Foundation Episode 3

"The Mathematician's Ghost" 

This was the first episode to air wherein David Goyer didn't take part in the writing. (Olivia Purnell did the honors here. She's also written for American Gods and Y: The Last Man...neither of which I've managed to watch yet.) And Mr. Goyer won't be back as writer until the final episode of this first season (#10). Since he has been my main conduit through this series (courtesy of the most excellent Foundation podcast), it's hard not to feel a bit of regret at that. Though I'd have to admit that this episode zipped along quite smoothly, and I found it interesting. Certainly interesting enough to bring me back next week for Episode 4.

However...

I find it puzzling that in the 49 minutes running time, not a single second was actually devoted to the plot of Asimov's Foundation plot. There were a few references to Hari Seldon...though he did not actually appear...and the Prime Radiant popped out for a moment. Otherwise, it was mostly about The Cleons and Salvor Hardin and her Terminus folks. There was a little bit of judiciously presented sex, a little bit of threatened violence. But we didn't even get a glimpse of Raych and / or Gaal...which was the big cliffhanger from Episode 2. That seems like a bad idea to me. To malign Chekhov a bit, If someone picks up a loaded gun from a table at the end of episode 2, somebody better get shot at the start of episode 3.

As for The Podcast (Episode 2)...

David Goyer clarifies that The Vault we've seen in the TV+ series is analogous to the Time Vault from the books. Which certainly implies that we will be seeing Hari Seldon pop out of the thing at some point in the near future (so holographic, oh my Hari Seldon 15), doesn't it? (Or at least--keeping the lack of Raych and / or Gaal in this episode--at SOME point in the next seven episodes.)

DG also talks about the time jumps (which can be a bit extreme, and, to be honest, confusing), and he says that "...people just gotta suck it up and embrace it."  Which I guess could be seen as admirable: an artist who is committed to his vision and is not willing to compromise that vision in order to make things more accessible to his audience. It's certainly the same attitude that James Joyce had when he wrote Finnegans Wake. And there are many people who claim that Finnegans Wake is one of the greatest novels ever written. But you know...I've read Finnegans Wake. And I am a moderately intelligent, educated human being. But I got almost nothing out of the experience. So I'm wondering if a more reasonable approach might be to do what you can to make your art (or "art," if you so desire) accessible to an audience. Which doesn't mean dumbing things down or pandering...but it does mean that you shouldn't expect your audience to "suck it up and embrace it." I'd think that would be especially true in a mass media genre like television. Of course, it doesn't really matter in the long run, because if the audience can't suck it up, then they will find something else to watch, and that will be the end of that show. I'm sorry to say that I already see signs of this being the fate of Foundation. Rotten Tomatoes currently rates the series at  75% on the TOMATOMETER with 63 Critic Ratings & 64% on AUDIENCE SCORE with 233 User Ratings. There was also a review in The New York Times entitled "The Math of ‘Foundation’ Doesn’t Add Up"...nuff said? And I've read some pretty damning viewer reviews on IMdB. Speaking of which...IMDb gives Foundation a RATING of 7.6/10 which seems to be based on 8.2K reviews. Also, Metacritic gave the show a weighted average score of 63 out of 100. Put them all together and they do not spell Mother, do they?

Not much else of interest to me in this podcast, I'm sorry to say. 

But as I said, I'll be back for episode 4 next week. More than that, I'll be anxious to see it. And lest I neglect to say it, I'll echo what most reviewers...even those who really didn't like the show...have said: it looks great. In fact, I really couldn't tell if they were using green screens pretty much all the time or if they actually had some sets. So there's that.