This article contains spoilers For the “Foundation” season 3.
At the end of season 3 of “foundation”, the galactic empire is in free fall, the first foundation is in flow, the second foundation is ascending and the mule was revealed (with a torsion). However, a neglected but important development of this full -time season has not come to the final. This discreetly slipped into a conversation in the penultimate episode, “the paths that choose us”.
Towards the end, Demerzel (Laura Birn) enters the very important galactic library, where she has a meeting with Kalle (or who is the character of Rowena King). While Demerzel finds it difficult to calculate how to help the second foundation while knowing that it is a threat to the Empire that it serves, Kalle sums up the fight, saying:
“The whole thing is the nightmare of a computer. You know that you can help the second foundation because you will have. What should be the output is now the entrance, and you fall through the paradox loop.”
Demerzel, clearly in distress, breaks down how she does not know if the paradox “will satisfy my programming”. She does not understand her contradictory motivations in the situation, and fundamentally, she becomes everything. At this stage, Kalle says that the two reasons are an option, and a delayed betrayal is the best choice. Demerzel seems satisfied and relieved by the idea. Then Kalle says something very interesting:
“See how it helps to have someone to think with? Is it like it should be.”
The occasional point, made to a robot, probably from a robot, immediately remembers one scene from one of the books of Isaac Asimov, but I am not talking about a novel of “Foundation”.
The idea of robots thinking together is a classic Asimov
In the book “Robots and Empire”, two robots named R. Giskard Reventlov and R. Daneel Olivaw work together to develop the innovative and positronic law of zero with brain flexion. It is the fourth law of robotics which comes before the three famous original legislative declarations of Asimov (robots do not hurt humans, obey humans and protect themselves, in this order). The Zeroth law allows robots to harm humans, but only in the defense or pursuit of the greatest tapestry in humanity.
The Daneel Olivaw robot, which helps to develop this law, is in fact the same being as Demerzel in the “Foundation”. The character is one of the main connection sons between Asimov’s robot novels and his foundation books. At the time of the foundation in books, Demerzel is busy applying the Zeroth law, but the robot did not succeed this complex reading of the three traditional robotics laws. This (I say “that” at this stage because in books, Demerzel is described as a man, in the show as a woman) did it with the help of the Giskard Reventlov robot.
In the book, there are many conversations between Giskard and Daneel when they establish what the Zeroth law could be, decide if they can adopt the law, then learn to apply it. This is the scene between Kalle and Demerzel a classic moment of Asimov where robots learn by “having someone with whom to think”.
Is Kalle just a robot, or more than that?
The link to have a robot with whom to think is fun, but there is a persistent question in my mind: is Kalle just another robot which speaks of positronic “clasps” and robots communicating in a real Asimovian style, or is it more than that? I wondered that all season. In episode 2, “Shadows in the Math”, Kalle escorts the dying Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) through a portal to an unknown place. When he talks about “having his skin in the game”, Kalle underlines that “we cannot”. A few moments before that, she initiated the gate with a shining red sparkle with her eyes. Easy. A robot, right?
But then, the character of Rowena King underlined several times that she is not quite who we think she is. She tells Demerzel similar cryptic things in episode 9, stressing that Hari thought she was the radiant bonus and said: “I know what you want me to be. Like researchers. Robots were not designed to be alone.”
All signs indicate a robot entity which contains pieces of Kalle and others in it. But it is weird that Kalle is still so cryptic in front of another robot, especially at the end of the season, when all the big “revelations” occurred as the day. I wonder if it means that it is actually a little more than that. I think it could be our first overview of the Gaia entity. Gaia is a living planet populated by humans (guided by robots) which operate as a collective organism. This is where the mule comes from and is really important in the subsequent foundation novels of Asimov and in the future seasons of the show “Foundation”. Could Kalle be the first teaser we obtain in the Apple TV + adaptation of this living planet? It is possible – but the truth is that we will not have a solid answer until season 4 now Greenlit appears in our streaming queues. Start the countdown.
Season 3 of “Foundation” is streaming on Apple TV +.
