{"id":150142,"date":"2025-08-16T09:28:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T09:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/150142\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T09:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T09:28:10","slug":"foundation-season-3-episode-6-recap-the-shape-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/150142\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Foundation’ Season 3 Episode 6 Recap: “The Shape of Time”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleon I-XXV are far from the first emperors to grace the small screen with their purple presence. The 1976 BBC costume drama I, Claudius<\/a> \u2014 a direct antecedent to and influence on every show involving squabbling family dynasties you\u2019ve ever seen since, from actual Dynasty<\/a> to The Sopranos<\/a> to House of the Dragon<\/a> \u2014 featured the sonorous Brian Blessed in the role of Augustus Caesar, first Emperor of Rome. The show\u2019s director, Herbert Wise, advised the actor to play Augustus as just a regular guy, arguing that everyone else\u2019s reactions to him would show the audience just how important he really is.<\/p>\n

The secondary effect, of course, is to convey the idea that on some fundamental level, the most powerful man on the planet has no idea how he comes across to other people. This, as we\u2019ve learned, is a peril of unlimited power: The world and the people in it warp themselves to fit your whims. If no one checks you, no one thwarts you, no one corrects you, no one tells you you\u2019re wrong, pretty soon you\u2019ll be living in a world one step removed from reality. That\u2019s all well and good as long as you\u2019ve got the money and power to ensure no consequences ever befall you. Take that away? Put your average billionaire or GOP politician on a street corner with just enough money for an Uber and Chipotle? They\u2019d die of starvation within two hours, somehow.<\/p>\n

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Pleasant fantasies of karmic retribution for our current tech-fascist overlords aside, Foundation<\/a>\u2019s version of Augustus, Brother Day, finds out the limits of his charm in this episode. Having successfully escaped the confines of the palace and gone undercover in the deep subterranean algae-farming undercity called Mycogen, he tracks down his mindwiped girlfriend Song in her lovely apartment. (Its giant pitcher-plant lamps look like something you\u2019d see in a Zelda game.)<\/p>\n

Song\u2019s brain hasn\u2019t been completely erased, it turns out: She still knows she\u2019s a palace courtesan, she still recognizes Empire when she sees him, and she still knows that getting your memories of your time with the Cleons erased is part of the deal. Her only question is why she was kept on as his companion for so much longer than the one standard night, but she\u2019s been willing to flatter herself with the explanation that she\u2019s just that damn good.<\/p>\n

Well, she is, Day admits, but that\u2019s not why he\u2019s there. It wasn\u2019t sex that linked them, not in the end \u2014 it was love, real love. Day offers her her memories back in the form of a thumb drive that can restore them to her brain, and he keeps insisting even when she tells him there\u2019s no way she could have ever loved him. He even drops the fact that she\u2019s met one of the robots she and her correligionists secretly worship to sweeten the pot. Wouldn\u2019t you want to remember that?<\/p>\n

Nah. Song, whose full name is Songbird-17, calls for backup in the form of\u2026her wife, Oceanglass-49 (Laura Berlin), who zaps the hell out of Day. He ought to have listened when Song told him there\u2019s no way she could have really loved him.<\/p>\n

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Rude awakenings of this sort abound in this episode. On new Terminus, home of the First Foundation, the obnoxious Mayor Indbur allows his captives Toran Mallow, his wife Bayta, and their freed-slave friend, the psychic musician Magnifico, to put on a performance for him and the assembled leadership of the Foundation. Of course, they understand the power of Magnifico and his \u201cvisi-sonor\u201d instrument the moment he starts playing. With his help, they stand a chance against the Mule, who Toran warns them all is on his way.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s business to attend to first. The First Foundation\u2019s Vault is opening, and with it comes their chance to commune with the holographic avatar of Hari Seldon himself. Indbur, Toran, Bayta, Magnifico, the psychohistorian Dr. Ebling, and the rebel Trader leader Randu Mallow are all part of the group that enters the vault. Captain Han Pritchard, however, is pointedly left behind, Indbur having deduced that he\u2019s secretly working for an unknown party.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably for the best. Just as the assembled guests discover that this copy of Seldon has no idea who, or even what, the Mule is, the man himself hijacks the Foundation\u2019s comms and radios in to show them he\u2019s already in the process of attacking and conquering their planet. A baffled Seldon disappears and turns on the \u201cnull field\u201d that scrambles the brain of anyone approaching the vault, forcing everyone to flee.<\/p>\n

The news travels fast, especially if you\u2019re an immortal robot. Far away, Demerzel picks up on the eruption of emergency transmissions after the fall of New Terminus to the Mule. Now armed with the Foundation\u2019s whisper ships, the Mule and his forces could be at the imperial capital of Trantor any minute.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is part of the plan. (Whose plan? Who knows at this point?) When Demerzel picks up these transmissions, she\u2019s in the process of saying goodbye to Gaal Dornick, the all-important telepathic psychohistorian who\u2019s in charge of the Second Foundation. That\u2019s a rude awakening for Demerzel, who\u2019d detected anomalies in the Prime Radiant but hadn\u2019t pieced together that a third organization other than Empire or Foundation was responsible, or that its agents had special mental powers.<\/p>\n

Gaal, meanwhile, learns to her sorrow that Demerzel is a robot, a fact Hari Seldon had hidden from her all this time. Demerzel reveals that he knew it from the moment he saw her on Trantor hundreds of years ago, and that when he persuaded her that their goals of preserving Foundation and Empire were not mutually exclusive, she granted him access to her massive internal dataset to complete his calculations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now that the truth is out \u2014 and once Demerzel decides not to simply snap Gaal\u2019s neck for luring Brother Dawn and the Imperial fleet to their respective deaths \u2014 Demerzel\u2019s robotic nature makes it impossible for Gaal to share her psychic visions of the Mule. Demerzel works around this impasse by inserting thin robotic filaments into Gaal\u2019s head and pulling the information directly out of her, a painful technique she used to use on human prisoners during the great robot wars.<\/p>\n

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Does it help? Yes and no. Demerzel gets an eyeful of Gaal\u2019s recurring vision of fighting the Mule hand-to-hand, trying to keep the location of the Second Foundation a secret from him. Demerzel\u2019s able to determine that the fight takes place within the Imperial Library on Trantor itself. When she tells Gaal to push past the battle and the break in the Prime Radiant that it causes to see beyond that point in time, the two women wind up as bright blue ghost-like figures in a black void \u2014 the black hole into which we now know Gaal is destined to fall.<\/p>\n

However, Demerzel has no way of knowing if these are real visions or merely convincing hallucinations. The uncertainty, though, is enough to persuade her to let Gaal live; we\u2019ll see if the Mule\u2019s victory over the First Foundation is enough to persuade her to join forces.<\/p>\n

This is a plot-focused episode compared to its predecessors, relatively light on the sci-fi spectacle that\u2019s Foundation\u2019s hallmark. That\u2019s fine \u2014 it\u2019s good to bring things back down to earth a bit in order to advance the story.<\/p>\n

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But this is not to say it\u2019s devoid of fascinating space-opera visuals. Demerzel pulling the Prime Radiant out of herself from between her robotic cleavage is an image that probably shouldn\u2019t be as disconcertingly strange and sexy as it is. The coldwave psychedelia of their journey into the black hole is a bravura effect, reminiscent of Hari\u2019s strange fractal freakouts while trapped within the Prime Radiant last season. And I love the design of Mycogen, which blends the familiar Blade Runner vibe of a decrepit futuristic city with the art nouveau beauty of a Peter Jackson Elf kingdom for its wealthier districts. I\u2019m perpetually amazed by just how smart the design of this show is.<\/p>\n

I keep coming back to poor oblivious Brother Day, though. His is the shock of any rich and powerful person when confronted with how normal people really think about them. Don\u2019t you love me? I love me! I know it\u2019s fake with all the others, but it\u2019s real with me, right? Right? The belief of the mighty in their own irresistibility is a gap in their armor as clear and as vulnerable as the missing scale on the belly of Smaug the Golden. Great and terrible things can be done when it\u2019s exploited.<\/p>\n

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins<\/a>) writes about TV for\u00a0Rolling Stone,\u00a0Vulture,\u00a0The New York Times, and\u00a0anyplace that will have him<\/a>, really. He and his family live on Long Island.<\/p>\n

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