Been catching up on movies and shows I’ve always meant to watch and never did.
Finally finished Foundation today.
I am mentally and emotionally drained. Phew. What an experience.
What an epic and wonderful piece of science fiction. The scale of the effort in this little-revered television show is amazing; the little details you don’t notice until it you really pay attention.
The moving painting, moving in scenes where it wouldn’t have mattered that it was. Hari Seldon’s lack of footprints in the desert when he walked next to Gale on the mining planet. The intricate and divergent plot lines, interweaving and intersecting across all the desperate characters timelines.
Foundation is a masterpiece of sci-fi, and Jared Harris and Lee Pace are amazing as counterpoints to each other’s ambitions.
Harris is Hari Seldon, both God and man, prophet and con-artist and true believer all wrapped into one, forcing onto a whole populace their consequences without concern for the singular. Pace is his counterpart as Brother Day, or ‘Empire,’ God and Man in his own right, believing his ambition to be his own, sadistic and cruel, yet not truly understanding his own motivations.
All good science fiction reflects and ponders the human condition and the many questions we ask of ourselves: What are we and what do we become if we no longer fear the consequences of Death? What is religious zeal when balanced between belief and faith. What is a Man in his totality? What makes a soul? How truly messy can humanity be, when love is involved and how it wrecks the best laid plans? What is a singular life worth versus the totality of humanity?
Foundation addresses all these and so much more, at a scale you can’t imagine until you watch. Trantor, the home planet of the Empire, has to be seen to be appreciated.
Bring on Season 3, and hopefully, many, many more.