lumenism holds central and sacred. The priestess points out that Demerzel has already been (to her, the priestess' knowledge) several versions of herself - the original robot subject to the Three Laws, the general fighting in the robot war obeying the Zeroth Law instead, and current Demerzel who has to prioritize the welfare of the Genetic Dynasty above all else - and that each of these could count as a different person, and thus, as an experience of death and rebirth. To underline this, she asks whether what General Demerzel would do if encountering current day Demerzel, and Demerzel replies her old self would kill her current one. (No kidding, since the welfare of humanity and the welfare of the Dynasty at most times are two very different things. Millions died when the Starbridge was destroyed, as the priestess also points out.) Whether evolution (as in Original Robot to Zeroth Law Robot) or reprogramming (as in when Cleon I. reprogrammed Demerzel) counts as death and rebirth is an unanswerable question, I think, but I also think it's fascinating the show brings it up.
Demerzel wasn't wrong in her judgment of what would motivate a Cleon (no wonder, given that even back then, she already had a millennium of exposure to variations of the same basic personality), and this reveal adds another layer to what she then told little Dawn (future Cleon XIII) as they were faced with the results of the executions - "You always choose this". But her solution, all those deaths, and the fact she who cannot forget remembers each of them was/is so appalling that it underlines both what she tells the priestess - that she's not human - and the self loathing inherent in her reply to the question of what General Demerzel would do to current Demerzel.
This season really leans into Demerzel's backstory, something also brought up when current Day shows up at her quarters after having paid the remnants of Cleon I. a visit (in a scene that offers a mini acting showcase for Lee Pace as he gets to be Cleon 23 and Cleon I in the same room) to quiz him about both the robot cult Song belongs to and about Demerzel. Losing Song seems to have snapped Day out his drug fog, and heigtened his cunning, as he gets the intel he wants in both scenes, with the later offering news to the audience as well, when Demerzel describes interlinking with other robots and/or their network as the robot equivalent of human affection. As far as Demerzel and the audience know, she is the last robot in existence, but as far as the audience knows, she is NOT the last or the only artificial intelligence - there is Vault!Hari Selden, and whatever the being usually taking Kalle's shape is which we saw first in the Prime Radiant when talking to Hari Prime (now - temporarily? - gone). So I'm wondering whether there is some interlinking there in Demerzel's future. This particular information doesn't seem to have been what Day was actually after, though; he steals one of Demerzel's repair tools (which the hologramm based on Cleon I's memories has told him original Cleon got from the Myconians for Demerzel), and I am assuming he wants to trade it or rather Demerzel herself to Song's people in exchange for her.
That Day has it in him to be as duplicitious and smart as any Cleon ever was and actually is able to play the long game - more than that, was already able when on drugs all the time - is highlighted by the final sequence in which he makes good of his escape plan with the bodyguard he bribed. I expected the bodyguard to turn against him in the last moment and/or reveal himself a spy, but instead, Day beat him to it. Losing to him and the other soldiers in their card games having been intentional, I had guessed, but not the purpose (to familiarize himself with all their tells - I had assumed it was out of sheer self destructive nihilism); and the offer of his nanobots for the guy's sick daughter was always a ruse as the real plan was to kill him, pump the nanobots into the dead bodyguard's body and thus buy himself time to escape as Demerzel would first track the body with the nanobots. This mutual backstabbing with Day revealing himself as the superior backstabber is the kind of Byzantine maneouvre I watch this show for, and it heightens my respect for and interest in the character to no end.
Also turning more interesting: the First Foundation's ambassador on Trantor, who when informed that the Cleons and Demerzel had the Prime Radiant ever since the Second Crisis goes all in and gets Dusk to show her the Prime Radiant (after a hilarious first failed attempt with barely hidden subtext). Given the current Mayor still is a barely seen uninteresting character, I was hoping for someone interesting to represent the First Foundation, and since Alexander Siddig's character only returns this episode and Pritcher is actually from the Second Foundation, my hope now rests on the Ambassador being it. Her being an older woman played by an actress allowed to look unglamoursly normal is great, and now she actually gets stuff to do, and I am here for it.
Lastly: Day isn't the only one leaving Trantor, as Gaal persuades Dawn to come with her. I'm not quite clear as to why because right now, it looks to me like he'd have been more useful to her on Trantor where he is about to become the new reigning Day (as he points out), but it could be she's aware the Mule will go after Trantor in the very near future (never mind four months, in the very near future meaning far closer than that) and then of course it makes sense for the most powerful of the three Emperors to NOT be there to be captured.
Another excellent episode, and I can't wait for next week!
no subject
Date: 2025-08-01 11:29 am (UTC)I haven't seen 3.04 yet, but felt rather let down by 3.03 as well, especially with regard to where the scripts are headed with Patel, which I found even more frustrating than killing of Bytha via self-sacrifice when instead the writers could have just as easily gone for establishing an interesting recurring Klingon female character.
Strangely enough, the one thing I didn't really mind,though, were the zombies, because I found them just an annoyingly silly waste of valuable screen time, however ultimately forgivable.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-01 01:57 pm (UTC)As for 3.04., it continues the feeling that the show keeps going back to what previous ST shows did instead of striking out on its own. Yes, there are only so many stories you can tell within in the ST format without some of them having resemblance to another. But that doesn't mean you have to do the nth version of "the holodeck goes wrong" with EXACTLY the same plot beats and solution. Again, counter examples: TNG's "A Fistful of Datas", DS9's "Our Man Bashir" and Voyager's Queen Arachnia episode are all "holodeck/suite goes wrong" episodes, they all follow the pattern of regular(s) entering the holodeck, plot macguffin happens to trap them there, they have to play out the scenario in order to save the day. But these three episodes feel different enough from each other that I didn't mind the basic format at all. Not so here. And it didn't have to be that way. I have the suspicion this episode was pitched as "a TNG style holo episode meets Galaxy Quest", and on paper, that sounds hilarious. But where Galaxy Quest came across as truly funny and a love declaration at Trek fandom besides, laughing with, not at the fans, what 3.04. does comes across as a truly weird mixture of ridicule and oversentimental self congratulation.
....and that's without mentioning what annoyed me most about 3.04., which is that some idiot must have thought "hm, this La'an/Kirk thing last season shouldn't have worked but did and was surprisingly popular, clearly we're on to something, how about we pair La'an with SPOILER next?"
Head. Desk.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-01 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-01 12:25 pm (UTC)Regrettably don't have Apple to see Foundation.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-01 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-03 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-01 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 09:59 am (UTC)Our jaws Hit. The. Floor. Neither of us had guessed that AT ALL and we actually had to rewind to go back and make sure we'd heard what we did! Phenomenal plotting, characterization and acting.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 10:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 11:59 pm (UTC)I'll have to check out Foundation when I re-up AppleTV! I keep hearing good things about it.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-03 12:25 pm (UTC)Foundation, btw, is one of the former - I mean, the first season has a lot of good points, but also weaknesses, you can tell the writing staff is still trying out what works and what doesn't, but then the second one really made every episode count, and the third one so far is superb.
ETA: And visually it's one of the most gorgeous shows I ever came across!
no subject
Date: 2025-08-04 07:36 am (UTC)I shall hold off paying cash until I see what you think of the rest of the series.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-06 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-06 07:44 am (UTC)