Foundation Season 3 Slyly Brings Another Sci-Fi Series Into Its Universe

Spoiler alert! This article has spoilers for season 3, episode 4 of "Foundation." Proceed with caution!

In the fourth episode of season 3 of Foundation, Brother Day (Lee Pace) starts to really rage against the machine — no, I mean literally. He lashes out in childishly petulant anger against Lady Demerzel's (Laura Birn) iron fist — again, literally iron. (The pair of imperial characters have a complicated relationship.) At one point, the disgruntled emperor confronts Demerzel right in her private quarters in the royal palace as she conducts robot maintenance on herself. (Remember, she's a survivor of her race's violent history.) She is headless when he walks in, and as she reattaches her top piece to her neck, Day complains about the complications of being human — clipping our nails, going to the bathroom — compared to a robot's flawless and clean upkeep. 

Clearly, there is an undercurrent of tension in the conversation, and as it plays out, it's easy to miss a short phrase that Cleon uses at one point. After saying Demerzel must think humans are dirty, she replies, "I was made to look like a human. Your shape was the ideal," to which the Cleon clone replies:

"The ideal. Do robots dream of wiping their own asses then? What a thought."

Did you notice that, though? While the conversation is about power politics and the tensions between biological and synthetic sentient life, the writers managed to sneak in a little phrase that goes right back to Asimov's own writings: the concept of dreaming robots.

Here's the thing you need to know if you want to grasp the bigger picture of the "Foundation" story: It takes place in the same world as Isaac Asimov's robot novels. The same books that inspired Will Smith's cringy sci-fi 2004 "I, Robot" adaptation connect directly to Apple TV+'s much better "Foundation" series. The flagship book in that seminal sci-fi library is "I, Robot" — but that isn't a single story (like Smith's movie). It's a series of short stories. There are other books like it. One is called "The Complete Robot," another is called "Robot Visions," and one that came out in 1986 is called "Robot Dreams." See where we're going here?

Along with these collections of short stories, Asimov wrote robot novels. All of these include a character called R. Daneel Olivaw, a clever, curious, and competent robot with vibes like Brent Spiner's Data from "Star Trek." Over time, the lovable positronic little guy collects several different pseudonyms. One of them? Demerzel. Yes, that Demerzel.

Asimov's early robot novels consistently include a character who is still present in his "Foundation" novels nearly 20,000 years later. The connection isn't coincidental, nor is it just in the show. Demerzel's involvement in both book and on screen is pivotal to the larger "Foundation" story, and it will eventually lead to one of the biggest reveals of the entire story. But we have a long way to go before we get there. For now, it's just fun to see the writers drawing those subtle connections between the expansive source material as they build up to the magnum opus of their galaxy-spanning story.

"Foundation" is streaming on Apple TV+.