Foundation

While I love the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov(and the Empire and Robots series), I admit it may be a bit dated. The novels were written during the '50s and Asimov never described the visuals in detail.

It was therefore expected that any adaptation would diverge from the source material. And I don't mind it. A faithful adaptation would not be possible because we wouldn't know how the ships are supposed to look like, for example. I don't mind the gender swap in itself.

But the creators take too many liberties with the source materials to the point the story doesn't make sense for any science fiction fan. If Terminus is 55,000 light years away from Trantor and the colonists don't have jump ships, how do they travel? Why does it take 900 days to get there? That would mean they are travelling at 22,300 times the speed of light. This kind of oversight may be OK for a Marvel show, not for a show where math plays a central role.

I was also disheartened by changing Demerzel's gender. Not because of itself, but because in the books Eto Dermerzel is a very special character with a deep backstory. Changing his gender sends ripples everywhere. It's like making Han Solo or Ron Weasley a woman.

Hari's relationship with Raych is also changed for the worse, presumably to make room for Gaal. Sigh.

All these changes leave us with really impressive visuals and a weakened story. Not the Foundation I expected.

Finally. An adaptation that doesn't just rely on pretty graphics!

I read the books years ago and only barely remember the story. But this is complex and you need to keep up at some points! Which is a good thing.

Some of the world building is excellent and I thought it was beautifully presented. Some acting was a bit wooden, but most are very entertaining with a few exceptional performances.

It was dark, scary and sometimes funny.

If you are a regular sci-fi reader I think you'll enjoy this series.

Asimov is not light reading and you need to be able to accept the premise and suspend disbelief.

When I read Asimov's 'Foundation' novels I was somewhere in my middle teenage years, more than 50 years ago. What I remembered was the central idea of psychohistory, but not much else.

When the first season of 'Foundation' screened in the Fall of 2021 I was deeply committed to the HBO series by Ridley Scott, 'Raised By Wolves' and the ambitious character driven political allegory 'The Expanse' airing on Prime. Both were challenging explorations into deeply complex ideas living up to the best that literary science fiction is known for.

Whatever my mood at the time, I found the first couple of episodes meeting most of my expectations, but then I seemed to loose the thread of the show as it left a central character behind and seemed to veer into a good guys versus bad guys realm of conventional space opera. I wrote a rather sour critique at the time that expressed my disappointment.

However, I started watching season two and decided to go back and review the first season. This time I was able to not only stay with the plot, but its choices made much more sense to me. I was newly impressed, to say the least, and could barely remember my specific criticisms on the first go-round.

Now I have a taste for what so many critics felt years after they first panned films like 'Blade Runner' and '2001:A Space Odyssey' before they recognized them as pioneering accomplishments. I wouldn't necessarily place 'Foundation' at the level of those films, but as an extended series it successfully tackles some profound questions about time and history and human behavior that are becoming ever more pertinent in today's climate of ongoing political crises.

The show runners project a run of 8 seasons to complete a narrative that even Asimov failed to finish. It'll be a remarkable achievement if all of the necessary factors, corporate, financial and otherwise hold up to make it to the end. Here's hoping.

If you put your head in a vacuum and try to watch it as if Asimov's work didn't exist, the good almost doesn't make up for the bad.

The setpieces are impressive. I think the visuals of the shows, environements, costumes and all are quite well done. It stays immersive. And its the one thing that grounds it in Asimov's narrative : very very far in the future without being completely uncanny.

You could even call the plot divergence from the original work a clever play on psychohistory paths : the show imagine a new path.

What destroys it for me is mainly one thing : character writing. We're thrown all the superficial cliches in the book. And a cliche can work, if there's some depth to it. Which there almost never is in the show.

I can't figure out for the life of me why they would make Gaal Dornick such a baby. How long is she going to be throwing useless tantrum in every scene? "I understand evolved mathematics that draws the future of mankind in a series of complex events and crisis the needs to be adressed and corrected, but I won't carry your cube in my pocket 'cause you're mean, waaah waaah!!!".

The only character I feel remotely invested in right now is Demerzel. Maybe because they felt a 11k years old entity couldn't be too shallow. Or maybe because I've read some books in the Robots serie.

In any case, outside of Dermerzel and the visuals, I'm grasping at straws.

... Its name didn't need to be Foundation. Imo, it's about 50% Asimov and the rest is a combo of soap opera, sc-fi-imperial politics, CGI explosions and Webb-esque space vistas. Heck, you could claim several other writers' materials were influences. Lots of this series is purely mainstream, outer space SF.

But it's excellent SF! Captivating sub-plots, likable characters and gorgeous images are extremely entertaining! In its own right, it is a superb show. Aye, and there's the rub... A "show" isn't necessarily literature. Michael Crichton and James Patterson were/are graphic oriented writers, evoking a "screenplay" feel in their fiction, which isn't meant as a detraction. Excellent easy read authors! Asimov isn't as frugal a wordsmith, however, and there are probably as many different visual interpretations of scenes in his books, as there are readers of his books. But then again, this is series is just loosely "based" on his work, whether it is expressly acknowledged or not.