cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/823506
Discussion thread for Foundation season 2 episode 2: “A Glimpse of Darkness”
Episode is live!
Allowed:
- Everything pertaining to this episode and prior episodes
Off limits:
- Anything that pertains to episodes beyond the episode of this thread
I have the same thoughts about Gaal v Salvor. Which bothers me because I like the idea of Gaal or the mechanic of a “mutant” disturbing things so early but from someone within Hari’s circle.
Haven’t read the later foundation books so I can’t comment on the PH stuff, but given the emphasis on math I feel like they’re leaning into it as a statistical thing that can be disturbed by perturbations like Gaal. Except they haven’t made it clear at all that that’s what is happening. I don’t know what non-book-readers think is going on with all that. And as a book reader I’d prefer they make it feel more momentous and significant.
I personally liked seeing the mule, albeit as a glimpse of the future. Feels like it’s finally getting things going. But again, if it were clearer that there are mutations etc messing the plan up, it could have been more impactful that there’s a mutant with malicious intent. It also felt like they rushed the introduction and could have done way more at building the character up.
Yea hopefully the demerzel thing lands. Otherwise I’m generally pleased with their depiction of the downfall so far, giving us a glimpse of power crumbling at a personal level with ongoing actors through the cloning thing.
Overall I’ve come to the point where I appreciate enough of the ideas of the adaptation but remain unimpressed with the execution at a directorial and writing level.
I like the thought of it, I just think it’s way too early, I really feel like we have barely begun to set up the foundation in the first place, they spent very little time explaining where terminus is right now, it’s some weird cross between military camp, religious evangelicals, mega-corporations and just really it’s all over the place. I would have loved 1 episode of terminus pre-crisis giving a backdrop, then end it with empire as a threat on the horizon.
I want a few clearer plot threads, this is a mishmash of the whole series with no clarity.
I agree completely on liking the ideas of the adaptation, I had so much hope last season, but omg it is so unclear on where it is and where it’s going. Also the weird personal dramas seem to be trying to disrupt the arc, which is the opposite of how Asimov wrote, his characters were almost 1 dimensional but they always served the plot, almost as caricatures.
Btw in the later books, Raych had a daughter who was the mutant, exactly like Gaal in fact, they mismashed that character too, which is fine in theory but it came out as a complete disaster here. That is one place where the books made more sense, Gaal is probably the worst character in the series, because it seems like she’s trying to be a combination math genius, jesus/jedi character who changes everything but acts like shes almost a child half the time. I’d like to see her do something decisively and with purpose, everything she does she claims she’s doing on instinct and none of it makes sense even to her. I get the clairvoyant bit, but this is just weird and unsettling, it’s like someone randomly jumps off a bridge while saying “I don’t know why!!!” It is the ultimate in withholding agency from your characters.
edit: I get it now, what they needed to do was write this whole thing, but without Gaal in it, like the characters are chasing her to untangle the mystery of the second foundation, and they only see her in glimpses from the past. It’s the only way to make that character work, because seeing her in action just makes her a big floppy mess. You can’t have a magical clairvoyant god-character who seems to be having a breakdown every 5 seconds and acting with no reason that everybody follows without question, that’s just weird.