Respectfully, I find the Foundation TV series extremely disheartening. I envy those who can watch Lee Pace’s triumphant acting without being completely off put by the appalling writing choices in the show. The fundamental aspects of the Robot, Empire, and Foundation series books clashe so hard with the message being presented in this show. The entire first season doggedly trashed psychohistory’s main point by making single individuals into linchpins. Hari’s double AI clones and his contrived disease was an abomination that undercut his entire function in the story. Demerzel (R Daneel Olivaw) is utterly without connection to their character from the book. It is infuriating to see a character that spent 18 books gently and intelligently guiding humanity towards a harmonious existence be turned into a Cleon sex doll muderbot. None of that should have been possible for them. It would have shredded their mind. In what universe can this character presented be guiding humans towards galaxia or second empire. The “believe in belief” motif of the show is antithetical to Azimovs clearly atheistic writing and goes counter to the whole message of his books. Intellectual pragmatism is replaced by dice rolling space cowboys. In the same way star trek has devolved from following hyper specialized intellectual duty-bound characters to flagrantly stupid/morally reprehensible ones, foundation has made its primary characters into people who ride on luck and faith.
All of this rant comes from a place of geniune distress and I don’t mean to disparage anyone who enjoys the show. I’ve seen so much praise and it’s causing me a lot of cognitive dissonance. I can’t see how people aren’t up in arms about Demerzel and the other character assassinations. I have no issue at all with any of the actor choices, design, artistry, or extraneous changes made to update the show to be a modern adaptation. There are even some good ideas, like the clone dynasty, which serve to enrich the story, but the flaws are to many to overlook. Are there any other foundation universe fans that feel the same way or am I living alone on the moon with a deteriorating positronic brain?
I gave it the first series to wow me as I had a trial of apple for three months, but I wasn’t impressed.
What’s annoying is that some of the stuff they added with the cloned Emperor and the Rebellion against him/them was actually pretty interesting in its own right and I would probably watch that as its own show.
However I don’t want to watch that when half the screen time is spent telling a poor and warped version of some of my favourite books.
I agree. The come empire plotline is the strongest of the arcs in the show (aside from Demerzel) and I’d pay to watch just that arc if it was not attached to the rest of the series. Trantor and it’s downfall could have been a fun story in and of itself.
I feel similar to you. It entirely misses the point of the books, and for me has become nothing more than a typical fantasy story about people with super powers.
Instead of it being about the mass of humanity working towards an inevitable conclusion (or not with the mule) it’s become a story about a few individuals saving the universe. Silly concepts like destiny and faith are at the centre of the story. It also feels like yet another rehash of the “hero’s journey”.
I gave up on the series. Pretty visuals, good set design, some good actors and acting - it’s all meaningless if the writing and story is bad.
Agreed. Goyer read the Hero with a Thousand Faces and sidelined the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Personal stories are great for television, but Foundation is a story that could have been a perfect mix of both personal and grand. It seems to just do personal stories poorly, while shredding canon.
Yes. As a fan of the Foundation books, I only made it a few episodes into the TV show. They just departed too much from the themes of the books.
I haven’t read the books and still only made it a few episodes in. I just thought it was poorly written and clichéd.
Completely agree. Apple’s Foundation is an aggressive and bad adaptation of Asimov’s Foundation. It’s a mediocre pretzel of three barely related shows who blatantly ignore the source material.
Unfortunately, mediocre adaptations/remakes/reboots are the norm this century. Someone explained to me that becoming an adaptator demands specific talents, and the insistence of Hollywood execs on rehashing known franchises has led them to employ creatives as adaptators. Creatives want to make new things and become famous, they don’t want to make others look good, and hence they suck at adapting things.
That line of reasoning makes a lot of sense. The latest “adapters” have been “creative” type personalities. It does then track that their diversions from the source material are their attempts to realign their personal goals with the task they have been given. It is a sad state of affairs that that seems to be the case for this tremendously important story. I fear that it is only going to get worse over the next decade due to the write/actor strike. (Fully supportive of their fight) the repercussions of these strikes echo for a long time after they settle. The 2007 strike damaged/canned a myriad of projects.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how the next century turns out.
One thousand percent agree. So much so, in fact, that after reading synopses of what was written into the show, I didn’t bother watching even one episode. Foundation is by far my favorite science fiction of all time. I understand why liberties would of necessity be taken with the story in order to make compelling television - but this - what’s been done - was not necessary.
And it’s refreshing to be able to say so. On reddit, all the Asimov real estate appears to be fully bought and paid for by corporate masters - this opinion would be deleted and you might well be banned.
As a reddit refugee, I have been pleasantly surprised by the community here. I appreciate not being put in the stocks for having voiced my opinion on this matter. The obvious lack of advertisment in instances is immediately apparent and astoundingly beautiful. This is the internet that I want to be a part of. I wonder if writers in California are migrating from Reddit as well. If they are, I hope they come accorss more honest and constructive dialogues like these about the projects they may be working on.
I agree, I was very excited about a foundation show being made, being a fan of the entire timeline Asimov created. But I gave up early in the show, especially after seeing how overdramatic every character was behaving and how R.Daneels identity was revealed without any preamble as to what role he had played in shaping the destiny of the entire human race. What you mentioned about how individuals becoming lynchpins in history was also a betrayal to what Asimov was trying to portray with his invention of psychohistory is spot on as well. I dont know how it turned out over all, but seems like its a hit and people like it. But the spirit of that whole universe Asimov created, was absent from the beginning of the show itself, and it was disappointing to see.
Making a mystery box out of the vault, which was never meant to be a mystery, whilst outing Demerzel made no sense. It undercuts any surprise that the Mule could pose in the future considering how flimsily they portray psychohistory.
No I’m right there with you man, Lee and Jared are doing their best but omg it just broken everywhere else.
I think there’s a lot of room for Demerzel to unfold into something really cool, but, the rest of the writing is just wow wrong.
I gave them all of S1 as runway because it’s a tough story and you need to build up, but S2 is far worse, they’re breaking all the good will they created and making it even more of a terrible S8 GoT ripoff.
There’s still time though, 2 episodes isn’t a whole season, maybe things somehow get sorted out.
But omg I hate genius-magic-jedi Gaal, really, deeply hate her, Salvor is fine, she has an actual character with agency, but Gaal is by far the worst character I’ve seen this year in anything really. A clairvoyant genius who spends almost the entire time doing things without understanding why and freaking out. They tried to take Raych’s daughter in the books and twist her into a whole other arc, but it completely fell apart because they didn’t spend the right time on buildup, it’s like the DC school of “step 1: birth and origin story, step 2: kill God”
They needed 2 changes: 1. Gaal needed to be a mysterious character that people followed and searched after, to untangle the true meaning of Hari’s plan, and 2: SET. STAGES. We spent 2 precious episodes on a dead planet with a magic wood hut that somehow floats through hurricanes that would destroy NYC, literally the most boring planet in the galaxy, and getting there cost us 130 years because Gaal didn’t want to even meet the 2nd foundation, the writers who went along with that need to be veiled forever.
I ditched the show after two episodes, as it suddenly appeared to be just another “hey let’s show some blood, sex, and CGI” one. Thank you for the well written review, I’m glad to know I didn’t miss anything and saved myself some heartache.
“Blood, sex, and CGI” is a perfect title for the show. I suppose if I turned the sound of completely it would be worth the watch to see the CGI. Trantor is a beautifully rendered megacity. It is a shame that the departments putting in the work to make the show beautiful couldn’t be married with a writer/director with reverence for making a true adaptation rather than a GoT clone.
Well, I’ve been quite enjoying it, because I consider it to be a different story from the one that’s in the books. The one that’s in the books is fine, but it’s fine as a book. And it’s rather dated in a lot of regards, too. So when the story was reinterpreted into a modern television series there were always going to be plenty of changes.
Is the story that results from the changes very different - even in some cases diametrically opposite - the story that was told in the books? Sure. Is it good? Well, I rather like it. That’s up to everyone to decide for themselves.
Your level headed approach to viewership of the show is appreciated. I don’t often get perturbed by these types of adaptations. For me the changes are just viscerally unsettling.
Fight Clubs change to the ending after almost faithfully adapting every scene to the letter was jarring, but I viewed it in much the same way that you are viewing Foundation right now.
Perhapse when the series wraps I’ll be able to view it more positively as a whole. I’ll either find some redeeming portions or an alternative to epicac.
Then why bother licensing the IP and getting existing fans excited for an adaptation that is anything but. Just make an original show with similar ideas but how you want to tell it?
If I’m honest, I quite liked the whole cloned Emperor plot they created, and would have watched a show about that, but I don’t want it if I have to watch a bastardised version of some of my favourite books for half the screen time.
It’s not entirely different.
If you don’t want to watch a show because, despite being good, it has the name of a somewhat different story that you read before and also liked, I find that peculiar. If it was bad I could understand being much more incensed.
I’m with you. I’m enjoying the Foundation series and, in a way, the departures from the book keep me guessing. But it’s not Asimov. When it stared I wondered how they were going to handle the constantly changing key characters but it seemed they just couldn’t so we have clones, uploads and hypersleep to keep people around for the long span of the stories. That’s disappointing but I’m still enjoying the ride.
Confession: I re-read the first three Foundation books last year but got bogged down in the fourth. The ideas are wonderful and changed science fiction with their scope but the writing is rather dated and, frankly, they are quite long-winded at times. Apologies for the sacrilege.
Good points. And from what I remember of the books, 80% of them was people talking about things that have or will happen, not actually seeing it. I’m not sure a direct dramatasiation of the novel’s would have made great tv.
Yeah. As I recall, everything basically went exactly according to plan for the first book or two and individual characters didn’t matter much. That was interesting when reading because the plan itself was sort of a character. When watching the characters living through all that, though, I prefer seeing people actually struggling and making a difference. That’s also why I like seeing the Empire unraveling first hand, rather than off in the background.
This is the approach I’ve taken too. I actually didn’t really like the first book (sacrilege, I know) because it was so dated, and because it just didn’t work for me overall. So I didn’t read being that book, but I read up the Cliff notes on where the artist went.
But I’ve found the TV show to be okay. Some parts of the show are very good, others are… not so good. I recalled during season 1 that some key points differ from the book. For those and other reason I think of the show as a kind of alternate universe from the book(s). And that’s kind of weirdly poetic for a story that involves the forking of timelines.
Someone asked why purchase the rights to the books if they were going to make so many changes . That’s a good question. There are a couple of answers to that, the biggest one (which is cynical and shitty) being branding and familiarity. Another one is that there are some great concepts in the overall story, and if they’d have used those in a totally different fictional universe the writers would have been accused of stealing from Asimov. Are either of those good reasons? No, not really. But they are reasons nonetheless.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. You articulated your argument well, with concise criticism and well thought out arguments. It was a pleasure to read. As for the show; I’ve only read the first book and it didn’t follow it as faithfully as I wanted. I understand artistic license because of constraints, but to veer from the vision of Asimov is heretical. That being said, I still love the fact that an attempt was made. You should review more. Communication skills like yours are sorely needed in today’s world 🌎
Thank you very much for your kind praise. I too am thankful that an attempt was made. It means that people have a desire to adapt his works, which are timelessly relevant. Fingers crossed that it means a future adaptation tackles the series with more reverence for the source material.
If your interested, research Cliodynamics. A guy named Peter Turchin is actually trying to engineer psychohistory using social dynamics and historical trends. Note: the future of mankind does not look good.
