First a quick summary of the plots. Then I'll highlight some stuff by episode.

Terminus

So Phara blows up the shield control at the end of ep 4 and the Anacreons attack. Fortunately, they are terrible shots and run around in large Napoleonic war style groups. The Foundation folks with their 6 guns hold 400 people off for a while and many escape. At the same time, an Imperial battle cruiser shows up and starts to land. Oh no, the Anacreons have an artillery gun. They destroy the cruiser with one shot (very convenient). (In the books, Imperial battle ships had energy shields. One shot it not gonna work. Plus given the optical tech shown in the show, the empire is not gonna detect the gun? Silly.) Luckily for plot purposes, the Captain of the Imperial ship survives.

So the Anacreons round up anyone who has experience working on Imperial ships. Very scary and mysterious. Salvor, her Dad, and Hugo sneak to all 3 of the Anacreon Corvettes which are on the ground or hovering near it. Instead of being the size of a high rise office building, they are the size of a 737 (and I'm being generous). Anyway, in broad daylight on a desert planet with no cover, they manage to blow up all 3 ships but Salvor's Dad is killed in the explosion.

So the Anacreons take the families of the Foundation hostage and commandeers Hugo's ship. Hugo assigns control to Salvor. Who we can assume has never flown a space ship, however, since she is the bestest ever, quickly figures it out. So Salvor, Hugo, a half dozen of the Foundation folks, and a half dozen of the Anacreons take off. They are off to find the Invictus, a legendary Imperial ghost ship.

So they get to the Invictus. A bunch of folks die getting into the ship. Hugo appears to fall into space when trying to board. Phara reveals her plan is to do a suicide jump into Trantor destroying the planet and thus getting even. Much fighting ensues. Salvor and Lewis take the bridge. At the same time, Hugo returns with several Thespin Lancer warships. Lewis sacrifices his life to jump the ship back to Terminus. Hugo's ship and the 3 Lancers are pulled along in the jump.

Everyone returns to the Terminus. Most of the people are unconscious due to the null field (the null field thing makes no sense. In the books, Seldon would speak in a simple auditorium.) Salvor somehow deactivates the null field. She also kills Phara somewhere along the way. A Seldon hologram appears and explains that this is all part of his master plan! The encyclopedia was just a cover. The Foundation's purpose is to unite the Anacreons, the Thespins, and the Foundation to break away from the Empire. With the Invictus, they can emit a giant bull shit pulse that will make it look like all life in all three systems are dead. Thus making them free. Now forget hundreds of years of hatred and make nice, okay.

That pretty much ends this story thread. More for Salvor which is covered with Gaal.

Gaal

Gaal arrives at her destination which is an Imperial ship on auto pilot headed to Helicon, Hari's home world. (This happens at the same time as the 30 year time jump on Terminus. Very convenient. (Remember, in the books faster than light travel is common place. There is no sub-light time dilated travel. It doesn't exist anywhere in the books.) Anyhow, Gaal finds an AI version of Hari on the ship. He is expecting Raych and she explains what happened. She figures out the she is telepathic and can "see" the future before it happens.

Hari then says that he and Raych were going to found the Second Foundation. And, her telepathic abilities may put psychohistory in jeopardy!!! Ok, as a fan of the books I gotta speak.

This is exactly the OPPOSITE of what happens in the books. In the books, the Second Foundation is created on Trantor to study psychohistory and telepathic abilities of humans. One of the main purposes of the Second Foundation is to create powerful telepaths who control minds and such. It is not at odds with psychohistory, its part of the plan. But Hollywood knows best, why follow one of the greatest authors in science fiction history?

Anyway, Gaal pitches a fit. She doesn't want to be part of the Second Foundation. Screw that! So she makes the Hari AI put her back in the capsule and sends her to Synnax her home world.

Back on Terminus, Salvor finds out that her parents are not her parents. That her biological parents were Raych and Gaal. She then decided that she will travel to Synnax at sublight speeds over many years.

So amazingly Gaal and Salvor arrive at Synnax at the same place at the same time. (I mean what could go wrong? It's only an entire planet of course they would arrive in the sample place.) So the two bestest women ever, finally meet on a flooded seemingly void of life world, with no food, no supplies, and no technology. Awesome!!!! But I'm sure these two will figure out how to save themselves!!! They have gotten rid of all those stupid men after all. Now the real story can begin! Yay!

Cleon

Not much to say about this story other than it was pointless. A waste of Lee Pace's talent if you ask me. It doesn't go anywhere, doesn't move the story of the Foundation forward at all. And Demerzel is NOT a robot of Asimov's universe. Just a bunch of anti-religious crap for no reason.

Episode Low Lights

Ep05

• The cold opening of life on Synnax has to be one of the most anti-religion sequences I have ever seen. Basically the water is rising because the people of Synnax don't think right?? Really? Maybe the show runners should spend some time with a Muslim, Christian, or Buddhist. It doesn't appear that they have.
• There is no sub-light time dilated travel in the Foundation books. Everyone always has Faster than Light travel through all the books.
• The Anacreon attack is just laughable. They have to be the worst military in the history of militaries.

Ep06

• More evidence that the Anacreons have the worst military ever. They do nothing to guard their ships. No surveillance drones? Or Patrols? Or hey, maybe have one of your "space" ships watching the area. So dumb!
• If they attached at night, maybe they could have pulled something off. But in the daytime?

Ep09

• The whole Invictus thread is like a bad Star Trek the Next Generation episode. They have this unsolvable techincal problem that they just seem to "solve" without explanation!!!

My Thoughts

Well this show has been very disappointing. The first episode gave me hope, wow they are following the books. But then by episode 4, my hopes were fully dashed. The show has very little to do with Asimov's writings, only the names are the same. So as a fan of the books, I give this show (1/5).

On the plus side, I thought the special effects were good. The acting was very good as well.

However, the writing was atrocious. There were so many plot holes, inconsistencies, and plain bad writing. Some the lowlights included:

• After 30 years, you are still living in shipping containers with dirt streets?? Really? The best scientists in the Universe???
• The Second Foundation was completely destroyed for any future seasons.
• Salvor Hardin is the definition of a Mary Sue. Ugh! Gaal, not as bad as she did have a few things to overcome.
• Anacreons have been trained by Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers in shooting.
• The battles and space battles were so unbelievably bad. Destroy an Imperial Battle Cruiser with 1 shot? Hell, it is highly unlikely a ship that big could even make it planet side. The ship would probably have a half dozen corvettes or so for such missions.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my reviews. I probably won't be watching season 2.

For more information on the series, check out the Foundation wiki at: https://foundation.fandom.com/wiki/Foundation_Wiki
* They have lots of go info and episode by episode guides. Very helpful.