Foundation 3.07
Aug. 22nd, 2025 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which it's backstory time, for more than one character, while in the present the end times keep rolling.
The episode is framed with an opening and (almost) concluding flashback in which we see a boy (not credited as "young Mule" but as "son", I note) and his parents on a planet whom I heard being called Rossum but saw being spelled Rossem (either way, it's a clear homage to Capek's play that invented the term "robot", where the company coming up with this type of exploitable workforce was called "Rossum"), located on the outskirts of the Foundation, which is here framed as if it were galactic China or India under Indira Gandhi, with a one child policy. Except that the parents have just produced another baby. Their attempt to hide it fails, and they're informed to get rid of one of the kids. To the boy's utter shock, they pick the baby to keep (despite the fact that the neighbouring family, who doesn't have a child of their own yet, would be willing to take it), and intend to not abandon but drown in, at which point hismutant mentalic powers kick in - as the genre wise know, this is prone to happen when kid mutants get traumatized - and he makes them drown themselves, telling them "you love me", as the adult Mule is prone to do with his current day followers/victims. Then, just to mess with the audience further, the very last scene of the episode after the second flashback reveals the Mule has been telling this story to the vault in order to goad digital Hari into making an appearance, which Vault!Hari does in the last minute, only to comment "touching story... but how much of it is true?" Cut to the grinning adult Mule, cut to black.
Hm. I don't think the majority of the story is a lie, otherwise the show would not have wasted the narrative time of showing it to us. However, I bet it has been edited, and/or there was a role reversal. For starters, the second flashback includes the boy deposing the baby with a note in front of the friendly neighbours' house before, and since we're thus reminded there is no verbal mention as to what became of the baby after that, it pretty much has to be Magnifico. (Note that now Magnifico and the Mule are on the same planet again, the Mule who in Magnifico's absence used good old fashioned brutality and blackmail and bombs now uses mind powers again as in the season opener to make people fire on each other or kill themselves.) Or does it? I could also see the twist that in fact the boy is Magnifico and the baby is the Mule, and/or the parents intended to give up/kill the baby which then lashed out with raw mental power.
(The precedent within the showverse here is Hari Prime's "death" or rather are his deaths and how the show handled how they were first presented versus what was later revealed to be true. When Original Hari Seldon dies in 1.02, Gaal and the audience see Rhaesh pretty unambigiously kill him after having earlier displayed increasing hostility towards him. It's only late into the first season that the audience and Gaal find out Hari - already dying from space cancer - did in fact request to be killed after having ensured the download of his consciousness, and that the plan was for his adoptive son to do it, then take off with the escape pod and the download of Hari's consciousness and be picked up by the ship that was awaiting. Similarly, in season 2, we the audience and Salvor are shown Hari Prime getting drowned by the Mentalic cult leader and her followers. Only later do we and Salvor find out that this is what Gaal has been projecting after getting alerted to Hari's peril and that in reality, Gaal freed him and kept her own mind from being read by the other mentalics by her endless mantra of prime numbers. And so I think that the two flashbacks in this episode will be shown to work on a similar basis; the core parts did happen - two children and their parents on a planet that was treated by the Foundation in imperial fashion, the parents were made to choose one of the kids, the horror of this caused one or both of the kids to realize their mental powers first to save themselves and then to avenge themselves - but we're still missing some criticial information in this villain origin story.)
The other backstory that comes into play is visited when Brother Day is made to go on one long LSD trip, sorry, spore trip as a way for Song and Ocean to check the veracity of his claim there's a robot and it's Demerzel without Song having to reintegrate her memories (which she still doesn't want to do). This isn't a question for the audience but what is a question is how this particular Cleon came to be so hostile towards Demerzel, and whether this is going somewhere beyond flight attempts and snide remarks, and I think this trip very heavily hints that yes, it is. As Day, Cleon 24 has been harping on Demerzel being unable to feel or understand affection, but while he's tripping and rumaging in his childhood memories we see her being affectionate towards him-as-Dawn and him loving her as all the other Cleons did. (BTW, I love how we first hear Demerzel's voice asking "are you hurt" at the start of the trip and later when it transitions into memory it's in fact little Dawn who ask her "are you hurt" because he sees her expressing sadness and grief and doesn't understand why, and then we move to two core memories, both of which go to the heart of the relationships between Demerzel and the Clones as set up by Cleon I.: little Dawn is asking her what she would do if she didn't have to be with him and his brothers, and she says she would try to create others of her kind (i.e. other robots, and it's inevitable that a child would interpret this as "other/better children"), and he's asking her whether she would still love them if she were free, and if she'd rather be free; Demerzel can't answer (as she said in her own flashback episode in the second season, she will never know whether what she feels for the Cleons is programming or whehter it was genuine and already there before Cleon I. reprogrammed her), but adult Cleon 24, who in his mind transitions from the memory of the child he was to his adult self, says he understands now she didn't answer because between love and freedom, freedom would have won if Demerzel had ever been in a position to make that choice. Between this, and Song being absolutely appalled at the idea of a robot being forced into this kind of slavery, I'm willing to put money on the bet that this Day, who in the present has shown nothing but anger at her, and through the trip comes to face what lies at the root of this, will in fact be the one to free Demerzel.
(The flashbacks to child!Dawn 24 also include one where he asks her to tell him a story from her past the way original Cleon did as a child, and she says she's had many names and provides three - Chedda, Eto, Daneel. Very mild book spoiler: I do so want a flashback to Demerzel's mystery solving days as R. Daneel Olivaw now....)
Cult leaders never mean something good on this show, so the one showing up once Day is out of his trip coming across as menacing is no surprise, but I am assuming the metal skull he has on his staff is in fact the head of an actual robot, and that Demerzel might eventually be able to use it to create another robot, perhaps in a teaser final scene of the season.
Meanwhile on New Terminus: Pritcher stops being unimpressively useless and breaks himself out of prison, the Mayor by contrast surrenders and is made to drown himself once he's of no more use to the Mule, poor Toran manages to carry Bayta, who is still unconscious and seriously hurt, to the relative safety of their ship only to mind out that Uncle Randu in on Team Mule now, and says all the nice things Toran had been longing to hear in circumstances where hearing them couldn't be worse, and then Bayta gets kidnapped by Mule soldiers while Randu gets killed before his eyes. Toran and Bayta (who I hope will be back conscious in the next episode) have endeared themselves to me like you wouldn't believe, and I am already longing for their reunion.
And lastly: At first I thought the camel Brother Dusk saw while listening to increasingly horrible reports was a hallucination, but then we got the reminder Day had something of a zoo and didn't make any arrangements for the animals before fleeing, so it's entirely possible a camel is indeed walking through the palace. Otoh, Dusk comes across as increasingly out of it (more than just as the result of bad news, I mean), and so Demerzel was probably right about the current bunch of clones having an earlier onset of senility. Which if Dusk was a nice old man who could retire would not be a problem, but he's an Emperor in possession of a super destructive planet killer withi an increasingly short temper and when not romancing the Foundation Ambassador entirely capable of Cleonic viciousness, as we see when he stomps on Day's ferret after having fed and played iwth it earlier at the behest of his beloved. Now given that Cleon 17 already did the destruction of old Terminus, I don't think we'll see Cleon 23 (aka current Dusk) destroy New Terminus, although that might be what he intends to do. But it's Trantor Demerzel saw next to a black hole when she was able to access Gaal's vision. Yep, not liking where this is going one bit...
(In a way that makes me yearn for next week and the next episode, of course.)
The episode is framed with an opening and (almost) concluding flashback in which we see a boy (not credited as "young Mule" but as "son", I note) and his parents on a planet whom I heard being called Rossum but saw being spelled Rossem (either way, it's a clear homage to Capek's play that invented the term "robot", where the company coming up with this type of exploitable workforce was called "Rossum"), located on the outskirts of the Foundation, which is here framed as if it were galactic China or India under Indira Gandhi, with a one child policy. Except that the parents have just produced another baby. Their attempt to hide it fails, and they're informed to get rid of one of the kids. To the boy's utter shock, they pick the baby to keep (despite the fact that the neighbouring family, who doesn't have a child of their own yet, would be willing to take it), and intend to not abandon but drown in, at which point his
Hm. I don't think the majority of the story is a lie, otherwise the show would not have wasted the narrative time of showing it to us. However, I bet it has been edited, and/or there was a role reversal. For starters, the second flashback includes the boy deposing the baby with a note in front of the friendly neighbours' house before, and since we're thus reminded there is no verbal mention as to what became of the baby after that, it pretty much has to be Magnifico. (Note that now Magnifico and the Mule are on the same planet again, the Mule who in Magnifico's absence used good old fashioned brutality and blackmail and bombs now uses mind powers again as in the season opener to make people fire on each other or kill themselves.) Or does it? I could also see the twist that in fact the boy is Magnifico and the baby is the Mule, and/or the parents intended to give up/kill the baby which then lashed out with raw mental power.
(The precedent within the showverse here is Hari Prime's "death" or rather are his deaths and how the show handled how they were first presented versus what was later revealed to be true. When Original Hari Seldon dies in 1.02, Gaal and the audience see Rhaesh pretty unambigiously kill him after having earlier displayed increasing hostility towards him. It's only late into the first season that the audience and Gaal find out Hari - already dying from space cancer - did in fact request to be killed after having ensured the download of his consciousness, and that the plan was for his adoptive son to do it, then take off with the escape pod and the download of Hari's consciousness and be picked up by the ship that was awaiting. Similarly, in season 2, we the audience and Salvor are shown Hari Prime getting drowned by the Mentalic cult leader and her followers. Only later do we and Salvor find out that this is what Gaal has been projecting after getting alerted to Hari's peril and that in reality, Gaal freed him and kept her own mind from being read by the other mentalics by her endless mantra of prime numbers. And so I think that the two flashbacks in this episode will be shown to work on a similar basis; the core parts did happen - two children and their parents on a planet that was treated by the Foundation in imperial fashion, the parents were made to choose one of the kids, the horror of this caused one or both of the kids to realize their mental powers first to save themselves and then to avenge themselves - but we're still missing some criticial information in this villain origin story.)
The other backstory that comes into play is visited when Brother Day is made to go on one long LSD trip, sorry, spore trip as a way for Song and Ocean to check the veracity of his claim there's a robot and it's Demerzel without Song having to reintegrate her memories (which she still doesn't want to do). This isn't a question for the audience but what is a question is how this particular Cleon came to be so hostile towards Demerzel, and whether this is going somewhere beyond flight attempts and snide remarks, and I think this trip very heavily hints that yes, it is. As Day, Cleon 24 has been harping on Demerzel being unable to feel or understand affection, but while he's tripping and rumaging in his childhood memories we see her being affectionate towards him-as-Dawn and him loving her as all the other Cleons did. (BTW, I love how we first hear Demerzel's voice asking "are you hurt" at the start of the trip and later when it transitions into memory it's in fact little Dawn who ask her "are you hurt" because he sees her expressing sadness and grief and doesn't understand why, and then we move to two core memories, both of which go to the heart of the relationships between Demerzel and the Clones as set up by Cleon I.: little Dawn is asking her what she would do if she didn't have to be with him and his brothers, and she says she would try to create others of her kind (i.e. other robots, and it's inevitable that a child would interpret this as "other/better children"), and he's asking her whether she would still love them if she were free, and if she'd rather be free; Demerzel can't answer (as she said in her own flashback episode in the second season, she will never know whether what she feels for the Cleons is programming or whehter it was genuine and already there before Cleon I. reprogrammed her), but adult Cleon 24, who in his mind transitions from the memory of the child he was to his adult self, says he understands now she didn't answer because between love and freedom, freedom would have won if Demerzel had ever been in a position to make that choice. Between this, and Song being absolutely appalled at the idea of a robot being forced into this kind of slavery, I'm willing to put money on the bet that this Day, who in the present has shown nothing but anger at her, and through the trip comes to face what lies at the root of this, will in fact be the one to free Demerzel.
(The flashbacks to child!Dawn 24 also include one where he asks her to tell him a story from her past the way original Cleon did as a child, and she says she's had many names and provides three - Chedda, Eto, Daneel. Very mild book spoiler: I do so want a flashback to Demerzel's mystery solving days as R. Daneel Olivaw now....)
Cult leaders never mean something good on this show, so the one showing up once Day is out of his trip coming across as menacing is no surprise, but I am assuming the metal skull he has on his staff is in fact the head of an actual robot, and that Demerzel might eventually be able to use it to create another robot, perhaps in a teaser final scene of the season.
Meanwhile on New Terminus: Pritcher stops being unimpressively useless and breaks himself out of prison, the Mayor by contrast surrenders and is made to drown himself once he's of no more use to the Mule, poor Toran manages to carry Bayta, who is still unconscious and seriously hurt, to the relative safety of their ship only to mind out that Uncle Randu in on Team Mule now, and says all the nice things Toran had been longing to hear in circumstances where hearing them couldn't be worse, and then Bayta gets kidnapped by Mule soldiers while Randu gets killed before his eyes. Toran and Bayta (who I hope will be back conscious in the next episode) have endeared themselves to me like you wouldn't believe, and I am already longing for their reunion.
And lastly: At first I thought the camel Brother Dusk saw while listening to increasingly horrible reports was a hallucination, but then we got the reminder Day had something of a zoo and didn't make any arrangements for the animals before fleeing, so it's entirely possible a camel is indeed walking through the palace. Otoh, Dusk comes across as increasingly out of it (more than just as the result of bad news, I mean), and so Demerzel was probably right about the current bunch of clones having an earlier onset of senility. Which if Dusk was a nice old man who could retire would not be a problem, but he's an Emperor in possession of a super destructive planet killer withi an increasingly short temper and when not romancing the Foundation Ambassador entirely capable of Cleonic viciousness, as we see when he stomps on Day's ferret after having fed and played iwth it earlier at the behest of his beloved. Now given that Cleon 17 already did the destruction of old Terminus, I don't think we'll see Cleon 23 (aka current Dusk) destroy New Terminus, although that might be what he intends to do. But it's Trantor Demerzel saw next to a black hole when she was able to access Gaal's vision. Yep, not liking where this is going one bit...
(In a way that makes me yearn for next week and the next episode, of course.)
no subject
Date: 2025-08-22 04:39 pm (UTC)Oh, that would be really neat. I'd love that.
I might have let out a tiny "!!" when she said "Daneel" and then had to explain to T, who never had an Asimov phase, lol.
Toran and Bayta's actors are doing such good jobs! I loved the development she got last time, and Toran having his confrontation with his uncle was just shattering.
When Son Mule??, er, manifests, his eyes glow blue like the Mule's do and I don't think we've seen that happen with other mentalists, have we? Gaal's eyes have gone gold. Magnifico seems dependent on his instrument, but maybe he just never had a trauma break (oh God I hope that doesn't happen bc of Bayta). It would be fitting if like the one act of mercy the Mule apparently ever showed anybody wound up causing his defeat/death.
T's question was, how did Hari know the Mule was possibly lying if he had nooo idea who he was, and while that could totally be just Hari being Hari, maybe he lied about having nooo idea. I would expect the Prime Radiant to at least be keeping him up to date on the news, for psychohistory! So maybe this is all part of his Master Plan. Or maybe he just wants the Mule to think it is.
I was pretty upset about the ferret. I love ferrets.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-22 05:17 pm (UTC)(There are two Prime Radiants as far as I recall. One which Hari Prime and Gaal and Salvor had, and one which Vault!Hari had, and that was how Salvor was able to communicate with Vault!Hari in the season 2 finale (since her visit happened before Demerzel and Cleon 17’s.) Meaning right now, Gaal has one, and Demerzel the other.)
As for how Hari would know to question the veracity of the Mule’s story? I think he doesn’t, he’s making an educated guess to needle the Mule and provoke him into revealing a bit more. Given Hari himself in either variation is an expert editor of the truth, that would fit.
Agreed on Bayta’s and Toran’s actors! And I don’t think Bayta will die. In fact, her having been an unconscious for an entire episode assures me she’ll live, otherwise they could have simply killed her then and there.
Daneel: I sat up straighter, I admit. :)
no subject
Date: 2025-08-22 05:51 pm (UTC)"In fact, her having been an unconscious for an entire episode assures me she’ll live, otherwise they could have simply killed her then and there.'
I HOPE SO. I seriously hope the Mule doesn't mindrape her, ugh ugh ugh. I guess he might want her for clues to Pritchett?
I totally want Adventures of Demerzeneel: Robot Detective.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-22 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-24 10:51 am (UTC)