The sixth episode of the third season of Foundation, “The Shape of Time,” opens with a parallelism that honestly had me screaming, because there are few things that I love more than a good mirror situation between a hero and their main antagonist.
The Mule wakes up from a nightmare and reveals to one of his henchmen that for years he has been haunted by the image of a woman, and that meeting with Pritchett last episode finally allowed him to put a name to her face—Gaal Dornick. So we learn that he’s been seeing her for as long as she has been seeing him, mirrors of each other, destined to clash like all the best hero-villain duos. It’s inevitable. And this inevitability is also what Gaal tries to impress upon Demerzel during their meeting, which lasts throughout the entire episode and is by far its highlight—bar the reappearance of Jared Harris's Hari Seldon, of course, but that’s just my immense love for him talking.
We skim over Brother Dawn’s supposed death pretty quickly, which leaves me wondering if he really is dead or if it was just one of Demerzel’s many ploys—both are plausible options, considering she can decant another Brother Dawn, so it would make sense for his death to be mentioned without too much narrative weight; or maybe she rescued Dawn when he got thrown out of the airlock at the end of last episode and was simply trying to emotionally manipulate Gaal.
For the briefest of moments, I also thought that Gaal’s plan was to get Demerzel to ally herself with her from the very beginning, and that Dawn was a great big red herring—which doesn’t seem to be the case, since Gaal had no idea Demerzel was a robot and is pretty shocked to find it out.
Still, now that Demerzel knows the whole truth, from the Second Foundation to Gaal’s visions, into which she can catch details too faint for Gaal to understand—like the fact that her life seemingly ends around a black hole—it seems like their teamup, which might or might not happen, could be just what’s needed to defeat the Mule and prevent humanity from disappearing. I really want it to happen. If I have to be honest, I think the characters could work exceptionally well together, both determined to do the absolute most to reach their goals. It’s a mix that makes for some truly great storytelling.
Also, I have to spend just one more bit of page to talk about Demerzel’s character design, because this episode really drove home to me the incredible contrast between her outer appearance, so composed and squared—hair always tied up, spine straight, arms in a rigid and never-changing formation—and the body horror that lies just underneath the surface. How she sheds her own skin, opens up her chest to hide the Prime Radiant, and slips into Gaal’s mind via the touch of her fingers are all so disturbing.
One of the other two main threads of the episode bring us along with Brother Day in the bowels of Trantor and finally into the Mycogen sector, which is filled with mushroom-inspired decor that always leaves me a bit iffy after two seasons of The Last of Us and that also highlights once more how much of sci-fi aesthetics lean into orientalism, especially if it’s to represent poorer or dangerous areas of a megacity. But this might be the question for a bigger discussion that would not have enough space here. So, let’s stick to the plot.
Day does manage to find Song, who, of course, doesn’t remember anything about their time together beyond being chosen as his lover, as is the standard for imperial concubines. Day tries to convince her to have her memories, which he brought with him, re-implanted, but Song is adamantly against it.
And we find out why—she says she never could have loved him genuinely because she already has a life partner, a woman, a brilliant reveal that completely flips us out of Day’s perspective. After all, watching the first episodes of this season, one might have even believed that Song really did love Day, just as Day himself believed.
But this twist reminds us once more of the realities of living under a totalitarian Empire that can decide how everyone lives and dies. Of course, she made him believe it; she needed to do it to survive, and, of course, she doesn’t want to go back to him—she fulfilled her part of the contract and wants nothing to do with Empire anymore.
Also, on a side note, I really loved how both Song and her partner have full names that slightly remind us of what a robot might be named, like Songbird-17—it’s very fitting considering the religion they practice and the overall culture they belong to. It's a brilliant piece of worldbuilding.
The very last narrative block of the episode, and the one that also takes front and center in its last scenes, is the conflict between the original Foundation and the Traders—which, if I have to be completely honest, is the one I care about the least out of all the ones we are seeing this season. Not that it’s not an interesting, well-written political conflict, it always is, but it shines a bit less when compared to everything else, and it really benefits from Toran and Bayta entering the scene and acting as a bridge between the two factions.
Also, a special mention to Toran’s outfit this whole episode; he’s really gunning for that position of Foundation’s Top Fashion Icon, and I, for one, fully support his candidacy. Two important things happen when the Traders arrive and meet with the Foundation. First, they agree that the visi-sonor is incredibly important for the Mule and that they may have an advantage over him by keeping it—and Magnifico—away from him.
And then the eclipse darkens the sky and the Vault opens, revealing the version of Hari Seldon that lives inside it—meaner than the actual Hari, his face twisted as if he’s always mocking the people he’s speaking with. And of course, limited in his knowledge, since he instructs the people who have gone to the Vault about the Third Crisis but not about the Mule—Mule, who just so happens to be attacking the Foundation right as they’re speaking about him.
I particularly loved how he employed the tried and true Master Yoda technique of escaping direct confrontation about topics you don’t want to discuss— Yoda decided to simply pass away; Seldon to almost kill everyone in the Vault by reactivating its dissuasion field.
The very last beats of the episode are all washed in the frenzy of the Mule’s attack and my desperation at seeing Bayta go down. Now, it’s not clear whether she’s actually dead or just severely knocked out and I’m leaning more towards the second option, or they wouldn’t have lingered on her so much—but if she turns out to really be dead it will be a severe hit on my enjoyment of this season altogether, it has to be said. She’s just a compelling character to watch. I can’t believe they’d take her out of the story after just a handful of episodes.
Episode grade: B