Seldon Crisis

cover art: Michael Whelan

Here on this blog page I comment on the second half of Season One of Apple TV's Foundation. Previously, in discussing episodes 1-5 of the series, I struggled to accommodate myself the the many changes that were made in the process of adapting Asimov's original Foundation Saga (which was crafted in printed stories published in the previous millennium) to the visual format of this new made-for-television version. However, giving Apple TV the benefit of the doubt, I want to see if this television version eventually covers the same ground as Asimov's original saga.

Ghost from the Vault. If you are not familiar with Asimov's original version of the story, I encourage you to read the seven novels that hold the entire Foundation Saga. An alternative strategy is to make use of online resources such as the Seldon Crisis Podcast. In the image to the right on this page is Michael Whelan's portrait of Hari Seldon. In Asimov's original Foundation Saga, holographic recordings of Seldon were stored inside a vault on Terminus. The first of Seldon's recorded messages was timed to be displayed 50 years after the Encyclopedists reached Terminus, at the time of the first "Seldon Crisis".

How I imagine Terminus, near
Anacreon, at the edge of the galaxy,
and the Four Kingdoms.

 Power Shift. In Asimov's Foundation Saga, the first mayor of Terminus City (Salvor Hardin) was able to play off against each other the four nearby Kingdoms of the galactic periphery. That political maneuvering by Hardin gave the First Foundation a chance to avoid being absorbed into the Kingdom of Anacreon. It also marked a shift in power from the Encyclopedists to the mayors.

Cliff Hanger.  Episode 5 of Apple TV's Foundation was presented to viewers so as to make it appear that the Encyclopedia Foundation was in imminent danger of being destroyed by "barbarian" Anacreons. However, rumor has it that show runner David Goyer hopes to be allowed to tell his Foundation story over the course of 80 episodes so nobody watching Season One of the show should fearfully fret, "Is this the end of the Foundation?" 

absurd Hollywood asteroids

 Null Field. Moving on to episode 6, we must discover how Goyer and his blaster-wielding Hardin, she of the spooky visions, will pull the Foundation's bacon out of the fire. Goyer has brought into the Foundation story many technological marvels that are being deployed in ways never imagined by Asimov. Asimov wrote his early Foundation stories before the Atomic Era and before there were digital computers and before DNA was recognized as the genetic molecule of inheritance. However, Goyer and his writers deploy DNA-detecting force fields, human cloning, a mysterious cognition-disrupting "null" field and nanotechnology.

In Asimov's Foundation Saga, atomic power was a key futuristic technology that had to be transferred from the crumbling Galactic Empire to the fledgling Foundation on Terminus. In Apple TVland, Dorwin, a spaceship commander from the Empire, holds in his body the Imperial nanotechnology that can allow access to the mysterious "ghost ship" Invictus. 

Goyer: "Gunna clone me a Cleon!"

  Empire, the White Dude. What is the amazing technology (or technologies) that will allow Apple TV's Foundation to become the most powerful force in the periphery of the galaxy? And is Goyer brewing up a lurking Second Foundation that will deploy "mentalic" powers, possibly on Seldon's home world of Helicon? I also must ask: why has Apple TV's Foundation made such a big deal out of the emperor and turned Cleon into a family of clones? I admit that Asimov never really successfully depicted the Empire as a galaxy-spanning civilization of the future. But must Hollywood punt and turn a vast assemblage of 25,000,000 planets into a single man is called "empire"? And will Pelleas Anthor magically emerge from Apple TV's Anthor Belt?

This is the "teaser" for Isaac Asimov's 1942 story that introduces the idea of Anacreons finding a "ghost ship". 

Foundation cover art: Hubert Rogers

With the world at war in 1942, Asimov was writing the adventures of Salvor Hardin, a shrewd politician and first mayor of Terminus City who managed to keep the fledgling First Foundation safe from its bellicose neighbors. Did Asimov write warfare into his science fiction story? No. In Asimov's Foundation Saga, the Encyclopedists created a scientifically literate culture on Terminus that allowed the Foundation to flourish among the petty kingdoms of the galactic periphery which had reverted to low-technology barbarism. During the second Seldon Crisis, Asimov's Hardin is over 60 years old and is not going to be having fist fights with the military commander of Anacreon. Apple TV's Salvor has a brawl with the Grand Huntress inside the Invictus. Asimov's Salvor used his control over advanced technologies to out-fox the military barbarians of Anacreon. 

interior art by Charles Schneeman

In Asimov's story, the Foundation not only repairs an old derelict Empire spaceship, but provides the worlds of the Four Kingdoms with much needed infrastructure support for hospitals, power plants and factories. But what does Apple TV's Foundation emphasize? Obviously, the old warship, because Goyer is producing Star Wars or Dune or some other blast 'em all plot line that has previously made money on the screen and can be sold to Apple TV executives, but not Asimov's story. Goyer and Apple TV are in love with violence. They can't even imagine telling Asimov's story about Hardin in which alternatives to violence are found. Apple TV's Foundation is what must be expected from the Hollywood sausage making machine and this TV show is a strange set piece that glaringly clashes with Asimov's literary legacy. Apparently the argument was made that it would be too boring for short attention span TV viewers to deal with scenes like that shown to the left, situations where rational people calmly talk to each other. Yes, Hollywood has come so very far since the pulp magazines of the 1940s. 😝

"Blood? I don't remember any blood."

 Please Sir, I want More Blood. Must Apple TV's Foundation provide television viewers with an endless stream of sickening violence? Murder an artist for reading a book, kill Seldon with a knife in the belly, murder Dorwin with a shot to the head, hang innocent diplomats, shoot a scientist's spouse in the leg, bombard innocent civilians from orbit, kill a 100,000,000 people in a terrorists attack, shoot arrows through people's necks, use your clanking robot to snap a boy's neck, etc etc etc etc.

I can't really blame Goyer for the horrific obsession over violence that exists in Hollywood. Like me, if you were to ask people about all the blood in Apple TV's Foundation, you'd be likely to hear, responses like, "Blood? What blood?" Television viewers don't even notice the violence and blood in this show because they've been completely desensitized to violence by Hollywood and have seen far worse on other shows.

Hollywood's Death Wish.

 Irony. I'd be willing to make an effort to live with the blood and violence in Apple TV's Foundation if it was actually needed in order to tell this story. However, in my opinion, going for the gore was a choice made by a few misguided folks in TV-land, a bad choice that was not needed. I'm not surprised that television viewing is in decline. What if Hollywood is like the Galactic Empire and can't see that their industry is going to collapse unless they change their ways? I suppose it is a lesson of capitalism... some folks relentlessly rode the horse and carriage industry all the way to the bottom.

mystery device behind the ear

 An Alternative. During the show, Gaal chastises Hari for breaking up her relationship with her lover and getting Raych killed. Hari reminds Gaal that she was involved in the sequence of events leading to this unexpected outcome; she made the choice to go to Trantor, knowing it would endanger her family on Synnax and Gaal told the emperor that if the emperor executed Hari then the Galactic Empire would fall quicker. There is always more than one way to look at things. Similarly, I'd like to offer my rebuttal to the idea that Apple TV's Foundation needed to include this much violence in order to keep an audience. I have to ask: why not try making an interesting science fiction story (in this case, just use Asimov's story) and in that way earn an audience? The main problem seems to be that the people in charge Apple TV's Foundation like comic book violence and don't know any other way to tell a story. It is sad. As a science fiction fan, I'd like to hear about the consciousness recording device that Raych took off of Hari's body, but instead all I got was a bunch of blood.

Episode 6.

Comic book adventure.

 Master of Cliffhangers. I suppose Goyer learned a lot from Star Wars. If your absurd plot requires that your hero make an impossible escape from a hopeless situation, sometimes you are better off not trying to put it on screen, lest your audience laugh at your show. So, after the Anacreon soldiers take control of Terminus City and throw Sal into a dungeon, viewers didn't get to see how two children break Salvor out of jail.

Then, having been sprung from jail, Sal, the peace-maker, has to destroy the Anacreon spaceships, because... plot. I thought the voice-over was saying, "Use the Force, Luke," as Sal dodged 1000 bullets while shooting down an army of Anacreon soldiers. 

spaceship fall down go boom

Conveniently, the Anacreons have stacked explosives next to their ships so that Sal's dad can walk up, detonate the explosives and destroy the Anacreon fleet. For Apple TV's Foundation nothing in the story line needs to make sense; all that counts is having a satisfying explosion or other "exciting TV moment" every 5 minutes. Sigh. One of the joys of reading science fiction stories by Asimov is seeing a logical progression of events that lead to a reasoned conclusion. Apple TV's Foundation has other goals.

Let's Examine Empire

 Prescience. Who knows what is going on with Sal in this story? Just show more bloody head shots and explosions and hope nobody notices that the "plot" makes no sense. Something makes Sal get woozy at the critical moment so that dear old dad will die and not Sal. Anyhow, we are off to find the Death Star ghost ship, Invictus. 

Nudity. One big surprise in episode 6 is that Apple TV's nudity taboo developed a small crack. We got a one second glimpse of a woman's buttocks. We also learned that the young Cleon is a natural born hunter, which may tell us something profound about Mr. Empire. But what?

How shall we define "human"?

 Reincarnation. For me, another big surprise from Apple TV's Foundation producers that arrived in episode 6 was the idea that Demerzel the robot is a devout Luminist. A key tenet of Luminism is reincarnation. One of the more amusing robot stories that Asimov wrote was called "Reason". In "Reason", a clever robot invents a new religion.  In Asimov's Foundation Saga, Daneel the positronic robot is 20,000 years old and for a short time he publicly plays the role of Demerzel. In Apple TV's Foundation, we are told that the Luminism religion is 15,000 years old. Could it be that Luminism was begun by Demerzel? Again, just like the Star Bridge, is Luminism something that can be created and controlled by Demerzel and used to contribute to the fall of the Galactic Empire? 

The other part of the reincarnation thread in Apple TV's Foundation is the ability of Salvor to experience "visions" of things that Gaal previously saw during her (Gaal's) life. Is Salvor in some sense a reincarnation of Gaal? 

Robot having a bad day.

 What would Daneel Do? In one of Asimov's positronic robot novels, Daneel has a conversation with the first telepathic robot, Giskard, in which Giskard admits to having thought of Daneel as being a human being. Also, Asimov's robots such as Daneel struggled with their programming and how to decide when they should follow either the First or the Zeroth Law of Robotics. Even if Demerzel in Apple TV's Foundation is a millenniums-old mastermind who is secretly guiding Humanity into the future, there is room for indecision and conflict in Demerzel's inner thinking and actions. 

 WWDD. What would Asimov's Daneel Do? What will Apple's Demerzel do? Stay tuned...

Kept in the dark.
Apple Spacer

 Spacers. I'm struggling to accommodate myself to the "Spacers" that have been included in Apple TV's Foundation. In Asimov's fictional universe, Spacers did not play a role in hyper-jump spaceship travel. The idea of a special creature that makes space travel possible seems to have been lifted out of Dune. Many scenes in Apple TV's Foundation don't look realistic, so one solution is to turn down the light level. Asimov's gene-modified Spacers were hermaphroditic human variants, and I wonder if he might have told us more about them had he found a way to continue his Foundation Saga beyond Foundation and Earth.

"They Said Foundation Couldn't Be Filmed, and It Still Hasn't Been" source

hey, barbarians, don't mess with Hari... get the point?

 Apple Fails Science. Foundation should be science fiction, but Doyer turned it into comic book fantasy and, sadly, Apple TV's Foundation does not make sense. This is probably Apple TV's biggest insult to Isaac Asimov, who as a scientist took pains to create science fiction stories, not comic books. So, we are told that the the Anacreons don't have faster-than-light spaceships. Now, Anacreon is 26 light years away from Terminus. We are told that Phara was a young girl on Anacreon 40 years ago when the empire blasted the planet. She grows up and becomes the commander of Anacreon's military forces. 

is Shadow Master Obrecht a robot?

 Mega Flare. Then the Grand Huntress must have packed up a bunch of arrows, gotten in her spaceship and traveled (Goyer says at half light speed) to the Terminus star system where, with her boiling anger at the emperor, she waited patiently for the Invictus to randomly jump in from across the universe. The Anthor Belt must be in the Terminus star system because within 2 weeks of the Invictus "randomly" appearing in the Anthor Belt, Phara tried to board Invictus and failed, destroyed the Imperial communications system linking Terminus to Trantor, landed her army on Terminus, captured Dorwin (who had been sent by the Emperor to investigate the communications breakdown) and used his nanobots to get into Invictus. And we still have not learned how the Vault™ got to Terminus before the Deliverance. Previously, I marveled about how the sub-lightpeed Deliverence traveled 50,000 light-years in five years. 

All the emperor's girls

So, Doyer and Apple TV fail physics and it has implications for the bogus biology of the story. The emperor has a magic force shield that somehow prevents a human body from being damaged after falling ten stories and striking the ground. The emperor's brain, in addition to not having a soul, seems to magically have no momentum. More magical biology: Dorwin's spaceship explodes and disintegrates, but Dorwin magically survives and is found laying on the ground. Does he have a personal force shield like the emperor? No, this is apparently more Hollywood/comic book nonsense, but we can't rule out that Dawn and Dorwin have SuperDuper™ medical nanites that make them hard to kill.

Episode 6 provided some more insight into the emperor's family life. Demerzel is like a mother to the Cleon clones and there is a whole harem of women available for the sexual pleasure of the clones. 

explain the genetic engineering of the Spacers, please

 Golly Mr. Science. We are also given a future technology tidbit: the memories of the harem girls are erased after they spend time with Cleon. As a science fiction fan, I'd like to hear more about futuristic technologies such as this memory erasure process. Sadly, Apple TV can't seem to spare the screen time to explain such things to viewers. I've been bored with what is on the screen for so much of this series, I wish that they had actually tried to include topics that are of interest to science fiction fans.

 Episode 7.

the ghost of a Pokémon

The more I watch the interactions of Demerzel with the emperor, the more I suspect that Demerzel can control minds as depicted by Asimov with his positronic robots Daneel and Giskard. The emperor is upset because Demerzel bowed to a Luminist, and then a moment later he seems to have forgotten the matter. Were his memories altered?

 Blood Spatter. Meanwhile, off in another absurdly high-density Hollywood asteroid belt, Luke Sal approaches the Death Star ghost ship which, although the greatest killing machine of the Empire, it just happens to have crummy defenses that Luke Sal can penetrate. Is this another "gift" from Demerzel, a hyper-jump spaceship provided to the fledgling Foundation? Who knows? Maybe after 12,000 years of the Galactic Empire there are thousands of "ghost ships" bouncing around the galaxy like prized Pokémon.

consciousness recorder

 See the Future. I'll confess that Asimov's original Foundation Trilogy did not get up to full speed until the arrival of the Mule. In Asimov's Foundation Saga, the predictions of psychohistory were correct all the way through the first few Seldon Crises. For Apple TV's Foundation, Seldon's plan was apparently derailed sooner, by Gaal's ability to see the future. We still have not learned why Raych was supposed to go to Helicon, but episode 7 suggests the possibility that Gaal, with her magical ability to see the future, can replace Raych and play a role in establishing the Second Foundation.

The interesting science fiction element that is exposed in episode 7 is a futuristic means to "record a person's conscious experiences". We are told that Seldon's consciousness was recorded and off-loaded into a spaceship's computer system after his death. 

the immortal founder

 Immortality. Also, the clone emperors constantly record their experiences and transmit them to "backup clones" that can be "decanted" and replace a killed Cleon. Dorwin has a recorder in his brain that records everything that happens to him. This technology is what allows for the electronic "rebirth" of Seldon and it is even possible to make multiple copies of Seldon's "ghost".

There is a hint in episode 7 that this unexpected future, with a Gaal who can have visions of the future, is working out better than Seldon had anticipated. The copy of Seldon on the Raven reports that there have been fewer deaths among the Foundationers on Terminus than originally estimated. Having read commentaries on future episodes, this also involves Salvor Hardin and her "mentalic" abilities, apparently inherited from her parents. However, it has not been explained how "raven" Seldon on the Raven knows what is happening on Terminus. I suppose he read the script of the show.

medical nanites?

Only in episode 9 is it revealed that there is a second copy of Seldon's "ghost" on Terminus, inside the flying Vault™. I have to wonder if these two digital "ghosts" of Seldon can communicate with each other.

When Phara cuts open Dorwin's hand, is she revealing that he has Hi Tek™ nanotechnology in his body? If these nanobots can rapidly heal someone's body, then why not provide that technology to the Imperial soldiers who go with Dorwin to Terminus? Obviously, we are not supposed to ask such questions. More importantly, it is the nanobots that will get Phara inside the Invictus.

 Episode 8.

Hugo's space walk.

  The Vision Thingy. Spock said, "In every revolution there's one man with a vision." I'm getting the feeling that in the future of Apple TV's Galactic Empire, everyone, including the robot Demerzel gets to have a vision. Folks like Salvor are special only because she gets lots of them. It looks like Demerzel is in a struggle with the emperor, perhaps trying to control his fate and the collapse of the Empire, but also struggling against her own programming.

 Stars End. In episode 8, Seldon reveals to Gaal that he wants to have a Second Foundation on Helicon. The idea that a black hole is a "star's end" state is cute, but I'm not buying the idea that you could have a habitable planet in orbit around a black hole.

 Neural Interface. I think it was stated in episode 8 that about 700 years before Seldon, the Spacers were not yet available to guide hyperspace-jump ships through the jump. Also, apparently the more modern HiTek™ gizmos like the conscious experience transmitters used by the emperor (to keep the backup clones updated) must not have been available back when Invictus was built. So at the end of the episode, we see Salvor trying to physically link her brain into the control system of Invictus. And explosions and flying fists, just so you know it was exciting.

Magical Astroids, again. Every time the viewers must be reminded that Demerzel is a robot, she has a bad skin day. 

The Invictus light show.

Every time someone has to magically get somewhere in outer space, just send them through a SuperDense Hollywood Asteroid Field™. In Episode 8, Hari and Raven must penetrate the "debris field" to get to Helicon. Gaal argues with Hari and begins a century-long space cruise in her handy-dandy and always reliable escape pod. Will Gaal end up playing a Mule-like role, continuing to mess with Hari's plan? Hugo, on his floating journey through the Anthor Belt, arrives at a handy phone booth in space and calls in the Thespis fleet which apparently hangs out in the Belt waiting for such a call. 

a bloody mystery

Being there. Rushing in through the asteroids that were previously almost too closely packed to allow human bodies to slip through, the Thespis ships arrive at the Invictus just in time to accomplish nothing, but we got the number of union specified explosions for the episode! In episode 9, we learn that the Thespis fleet just needs to be there.

Magical Null Field. The magical null field of the Vault™ continues to expand, which might conveniently cause the Anacreon soldiers on Terminus to loose control of the perimeter barrier that they are using to hold the people of Terminus prisoner.

Hari's Resurrection

 Episode 9. Now the magical null field has grown larger, so as to incapacitate everyone on Terminus, but it is a nice warm day so nobody freezes to death while they lay on the ground unconscious.

The Crisis of Plot Absurdity. After Salvor spends several episodes "solving problems" with her fists and a blaster, we finally see her years before, as a child, learning from her father the idea that "violence is for incompetents". After killing the Grand Huntress, Sal can then magically get the people of Thepsis and Anacreon to end their centuries of conflict.

Everyone gather around the Prime Radiant and sing Kumbaya. Salvor uses the Prime Radiant like a magic wand to turn off the null field and then a copy of Hari pops out of the Vault™. With Hari resurrected, now Anacreon, Thespis and Terminus can unite to start a new civilization at the edge of the galaxy.

Miss Honeypot the gardener (Azura).

 Highly Contrived. The "plot" of this episode was so full of unbelievable/miraculous events that I suspect the null field scrambled the brain function of the writers and crew making Apple TV's Foundation. 

Comicbook Adventure. The whole Hugo magically spacewalking through the asteroids sequence is just as silly as Gaal bouncing around the universe in her cryopod. Episode 10 is called "The Leap", but that term seems to be the description of Hugo's magical ability to jump from place to place through the Anthor Belt.

When you need to magically make Hugo and the Beggar and the Thespian fleet arrive at Terminus, the writers introduce the idea that everything nearby the Invictus is simply sucked through hyperspace along with the jumping spaceship. 

I can't watch.
Please make it stop.

 Hollywood Logic. And yes, when traveling through hyperspace you can't survive unless you are carefully made unconscious, except for all the people who were not carefully made to be unconscious before this jump. None of this comicbook adventure makes any sense, but the folks at Apple TV think it makes great television. For me, as a science fiction fan who can't turn off my brain, it is painful to watch. All the talk in this episode about how people need to use logic and not emotions should have been applied to the creation of the show's plot.

More Clones Please, or Fighting Clones with Clones. The whole plot thread about Cleon Clones not being genetically identical because conspirators have been secretly altering the clone's genes seems absurd. The show previously introduced the fact that DNA scans can be made instantly, but now, because... plot... the genetic variations in the clones are never noticed. Is there some way to make sense of this Dawn-dates-Azura 💕 thread in the show? Maybe this is simply our way of finding out that Demerzel always had a long range plan for how to put an end to the clone dynasty, just at the right time, as the Galactic Empire was made to collapse. 

The Cleon art history project... may the Bird
of Paradise teach a valuable lesson to
the young grasshopper.

 Bad Choices. In Asimov's Foundation Saga, an unhappy palace gardener kills the emperor. I always felt that the assassination of the emperor was one of the more absurd and contrived parts of Asimov's Saga. Rather than avoid silly and contrived plot elements, the writers for Apple TV's Foundation seem to have made a big effort devise an even more absurdly contrived conspiracy to replace the emperor with a cloned copy who is a rebel trying to end the clone dynasty.

Speaking of contrived... In episode 9 we finally learn why Apple TV's Foundation has the elder clones endlessly painting the palace. That was all a teaser for using the palace paintings to trick Dawn into running away and leading Dusk to Azura's co-conspirators.

If we walk into the light will
we finally get out of Season One?

 Sciensy. Dawn has defective cones and color blindness. But he can correct the defect by wearing two magic brain prosthetics on his temples. I wish I could use this kind of technology to correct for the inability of Apple TV's Foundation writers to write a coherent science fiction plot.

There, there... it's almost over darling...
why not take a shower and get the bad
stink of Season One off of you?

 Mercifully Season One is almost over. Now we just need to find out how Sal got her magical powers and abilities from the Galactic Spirit. Having read a summary description of episode 10, I already know that Salvor is the daughter of Gaal and Raych. What other "big reveals" await in episode 10?

 Episode 10.
Demerzel ripping her skin off was a disgusting ending to Season One. I'm not sure that it does any good to think about how Asimov wrote the Demerzel character; the TV show seems to have taken robot technology off in its own direction.

After an emotional rant about how she hates being lied to, Sal's mom finally tells her daughter the truth: that her biological parents were Gaal and Raych. HiTek™ Terminus City in the background, ready to build jump ships.

 Second Foundation. Are Gaal and Salvor the beginnings of the Second Foundation? Will they fly the Beggar to Helicon and work with a copy of Hari to establish a Second Foundation composed of people with the magical mentalic ability to predict the future? Will we ever get an explanation of how Helicon can exist as an inhabited world in orbit around a black hole?

Sorry, but I'm not buying the whole Invictus can make a megaflare to hide us from the empire idea. But because Captain Hugo says it will work, we have to go along with it. 

Phara makes peace with Terminus.

In Asimov's Foundation Saga, because the Encyclopedia Foundation was a center for science and technology, the First Foundation not only had all the technology of the Galactic Empire, but was also able to start making new technological advances such as atomic power sources that were much smaller than what the old Galactic Empire had. According to Asimov, it was the lack of certain metals at the rim of the galaxy that led to the development of miniaturization of spaceship and shield technologies.

you call that an explanation?

 Poly Wants Some Answers. There's an amusing scene in episode 10 where after the adults are all done speaking, a couple of the dismayed kids on Terminus demand some answers. I suppose we will again see Poly, Keir, Gia and Laylo in Season Two.

In Apple TV's Foundation, just as soon as Terminus has the Invictus, they can start manufacturing new hyperspace jump-drive spaceships. 

how Hari used math to predict the location of the Invictus

There was some silliness in episode 10 about how Hari had been able to use mathematics to predict the "random" hyperspace jumps of the Invictus, so that's why the First Foundation had to be located on Terminus. We got no explanation of what the SuperSecret™ technology hidden inside hyper-jump spacecraft is, something that you can just look at and then you suddenly become able to build new jump ships. Never mind that up until this point, civilization on Terminus has been made to look like a bunch of people living in tents in the wastes of Iceland, their one sub-light speed spaceship having been decommissioned, now they can start cranking out new jump ships in their non-existent factories.

Hari's magic reincarnation pill.

 The Magic Pill. We have to wait to find out what two electronic Hari copies will be doing in their spare time. Apparently it is a mistake to assume that the two ghosts of Hari were made in the same way. Hari1 on Helicon is an electronic artificial intelligence. In episode 10, viewers are told that just before dying, Hari swallowed a magic nanobot pill that during the voyage of Hari's coffin to Terminus transformed his coffin into the magical Vault™ and reconstituted Hari's mind into a new artificial body that we see walking around on Terminus. We were fed some mumbo-jumbo about how the artificial Hari consciousness took 50 years to be reconstituted inside the Vault™. 

Gaal returns home.

 Water World. In all of Season One, we still got no explanation of how the Vault™ generates the magical null field. 

Meanwhile, on Synnax, I was expecting Gaal to return home and be proclaimed the mystical "Seer" who has awakened. Sadly, it appears that human civilization on Synnax has been destroyed by catastrophic sea level rise. 

We must boldly move on-wards to Season Two, but I fear none of the nonsense of Season One will ever be explained and new travesties of technological implausibility await us. 😞

Next: my conclusions about Season One; is Apple TV's Foundation successfully capturing the essence of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Saga?