Since re-upping my subscription to Apple TV+, I have been working my way through the many genre entries on that service. I watched Severance (more on that one at this link) and then turned my attention to that service’s adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, which I had previously heard both good and bad things about. I have read the three original novels that make up the beginning of that book series, and I have to say that I consider them pretty much unfilmable. To start off with, they are old-school science fiction books written in a stilted and wordy manner (like much sci fi at that time). And Asimov’s story covers such a broad scope, spanning thousands of years and tracing the lives of many characters, that it just would not work to follow the source material closely unless it was exclusively targetted at hardcore sci fi fans. And that audience alone would not justify the cost.
Apparently the creative team behind the series–which includes David Goyer (Blade, The Dark Knight) and Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Snowpiercer)–were aware of the enormous challenge they faced and decided it was best to just create their own version rather than adhere to the original story. The television series has the basic concept of the books in place: brilliant mathemetician Hari Seldon has developed the concept of psychohistory which uses both math and science to predict the future of very large human populations. He foresees that the Galactic Empire will fall, leading to an age of darkness, but the establishment of a Foundation that preserves the knowledge of the human race will shorten that dark period. That is all established in the first episode and sticks pretty closely to the basic premise of the Foundation books. From that point forward, though, all bets are off.
The television audience wants a story that they can relate to carried by characters that they come to know over a multi-episode arc. The Foundation books span generations, and characters come and go, so the TV series follows a different approach. It takes place at the early stages of the fall of the Galactic Empire as we see the interstellar conflicts beginning to destroy the human collective that has spread out across the cosmos. It also follows the early days of the Foundation as that group tries to establish themselves as the best hope for the long-term survival of civilization. It is a grand tale and it has some interesting sci fi concepts as well as characters that the audience can relate to. But pretty quickly this series becomes the Foundation in name only as it diverges notably from Asimov’s tale.
So does that make it a good show or a bad one?
If you want to see Asimov’s epic saga brought to life, you will be disappointed. But if you are looking for a grand sci fi tale that delivers something along the lines of Game of Thrones in space, you may just like this show. I struggled with it at first when I kept trying to reconcile the story to the books. But then I decided to look at this as its own separate tale, and I started to enjoy it more (I went through the same struggle at first with The Expanse).
The Foundation series has some truly interesting aspects, such as the cloned emperor who is split into three different versions of himself, Brother Dawn, Brother Day, and Brother Dusk (an ingenious way of keeping these as ongoing characters throughout the series). In fact that whole story with the emperor was most interesting to me, especially the standout performance by Lee Pace as Brother Day. The story of the establishment of Foundation on Terminus has its moments as well, despite the significant changes to characters like Salvor Hardin, and I can see where it can connect with later ideas introduced in the books. And the special effects and production values are certainly up to the task of delivering the grand story promised.
I walked away from the first season a little disappointed that it did not meet up to my original expectations, but the more I reflected on the show the more I felt that it succeeded more often than not in the impossible task of kicking off the story of Foundation on the small screen. It takes plenty of liberties with the source material, but it does deliver a gran sci fi epic. And I will definitely stick with it through its second season to see how well it continues with its alternate take on the Asimov classic.
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