Shadows in the Math

All but one of the major players is now on the move, plus a revisit from Kalle to Hari, to whisk him off to....well, I have a hunch.

Bayta and Taron rock up and show us that it is not just Brother Day that is decadent and indifferent - so naturally they get press ganged to help suss out The Mule.

Whoever thought to cast Troy Kotsur as Preem deserves a pay raise, given that we know much earlier than in the books exactly who he is - and that's just fine, thanks to this inspired choice.

Gaal is all grown up now - not the callow youth lured from a doomed world, but a powerful mentalic and psychohistorian. I can't help but suspect that the Three Gaal Trick will prove significant at some point... (And nice to see Thalis given a break-neck maturation process as we are brought up to speed. Continuity FTW!).

Even the most dull-witted NTBer must grasp that this was never a show about brainy people discussing big things, while everything important happens somewhere else, and that it was the ideas and their implications Asimov was interested in.

Rich, complex storytelling that is so much more than a puzzled to be solved - if you have seen any SF with telepathy or telekinesis then it owes a debt to Asimov. And - just like he did with the Three Laws - he explored implications, never just using it as a plot device. What if someone, instead of being measured by the model, can *shape* the model - but more to the point, what might that mean for identity?

Every single character struggling with their identity - except *that* one, and if that doesn't end up being important I'll eat my hat.

Now, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

An excellent cast with superb story telling. Foundation is classic sci-fi spanning many thousands of years. It's a huge task to bring the story to life on screen but they have done a fantastic job. It's taken a while to build the story and establish the characters but now everything is coming together. I find myself caring about the characters. And counting the days to the next exciting episode. Even if you haven't read any of the books you get a meaningful understanding of the foundation universe. It's not a show where you can watch a hand full of episodes and really appreciate just how good it is. But watch it from the start and it's addictive. Exciting, involving and epic.

I can't possibly be the only one who sees how disjointed, unintelligible, poorly written, overly dramatically acted this show is? I tend to go for stuff Espenson produces, music Bear makes, shows Harris is in, what are they doing, why is this happening? Somehow Asimov's source books come across as coherent and the dialog flowing compared to this show. The interesting sci-fi idea of psychohistory while of course speculative in the books nonetheless was explored in interesting depth both through exposition as well as story, but this show just has utterly lost it, no depth, no story, no characters worthy of interest, basically just getting death-stars and Jedi retreads to fill out the lack of ideas and story.