selenak

In which Gaal unleashes her inner Hari, and lots of revelations happen in all plotlines.

Well, okay, no reveals in Pritcher's plotline, except his impressive physique, but I have to say currently that's the only impressive thing about him. The Mayor is an ass, but I wouldn't be convinced by Pritcher, either, who doesn't even use new arguments to underline that the Mule is the primary danger. This better be a "I'm deliberately getting myself locked up for a future plot point" kind of thing, otherwise I wonder whether Gaal couldn't have found someone better to be her eyes and ears in the First Foundation.

But Pritcher aside, I was iimpressed by pretty much everything else. Brother Day continues to demonstrate his refound cunning in his one scene in this episode by sending a decoy so he can observe how he'd be received. I can't help but wonder whether he'd be insulted that Demerzel doesn't go after him but cooly states she knows exactly where he is and that going after Dawn is way more important.

In several ways, this was Dawn's episode, from his conversations with Gaal en route where you can see he's uneasy about her abilities and aware she might be using them on him without him noticing, but still decides to trust her, and the other conversation re: Salvor (a nitpick about this later) where she opens up to him about something very personal, to his display of Cleonic ruthlessness when blackmailing Tratiss into voting his way on the Council, complete with killing the eyewitness to said blackmail, to the message to Dusk which underlines both his affrection for the older clone and awareness of what they are ("Where tyrants etc...", which of course is the episode title), to his horror when the Mule shows up via holo, reveals he expected the blockade and blows up the jumpgate, the planet and the fleet, to his stunned realisation that Gaal knew this would happen and had, in fact, planned for it to. Gaal basically pulled a Hari Selden on him, complete with manipulation, withholding of key information and ruthless sacrificing of lives for the greater good, and while you can tell she does feel sorry for him (he has been truthful towards her and has sincerely tried to do something good for the whole time they worked tog4ether), she did it without hesitation and would do it again.

As someone always on the lookout for female characters with that kind of shady ambiguilty which usually far more male characters get to display, I was doubly impressed. (And will grudgingly concede this makes in retrospect complete sense of writing Hari Prime out of the story for now; Gaal needed to do something like this without any possibility that he was to blame for it, simply based on her own decisionsl. (Note that Salvor told her in s2 that she and Hari were far more alike t han not. Of course, that was in reference to Gaal being willing to near suffocate in order to get a proper vision, and we've known she was ruthless towards herself for a good while now, but being willing to sacrifice so many other lives (she couldn't know what exactly the Mule would do, i.e. the planet blowing up, but she certainly knew it would be something that would take out the entire fleet, complete with everyone on it). During that scene we also hear for the first time what her plan re: the Mule actually consists of - well, the outlines: not containing him on Kalgan but luring him to Trantor with the fall of the Cleonic dynasty, letting him take it and trap him there. (And because Demerzel had given the Cleons a bit more time in the last 140 years via using the Prime Radiant, she needed to counter this by accelerating their downfall so that in turn the Mule would get to Trantor more quickly.) Given in the previous episode, the hologram of Cleon I. made a point of telling Day (and the audience) Trantor depends entirely on Myconia (spelling?) for their food supply, I'm assuming this will come into play, btw.

Anyway, this of couorse also makes sense of the fact she hurried Dawn off planet instead of letting him stay there for a few more days so he could ascend to the middle throne and work with her from there - an actual alliance with Empire not being the goal, but the Foundation replacing it. Mind you, given the Foundation has its own inner civil war brewing and the Mayor is useless, I am not sure they're up for this, and I bet the Cleons stay around longer than Gaal at this point thinks they will, but that doesn't lessen the magnitude of the con/betrayal/cunnig maneouvre she just pulled. And the episode makes sure not to let Dawn be the entirely innocent patsy here by showcasing earlier that he, too, is willing to betray, blackmail and kill for what he believes to be the greater good. I don't think he's dead, otherwise the episode would not have bothered to get him into a space suit before blowing open the lock, so we'll see him again - and given no Cleon has ever taken being deceived well, on the one hand, but on the other the survival of humanity as a species really IS at stake, I'm immensely curious what he'll be like then.

But for now, Gaal has to face Demerzel, which was a great cliffhanger to end the episode on. They never shared a scene in the sense of interacting together before, and the only other time they were in the same room together was during Hari Selden's trial in the pilot for the series, so I'm dying to find out how that confrontation will play out. Given Gaal was unable to sense Demerzel coming, I think it's a given the power of Mentalics doesn't work on robots (btw, this would be true for the Mule as well), which means Demerzel has the advantage; Gaal will have to convince her to survive.

Meanwhile among the Traders: we meet Taron's uncle, find out more about him and Bayta (who wasn't born rich but is a clever social climber), and like two episodes ago, I love how this couple starts out as seeming one note and then gets ever more interesting (and clever). We also see more of Magnifico, but here I am somewhat fenced in by the fact that I remembered the thing from the book two episodes ago and so can't speculate without book spoilers. Though of course they might be doing something different re: him.

Lastly, my Salvor-related nitpick: now we did see in the second episode of the show, 1.02, how the original bunch of people which went into exile with Hari all donated their sperm and eggs so they'd later, once on Terminal, be able to have kids. And okay, I can buy that this was still going on by the time Salvor was an adult, because conditions on Terminus were harsh, they needed to get a population growing, and doing this via artifcial means instead of leaving it to the genetic lottery, or at least making it conditional for everyone to donate while leaving it up to them to decide when those fertilized frozen eggs would actually be developed into an embryo is also something I can see. BUT. If Salvor did that, wouldn't her frozen possible future kid have remained on Terminus, and thus likely blown up when last season's Day went genocidal on them? Or are we meant to assume Salvor actually took the thing with her when she went on her quest? It feels a bit unlikely. Not impossible, just unlikely. Anyway, given the conversation was there, I am pretty sure someone will get implanted with Gaal's biological grandkid this season. (Or, the darker possibility: a vengeful Dawn destroys it, especially if he should become the sole surviving Cleon.)