A quick programming note: This is the one-hundredth post on StarsEndPodcast.com. I have plans for a post or two to mark the occasion, but in the meantime, we’re deep into the second season of the teevee show and that’s why most of you are interested in this blog in the first place.

So, for now, let’s return to “Watching Foundation.” As always, Joseph’s initial reactions, wild theories, and a few digressions from watching the episode. One digression is more extensive than usual. You have been warned. Simultaneously published at ComicsTheUniverseAndEverything.net. Let’s go!

Watching Foundation S2E04

In the narration, “If your parents never met, you wouldn’t exist… everyone in the universe is the result of a unique set of pairings. And psychohistory doesn’t care about them at all.”

Kudos to saying the right thing about Psychohistory but on the larger point about whether or not you would exist this seems optimistic. I think if anything had even a minor effect on the circumstances of your conception you wouldn’t exist. I’m not going to research the probabilities involved here but my best guess is that if you’re lucky the resulting individual is as close to you as an identical twin. But it might be someone who’s as unlike you as any of your siblings. Or someone who doesn’t exist at all.

Constant and Poly are waking up on the Spirit. When we see Hober he’s still being played for comic relief.

According to a (very) quick internet search, constant sunlight wouldn’t be good for wine. This from Calwineries: “At the same time, too much direct sun exposure can burn the fruit and will lead to excessive sugar development. The result is unbalanced wines with a lack of acidity and too much alcohol.”

Now I’m pondering if a planet that’s tidally locked could support life.

Asimov wrote about a tidally locked planet in Foundation and Empire.

Radole was a small world – and, in military potential, perhaps the weakest of the twenty-seven. That, by the way, was another factor in the logic of the choice. It was a ribbon world – of which the Galaxy boasts sufficient, but among which, the inhabited variety is a rarity for the physical requirements are difficult to meet. It was a world, in other words, where the two halves face the monotonous extremes of heat and cold, while the region of possible life is the girdling ribbon of the twilight zone.

Such a world invariably sounds uninviting to those who have not tried it, but there exist spots, strategically placed – and Radole City was located in such a one. It spread along the soft slopes of the foothills before the hacked-out mountains that backed it along the rim of the cold hemisphere and held off the frightful ice.

The warm, dry air of the sun-half spilled over, and from the mountains was piped the water-and between the two, Radole City became a continuous garden, swimming in the eternal morning of an eternal June.

Isaac Asimov, in Foundation and Empire

What I really want is a science essay by Asimov that specifically discusses whether “ribbon worlds” could be habitable. I read “Time and Tide” from Asimov on Astronomy, which was pretty good, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. It might be more of a Clarke topic.

This website speculates that the exoplanet Gliese 581g could be habitable despite being tidally locked. It’s out of date though: the latest information is that Gliese_581g doesn’t even exist.

But I digress.

Constant and Hober have chemistry. These two are cute together.

They arrive on Terminus and head towards the Vault.

Trantor

We learn more about Queen Sereth’s motives: she wants the truth about what happened to her family; C-17’s denials clearly weren’t enough. “I know how to employ courtesan tricks.”

Surprisingly, it’s C-18 with whom she’s spending time. These two also have chemistry, a more casual and comfortable flavor than between Sereth and Brother Day.

That’s a great tree! Is it a Banyan?

Blunt as usual, Sereth brings up the assassination attempt. I know we’re supposed to be suspicious here, but was the timing really that suspicious? And she asks Dawn about whether Day had her family killed. This is less “courtesan tricks” and more “bull in a China shop.”

“I was a million steps from the throne” and “then one mysterious crash later, and suddenly there I am“ don’t mesh for me.

This Dawn claims he wouldn’t be capable of the assassination of Sereth’s family but “I am well prepared to think I could become capable of it.” That is an interesting admission.

It’s asymmetric but both of them are trying to play the other; the politics here is dense. Sereth ends with the notion that she and Dawn could have been paired. These two are certainly more age-appropriate for each other. The point of that seems obvious. Could there be something more subtle there? And is the kid always going to have problems stemming from romance?

Now a scene with Dusk and Rue. C-16 implies that dominion pigments are better than what the Empire usually has. Not sure if that changes anything from the gifting scene in the first episode.

They walk by a picture of the mural that has to be Demerzel. It must be her because the solar system motif from the jewelry box is behind the figure. It looks to me as though it depicts the positronic conflict from the last episode of season one. I’m sure we’ll be coming back to this.

They talk about their history together. “I thought I had lost count of my Cleons.“

“You might be the last Dusk, and the first grandfather Cleon” is pretty damn aggressive.

Then talk about how Rue doesn’t remember their time together because as we know, courtesans have their memories wiped. Allowing a courtesan to even know that there had been a liaison with one of the Cleons seems completely inconsistent with how those assholes conduct their business. It also seems like a dumb decision on their part that never would have happened except the writers wanted to go with this plot.

But memories and memory suppression are clearly recurring themes in this season.

Siwenna

“Love itself is inconsequential when measured against the scale of the Galaxy.” Gaal is quite the Ray of sunshine here. Is this her being an unreliable narrator?

Riose and his ship have arrived.

Boy, the transporters in this universe are really inefficient, and filled with unnecessary spectacle!

The first time through, I spent this sequence being sure that Glawin was going to die.

What’s with all these things that look like gigantic antlion sand pits?

This sequence doesn’t add much to the episode except Bel and Glawin are arguing at the end of it. Is that what Gaal was alluding to in her narration?

“By the time you recognize an atrocity, you may have already been complicit in one” is wise, but ominous.

Terminus. At the Vault.

Hober’s “It doesn’t work like this” is a hot take and a correct one.

“Governance depends on me continuing to govern.” Coward.

The vault, first of all, seems to use time lord technology. It’s bigger on the inside of course, but also time passed differently for Hober in the vault, two days rather than two minutes. Constant and Poly didn’t notice even though there was a similar gap between when those too entered. Are we supposed to take from this that time passes inconsistently inside the vault? Are the writers just being sloppy?

“We’re inside the mathematics of Hari Seldon.“ No, you’re literally inside Hari Seldon himself.

This does seem a lot like the inside of the prime radiant though.

Those blue contacts really make Isabella Laughland look intense.

“I see by your robes that the foundation has entered the religious phase.“ That’s a decent callback to the books. Then Hari pats Brother Constant on the head. Who’s a good girl? Who’s a good girl? Is it you? Who’s a good girl?

So Hari knows Director Sermak and he knows Hober Mallow but he doesn’t recognize Poly and he didn’t know that the Foundation had entered its religious phase. Sigh.

Poly gets that the Vault is a tesseract. This makes me want to go back and reread Heinlein’s “And he built a crooked house.”

Hari says he wants to prevent the coming war.

Siwenna

Bel and Glawin approach a dwelling.

“Fleet Supremus?”

We’ve swapped Onum Barr and Ducem Barr. Whoever he is, he’s been sending reports to the empire for 40 years.

Is an oval bookshelf one of those things that are supposed to look science fictional but aren’t?

“Books are for old men.”

Glawin, “Here’s to those who fight and ask why.” Ducem is beside himself with approval!

This is twice now. What are the writers implying?

Ducem shows Bel and Glawin some reruns. They quickly learned important stuff about the Foundation and its technology: jump ships, and personal shields. Bel is dubious.

The “Local Constabulary” arrives and Ducem asks to be shot in the head. Not sure that isn’t stupid. If nothing else it’s a waste of a good character… unless he has the imperial nanobots, maybe?

And again, with the laughably efficient transporters. A futuristic pneumatic tube seems like the worst possible way to attain orbit. Especially without a ship of some sort.

Terminus.

Hari offering Sermak wine that was literally made from his body is way too “on point.”

We learn that the prime radiant is “a quantum computer that exists in a state of superposition.” Quantum computers seem like magic, but maybe not that magic.

Hari is assigning people homework.

Sermak is dismissed out of hand. Constant and Poly get to be envoys to the Empire. Poly: “An agent of peace. Yes. That’s something worth being.”

“The honor is mine, my loyal child” is much better than a pat on the head. I was afraid he was going to scratch her behind her ears.

Fine suit. Now piss off. Lol.

And we learn hologram, Hari, like any AI, needs the three laws. He “had to” kill the warden. “For a god to be effective you have to be intermittently wrathful.”

Then, this, “I heard the warden on my doorstep. How long before he declared himself the only holy vessel worthy of my spirit?”

On the one hand, that’s an apt critique of organized religion. But it seems at odds with a policy of using an ersatz religion to expand the Foundation.

“Let no being presume upon my mercy.” *WINK*

I enjoyed Hober calling out Hari on his BS.

Hari in turn, calls religion “A developmental stage, that all successful civilizations go through.” But can you go through that stage legitimately if it’s all a con? Did the United States have a religious stage? Is it right, freaking now? Is the Church of the Galactic Spirit akin to the US’s current religious status quo with megachurches and pastors using the trappings of Christianity to their own ends?

Hober gets his own homework and it’s not being an agent of peace.

Trantor

Sarath, Rue, and the Handman are beneath the banyan tree. They are joined by someone who is wearing an utterly ridiculous outfit.

The new guy, Markley, is worried. We learn that Cloud Dominion can block or reverse a memory wipe and fool a memory audit. Clear implications here about Rue.

Sarath wants information both about her parents’ assassination, and the assassination attempt on Day. She’s cold and matter-of-fact. Everything we have seen of her personality thus far could have been a front.

Terminus.

The sun has gone down, so a decent chunk of time must’ve passed. Hober is leaving the Vault.

I don’t believe that Hari said Hober could take the Spirit. By the way, the bishop’s claw in the Spirit, is named Beki.

It’s actually Constant who calls out the sexual tension between her and Mallow. This could be foreshadowing that’s either good or bad. “I can’t help feeling that this is it” is ominous. [But the discussion on our podcast makes me think that Hober and Constant getting together could be equally ominous].

“Wenus” is funny. I did not expect to hear that name in the teevee show.

We end on a long wistful look between Constant and Hober and a bit more of Gaal’s narration. That narration always seems to be in counterpoint to what we’re seeing on the screen. “With few exceptions, attraction is entirely irrelevant to human history. It only matters on the small scale of the human heart.” I think this is the show trying too hard to misdirect us.

All Images from Foundation on Apple TV+.