Foundation - Season 1 Episode 6 - Death and the Maiden - Episode Discussion Thread [TV ONLY]

The characters of Empire (Dawn, Day, Dusk) are fascinating. I've never seen or read anything like it.

Yeah let’s first randomly kill all the townsmen and THEN ask some specific ppl with skills and hope they survived…. Same with shooting down that Imperial ship and miraculously finding ONLY the guy they seek alive… really?!

So it definitely feels like she altered the most recent Dawn in some way. Her motive being her desire to stop the dark, and her faith now teaching against stagnation.

Also the gardener is a nice character. It’ll be sad.

Lee manages to switch from a brat Emperor into an afraid brat so magnificently. Kudos for that casting.

Love everything that is happening with Brother Day and Luminism in this episode. I loved how in the scene with Demerzel and Day drilling the history of Luminism. You could really see the former Brother Dawn in him - eager to show off in front of his teacher. Looking back on that scene it’s so clear how outmatched he was by the heretical leader.

My question: does this mean that the Luminists are about to kill Day?? I feel like he might have been poisoned when he toasted the corrupt leader he tried to install. What if next episode we see Dawn rise to power with 3 trillion subjects in open revolt and without Demerzel to offer him council!

You're telling me that the Anachreons shot down that ship because they needed one specific person from that ship, who luckily was the only survivor?

Huntress: Give me your environmental, propulsion, astronautics engineers!
Also Huntress: shoot everyone on sight as you invade.... including potentially those engineers.

As usual this show does not care about logic or sane plot

I know why Lee Pace is so swole. All the workout of carrying the entire series on his shoulder.s

I started laughing when she had the heart to heart scene with her father because I knew that they were going to follow the formula of him dying in the next five minutes. The empire scenes feel so much better in comparisons. There is a feeling of whiplash jumping back and forth from the empire scenes to terminus scenes. It feels like two different shows.

Maybe it’s my own fear of heights but I was on edge the entire time dawn and garden girl were on the ledge. It was like “take your teen romance crap back inside young man” but having a cleon be different just for the empire to fall anyways deepens the tragedy. I’m looking forward to more trantor.

It feels like two very different shows between empire and terminus stuff.

empire/trantor is really good and love every minute of it terminus feels like something that'd be on syfy and gets in the way of the good stuff™

One thing that legitimately disappointed me was the Huntress gathering the intelligentsia and the 'purge' of Terminus. They made it seem like wanton killing of civilians; little to no regard. The Huntress then summons these important people and not a single one of them was part of the slaughter? That is just disappointing writing.

The Empire stuff is really interesting, but I'd be surprised if they don't resort to something predictable with Azura or whatever her name is

All the other bullshit aside, did we really need a 5 minute scene showing Hardin figuring out how to fly a fucking spacecraft for the first time and the only advice she gets is to “trust herself?” What absolute horseshit. Why is it even there? Why can’t the dude just fly the ship (just make it so she commands him to pilot or some crap) and we can skip that entirely unnecessary scene altogether?

Is the reason why Dawn tore down the old Dusk's paintings we saw earlier due to his color blindness? The hunting prowess and flowers are obvious when he states it, but the mural Dusk had was so colorful that it may have been infuriating for Dawn to see no difference with colors blending into each other. That may have been the first sign that we see of his color blindness too!

Was terrified that Dusk was going to step out of the shadows and push Azura off the ledge

Please take a step back from the ledge, Brother Dawn. I was getting serious Tommen Baratheon vibes from that whole encounter.

Somehow I feel that the imperial henchman and his cloaking ability will play an important part in the story a la Chekhov's gun.

How is it possible that the Empire portion of his show might well be the best thing on TV right now, while the Terminus portion is so glaringly mediocre!

I feel bad for the actors on Terminus, I don't think they are doing a bad job but their storyline is some mid-2000s budget scifi channel bullshit.

As always, loved the Trantor/Imperial plot, meh on the Terminus plot. Better this time, but still meh.

looks through binoculars

That doesn’t look good

I'm definitely sure about what's wrong with the Terminus scenes.

It's making Salvor - who they've made an otherwise perfectly good character for - into the super special destined destiny girl. And the Vault is going beyond being a Deus Ex Machina, it's turning into a helicopter parent. It's becoming somehow less mysterious and more banal the deeper they dig into its mystery.

Terminus should have been the back beat to the whole season. It should have been 5-10 minutes each episode, and the Foundation should have been more of a character. Salvor should have been prominent but not center stage, yet. Just icy rock colonists, scrapping to make an encyclopedia. MORE emphasis on the Seldon plan and faith surrounding it, which is present but overshadowed by the super special destiny stuff. Salvor as an outsider, who doubts the plan, but learns to trust herself - but as a simple background arc, NOT Luke Skywalker.

THEN, at the very end of the season have the entire Anacreon crisis neatly packed into 2.5 episodes where the crisis feels like a crisis. It's the culmination of 7 episodes of quick little vignettes of problems they've been facing and doubt in Hari's plan. Salvor chooses to trust herself, NOT to embrace being bestest ever, but just as a character choice. THEN the Vault miraculously does something and validates Salvor's intuition.

We also should not be left so confused about the Vault where the mystery becomes boring because it's so out there. We should get little clues that make the Vault more concrete, but its actual nature revealed at the end. Like "we've scanned it an it appears to contain data" rather than "I hallucinated I was on Trantor and it makes no sense to me either, but I feel it might mean I'm the special destiny person and I need to go with that more even though my intuition got an Imperial ship blown up". I like Salvor's explanation about why she feels they need to blow up the Anacreon destroyers, but it was way too mixed up in other information.

In other words, there's a perfectly serviceable plot here, they've just chosen to add all this baggage to it.

Salvor Hardin SHOULD be a servant of Hari Seldon's ideas, a free agent who nevertheless falls into the role the Seldon plan intended. This kind of character cannot also be Luke Skywalker whose own will to get things done and amazing specialness saves the galaxy. Hardin by plot necessity would take a backseat to forces that are larger than her. This same character they've built could have functioned fine in that role.

Gaal Dornick already exists as a perfectly serviceable special destiny person whose free will is above the Seldon plan. Whose arc is to defy the forces of destiny.

Sorry, maybe I'm missing it. It seems like Salvor should be bound by forces. But they keep telling me with exposition that she's above and beyond those forces. It's very off. I don't know why it's necessary. It takes away from the existing themes. It confuses the role of Gaal.

I’m very curious to see how the Luminism arc unfolds for Empire. The setup and character building of the heretic preacher was perfect.

I don’t know about the Terminus plot. It’s moving at a snails pace and some of the acting is pretty average. The whole Anacreon thing is boring I don’t know if it’s the writing or what.

With all that said the show is still a 9/10 for me.

It strains credulity that the Foundation would have only one environmental engineer etc. Shouldn’t there be thousands upon thousands of scientists and engineers and therefore tens (or hundreds?) of different kinds of engineers? If those 2-3 people caught some random disease and died they’d be left with zero?

its actually incredible how fucking shitty the terminus plot is and how good the emperors one is. just delete the salvor hardin plot please and do a whole show on the cleons

I think the real threat with Brother Dawn isn't so much his differences to his brothers, but the fact that the system he is within is predicated on the fact that nothing changes.

Loving the show, but the Terminus scenes are so cliched and predictable I found myself fighting the urge to fast forward to get the the Empire plot.

Can we just have a show that’s Gaal’s story, Empire’s shenanigans and none of the Terminus stuff? I feel like that’s the only part not adding to the bigger picture here.

Are we supposed to care about Gaal? Her storyline has a cliffhanger then she disappears for 1-2 episodes. This has happened twice now.

Six episodes in, I'm still extraordinarily disappointed by the Terminus scenes. The empire scenes feel like a part of a well written, thoughtful, character-driven HBO series, yet the Terminus scenes feel like network sci-fi (awfully cheesy dialogue is the thing that stands out most to me, but there are others).

There is such a gulf in talent and depth that I wish they'd just make this a more direct adaptation and focus on Empire's side of the foundation story. I think it's a super interesting concept, especially considering how the book was inspired in part by The Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire.

What the fuck is happening? (This is all show spoilers) The terminus plot line just keeps getting worse. Starting from episode 5 when they shoot down the vastly technologically superior gunship with one shot, just hoping the one guy they need stays alive. Then they blow the fence with an eyeball even though it’s been established that small size high yield explosives are very much a thing in this universe. Then they March in and just start murdering everyone for no reason… except all the foundation people who have guns are somehow spared even though they are directly threatening and are on the front lines of the battle. Later we find out they need a few scientists who they just happen to not have genocided yet. All the foundationites are way to emotionally stable for what’s going on around them. Then we have the foundation soldiers and 1 little girl somehow defeating any Anacreon soldier that dares to take them 1 on 1 or 50 on 1 or whatever. This is despite the foundationites being scientists and the Anacreons being a military society raised out of the flaming wreckage of an apocalyptic world. I swear foundation ripped off everything about the Dothraki for the Anacreons except the two things they are known for: fighting and horses. Finally we get to some weird emotional dialogue and obvious foreshadowing between salvor and her dad and then salvor and her BF. Both of whom are once again somehow still alive despite being the only people fighting back. Then a mine goes off the liquifies the ground in like a 500 meter radius. Then the dad dies, totally unnecessarily. Why didn’t she just shoot one of the mines from far away? If you can shoot heads you can shoot mines. Finally, the Anacreons stop salvors genius plot to storm a stronghold of 100+ with 2 people by… walking through the front door? Then as the Anacreons are leaving all the townspeople are gathered around like a fucking farewell ceremony?? These people just murdered like half your population. You should be crying in your homes cowering in fear.

Seriously WTF these writers need to get their shit together or I’m gonna stop watching. Do they have separate writers for trantor and the foundation. It’s two totally different vibes.

I have to assume the lazy writing will inevitably leak in the empire story line. So far we haven’t seen it because there hasn’t been any real conflict in the empire story line it’s really just been telling a story and setting up a change. It’s been beautiful but there hasn’t really been a chance for the writers to screw up yet.

Except the colorblind thing. They imply that he is better at hunting the chameleon birds because he is color blind but that’s not how that works. If your colorblind color changing still affects your vision it’s just different colors, or in extreme cases black and white(not sure if that’s actually a thing). A chameleon would still blend in with a blue wall the wall and the chameleon just might not look blue.

Salvor legit said that Hari seldon said an entire universe can hinge on an individual… which no…that’s the opposite of what he said. If he believed that he wouldn’t try to model population masses.

I may be a simple man but overall I've enjoyed it so far. It's not perfect but nothing that spoils the show outright

Why does Zephyr Halima speak with the accent, and cadence of a 1960s, suburban Dallas dinner waitress? Is this a space show or "Fried Green Tomatoes"? The only thing missing is the phrase "Mama always said..." wedged in front of all her witticisms.

This entire stupid Terminus invasion plot line could have been completely avoided if they had just hand-cuffed the Anacreon huntress with her hands behind her back so she couldn't pull her eye out.

It is absurd to me that so much of the script hinges on people making stupid decisions. It should be impossible to lose control over a single prisoner.

How the fuck is the terminus plot still moving THIS SLOW!

"The worst thing that can happen is stagnation", says a lady who wants to become the leader of a 15,000 year old religion, in a technological era where space travel exists, while still wearing robes and praying at a 10,000 year old temple.

I can give her the benefit of the doubt now because I don't know what kind of leader she will be, but it seems she's mostly talking about the stagnation of the empire, not of the religion whose stagnation predates the empire.

The scene with young Empire and the flower lady was beautiful. Wonderfully acted and felt every word.

So the Grand Huntress want to get engineers, navigators from Terminus to drive their starship. And they go around killing anyone who kind of resist? They could have killed the exact person they need. Really dumb.

People with acrophobia unite

I wonder if with current Day, Demerzel tried to change him with a nuture approach, which is why he seems somewhat different to Dusk and those that came before, and is so attached to her. Then with current Dawn she went the nature route and changed him so he's not a perfect clone.

A lot of people seem convinced that garden girl won't meet a sad end because that would be cliche...have you been watching the Terminus scenes? I'd love to be wrong but I have very little faith they won't fridge her.

Being afraid of heights I hate this episode

So they mention that this is already the first crisis that Hari predicted right? A group of around 100 fighters take one single shot at a warship that immediately breaks down and is now used to endanger the "entire galaxy". Am I the only one who thinks this is a bit unbelievable? I mean if it's this easy to bring chaos to this universe then the stakes feel pretty low overall to me.

I really do not want to take away the joy from anyone who enjoys the show but for me personally, I really hoped this would be special but now it feels like just another mediocre sci fi show that wants too much with too little trying :/

Not sure if I missed something but if Salvor is the only one who can control and fly the ship now, why didn’t she just refuse? They would have all been stranded and while people might get shot, at least it would have ended the arachians plan. The only thing I can think of is maybe she is worried the foundation would end but it’s pretty much done for at this point in the story

I personally loved the episode - I’m liking Brother Dawn much more now - I’ll have to go back and re-watch but didn’t Demerzel toy w Dawns embryo ? And then after him being born - was it Brother dusk or day who said “something’s wrong with him” ? Or something to that affect , either way definitely looking forward to the next episode to see what happens w Demerzel and Dawn

This one's a mixed episode.

• Demerzel's rationale for having a religion is strange. She seeks enlightenment, but how exactly does she expect to gain that by following a rather unremarkable religion with quite a dubious foundation myth? This to me seems like a rather strange way to add conflict between her & Day. Though I suppose as an ancient android she might later reveal that the three moons are pieces of some massive ancient thinking machine or something. Not sure if that'll be a good revelation for this show.

• I'm definitely liking the brewing battle between Day & the new space Pope. Curious to see how badly this goes for Day.

• I'm glad we're finally learning what exactly the Anacreons are planning to do. Their strategy is incredibly questionable (like what if they killed all the civilians they needed?) but I suppose it's better than nothing. It's also QUITE annoying just how fragile these spaceships continue to be though.

• Speaking of the Terminus story, I officially don't like the child actors. No idea why the show insists on keeping them around. Plus those lil non-combatant scrappers managed to take out a trained solider. Of course they did... I also remain apathetic about Hardin. She's officially a seer now? Whelp guess we'll see what they do with that I guess.

• Lastly, while I'm glad we're getting to see more Day & Dusk. I still find Dawn's attraction to a random gardener questionable. It's probably some silly teenage crush but you'd think Day & Dusk would've warned him that seriously dating someone would only get both of them hurt. And the gardener will be the one that's hurt the most.

• Last, last, note. Seems the Celons are bisexual. Guess these are the first LGBT characters we have?

they should seriously consider reworking the writers room. Empire stuff is cool, but its the B plot. I just dont care about anything Terminus related.

I like the show overall, but I feel like they have a real problem with overacting. I don't love seeing characters I am still getting familiarized with cry screaming over whatever the latest thing happening is. Everyone just chill out and let us get to know your motivations before "ACTING" so hard. I feel like Lee Pace is the only one who really keeps his cool.

Im sure this is more due to directing, but it bothers me.

I don't think the destroyed Corvettes were mentioned even once after they were destroyed, i don't even think the men killed were mentioned, i don't think the plan to destroy the foundation settlement being foiled was mentioned... yeah the stakes are written off sometimes in this series

I hate the anacreons almost as much as i hate belters.

The terminus plot line has some really lazy writing

Lots of good stuff in this episode, but also with a heaping serving of cringe.

• The Anacreons need the crew/passenger manifest, because they need a squad to pilot and operate the Invictus....but in one of the scenes you see soldiers indiscriminately shooting Foundation members at point blank range. If they're looking for very specific skillsets, how do the soldiers they're not killing off required specialists.
• The trope of the kids rescuing Salvor via "airshafts" and with a single soldier guarding Salvor.
• The Anacreons finding the captain as the LONE survivor....as he's crawling away. You'd think he would at least find somewhere to hide/take cover and fire at the enemies that killed all his crew instead of waiting until they were directly on top of him.
• The firefights are laughably bad; and the show can't figure out if they want to depict guns as energy/laser weapons, or conventional firearms; half the time you see are pew pew laser beams, and the other half they fire like 16th century muskets.
• Starships in the Empire aren't so robust; not only did one shot took down an Imperial cruiser, a bunch of landmines took out several Anacreon corvettes.
• In the last episode, Brother Day had to direct a sexy friend to move increasingly softly and slower as to get past his kinetic shields so he could enjoy simple human touch and contact; his reaction suggested that he isn't touched often. This scene implied that the shield is innate/involuntary. But we see Brother Dawn easily remove his shield as a simple wristband.
• Despite being a clairvoyant/pre-cog badass, Salvor and Hugo walk directly into a trap and are immediately surrounded by 50 Anacreons because of Plot.

The good stuff:

• I enjoy that although the Brothers are exact clones, they clearly have different personalities, and the writers have taken steps to ensure that their personalities are consistent even as they progress from Dawn to Day to Dusk. The first Brother Day we saw was a homicidal asshole, and he remains an asshole as Brother Dusk. The current Brother Day recognized that Brother Dusk was an asshole as is doing everything his power NOT to be an asshole. Brother Dawn knows Dusk is an asshole too.
• Although Halima's speech could come off as preachy, it made a lot of thematic sense in that their faith allows them to believe their souls are constantly learning and evolving, in contrast to Empire, who has the same static/stagnant soul (although as others have pointed out, perhaps Demerzel, as a practitioner of said faith, is taking matters into her own hands to effect this Empire Evolution).
• Brother Dawn's budding romance with Azura isn't too CW-ey.

Bring on Episode 7!

"HA HA I have foiled your plan by transferring control of the ship to Salvor Hardin, it only listens to her now!"

Huntress shoots Hardin's mom in the leg. "Transfer the ship control to me then".