I’m about to say the most “I’m a professional television critic” thing I’ve ever said, so please bear with me: This week’s episode of Foundation was a hell of a good time, and I have my reservations about that.
It’s not because anything in the episode (“King and Commoner”) was bad, or even just so-so. (There was some just so-so stuff in it, but not an inordinate amount compared to any other basically good show.) Nope — characters, dialogue, imagery, intrigue, cool future tech, all the stuff you’d want out of a big-budget science fiction show is there and working according to plan. If you’ve enjoyed any major space opera or SFF epic in your lifetime, this sucker was made for you…which, again, leaves me just a bit concerned.
Let’s take the Hari/Gaal/Salvor storyline as an example. Hari’s digital ghost deliberately leads this little trio to an entirely different planet than the one he’d called for, this one an abandoned imperial mine that Empire basically fed to the giant autonomous mining robots that cleaned the place out thousands of years ago. He does so acting on the apparent orders of the Prime Radiant, which for a gigantic mathematical equation sure has specific instructions for people from time to time. (Hari and Gaal get into this a bit, for what it’s worth.) He’s been told he must travel into a mountainous monument featuring a gigantic statue with an outstretched arm for his plan to work. Once there, he encounters a representation of Kalle, the mathematician who inspired his work. Gaal leaves at his insistence, and is persuaded by Salvor to just give up on this iteration of Hari entirely and set up the Second Foundation on their own. But their ship is attacked by the spider-like three-legged giant mining machines, which then race through the sand to the monument, where Gaal saves a now physical and fully alive Hari from certain death.
Okay, so. The wise old man has to travel to a desert planet (Star Wars) and pass through a secret ancient door (The Fellowship of the Ring) ascend a giant statue in the shape of a man carved from a cliff (also The Fellowship of the Ring) where he will be reborn in a new body (The Two Towers). His pals’ ship winds up in a cave where they escape just in time from giant hidden creature that tries to eat them (The Empire Strikes Back) before the creature swims through the sand (Dune) and moves like an insectoid robot (The Matrix) and shoots laser beams while mounted on three legs (War of the Worlds).
You see what I’m saying?
It’s like that pretty much across the board. Like, Foundation religious clerics Poly and Constant track down Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas) at the demands of the Vault. Hober’s a handsome fast-talking con man who nearly gets himself killed the first time we meet him before humiliating the military dictator Commdor Argo (Philip Glenister) and his comically hot right-hand woman Forcer Wallick (May Lifschitz) and making good his impossible escape. In short, Hober is straight out of the Han Solo/Madmartigan/Chris Pine in Dungeons & Dragons rascal-with-a-heart-of-gold playbook. Constant has the hots for him quite plainly, which is cute, so I hope we’ll be spared much of the standard initial-dislike maneuvering, but I’m not gonna hold my breath.
Then there’s my favorite storyline of the hour, primarily because I’m very impressed with the actor involved. Acting at her own suggestion, Demerzel travels to a grim penal colony to recruit Bel Riose (Ben Daniels), the disgraced general who was imprisoned for daring to disobey an order from Empire in battle. (He won the battle, which actually makes this worse, not better, since it shows Empire was wrong.) The tension of their meeting and Bel’s subsequent meeting with Brother Day, the striking British character actor under oodles of hair and makeup that makes him look grizzled and malnourished, the mind games about duty and honor, the profligate use of f-bombs: It’s the politicking of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon gone galactic.
But I think Ben Daniels, who goes from a hermit of the wastes to one of the handsomest men on TV with a shave and a haircut, has a great deal of screen presence as Bel, whether he’s sparring with Demerzel and Day or reuniting with his young husband Glawen (Dino Fetscher), whom he’d been told was dead the whole time he was in prison. Come to think of it, Isabella Laughland and Kulvinder Ghir have popped as Constant and Poly, too. It kinda makes you realize how underwritten Gaal and Salvor have been; had either of them been handled material this zesty last season, I think Lou Llobell and Leah Harvey could have achieved liftoff too, metaphorically speaking.
Because you can be both zesty and, y’know, kinda clichéd, as this episode proves. The lack of originality didn’t stop me from enjoying anything, though as I mentioned up top, it has me wondering what a more original Foundation might be like. I dunno, it’s tough. I think the genre-veteran chops that showrunner/director David S. Goyer and writer Jane Espenson (here writing with Leigh Dana Jackson) are crucial to why the show is as entertaining as it is, but it’s got to be hard to break out of storytelling patterns you yourself basically helped create over the past 25 years.
Again, however, this was still fun to watch! Goyer has a keen eye for ways to make the conversations that drive the show fun as visual experiences too; this review is dotted with gifs showing how interesting Foundation can be to look at when literally nothing is happening plot- or action-wise at all. For all that it borrows concepts and (in the case of that Argonath-looking statue) occasional imagery from the SFF landmarks that came before it, it’s largely doing so with a visual vocabulary all its own. The little bubble-like blips of supernova color that appear when ships jump past light speed, some of the better ship designs I’ve seen in recent memory, costumes that look both costumey and convincing, all those silhouetted shots of all those characters looking out all those viewscreens at all those vistas in clear evocation of we viewers watching this show on viewscreens of our own: Foundation looks like nothing else on television. Few shows try for that, let alone succeed.
And I don’t mean to dismiss the writing as mere pastiche or recycling. I enjoyed Bel Riose’s case for rejoining the government that destroyed him even though Empire clearly fears his strength: As the only human whom Cleon does not see as dispensable, it’s his responsibility to protect the citizens of the Empire, since Empire himself cannot and will not. Calling the execution method nearly employed on Hober Mallow “the Titan’s Prick” felt lifted from A Song of Ice and Fire in the best way — a bit of ribaldry that turns out to be just our own dirty minds reading into things. I appreciate that Constant is attracted to, not repulsed by, Hober’s swagger. I appreciate that Day is attracted to Demerzel in large part because, as Dusk jibed in the season premiere, she did change his diaper back in the day; their interaction as they watch Bel and Glawen kiss and embrace following their reunion shows he really wants her to tell him he’s a good boy as much as anything else. And whether it was in the script or not I don’t know, but the decision not to dwell on how Hari leaves no footprints and casts a faded-out shadow when he “walks” through the desert, just allowing the viewer to notice it if they happen to and not notice it if they don’t, displays the kind of attention to missable detail that characterizes the best SFF productions.
Reservations aside, Foundation is more fun to watch now than it’s ever been, losing none of its previous strengths in the process. I’ve got my doubts, but like Bel Riose, I’m gonna see this through regardless.
(This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.)
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
