Foundation Season 3's Biggest Action Scene Was More Real Than You May Think [Exclusive]

This article contains spoilers for "Foundation" season 3, episode 8.

We're in the middle of a great time for science fiction on TV, with great shows like "Alien: Earth," "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," and "Foundation" airing new episodes every week that illustrate the variety of the genre and its ability to tell incredible stories that speak to our past, present, and future.

"Foundation" is not just one of the best Apple TV+'s best shows, but a truly stunning adaptation of an incredibly influential literary classic that was long considered unadaptable. As created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, the adaptation of Isaac Asimov's book series of the same name keeps the complex philosophy of the source material, as well as its rather dense plotting and expansive scope. Yet, it's also an adaptation that makes so many changes that it's easy to think of it as a separate entity from Asimov's books — almost more inspired by than fully based on the novels. Among other things, the show introduced the incredible idea of clone emperors that perpetuate the idea of an unstoppable, unchanging, unending empire; it heavily changed Demerzel's story and turned it into a compelling and slow-unravelling mystery; and it introduced both romance and action to the world of "Foundation."

This last bit is important because there is a lot of action that happens in the books: entire planets are conquered, an empire crumbles, and wars are waged. Still, most of the action on the page happens far away, and we are only told about it afterwards. In the TV show, however, the action is explicit and prominently shown on screen, with "Foundation" becoming more of a four-quadrant piece of entertainment with huge spectacle, like Denis Villeneuve's take on "Dune."

Season 3 continues with this approach, upping the ante and scaling up the action at every turn. We saw an entire planet's surface being torched, and even the unveiling of an actual Death Star. Now, the Foundation meets its end (again) when yet another planet with Terminus in its name falls in a big battle. In episode 8, we get the full extent of The Mule's attack on New Terminus, his full-frontal assault and conquest of the Foundation's home planet. It's big, it's stunning, and it's more real than you think.

The episode starts with the battle above and on New Terminus, with the Mule taking control of half of the Foundation's forces as well as many of its leaders and forcing them to kill each other. The battle above is a stunning display of VFX, with one very cool sequence of space dogfighting. On the ground, however, we get a war zone like we'd never seen before in "Foundation." There are people dying left and right, big open sets, and a surprising amount of blood for this show.

Cody Fern, who plays Toran Mallow in season 3 of "Foundation," told /Film in an exclusive interview that this was an "extremely physical" episode to work on. "There are a lot of practical effects in the show, so you're dealing with hundreds of extras. You're dealing with multiple stunts. There was an actual person on fire," Fern said, and that's before you get to the fact that he was also carrying a stunt person playing Toran's wife, Bayta, for most of the episode. It may be surprising for fans to learn that a lot of the episode was real and practical, considering just how much the show relies on VFX to create fantastical alien worlds and gorgeously impossible vistas. And yet, the practical sets and commitment to reality make all the difference when it comes to capturing the scale and tragedy of these scenes. "It was hot, it was sweaty, it was a lot of physical work, and then on top of that, you have to layer in, especially when he arrives at the ship, that there's all this emotional work that comes along with that," Fern explained.

Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series is not really about space battles or war zones. Most of the action takes place in various forms of meeting rooms, with characters talking about galaxy-changing events happening out of sight. Apple TV+'s adaptation of "Foundation" not only has the time to do a dense, complicated, exciting exploration of the history of robotics and the Robot War, it also finds a way to give audiences a gritty, battle-heavy episode where a character we previously thought of as little more than a rich clown runs through a battlefield to save his wife while experiencing absolute horror. Moments like these are what makes this a must-watch series.