2x07 A Necessary Death

Things are looking quite bleak all around.

The envoys are captured on Trentor only to be brought to Day (and discover that Constant was used by Vault Hari to transport a message), just as Riose comes across Hober who tries to convince the Empire's jump pilots that allying themselves with the Foundation is in both their interests (only to be betrayed).

And Gaal continues to be manipulated by the telepath - and Salvor discovers what happened with Hari. Which is kind of strange. One would think that they'd remove the drowned Hari at some point. While I believe they'd kill off Hari, I doubt they'd kill Salvor the same way. The writers hopefully aren't that lazy.

And then we have the empress who's plotting on having Dawn's children... erm... why exactly does she have to have body births? I mean if they can bring up clones without a womb, they shouldn't have too much trouble doing the same with a "normal" fertilized egg.

Honestly, though, the highlight of the episode was Day being his usual cruel way. Ah, I like Pace's casual disregard for any kind of humanity even if he tries to be different. And Demerzel's her delightful dispassionate self here. (And that examination scene rang back awfully to Handmaid's Tale.)

Another quite emotionally intense episode. Things seem to go really bad for all the likeable characters.

Sareth learns from Demerzel (who seems to enjoy watching Sareth's fertility examination and verbally fencing with her) that she killed Sareth's family on Day's orders and later on realises that she actually is Day's prisoner now since he can kill her as well whenever he feels like it. Sareth intends to have a baby with Dawn as she thinks he is kinder than the older copy; this is probably high treason and if they wouldn't be executed, I guess Demerzel would kill them.

Hober talks with the Spacers (they are really interesting since they are genetically modified humans who can travel in space, but they are enslaved to the Empire and have to give their children to the Empire's service as a tithe; the words used to describe them such as swarm are usually used to talk about animals so the Spacers are probably looked upon as worse than humans?) but they reject his proposals, fearing the Empire's retailiation, and actually give him up to the Empire's spaceship captained by Bel. Hober manages to narrowly escape thanks to Constant's bishop claw.

Constant and Poly are brought in front of the Empire, and it turns out that Constant was sort of possessed by Hari Seldon, who gives his speech to Day. The whole thing ends badly as Day orders to attack Foundation, and Constant and Poly remain in custody. When I read the title of the episode, I though that the eponymous necessary death means that Constant and Poly would be executed, but they are not so far.

The term from the title actually refers to Salvor, who thinks something is fishy about the mentalics and their leader, and discovers Hari Seldon's body. Tellem finds out about it and kills her. Earlier on, Gaal gives a pep talk to the mentalics about the Mule and the need to unite in the face of danger, she definitely wants to be their leader. I wonder how would she react when she discovers she actually lost the daughter she wanted to protect?