Foundation Season 3 Episode 5 turn this whole thing into one giant mind bender that left me questioning every about who is trying to help who?, I mean they took the whole chess game metaphor and cranked it up to 11 where Gaal is basically playing with human lives like they are just numbers on a calculator, I only wonder if at some point in time life will become just that, I know now days we can say it is but I think not yet at the levels of this series. The whole episode is built around Gaal manipulating Brother Dawn into creating this massive trap around Kalgan, convincing him that surrounding the planet with Imperial battleships will contain the Mule when really she wants the entire fleet wiped out. The girl straight up orchestrated genocide to weaken the Empire and strengthen Foundation, that is some cold calculation right there that makes you wonder how far she has traveled from the innocent mathematician from Season 1, I have just started watching Season 1. Dawn thinks he is making independent decisions and doing the right thing by forming this enclosure with the council, meanwhile Gaal is pulling his strings like he is a puppet, the manipulation game is strong with this one. The crazy part is how they use the Empires own jump gate technology against them, turning their faster than light travel into a delivery system for this thing called a cobalt spike weapon that just erases the entire Imperial fleet in seconds. You watch these thousands of ships move into position thinking they are setting up containment when really they are just making themselves sitting ducks for slaughter, the visual of all those battleships getting obliterated was sick, there is no dramatic explosions or anything, they just disappear like they never existed, the whole act make the effects unnecesary at all.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804484/
- Platform: AppleTV+
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At this point the Foundation has evolved from this hopeful thing about preserving knowledge into something much darker and more ruthless, Gaal went from being this gentle scientist who wanted to save civilization to someone willing to sacrifice entire planets for what she believes is the greater good, take in consideration that there are no guarantees so this are HUGE risks Gaal constantly takes, sounds irrational to be honest. That transformation feels earned through time but also pretty disturbing when you think about the mathematics of it all, she talks about individual lives being variables in larger equations and you can see how far removed she has become from caring about actual people, she even tells this to Pritcher straight to his face when he ask her to run away with him. The episode does a great job showing this through Dawn who did believe he is doing the right thing while being completely manipulated, his character represents the tragedy of good intentions being twisted by people who think they know better, after all who can guarantee Gaal is right?, have she been right a couple of times yes but she is predicting the infinite future when she have all this blur visions. Brother Day is still spiraling into madness while Brother Dusk seems lost in his own little world of traditions and ceremony, meanwhile Dawn is the only one who appears to have any kind of desicions over his life but even that turns out to be an illusion. The Empire is basically a zombie at this point, still moving around and going through the motions but already dead, they just dont know it yet and Gaal is the one holding the knife waiting to finish the job. The political maneuvering between all these factions gets complex fast, you got different groups playing long term games that span decades while individual characters think they are making choices when really everything was planned out years in advance, but there is something none of them know and Brother Dusk is the key to all of it.
The technical stuff in this episode was solid as hell, the way they showed the cobalt spike weapon working was scary, like watching an entire civilization get erased with the push of a button. The jump gate technology being turned into a weapon is such a clever concept, taking something that enables exploration and turning it into a tool for massive destruction, its like turning highways into missile launchers which is a pretty dark metaphor for how technology can be perverted. The space battles in Foundation have always been more about strategy than spectacle but this episode found a good balance, especially with those fleet formations around Kalgan where you could feel the tension building as all these ships moved into position. Even though the script might not always be at its A game, the visual quality is almost on every episode specially with such events like the Cobalt Spike, the way they showed the destruction, there is something terrifying about watching thousands of ships just vanish without any sound or drama, just gone like they never mattered. Hull and other characters keep stepping up, showing sides of themselves that we have not seen before while the enigmatic Magnifico Giganticus becomes more central to everything going on.
But the real meat of this episode is the character development, especially for Gaal who has basically completed her transformation from idealistic scientist to ruthless strategist willing to do anything to ensure survival. When she talks about the necessity of sacrifice and how the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, you can see how psychohistory has warped her thinking until individual lives become just data points in her calculations, I have never seen such concept taken to the extreme into a TV series, mostly across time, she had hundred of years to give this a thought and actually never change or imagine she was wrong, kinda Thanos way of thinking. Hari Seldon continues pulling strings from beyond the grave but even his psychohistory cant account for wildcards like the Mule who operates outside normal patterns of human behavior, creating chaos that no one can predict or control. The episode raises serious questions about Demerzels stability as she gets lost deeper into emotional drama I never thought her character would have, she is a robot making her reactions even more unpredictable and dangerous, its weird she have not snap and killed anyone yet, this is just half way of the season and feels like the end with all the chaos and unfolding crisis shows how complex the entire survival aspects it considering its literally the continuation of human civilization.
Going int to end, you think Dawn is coming back through the airlock after everything that went down, Demerzel shows up instead with that line about 300 years that changes everything. The look on Gaals face when she realizes the robot has been playing an even longer game than her was priceless, these two have been circling each other for three seasons and now they are finally face to face with all their cards on the table, although the only true immortal here is Demerzel. The whole cliffhanger works perfectly, making you realize that Demerzel has been orchestrating events from way further back than anyone imagined while Gaal thought she was the mastermind givin way more context to episodes from even season 1, and Gaal thought she was the only one taking risks for the survival of the Foundation but it ends up that Demerzel had the same intentions but for the Empire. Episode gets a solid 87.5/10 from me, the political drama aspect was tight as hell, the action sequences delivered when they needed to and very smooth too, and that ending left me wanting more immediately, lucky me I can since Im only half way and the series already ended irl. Gaals choices without making excuses for the genocide she orchestrated shows how mature this series has become, its not afraid to show the dark side of trying to save civilization when the cost might be higher than anyone wants to pay.
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