It seems a shame that Foundation has managed to show flashes of brilliance, but can’t consistently keep that level of interest throughout. Episode 9, ‘The First Crisis’ is one of those that has quite a lot of successful moving parts, amongst a sea of episodes with empty grandstanding. *Warning! Some Spoilers Ahead!*
That grandstanding and lack of anything significantly interesting in some episodes has been the big weakness with Foundation. It has failed to find a consistent tone or rhythm and it has never felt like it has a sure footing in its own narrative. ‘The First Crisis’ actually feels like there is some dynamism for a change and it is tempting to wonder whether this is down to the excellence of director Roxann Dawson, who has always done great work. The problem with that hypothesis though is that earlier episodes are also helmed by great talents, such as Alex Graves, so it seems the issue is with how the plots have been structured.
In this instalment we see the conclusion of last episode’s cliff-hanger, with the Invictus appearing over Terminus. We discover that this is due to Lewis (Elliott Cowan) sacrificing himself as navigator at the last second and perishing in the process. Salvor (Leah Harvey), somehow stays awake throughout the jump, a feat yet to be explained, which means that she can subdue all the Anacreons that are aboard and make her escape to Hugo’s (Daniel MacPherson) ship.
There is quite a lot of action in ‘The First Crisis’ and lot of it will have a major impact on this part of the galaxy. Discovering that the null field on Terminus has expanded, Salvor can’t raise anyone on the radio, so decides to go down to the planet to investigate. After finding everyone knocked out, she is able to access the vault using Hari’s (Jared Harris) cube and it begins to change to a portal of sorts. This also allows everyone to wake up.
Once everyone is awake though, there is suddenly a standoff, as Anacreons, Thespins, and the people of Terminus all have differing opinions on what to do, with old hatreds overriding any pragmatic viewpoints. It’s quite an interesting development and certainly moves this along, especially once Salvor kills Phara (Kubbra Sait) and the holographic Hari walks out of the portal. This shows promising signs of seeing Foundation becoming something more than just a lot of exposition in different parts of the galaxy.
Across the galaxy though, on Trantor, they are also getting a little bit of excitement for a change, as we see the most interesting of the Cleons, Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) pushing back against what is expected of him. While his love affair with Azura (Amy Tyger) was likely to see him flee pretty soon, events are pushed along by the suspicions of Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann). It’s quite a twisty storyline here, as it turns out that his romance with Azura is all a sham, and he is a pawn in a bigger plot to ruin the Empire. Brother Dusk has been aware of it for a while though and the upper hand flicks back and forth very quickly.
While this is an intriguing part of the overarching plotline in Foundation, it all happens way too fast in ‘The First Crisis’ and should have been spread over more episodes. Once the twist was revealed, it could have been used extended over at least one more episode and didn’t need to all be wrapped up so soon. There are a few loose ends, but they aren’t big enough to be massively interesting story points going forward.
So, what we have here is a fairly good episode, which works very well in itself. What it also does though is highlight where the show has been weak in other episodes and how the whole series could have been more consistent. There is one more week to see if they can keep this trend up, and then after that we’ll be wondering if Season 2 will be better all round.
