The latest episode, ‘The Shape of Time,’ gave us a reunion centuries in the making.
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.
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