You knew it wasn’t going to be a pleasant exchange when—at the very end of last week’s Foundation episode—Demerzel barged her way aboard Gaal’s spaceship. Gaal may be a psychic warrior who’s lived for over 300 years, but Demerzel is an ancient robot. They aren’t strangers, having met at the very beginning of season one. But times have changed since then, to put it mildly, and they really don’t know much about each other. That evolves in a big way in season three, episode six, “The Shape of Time.”
“The Shape of Time” is a turning point episode in many ways; we don’t spend much time in the palace, but the other storylines all take big leaps forward. The Mule continues his cruel galactic takeover. The Foundation elite strike a tentative truce with the Alliance of Traders to witness Hari Seldon’s promised return—a brief, confusing, emotionally brittle sequence with Holo-Hari that the Mule gleefully crashes. Brother Day continues his quest through Trantor’s most mushroomy sub-region in search of his beloved Song.
But no encounter strikes a chord more than the one between Gaal and Demerzel. The robot’s first instinct is violence: it’s because of Gaal that Brother Dawn turned his back on Empire. Not only did his subsequent actions result in an entire planet and the Imperial fleet being laid to waste, but the youngest Cleon was last seen being blown out of an airlock.
Demerzel is furious at first, and her instinct to choke the life out of Gaal is very strong. Truths come out quickly: Gaal had no idea that Empire’s majordomo was an immortal robot, but now that she’s in on the secret, she realizes Hari (who did know) made his pitch about Foundation all those centuries ago to Demerzel, not the Cleons. Demerzel reveals that Hari used her memories to help complete his data set, which means… she’s actually the co-creator of psychohistory.
Gaal points out, while gasping for breath, that she herself is part of Seldon’s plan and that Dawn was helping her in direct service of that. She explains the Second Foundation in succinct terms Demerzel can understand: “The Cleons have back-ups. Why wouldn’t the Foundation?”
This makes sense, especially since Demerzel herself has noticed “shadows in the math” clouding the Prime Radiant’s ability to predict the future. She hadn’t considered another Foundation, nor the fact that it would be powered by psychics—including Gaal, the most gifted among them—who are uniquely suited to battle the Mule. He has similar abilities, Gaal explains, but he uses them for sinister purposes.
Gaal admits, as she did last week to a shocked Brother Day, that she wanted that planet and the fleet to be destroyed. With Empire now in a perilously weak state, the Mule will attack, thereby setting up the ultimate battle with the Foundation. Later in the episode, we see the Mule attack the Foundation first, meaning Gaal’s strategy may need some readjusting. But for now, Demerzel is intrigued by Gaal’s most unique talent: “I can project my consciousness forward.”
The Mule wakes up. © Apple TV+Demerzel insists that “information cannot travel backwards on the timeline,” but Gaal pleads with her to expand her logical definition of what “time” can be. She predicted the Mule’s arrival 152 years ago, and she knows that four months in the future, there’ll be a battle where she and the Mule will face off for the first and probably last time.
Realizing that lines up with the Prime Radiant’s fraying ends, suggesting humanity itself might end in about four months, Demerzel sets her jaw. “Show me,” she orders. Though she’s not human, she has a mechanical way to read minds—a holdover from, it’s implied, her Robot Wars era interrogating human prisoners. It involves injecting filaments into Gaal’s brain, and it looks as painful as you’d expect.
It’s effective, though, and it allows Demerzel to glimpse a vision Foundation viewers will recognize: the Mule, executing a very Demerzel-like chokehold on Gaal, demanding to know the location of the Second Foundation as war rages around them. She recognizes the battlefield as Trantor—the Imperial Library, to be exact—and asks Gaal if she’s ever “gone further.”
A second mind-reading session transpires, so intense Demerzel has to hard-reboot and Gaal requires resuscitation afterwards. Beyond the Mule, beyond that familiar and seemingly fated battle, there is blackness. Nothingness. But there’s also a sound so far below the range of human hearing that only a robot could detect it: “Gravitational waves emanating from a black hole.” That means, four months from now, Gaal will be… orbiting a black hole.
That’s certainly ominous, and Foundation viewers will immediately think of that black hole-powered superweapon Brother Dusk has been gleefully developing on Trantor behind Demerzel’s back. But there are suddenly more pressing concerns. Just as Demerzel and Gaal are striking an understanding (Demerzel won’t accept Gaal’s visions as “premonitions” until the events actually take place, but she’s going to give her the benefit of the doubt by not killing her), they learn the news about the Mule attacking the Foundation’s home, New Terminus.
As Demerzel hurries back to Trantor, knowing the Mule will now have control of the Foundation’s fleet, Gaal tries to send a message to her partner, Pritcher, currently being held in a prison cell orbiting New Terminus. Chaos, everywhere!
While Gaal’s black hole drift is certainly the eeriest takeaway from “The Shape of Time,” the episode is not without its amusements. Let us now appreciate Brother Day’s “mid-1990s Lollapalooza dude” glasses, hair, and bucket hat combination—his stoner disguise of choice while creeping through Trantor’s underbelly.
© Apple TV+New episodes of Foundation arrive Fridays on Apple TV+.
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