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to quote Lord Acton, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." The paternalism (separately) of the Second Foundation and Daneel mark them, in my eyes, as the villains of the overall saga.
I dunno. Studies show that whether people use power for good or ill is contingent on their pre-existing character, so that only the people predisposed to corruption would use power corruptly. Stories like "Evidence" argue that a Three Laws robot is intrinsically incapable of corruption, since they would always put the good of others (or in Daneel's case, the good of humanity as a whole) over their own self-interest.
Although one could fairly argue that a Zeroth-Law willingness to sacrifice individuals for the sake of some statistically calculated "greater good" for humanity in the long term is a form of corruption, particularly if one individual takes that responsibility onto themself without any checks on their power or judgment. That was what Acton was really writing against, the existence of offices or institutions that are presumed to be infallible and thus have no restrictions on their authority.
But really, the overall politics of the Foundation books are problematical, since they basically take it as a given that an authoritarian empire is necessary for the good of humanity, and democracy doesn't even seem to be considered as an option.
what an interesting episode on so many levels and lots of surprises... hope the conclusions are just as good as the build up.
Loved Seldon seemingly getting one over the Mule
I am still unsure as to what or who Vault-Seldon actually is or isn't though.
Guessing the "searching" robot head on the stick and the Song lady will somehow be involved to free Demezel from the Emperors programming shackles - whether Day's around for it or not. Despite what Day did to her. Don't think we've seen the last of this Day yet either.
Gaal doing the smart move to cut ties and location for Foundation 2. Now I hope the Pritcher thing isn't drawn out. I can see that drama/betrayal/broken hearts coming. Still think he's been partially turned already by the Mule.
Oh hello half of Dawn... nice twist, it wasn't by Demezels hands and a new acceleratec copy as I thought, but rather the "spaced" one. These 3 Cleons are just interesting fellas and characters.
Was Ms. Mallow aka "Beta?" lady mind controlling the Mule to stop him from torturing Dawn??!! Is she secretly
He's an AI copy of Seldon's mind, as I recall. Pretty straightforward. It's an elaboration on the concept from the book, where Seldon just left holographic recordings to play at scheduled dates, with everyone being surprised when his recording about the Third Crisis made no mention of the Mule or any of the events he'd caused.
Anyway, it's weird that the Empire considers robots extinct but isn't fazed by the existence of a sapient AI. I guess that's because it's a copy of a living person's mind rather than a synthetic intelligence.
Guessing the "searching" robot head on the stick and the Song lady will somehow be involved to free Demezel from the Emperors programming shackles - whether Day's around for it or not. Despite what Day did to her. Don't think we've seen the last of this Day yet either.
I'm surprised Demerzel didn't pick up its signal as soon as it tried searching. I guess it's too deep in the bowels of Trantor for the signal to reach.
Meanwhile, we learn that the reference to Daneel Olivaw wasn't a throwaway, but an important plot point. And Day confirms Demerzel had a different face as Daneel, so there goes my idea of casting Laura Birn in a Caves of Steel adaptation.
She didn't cut ties with the Second Foundation, she had them evacuate the planet with her.
I just realized that having the First Speaker communicate through sign language is kind of a riff on the books, where the Second Foundation communicated mentally and didn't speak aloud to each other.
Yeah, it didn't feel right that he was dead after getting sucked out the airlock. If there's no body, assume they aren't dead. Although I wonder why Demerzel lost touch with his nanites, and why they didn't heal his injuries.
Bayta is not a Mentallic. She's just a formidable personality. The show is adapting her part of Foundation and Earth pretty closely, and Mentallics besides the Mule weren't introduced until later in the series.
In the books, the couple is named Toran and Bayta Darell, and Bayta is the one descended from Hober Mallow, though her maiden name is unestablished. I don't know why they inverted it for the show.
This week's episode was potent, but I'm annoyed by the black-hole superweapon that can apparently fire an FTL beam across interstellar distances. Although the shot of the Zephyr planet's destruction kind of looked like maybe the weapon was hyperspace-jumping and then firing? It was very unclear. I'm not sure it would be possible to jump a black hole through hyperspace.
Hmm... They did say that the weapon makes use of the ergosphere of a black hole -- the region of spacetime dragged around by its rotation so that the spacelike and timelike axes are inverted, which according to Frank Tipler would allow closed timelike curves, i.e. time travel. So perhaps the idea is that the beams are actually traveling far enough back in time to compensate for the travel time to their targets -- which is basically how the Darths and Droids webcomic rationalized Starkiller Base's interstellar beam in its adaptation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Only one episode left now. I really hope Day manages to free Demerzel. Or even that she manages to free herself, given the new possibilities she's discovering.
This week's episode was potent, but I'm annoyed by the black-hole superweapon that can apparently fire an FTL beam across interstellar distances. Although the shot of the Zephyr planet's destruction kind of looked like maybe the weapon was hyperspace-jumping and then firing? It was very unclear. I'm not sure it would be possible to jump a black hole through hyperspace.
Hmm... They did say that the weapon makes use of the ergosphere of a black hole -- the region of spacetime dragged around by its rotation so that the spacelike and timelike axes are inverted, which according to Frank Tipler would allow closed timelike curves, i.e. time travel. So perhaps the idea is that the beams are actually traveling far enough back in time to compensate for the travel time to their targets -- which is basically how the Darths and Droids webcomic rationalized Starkiller Base's interstellar beam in its adaptation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Only one episode left now. I really hope Day manages to free Demerzel. Or even that she manages to free herself, given the new possibilities she's discovering.
You are way overthinking it, i doubt the writers put as much thought into that weapon as you did in your posting
The show is at an intriguing place by following its own path and "very" loosely following the original story. Next week should be a hardcore twist episode as much should be revealed ( unless the writers pull the rug out from under the book readers and go their very own way).
I only wonder if they'll resolve the Mule storyline next week or extend it into a possible 4th season in their own way, we'll see.
This is an adaptation of an Isaac Asimov classic, not some brainless piece of fantasy claptrap, so no, I'm not overthinking it. It should be held to the standards of plausibility that Asimov himself, probably the greatest popular science educator of his generation (or certainly the most prolific), would have expected. He took his share of liberties in his fiction with things like psychic powers (no doubt to please John W. Campbell) and black-box hyperdrives, but he wouldn't have just ignored something as basic and well-understood as the speed of light (which is why hyperdrive was needed in the first place, obviously). Mostly this is a very smart and effective show, but when it takes this kind of lazy fantasy approach to the laws of physics, it demeans its source material.
While we're at it, I don't acknowledge the concept of "overthinking." The word means nothing to me. Writing and creativity are about thinking. That's how it's done. It's like telling a sprinter to slow down.
This is an adaptation of an Isaac Asimov classic, not some brainless piece of fantasy claptrap, so no, I'm not overthinking it. It should be held to the standards of plausibility that Asimov himself, probably the greatest popular science educator of his generation (or certainly the most prolific), would have expected. He took his share of liberties in his fiction with things like psychic powers (no doubt to please John W. Campbell) and black-box hyperdrives, but he wouldn't have just ignored something as basic and well-understood as the speed of light (which is why hyperdrive was needed in the first place, obviously). Mostly this is a very smart and effective show, but when it takes this kind of lazy fantasy approach to the laws of physics, it demeans its source material.
While we're at it, I don't acknowledge the concept of "overthinking." The word means nothing to me. Writing and creativity are about thinking. That's how it's done. It's like telling a sprinter to slow down.
You are overthinking it in the way that this is 99% a story device, a McGuffin. It served its story purpose and will likely never be a factor again.
This is not the Death Star that has a central role in the story around which everything revolves, this had a clear story purpose and once it has served the story and it moved on it will rarely or never be spoken of again much like the Invictus from the previous season that only was name dropped one again this season. This is a show invention and is not present in the books.
I find it also curious how you as a writer fail to distinguish modern SF TV/movie writing from actual hard Science Fiction literature. The former couldn't care less about hard science facts, they use cool sound names and concepts like black hole and give it a fancy name and completely butcher the physics behind it to serve the story and give some eye spectacle if they can.
Hard SF writers do care about the physics as they are understood at the time of writing and try to incorporate and work their story within the confines of science to make it more believable - Science Fiction was always story wrapped in science but even then there's the pulp genre of it that tended to use that very loosely and from which most of modern SF entertainment takes its inspiration.
This show is entertainment and space opera at best, it is not hard SF and in my opinion you are giving it too much thought.
The series has shown three or four different methods of FTL travel, and demonstrated FTL communication is ubiquitous. It's never concerned itself too much with nuts and bolts (I'm still not sure exactly how the "slow ship" to Terminus actually got to Terminus, if it had some non-wormhole FTL, or if it took jumpgates (which we didn't even hear about until this season) and had to do the last few lightyears at sublight, or what). If the Novacula's means of operation isn't going to come up (like, in order to mitigate it or destroy it), it's probably not going to be explained, any more than the cobalt spike was (beyond the historical allusion to cobalt being proposed as an additive to make nuclear weapons even worse).
The series has shown three or four different methods of FTL travel, and demonstrated FTL communication is ubiquitous. It's never concerned itself too much with nuts and bolts (I'm still not sure exactly how the "slow ship" to Terminus actually got to Terminus, if it had some non-wormhole FTL, or if it took jumpgates (which we didn't even hear about until this season) and had to do the last few lightyears at sublight, or what). If the Novacula's means of operation isn't going to come up (like, in order to mitigate it or destroy it), it's probably not going to be explained, any more than the cobalt spike was (beyond the historical allusion to cobalt being proposed as an additive to make nuclear weapons even worse).
I'm aware that the show has played fast and loose with physics all along, and that is exactly what I am criticizing it for. It's the one thing about this show that does a disservice to the source material, when so much else about it is excellent.
Besides, when Star Wars, a franchise that's never pretended to be anything but pure fantasy, had a weapon that could fire across interstellar distances, fandom criticized it ferociously for the sheer nonsensicality of it. So it seems bizarre to hold a work like Foundation to lower standards.
The series has shown three or four different methods of FTL travel, and demonstrated FTL communication is ubiquitous. It's never concerned itself too much with nuts and bolts (I'm still not sure exactly how the "slow ship" to Terminus actually got to Terminus, if it had some non-wormhole FTL, or if it took jumpgates (which we didn't even hear about until this season) and had to do the last few lightyears at sublight, or what). If the Novacula's means of operation isn't going to come up (like, in order to mitigate it or destroy it), it's probably not going to be explained, any more than the cobalt spike was (beyond the historical allusion to cobalt being proposed as an additive to make nuclear weapons even worse).
asimov was never that concerned about how ships moved about, as time moved along, some out the outer worlds, cut off from Trantor and the empire, had coal fuelled space ships.
and pretty sure there were no computers for navigation - just large plotting tables as ships and aircraft would have used at the time the short stories were first written (starting in 1942 according to wikipedia so just before the dawn of computing though we know as the Foundation trilogy came out in the early 50s obviously no re-writes before publication).
asimov was never that concerned about how ships moved about, as time moved along, some out the outer worlds, cut off from Trantor and the empire, had coal fuelled space ships.
No, they didn't. The reference in Foundation was to "the cities of Anacreon [being] warmed by the burning of coal and oil" because they'd lost the expertise to build nuclear reactors. The book didn't specify what powered their ships. But hyperdrive was generally portrayed in the series as something easy to use without demanding a lot of power.
and pretty sure there were no computers for navigation - just large plotting tables as ships and aircraft would have used at the time the short stories were first written (starting in 1942 according to wikipedia so just before the dawn of computing though we know as the Foundation trilogy came out in the early 50s obviously no re-writes before publication).
Which is beside the point. I'm talking about the portrayal of something moving faster than light through normal space. Asimov made it quite clear in literally the very first scene in Foundation that that couldn't happen:
"The Jump remained, and would probably remain forever, the only practical method of travelling between the stars. Travel through ordinary space could proceed at no rate more rapid than that of ordinary light... and that would have meant years of travel between even the nearest of inhabited systems."
for plotsake...
convenient how Pritcher stumbles into Gaal... and how they conveniently meet Mr. Mallow - who conveniently is also reunited with the MIA Magnifico, all conveniently end up in the same Mule "survivor camp"...
Dusk pushing the button(s) three times... the foundation lady ambassador's words were on point.
Siddig is back as the Seldon/Psychohistory professor and we get to see Gaal talk with Vault AI Seldon. Interestingly Vault AI Seldon wants a body, like the "real" Seldon got earlier in the series from the mysterious prime radiant lady - who's also somehow connected to Demezel story arc.
Guessing the "searching" robot head on the stick and the Song lady will somehow be involved to free Demezel from the Emperors programming shackles - whether Day's around for it or not. Despite what Day did to her. Don't think we've seen the last of this Day yet either.
Yay, the Song lady helped Day (for her robot believs and Dezemezel) .
Day seemingly has found "daylight" and wants to free Demezel or redeem things somewhat with her.
the AI Seldon and Empire/Demezel/Robots story arcs are much more intersting than the Mule one to me. Hope the Mule one doesn't drag into a potentianl next season.
Ms Mallow/Bayta - despite me now knowing a bit more - remains mysterious still, omninus look on ther face.
Magnifico says he loves Bayta, uses the "I've never felt such love" people use about The Mule, than Gaal sees The Mule in his mind holding a knife to him. What could this possibly mean?!?! (t's Bayta she's the Mule. I'm not complaining, it's fun.)
Magnifico says he loves Bayta, uses the "I've never felt such love" people use about The Mule, than Gaal sees The Mule in his mind holding a knife to him. What could this possibly mean?!?! (t's Bayta she's the Mule. I'm not complaining, it's fun.)
with largely never seen the sort of the behaviour from Dusk so it's easy to that in years gone by he was Day and we're all familiar with his behavior (well until this incarnation went hippy).
with largely never seen the sort of the behaviour from Dusk so it's easy to that in years gone by he was Day and we're all familiar with his behavior (well until this incarnation went hippy).
Well, in theory, all three Cleons at any given time are essentially the same person, yet in practice every one is an individual. So there's no consistent standard for what makes a Dawn, a Day, and a Dusk different from each other. One Day is going to be different from the next Day, yet in some ways they're all the same person when push comes to shove -- all equally ruthless and narcissistic, so that once you start believing any one of them is decent or sympathetic, they do something horrible.
Anyway, though Lee Pace gets all the press coverage, to me there's no doubt that Terrence Mann is easily the most brilliant actor of the three Cleons.
