Foundation arrives to bring hope in the encroaching darkness
Sadly, though, preventing the destruction of mankind will require math
TV Reviews Foundation
Speculative fiction isn’t in a particularly optimistic place these days. Art reflects the environment it’s created in, and currently our science fiction reflects a deep and not entirely unearned fatalism about the future of our civilization, our species, and our planet. So it’s not surprising that Apple TV had to go back to 1951 and the first publishing of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series to find a story where intelligence and forethought will triumph. Not without opposition along the way, of course. But as Dr. Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) says to his young protégé Gaal (Lou Llobell) when she exclaims, “Everything is dying!,” “That doesn’t mean it won’t all work out.”
The Foundation series is governed by an all-encompassing sociological/mathematical model known as psychohistory, a field of study that claims it can utilize behavioral models to accurately tell the future of human civilizations. Perhaps to balance out such an academic premise, the show is a sumptuous production. It is saturated in jewel tones and rich textures. Characters are often shown tiny against their environments, threatening to be consumed by great compositions of shape and movement. It is grand and it is minute; one moment showing a mural that stretches beyond human sight, the next, showing the individual flecks of pigment that dance along its surface. One of the most impressive feats Foundation pulls off is never letting you forget it is individuals affected by galaxy-wide events.
“The Emperor’s Peace” (B+) is bookended by brief vignettes on the planet Terminus. It’s a desolate place where the only entertainment for the local kids appears to be planting flags as close as they can manage to a giant, floating monolith surrounded by a shield that repels all life. What’s this all about? We’ll have to go back 35 years to find out. There, we’re introduced to Gaal, a young woman being led through an ocean-side village where she receives the stink eye from the other residents. She boards a ship where she’s taken to the imperial library on Trantor, the planet at the center of the galactic empire. We learn that she essentially won a math contest by solving some esoteric, poetry equation, and her reward is to learn under the great Dr. Seldon. When she arrives, Hari’s adopted son Raych (Alfred Enoch) brings her to Hari, who tells her they will both most likely be arrested within a day of her arrival. The crime is Hari’s claim that, according to the psychohistorical model he’s constructed, the thousands-year-old galactic empire will collapse within half a century, and without Hari’s intervention, remain in a dark age lasting 30,000 years. The trial provides both a very helpful framework to deliver mounds of necessary exposition, and also displays Jared Harris’ strongest acting. Here we see the full weight of his calculations. Like Darwin crafting the theory of evolution, it’s a truth he does not enjoy, but knows is unavoidable.
This news doesn’t sit well with Brothers Dawn, Day, and Dusk—three genetic clones of the galaxy’s original emperor decanted at different ages to act as the holy trinity overseeing their kingdom. They are collectively known as The Empire, though of course it is Lee Pace’s wonderfully hammy, decadent Day who does most of the decision making for the trio. They place Hari and Gaal on trial for their crime of heresy and find them both guilty.
However, before the pair can be executed, a terrorist plot occurs on the Star Bridge, Trantor’s space travel hub that’s tethered to the planet by a massive space elevator. The destruction of the Bridge is harrowing. It shows the individuals trapped in passage to the planet’s surface breaking free into the upper atmosphere. Worse, the shattered central column of the Bridge collapses onto the planet, cutting deep into the surface and creating a path of violence that kills 100 million people. The attack is seemingly executed by two people: one from Anacreon, one from Thespis, from two warring outer rim planets with ambassadors brokering with The Empire for peace. While both civilizations claim innocence, the attack lends credence to Hari’s prophesy of revolt.
Thus, Hari and Gaal earn a form of clemency. They are exiled from Trantor and sent to Terminus to develop the Foundation project. Absent jump drives, their journey will take five years.
So far, the most interesting aspect of the show is the lopsided conversation it maintains on faith. It establishes early on and doubles down on the parallels between the seeming non-negotiable objectiveness of Hari’s math and faith-based prognostication. Sure, you can check his numbers, but only if you can speak the same specialized language as him. Like Joseph Smith’s golden plates, the prophecy isn’t for everyone to read, only a select, chosen intermediary. As wielded by Hari Seldon, psychohistory blends the hard formula of math with prophecy, and the galactic scale of his vision bears down on each individual within it. And for those who do believe, Hari has been exalted. He is a secular prophet. It all evokes a feeling of spiritual awe. It is literally on a cosmic scale and awakens a response of wonder and terror as great as any biblical vision. But while the series is happy to maintain that tension within the science of psychohistory, it makes sure to still include actual religious faith that exists, so far, only as an expression of the ignorant or violent. It’s not enough that Gaal’s people distrusted her for her love of math and for relinquishing her prayer stones. We also learn that her people maintain a pogrom against all educated people known as “the purge’.” When Gaal seeks out a church on Trantor for comfort the night before she’s to be executed, the priest offers nothing but contempt.
This dichotomy is an easy one to make. As we are now, in the midst of the dissolution of our own democracy at the hands of a bunch of venal white Christian nationalists who embrace anti-science with pride and cruelty, it’s difficult to find the virtue in religion. But if the show is going to continue wrapping its central conceit in the embellishments of faith, it would probably benefit from more thoroughly exploring why those embellishments are so provocative.
After spending much of the first episode on the macro, “Preparing to Live” (B) is a much more intimate affair, transitioning from a grand treatise to a more human scale, space-pioneering episode as the characters now have to deal with consequence of their decisions. For Hari and his hand-picked crew, it’s being on a four-and-a-half-year long voyage to Terminus and the significant time that provides for doubt about their mission to creep in. For the Empire, it’s how to react to the debilitating act of terrorism they suffered. On the ship, the crew runs series of mini-pyschohistorical models to test their preparedness to live on a planet as harsh as Terminus. This includes a monster-and-mine-explosion simulation that doesn’t provide much other than adding some action to the crew’s otherwise explosion-free mixture of interpersonal dynamics and math fetishism. Paired with the brutal attack on the black market geneticist at the beginning of the episode, one gets the feeling series creators David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman fear there’s an inherent lack of dynamism in the story. If you are predisposed to enjoy black-op raids and monster attacks, they were both fun additions, but neither offered much beyond comforting bombast.
It’s established early on in the episode that Gaal and Raych have become lovers. Other than Raych suggesting Gaal turn on Hari in order to save herself in the first episode, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of chemistry connecting the two. But there are a lot of things that happen in this episode that feel more driven by the necessity of the story than actual human reactions to things.
Interestingly, some of the show’s most compelling moments occur with The Empire. Brother Dusk, taking over mural maintenance duties from the servant Day murdered in the previous episode, suffers an accident that appears to be brought on by either age or genetic obsolescence. This incident propels a significant amount of introspection for Dusk. First, he visits the scar left by the broken space bridge tether. He meets with the priest who refused to administer to Gaal in the previous episode and it’s apparent the two have history together. Dusk noticed the priest at Hari’s trial, but the priest refuses to offer up why he was present.
Facing his own mortality, Dusk begins to internalize the inevitability of Hari’s predictions. He and Day have a creepy argument around the vacuum-sealed display of their genetic originator before Dusk demands to see the Anachrean and Thespan delegates. He explains to them that there is a likely chance that both are innocent, but it doesn’t matter. The predictable forces of inertia and revenge will result in them being killed. Day proves this true. Openly exploiting Dawn’s fear, he justifies staging a mass execution of the delegates while simultaneously bombing their planets. It is the predictable sequence of revenge and retaliation that fits exactly into Hari’s psychohistorical model.
The episode culminates with Raych’s apparent murder of Hari, which only deepens the religious parallels of psychohistory. Earlier during the dinner scene, he was already showing anger with Hari for his mentor’s dismissive and poorly remembered history of Raych’s family. While his agitation foreshadowed some break between him and his adoptive father, it was an abrupt shift over the course of one episode from nothing, to anger, to assassination. So now Raych is Judas, and Hari will only be speaking to his faithful from beyond the grave. Raych’s motives are unclear at this point. Specifically, we see him yanking some doodad from behind Hari’s ear. But less clue-oriented than that detail, Hari was noticeably walking through this entire episode in a state of distraction. He alluded to his time alive after exile as a gift, and in retrospect, seemed to be bracing himself for his fate.
How that fate concerns Gaal is another matter. After the murder, Raych thrusts her into an escape pod that fills up with a disturbing mixture of embryonic fluid and Hari’s blood, before she’s jettisoned into the stars. It’s a hell of a lot to wrap up just the second episode. But the show has proven itself to be thoughtful and well-crafted so far, and I remain excited to see where the rest of the season goes.
Stray observations
- Hi! I’m Nick and thanks for joining me for Foundation recaps! I have never read any of the Foundation books. I started reading the first one in eighth grade, but was quickly distracted by some Dragonlance novels. So forgive me if I miss details or connections from the books.
- The faster-than-light ship at the beginning was truly gorgeous. The way the fully-powered drive mimics the event horizon of a black hole is just stunning visuals.
- I like Gaal’s Good Will Hunting-esque backstory. Space janitor solves space equation no other space student could solve. How do you like them space apples?
- Brother Day always wears the armor of the conqueror. While Dawn and Dusk both favor robes with the high, golden collars, Day only presents himself clad in the warrior’s garb depicted in the great mural.
- While I’m a little down on the show’s depiction of religion, the rituals they created for Gaal’s people are very cool. The prayer stones embedded in their cheeks so God may see them, and the ritual to have them removed all felt very thoughtful and lived-in.
- Another parallel between faith and science is how Gaal will recite prime numbers to herself as a mantra or rosary in contrast to the terrorist who sang a brief song before detonating his bomb.
- Brother Dawn has a close and complicated relationship with Demerzel, The Empire’s majordomo/enforcer who is also an android. She alludes to having been around since the robot wars, which, according to Asimov’s own shared universe timeline, puts her origins somewhere around the I, Robot era. I wonder how many generations of Dawns she’s nurtured?
- There seems to be a point of surrounding Hari with elements of the natural world to show how the chance and design of biological structures match psychohistory. Even the floating model of Hari’s calculations contains an element similar to a starling’s murmuration.
154 Comments
“Speculative fiction isn’t in a particularly optimistic place these days.”It’s really weird, I’ve read 6 ‘Long List’ volumes over the past month and there’s a LOT of ‘working out my queerness’ stories that are more fantasy/fairy tale than actual sf. I was impressed by a few of the stories but a lot of it was pretty junk tbqh.I wasn’t optimistic that they’d do the Foundation novels justice and this review(and others) seems to justify my thoughts. If you’re not starting your Foundation series with The Mule, you’re doing it wrong.
Why on Earth would you start the story with a character who doesn’t show up until the second book? It’s necessary to see the fluidity of Seldon Plan working in order to feel the impact of its sudden failure.
Because that’s the only part of the original series where anything really happens. You frame the whole thing around the journey to the Great Library and Ebling Mis’s search in it, then end the first season with the discovery of the Second Foundation. The Plan should be set up in flashbacks and via information encountered during the journey. There’s no need to have entire episodes about Seldon setting up Terminus, that’s just boring.
I am very pleased that they didn’t use your terrible idea.
Yes, making up an entirely new story with some of the trappings of The Foundation series and calling it ‘The Foundation’ like they’re doing is a better idea, uh huh.
I don’t know how you ever expected anything else. Go read Foundation and you’ll quickly discover that everything other than the premise has aged horribly. They were never going to be faithful to the characters or story as presented in 1951.
Well I’ve read the series at least a dozen times and have a pretty good understanding of general narrative structure, I think the idea is actually pretty good.
Plus people are generally a bit nicer than that at AVClub. This isn’t Jez after all.But hey others can have different opinions and I won’t call them terrible.
Sorry about the snarky tone of my reply. IMO an effective Foundation adaptation should capture the epic spirit and many of the details of Asimov’s work while addressing its flaws. Starting with The Mule then filling in backstory might work for Asimov fans (I am one), but have some pity for everyone else! As Neon Moron pointed out, TM isn’t interesting unless you’ve already learned to trust Seldon. And that’s only part of the backstory.Playing out the story chronologically and fixing things “on the fly” seems like a good approach, and I’m encouraged by what I’ve read so far.
Right that’s why you use their journey as a framing device, not like he’s taking the Foundation down right when the series starts.
The trilogy naturally lends itself to an episodic format given they were original published as serialized stories. I have no clue what Apple is doing, but having 3-4 episodes arcs about Salvor Hardin -> the next one -> the next one would be a nice setup for the formula-breaking appearance of the Mule, who would demand at least a season. (Mid- or season final cliffhanger of the Seldon hologram suddenly describing events not remotely similar to what Terminus is experiencing? Could be neat.)
I’d be wary of starting a Foundation adaption with the Mule because so much of what gives the Mule’s arc the dramatic weight that it carries is the fact that it manages to topple an organization that the reader has learned to think of as increasingly unstoppable over the course of half the book (and a few centuries’ worth of in-story time). Without the weight of that epic amount of context, the Mule just feels like one in a long line of would-be emperors, not the existential threat he actually represents.
That’s why you use their travels as a framing device and Ebling Mis as
the storyteller to talk about what has happened in the past, then at the
end of the season you’d reveal that the Mule has disrupted it all. You
don’t start with the Mule upending everything, that would obviously be
bad. That way you keep all the boring stuff within a more interesting
framework and the twist still hits home at the end.
In this case it’d be because tv producers want “action” and there’s not really “action” in the books until the Mule shows up.
Or even very fleshed out characters.
You are correct about the lack of fleshed-out characters, but I expect/hope the series provides that fleshing out.
when the hell has fleshed out characters ever mattered to Hollywood
“Long List”?
Stories that were on the list for Hugo nominations over the past few years:https://www.amazon.com/The-Long-List-Anthology-Series-6-book-series/dp/B0753L1ZWJ?ref=dbs_m_mng_rwt_0000_ext
I’m curious about what you mean by “‘working out my queerness’ stories that are more fantasy/fairy tale than actual sf”; are Hugo awards meant for only science fiction? I thought they were fantasy and sci-fi both
It’s a good thing you’re not in charge of this show.
Starting a foundation series with The Mule would show such an incredible lack of understanding of the source material, it would almost circle around to being interesting. Like a Hobbit adaptation that started right as Bilbo is having his chat with Smaug, or a Sixth Sense remake that opened with Bruce Willis being fatally shot and then manifesting as a ghost.
The establishment of the Foundation is the most important part of the story. Like someone else said, your idea is terrible.
Hey thanks to all you greys who think my idea is terrible and that I don’t understand the books, there’s a reason why you’re in the greys and it has to do with comments like that.
…there’s a reason why you’re in the greys and it has to do with comments like that.No, it doesn’t. Being in the greys is the default setting for everyone. Being “elevated” into the approved commentariat is to be brought into an echo chamber of approved opinions. Quality is not a consideration.And your idea is terrible. The first book sets up Seldon’s psychohistory as expressing the Great Forces view of history, that individuals are fundamentally interchangeable conduits for implacable forces of history. It is an explicit argument against the Great Man view of history. The second book is all about the Great Man view of history, effectively demolishing the Great Forces view of history by showing how significant the actions of a single man can be. You need the setup, you need the time to establish that setup in stone, for the payoff to be effective.
…there’s a reason why you’re in the greys and it has to do with comments like that.No, it doesn’t. Being in the greys is the default setting for everyone. Being “elevated” into the approved commentariat is to be brought into an echo chamber of approved opinions. Quality is not a consideration.And your idea is terrible. The first book sets up Seldon’s psychohistory as expressing the Great Forces view of history, that individuals are fundamentally interchangeable conduits for implacable forces of history. It is an explicit argument against the Great Man view of history. The second book is all about the Great Man view of history, effectively demolishing the Great Forces view of history by showing how significant the actions of a single man can be. You need the setup, you need the time to establish that setup in stone, for the payoff to be effective.
I’m probably in the greys because I like to call people out on their misplaced smugness.
If you’re not starting your Foundation series with The Mule, you’re doing it wrong.Uh…no. Just, no.
I’m a little conflicted on this idea. As much as I thing “In Medias Res” needs to be a thing, what makes the Mule special is that he managed to do what at least three groups of warlords could not. At the risk of repeating others here without building up the Foundation as seeming so invincible, you undermine the whole point of the Mule. If you want to start In Medias Res, you should start with maybe the Regent and his invasion plans.
I’m really interested as to how they’re going to do the Mule. Here’s hoping they get that far.
That’s actually what is kind of interesting about Asimov — he likes to set up a structure — psychohistory in the Foundation books and the Three Laws in the Robot books and then shows examples of how these seemingly good ideas fail miserably. Not a lot of authors attack their own ideas this way.
Your general point is a great one, but I think Fail Miserably is overstating. Asimov did believe in progress but nothing would be perfect the first time – and even if something statistically was the best way to go, there could certainly be things that went wrong within that. It’s more that you keep experimenting and refining, hence the Zeroth law and Second Foundation et al.
To me, the interesting thing about Asimov’s own feelings about the Foundation series is that when Asimov wrote the original stories, being around 30 years old and somewhat naive, he thought that he was writing a defense of technocracy. 30 years later, he realized that his utopia, in which a self-elected elite rules the rest of humanity for its own good, and the rest of humanity are the elite’s willing slaves, is in fact pretty much a fascist dictatorship – which is why, in the later books, he redefined his utopia as being, to a reasonable first approximation, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Asimov was only 21 when he wrote the first Foundation story, and the rest of the ones that were collected as Foundation and Foundation and Empire were all done over the next three or four years. The two parts of Second Foundation came a few years later, when he was in his late twenties.
Surprised they revealed Demerzal to be a robot right early on. Seems kinda spoilerly…In the books it’s believed robots are completely extinct until the fifth book, and then Demerzal being a robot is an additional twist in the sixth book.
Hell it wasn’t even a shared universe until, what, 1984 or something?
1982 (with Foundation’s Edge), but yup.
Ah yep I knew it was in the ‘80s at some point, didn’t remember the exact year of Edge.
I’ve all the Asimov stuff decades ago, and just Googled Demerzal to remind myself what you’re talking about…and as I always have, I once again think Asimov choosing to merge his two series was a terrible idea, even if the very, very, end of the whole thing did make my jaw drop. But that’s more from having read it in, not exactly real time, but as nerds my age had to, I came to Asimov during his decades-long break from SF, read everything available, and then read the 1980s stuff in real time.
tbh I googled Demerzal also, more out of a “why is there a robot” thought; I tend to think of the character more by his other two names and didn’t even think of the third.I’ve never read any of the Robots or Empire books and only read this series maybe a decade ago, but I did like the twist. And the greater twist that the entire Foundation plan was ultimately a failure.
Actually, the Foundation plan was not a failure – in the original series (at least when he adapted the original stories for the book publication), the sections are generally headed by quotations from an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica from later than 1000 F.E., implying that the Second Empire was founded according to plan. That’s why Asimov gave up after Foundation and Earth and started writing prequels that contradicted the premises of the original stories – he had no idea how to reconcile the success of the Foundation Plan with the direction that he took the stories in the 1980’s.
I suppose the canonicity of the post-Asimov books is debatable, but the people of Galaxia published the Encyclopedia Galactica in 1000 FE.And then I suppose it’s also debatable that part of the actual plan was for the Foundation to help pave the way for Galaxia, in which case that would also have been a success.
Since the origins of Eto Demerzel are a retcon rather than a plot twist, it’s hard to call the timing a spoiler.The actual significant change is revealing *to Cleon*.
It was a retcon and a twist. It’s a retcon because the robot stuff didn’t get added until a later book. It’s a twist because in the following book, where Demerzel is introduced, who (and what) they actually are isn’t revealed until the end of the book.It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but was there actually anything in the books that prohibited Cleon from knowing? Certainly he’d have noticed if his advisor, who presumably also advised his forefathers, never aged.
Sounds like you liked it a great deal more than the folks at Gizmodo. I suspect it might be because you haven’t read the books.That’s not a criticism. I’m hopeful that this is a good story, but it sounds like it was written by someone who overheard two people discussing the books in a noisy diner. Fair play; a faithful adaptation would, frankly, make for bad TV.
I wasn’t gonna go over to Gizmodo and argue about it, but I’m perfectly OK with a well-done, Foundation-What-If series about the concept of psychohistory. Not a lot of sci-fi novels from the 50s (or 60s, Jubal Harshaw) would fly in today’s culture.
I agree that a faithful adaptation would NOT make for good TV, and this story makes for a great framework for TV writers to build around. A lot of good stuff in the books, but lots of room to craft something for today’s audience.
Yeah, me liked these books as young monster, but even then me was aware that, while Asimov have fascinating, grand ideas, he not great at writing interesting characters or giving plot emotional stakes. So me glad someone doing loose adaptation of this, just so long as it not I, Robot-level loose.
It’s been forever since I read them, but don’t the Foundation books come across a sci-fi philosophy/history paper with just the barest trappings of “character” and “story”?
Yes, pretty much. And the first couple/few (it’s been years since I’ve read them) books aren’t even cohesive individual novels. They are more a compilation of short stories or novellas set in different time periods within the same universe.
Correct. The characters are barely characters, instead serving as conduits for competing concepts, vying for control over a chaotic galaxy.
That’s what I thought. When I read it as a kid I was also reading a mountain of other “big ideas” sci-fi at the rate of, like, two to three books a week so a lot of them are mixed up in my brain. It’s a grand thought experiment in philosophy carried out over centuries. Which works just fine as words on the page but doesn’t really fit a visual medium. Maybe as some weird mix of Ken Burns documentary and philosophy lecture? Preferably by Chidi Anagonye?
The first one, yes. Foundation and Empire had a plot and characters, and is the only one I even vaguely remember.
I read the first three FOUNDATION books — but if you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t really tell you anything that happened in them, other than that the person building the Second Foundation is a middle-aged Jewish dumpling…rather like his creator, Isaac Asimov. He was the only character who stuck in my brain, and the first time I actually met Dr. Asimov I understood why….
I’ll bet the Will Smith I, Robot started life as a script completely unrelated to Asimov’s work which was then grafted onto it later.
100% correct.
It was, Cura Te Ipsum — I know this because I went on a tear at a SF Con panel about I, Robot and how it didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to any of Asimov’s stories, and one of the other panelists piped up with “That’s because it’s not, they had a screenplay about robots trying to take over society, and by licensing Asimov’s Robot Stories they could both avoid any legal hassles with his estate and use his name to help raise funds to produce it.”
I’ve always contrasted Asimov with C. S. Lewis. You can see in his prose that he was a walker. His descriptions of things are as if he was seeing them from afar, and then by decrees until he stood in front of it. His narrative is such that one thing causes another, and flows into another.In contrast, Asimov seems like someone who saw things from a subway train or a bus, a flash and then away. You get a glance, but not a deep description: an insight, but an isolated one.
Yeah. I was never able to get through the books. There was a kind of bloodlessness to all the characters and writing that left me cold.
Me like cookies.
The books, as intriguing as their ideas are, really haven’t aged well at all. The storytelling is pretty flat and tedious as it’s literally just 2 characters sitting in a room and talking to each other. There is like…zero character development or arcs to speak of and no one to get really invested in. I don’t even think there are any female characters in the first couple of books.Foundation is a story that’s very much of its time. A 1:1 adaptation would be horrible and modern audiences would be completely put off by it.
Personally I think it picked good elements from the books. However I really liked the almost Le Carre-style approach in the books. I would totally dig this sort of gentelmany vision of future with tweed, cigars and brandy.
I mean I really dislike the main stream scifi (Stawa, Guardians of Galaxy or rest of the *Marvel stuff). Way too much non-realistic ADHD action with 99,99% budged used on silly effects and plot is more like afterthought.* Agent Carter was sublime.
It’s like when AV Club covered Game of Thrones and had 2 reviews for each episode: one by someone who read the books, and one by someone who didn’t. I loved the approach.I’ll give Foundation a shot. The closest I got to reading the books was a short story by Orson Scott Card that took place in the Foundation universe. If the show works better for non-book readers, all the better for me. (What’s funny is my wife and I gave up on Y: The Last Man after 2 episodes for just not being as compelling as the comic. Expectations can be a drag sometimes.)
Starred for OSC reference. Enders Game is an awesome book, and a meh movie.
I think if they tried the same dual recap approach here we would just end up with one actual recap of an episode and a second one just yelling “This isn’t like the books at all!!!!”
It really wouldn’t. Somebody in the comments on Giz suggested it could be made as a limites series, Ken Burns documentary format, and I think it could work out great. World War Z would’ve worked like that as well, I think
To be fair, that Gizmodo review, to me at least, positively reeked of sci-fi geek elitism, and was terribly written to boot – and I’m saying that as an Asimov fan.
This dichotomy is an easy one to make. As we are now, in the midst of the dissolution of our own democracy at the hands of a bunch of venal white Christian nationalists who embrace anti-science with pride and cruelty…“White Christian nationalists” aren’t the ones who spent last year rioting, burning down cities and agitating to “tear the system down”. They aren’t the ones currently claiming authority to control every aspect of citizens’ lives – what medical procedures government requires them to subject themselves to, where government allows them to go, what government allows them to do. They aren’t the ones who are imposing these requirements by claiming the authority of science while actively suppressing the actual activity of science.Perhaps you have misidentified those who are actively seeking to dissolve democracy.
Io9 had a much more negative review, which was coming more from the perspective of the books. All respect to Asimov, but I tried reading it years ago and got bored when I realized it didn’t really have a plot (or women). Which isn’t to say io9’s opinion isn’t valid…but I’m kind of hoping I can enjoy the series as someone who hasn’t read the books. So this review gives me hope.
The first book doesn’t really have a plot because it’s not really a novel. It’s a collection of short stories and novellas, each of which deals with a political crisis and how it is solved.It’s basically House, M.D. if House was a political advisor and also a hologram who’s dead, who only reveals the right solution after the interns have already managed to solve it.
Ughhhh that House analogy is a good one and I shall steal it.
“It’s basically House, M.D.”Is it space lupus? It’s never space lupus.
it didn’t really have a plot (or women)I believe Asimov wrote a few billion words worth of fiction in his career (a drop compared to his non-fiction production, to be fair), and still managed never to write a single sex scene. So he didn’t need more than one gender, the one that was more likely to engage in scientific endeavors at the time. (And, it goes without saying, sex among members of that gender was also out of the question. On top of everything else, it’d be a distraction from science.)
“Robots of Dawn” has an extended sequence where a female character talks about how she experienced her first orgasm and her pursuit thereafter.
Sex was a motif in any number of Asimov stories, and there are explicit sex scenes in several of his books, particularly the later ones. Robots of Dawn, Forward the Foundation (which I seem to recall is somewhat unusual in that it attempts to portray intimacy between an aging, long-term couple), Foundation’s Edge…There’s also The Gods Themselves, which concerns itself very largely with the sex life of an alien species.(Probably also worth mentioning his well-documented habitual sexual harassment, and his status as a self-described lecher who wrote a guide to being a “Dirty Old Man.”)
I always found the sci fi canonical avoidance of sex creepy. Even in “The God Themselves” sex is seen as something transactional (the fix up is pretty ridiculous to me, and totally undeserving of those awards which I guess were given as a kind of contrareform reaction to the New Wave). I like some of the Asimov stories I came across, mostly because of how they get to the point and sometimes pace the emotional bombs well (Robot Dreams is fantastic at this) but, as usual in science fiction, getting to longer stories means that the writer has to create some melodrama and usually these guys were incredibly bad at believable character interactions. Which, again, huge red flag for me.
One of the reasons I like his work is because he doesn’t bother wasting time with sex scenes in every single damn story.
Do people really find sex scenes in fiction arousing? I generally find them rather cringeworthy myself.
You might not have read any good ones. Not talking about smut, but an actual depiction of passion. I think it’s not easy to write, and the vast majority of written sex scenes are pretty cringey.It’s also possible it’s just a different strokes for different folks thing….sorry about the “different strokes” pun, I just couldn’t resist.
There’s at least one sex scene in “The Gods Themselves”, although it’s between three alien, energy beings.
That’s kind of famous, that novel was a deliberate answer by Asimov (he commented upon it at length in his various introductions to things, like his own curated anthologies) to two common criticisms: that he would never use aliens; and that he would never write sex scenes. For all the other answers in this thread, Asimov was the first to admit he didn’t know how to write sex scenes so he just wouldn’t. It changed a bit only towards the end of his career.By the way, The Gods Themselves is one of his best works, possibly my favorite.
Both the 2nd and 3rd books, which each are divided into two separate books, has one of their two stories with a female protagonist. In the final four books published, one of the main characters is female.I get the feeling that all the people that say there are ‘no women’ in the series are just hearing this second-hand and accepting it as fact.
I’m one of the people saying it, and that was based on my actual experience of trying to read it. (I also read Caves of Steel about a year ago and had a hard time with Asimov’s depiction of women – and by women, I mean one single woman character, who was on the verge of hysterics in practically every scene she was in; yes, I know, it was written in the 50s and Asimov was a product of his time – it’s still hard for me to take.)
That being said, I’m glad to hear there are women in the later books. I’ve been thinking I might give the series another try sometime and that’s actually somewhat more encouraging.
I get the feeling that you are desperate to whitewash an author’s reputation which the author himself admitted to.Two female characters in three books is what is known as “the exception that proves the rule”. The “final four books” (two prequels, two sequels) were published three decades later, when Asimov was a significantly more experienced and thoughtful writer.For the classic trilogy “No women; nothing happens” is a reasonable one-line description and for the era isn’t that outrageous.
Although you are right that even in his 1950s books there were a few women characters, it is important to realize how Asimov’s life changed over time influencing his view of women. Alec Nevala-Lee’s shared biography “Astounding” about the lives of Asimov, Heinlein, and other 1950s SF writers is an informative read. The basic story with Asimov was that his first wife was ultimately a poor choice, uneducated and uninterested in science and writing. So this negatively influenced Asimov as to what women were like even more so than the 1950s culture of the time. But after he married Janet Jeppson, a highly educated woman who was an author herself, he began to include more rounded women characters and protagonists.
“I tried reading it years ago and got bored when I realized it didn’t really have a plot (or women)“They are very much examples of 40’s era SF short story writing, and specifically writing that John Campbell would accept for publication.
One of my favorite books, hands down. Read it first in high school. Later in life I married an author and learned that science fiction, more than most genres, is about setting. And setting is what I care about. Really to a ridiculous degree. Foundation is the perfect distillation of this, as there really aren’t any characters or story in the traditional sense. It’s all setting! As an old man, I have, of course, come to enjoy and understand what makes a book good is more than just that, But while I can appreciate that, I’d still prefer a book that takes place on a ring, or has wild alien life, or enhanced human brains and bodies, or whatever. I guess I’m still that kid when it comes to novels.
“The Foundation series is governed by an ….mathematical model known as psychohistory…”
Well, it is — it’s a statistical model of history, and statistics are mathematics. Yes, you can say that such a model is impossible, and maybe it is, but some people (like the 538 people) do try to make statistical models of politics and the like, which sometimes work (of course sometimes not at all).
Sadly, though, preventing the destruction of mankind will require mathFuggit, killit.
Nuke + Enemy = Peace
Jared Harris saying “math” in his English accent was jarring as fuck to hear as an English person
I wouldn’t worry about missing a lot of connections to the books, since there are few.Delving into Demerzel’s history might wind up being a spoiler, though, depending on what they’ve decided to do with that character.
Perhaps to balance out such an academic premise, the show is a sumptuous production. It is saturated in jewel tones and rich textures. Man the publicity stills they gave you sure aren’t showing that.
I read the books as a wee lad, but I don’t recall anything other than the broadest strokes of them. So maybe I’m in the best of both worlds. Hopefully, they won’t add too much pew-pew to the story, though.
For those who want to the term “psychohistory” further:
I have never read any of the Foundation books. I started reading the first one in eighth grade, but was quickly distracted by some Dragonlance novels. So forgive me if I miss details or connections from the books.Well I just got the trilogy a month ago and it looks to me like the writers and showrunners missed a few details as well, ba dum tish. Joking aside, I’m less concerned about the show following the books than I am about their characters acting completely bass ackwards.For example, look at Seldon’s trial. In the book, there was never any intention of execution. In fact, the “Emperor,” wouldn’t dare, because Seldon was just a stodgy old math guy; killing Seldon would make him a martyr, and make the Emperor look weak by appearing to fear him. Seldon and his crew were always going to be exiled just because it was a better solution.But now in the show, there’s a terrorist attack killing one hundred million people. This should guarantee Seldon’s execution, not stop it. By failing to prevent a terrorist attack, the Emperor already looks weak and will need to execute someone to remind everyone of his strength. At the very least he’s use Seldon and the Foundation as a scapegoat.Just look at 9/11. The immediate death toll of 9/11 was roughly 0.00003 of what you said happens on Trantor and look what happened then. The Patriot Act, the War on Isl- I mean Terror, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, sending soldiers to Guantanamo… The US government wasn’t exactly in the mood for clemency (and they were ostensibly still a democracy). How can writers justify a blatant autocrat risking the appearance of weakness in response to an attack that resulted in almost 300,000 more casualties?
I see what you’re saying, but also keep in mind that this whole thing is being orchestrated by Demerzel, who needs Seldon alive to maintain the Zeroeth Rule.I mean, assuming that the series lasts long enough to get to that stuff.
Whoever, whatever, the point is, it’s backwards. Whoever wrote in the terrorist attack fucked up because now the characters act opposite to the way they should.NO terrorism, the Emperors kick Seldon out instead of executing him to get rid of Seldon without making a martyr out of him.Once you add a bloody terrorist attack that kills millions of people, the Emperors HAVE to execute someone or they’ll look weaker than Seldon could have ever wanted to make them. Who wrote this, Damon Lindelof?
If only they showed some kind of televised mass execution of the parties they determined by fiat to be guilty in episode 2. Someone should tell the writers.
Did Emperor Day not execute a whole bunch of people and torched two planets?
Yeah, but that’s like if the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 out of a flailing need to demonstrate strength, when apparently what they really did was publicly execute, I don’t know, Jerry Falwell or Al Gore or whoever wrote the “Bin Laden Determined To Attack Within United States” memo for publicly predicting impending doom because of America’s failures and coincidentally damaging public confidence before they attack.
Yeah, but that’s like if the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 out of a flailing need to demonstrate strength, when apparently what they really did was publicly execute, I don’t know, Jerry Falwell or Al Gore or whoever wrote the “Bin Laden Determined To Attack Within United States” memo for publicly predicting impending doom because of America’s failures and coincidentally damaging public confidence before they attack.
Actually, in the original stories, the emperor doesn’t “kick Seldon out” – only the 100,000 individuals necessary to found the (First) Foundation on Terminus. Seldon and a few hand-picked collaborators stay behind on Trantor for reasons that are not disclosed until the end of the “Search by the Foundation” section of Second Foundation.
the Emperors HAVE to execute someone And they do. Just not the guy who claims to have a longterm solution to the problem they’re now aware is very real. The Emperor (to be clear, only one is the emperor, the other two are an Emperor emeritus and the heir apparent) is not an idiot. The terrorist attack was a wake-up call that the Empire is, indeed, dying.
Yeah, I thought it was a nice touch that they showed the faces of the two older ones while Seldon was talking, indicating that they were quite shaken by his words and all their confidence was false bravado for the public.
It’s also interesting that Seldon’s warning is not a threat to the current rule, it will affect their “descendants”. As they said, they control the media, they could hammer home the idea that Seldon is crazy, and the citizens would buy it, especially because not even the scientific community at large is able to prove him right.I also find the triple active clone structure surprisingly logical. If one accepts that cloning the same ruler is preferable to a dynasty of offsprings (and in more than one way, it’s certainly a more stable form of monarchy; and each clone has the potential to grow into his own person according to the time in which they spend their childhood and the nurture they’re given, so it’s not entirely stagnant). Then having three cloned at once, but spaced, say, 30 years of each other, seems like a good idea. This way, if something happens to the active one, the old one can leave retiremenent and resume government until the young one comes of age, avoiding a dangerous regency from third parties. If something happens to the heir, they can just make another. And the succession is smoother, because they each relinquish power to a version of themselves.
David Goyer.
But the Empire did execute loads of people, the entourages from both Anacreon and Thespis, and bombing both planets.
Having not read the books, the Empire’s motivation seems pretty clear; at first, they were just going to execute him before his movement was anything more than a cult following in an effort to squash the idea, but the combination of Gaal’s lie about Seldon’s necessity for keeping the Empire alive and the tower collapsing made Seldon’s argument seem correct, so keeping him alive helped promote the idea that the Empire is doing something about the problem.
So this adaptation IS being written by Lindelof. I don’t know if he’s from another planet or a parallel universe where everything’s backwards, but I swear no one has Damon Lindelof’s knack for making characters act in the complete opposite way to how they should.
So this adaptation IS being written by Lindelof. I don’t know if he’s from another planet or a parallel universe where everything’s backwards, but I swear no one has Damon Lindelof’s knack for making characters act in the complete opposite way to how they should.
Cleon has the delegations from Anacreon and Thespis, and the bombardment of their home worlds, for his show of strength.
Hari is his hedge bet. If Cleon is really thinking this through, he’s sending a cloning system to put in Hari’s vault so he can pop out in a millennium.
Given your description of the episodes, it feels like the mule has arrived early
Very nicely written, and I’m happy I was able to enjoy your write up, since I don’t pay for Apple+ so I’ll never see it.
I haven’t read the books in a number of years, so I’m not going to watch to make sure all the details are there – outside of the Mule, who I really hope shows up, as I’ve always thought of Trump as the Mule. I’m glad that it’s keeping the books’ optimism. I’m glad its focusing on the relationship between science-based prognostication and religion, but I hope they don’t try to sanitize that. The books, and Asimov himself, are incredibly anti-religion and pro-science.I hope they get rid of the psychic Second Foundation subplot, which feels very dated – golden age science fiction seemed to think that humans just needed to evolve a bit more to start reading each other’s minds.I’m excited to watch, and cautiously optimistic.
Only watched the first episode, but I thought there were already some hints about the Second Foundation. Gaal Dornick seemed to be a sensitive.The reason psionic powers are such a common element of Golden Age science fiction is basically that John W. Campbell was a sucker for the stuff, and his magazine paid the best rates for stories.
Ah, now that makes sense! From what I’ve read of Campbell (mostly authors talking about him) he seems like quite the character, in both good and often bad ways. Would love to watch a proper documentary on him.I wonder if they’ll keep the “Preem Palver: First Speaker” reveal! Very Harry Potter-influencing name there haha.
…I just got it. Over 50 years after I read the book.
Gaal Dornick seemed to be a sensitive That’s one of the annoying things about Forward the Foundation – in the original series, it was made clear that the psionic powers of the Second Foundationers were inherent in the human brain, and just needed to be developed, and not due to some kind of genetic mutation. The Mule’s mutation was that he got the powers naturally without needing to learn how to develop them, and that he could maintain mental control over people with whom he was not in visual contact.
A lot of them genuinely believed in it, too.
Like, Heinlein thought that past-life regression therapy was legitimate, and that ESP was real, but unlikely to be ‘controlled’ any time soon.A lot of the Golden Age sci-fi writers who lived in California also spent a lot of time palling around with Jack Parsons. Mostly for the orgies, but they picked up some of his weirder beliefs too.
Emphasis on “sucker”. Campbell was also an early proponent of Dianetics (Scientology back when it claimed to be a science rather than a religion). And of course Hubbard himself used to write for Campbell in his SF writer career before his Messiah complex kicked in.
The Mule is mentioned in a framing sequence in Episode 1, so that’s certainly the plan. What I don’t know is how far this first season is going to go.
Yes!! I made that same analogy when it became clear that Trump would be the Republican nominee in 2016!
(We’re in deep spoiler territory, for those following along.)People kept calling Trump the Mule, but I strongly disagree. The Mule represents a thing that is not susceptible to the analysis of psychohistory, because he distorts human reactions. Trump is the culmination of decades of (international!) anti-globalization reaction, combined with modern media and celebrity politics. Psychohistory would be all over that.
The Mule was intelligent, competent, and most importantly aware of his limitations.
Never read the books but from a pure work of fantasy entertainment and world building it rocks so far. It’s nice to have SciFi that isn’t all one liners and pop culture jokes on the biggest scale for a change.
I’ve always disliked the term “unfilmable” because what it often means isn’t that the story can’t be committed to a visual medium but instead that it can’t be done in such a way that studios won’t be terrified and/or mass audiences won’t be bored or perplexed.*
Foundation is “unfilmable” in the way that World War Z is “unfilmable”… any adaptation to TV or Film will necessary bear only a passing resemblance to the original work because otherwise you’ll never get a studio, network, or streaming platform to fund the adaptation. World War Z should have been a faux documentary with the documentarian as a framing device skipping from “present day” interview footage to “historical” archival footage and back again. But even that pretty direct translation of simply adjusting the documentary medium would have been too far for major studios to trust the audience to play along.
Foundation doesn’t require adjustment of medium in the same way, the specific events of the series are actually fairly filmable even with lesser effects than we have available today. However it would require you to be up front with your audience not to get attached to any particular set of characters as this series will take place over a millennium. But the cool thing is that you get this wholly different perspective on history, watching later people talk about characters whose viewpoint you were in just chapters before and getting this hilariously skewed.
Honestly the best way to film it would probably be in Tarantino-esque vignettes told in an order to help the audience make connections, not chronological order. So you have three or so narrative threads at different times in the plot going on at once. You can condense some material into those three timelines so they cover the first five hundred or so years of events. I’m just spitballing, I realize there would be plotting and logistical hurdles. But my point is that telling Foundation as a straightforward narrative on screen just isn’t possible unless you are going to frontload events OR get your audience on board with cast changing time skips between season breaks. Maybe Apple will do the latter, but I’ve seen no indications of it and I can’t imagine the money people giving the greenlight.
*House of Leaves may actually be unfilmable as it’s as much about the medium as the plot, I don’t know how you disentangle the two.
Gaal Dornick is introduced with her mother in their little hut. They talk. Gaal and mother walk across the many bridges, and eventually reach a boat, talk and bond some more. They row out to the platform. Gaal turns to the mother… and then to the boatman, and I’m like “Why are you looking at *him*? Do… do you two have a relationship of some kind?”They could have done literally *anything* to establish before now that the boatman was her father, and failing to do so made this extremely jarring for me. This kind of narrative misstep, in which important relationships are improperly established, happened all too often in these first two eps.
I’ve only had a chance to watch the first episode so far but I really liked it. The special effects are fantastic and the acting has been fab so far. Really looking forward to seeing how it unfolds.
Hari’s ‘murder’: I’m pretty sure his plans required him to be a martyr. He expected it to be the trial but the inability to predict the individual, Gaal, only the big picture meant she stopped that from happening. Hence Plan B with having Raych kill him.
Note the trangular pill case that we see at least twice: Hari was already dying.
I was all ready to submerge myself in this complicated new universe of world building and psychohistory and new characters…Then Hari Seldon walked through the Long Room of the Trinity College Library in Dublin and I’m like, “Well, so much for new worlds.”Then the whirling thingamabobs in the middle of the FTL ship looked just like the worm hole port in Contact.
Then the black hole in the same ship looked just like the black hole in Interstellar.The boat on the lake with the planetary rings in the sky looked pretty good though.I’ll watch another two or three episodes to see how it hangs together.
“Then the black hole in the same ship looked just like the black hole in Interstellar.”To be fair, that’s just what an event horizon is going to look like. Also, in the books the emblem of the galactic empire is an oval overlaying a circle representing a spaceship in front of a star which also what the black hole in the middle of the ship looks like.
The way I read that second episode, Hari has realized that the project will not work with him alive, because people who get close to him will recognize him for the flawed man he is and it will damage the faith and devotion needed to complete such an undertaking, and so he has asked Raych to kill him. This is why Raych is so out of sorts all episode, and why the revelation that the math is incomplete is so viscerally upsetting to him. And when Gaal reassures him that the math is complete enough to trust, you can the melancholy as he accepts what he has to do. He’s about to have to sacrifice everything he cares about for the sake of the greater good.
My take on that is that while psychohistory is the opposite of the “great man theory” of history, it’s predictions are vulnerable to disturbance by great men as statistical outliers. Asimov addresses this in later stories (not sure how much it’s safe to mention later writing here) but I’m not sure how much of that Asimov thought of at the time of the first story, i.e. before we get to Terminus. For this adaptation, the writer *does* know about this vulnerability and thus has to account for the fact that Seldon himself would be such a “great man” outlier that would throw off psychohistorical predictions. This also means that Seldon himself has to recognize that he is his own threat, and has to remove himself. Like Moses, he can never entered the promised land. (In the first story, he never makes it off Trantor.)The contrast of the laundry scene, where he can recal the details of the woman once prompted by her first name, with the dinner scene, where he misremembers his introduction with Raych, is supposed to show the audience this was a setup between the two.
Hate to be that guy, but..the thousands-year-old galactic empire will collapse within half a centuryWithin 500 years.three genetic clones of the galaxy’s original emperorNot the original emperor (the clones are invented in the show, but Cleon exists in the books, he’s just one of many emperors. The whole thing is a thinly veiled representation of the Roman Empire).to act as the holy trinity overseeing their kingdomNope. Brother Day is the Emperor, and is 100% in charge. Brother Dusk is the Emperor emeritus, he can express his opinion, and that’s it. Brother Dawn is the heir apparent: he’ll be Emperor once Brother Day retires. He’s now Emperor-in-training.Hari and Gaal on trial for their crime of heresyNope. Treason (for allegedly trying to destabilize the government). The Empire is not a theocracy.
In reference to the connections to Roman history – Asimov said that the series was written “with a tiny bit of cribbin’ / from the works of Edward Gibbon”. Gibbon having written The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I just like that somehow “a tiny bit of cribbin’” was something that Asimov said in the 50s.
Why does everybody go talk to Gaal while she’s in the pool? At some point, you have to think they just want to see her in a swimsuit.
Because that’s where you know you can find someone from a mostly water world.
That’s true. If we discount the time when she’ll be working, eating, sleeping, walking through the ship, in meetings, or engaged in recreational activities that don’t involve swimming. So, you know, just about 95% of her time.
I think it’s just that they built a really cool pool set, and wanted to get their money’s worth. They seemingly didn’t build that many ship sets (which would make sense if this was the only episode on the ship), and it was a versatile space to film in.
Was nobody else annoyed that some of the prime numbers they kept showing her muttering weren’t actually prime numbers…? (Most obviously the even ones or the ones ending in 5?)
Depends on what base you are counting in.
How are even numbers prime in any counting system that includes 2?
Odd bases will have numbers ending in “2″ that aren’t even. Base 3 for simplicity:1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 20, 21, 22, 100, 101 : even numbers are 2, 11, 20, 22, 101
Well, I guess rather than the writers being ignorant or careless, she must’ve just “been counting primes in base-3″ or something…
Lover the first episode, but episode 2 took it down quite a few notches. They just can’t help Mary Suing female characters. Episode one saw a Gaal that was out of her element, trying to take it all in and on top of that, fighting for her life on day 2. It was a phenomenal peek into a complex world, and it looked amazing.Episode 2 threw that out the window and polluted the story with a 21st century diversity and inclusion lecture, just on a grander scale. It flies in the face of the original, but I expect no less from Apple; ever style over substance.I want to see where it goes, but the drop off from episode 1 – 2 was disappointing.
As someone who read the books, it’s very clear to adapt the material into a TV show you’re going to need a LOT more happening than happens in the source material. I was fine with the additional padding.
I read the books three decades ago, so I barely remember them, except for the lack of action and the long-winded exposition. But I enjoyed these two episodes. Every article on this show mentions how Asimov wrote zero female characters, and this has primary female characters plus romance(!). Not bad. However, if Apple+ was expecting Games of Thrones levels of viewership, well, no way…
Encouraged by the positive review score, here, I’ve watched
the first two episodes over the weekend. I am very impressed by the production
value (it looks gorgeous) but a bit frustrated with the weakness of the cast.Jared Harris is the most credible prestige-level actor
(Chernobyl, Mad Men, The Crown, he bleeds Emmy blood), and he gets a lot of
meat to chew on in the first episode, but then he vanishes into the background
in the second episode and gets killed off. Typical “we can’t afford him to be a
full time cast member” stuff, you see it all the time in budget genre
programming. Lee Pace doesn’t have quite the same resume, but he’s
unquestionably the next most established actor, and I’m relieved that he seems
to be a permanent fixture on the cast, because he’s nailing it. I’m totally gripped
by all the Empire stuff. Then there’s Clarke Peters, of The Wire fame, who is
playing an inexplicably small role in the second episode, but still jumps off
the screen. IMDB says he’s in 6 episodes, so hopefully we’ll see more of him.
Otherwise I am truly baffled at how small of a role he played.
It really falls off a cliff after that, in terms of names
and faces I can recognize. The actress playing Gaal literally has almost zero
credits to her name (the only other credit is something also released this
year). She is not distractingly bad, she’s clearly got some acting chops, but
setting up her up as the protagonist puts a lot of weight on her back that I
don’t think she quite carries. A lot of the smaller roles I thought the acting
was at least baseline competent, although not enough to really improve the
story. The actress paying Demerzel is the one that sticks out the most, I find
her approach to the character compelling. She gave nicely subtle android vibes
even before the reveal, and her Finnish accent is perfectly offbeat. It was
also a delight to see Alexander Siddig in the first episode, though that was
certainly a guest appearance kind of thing.
Then there’s Raych (Alfred Enoch). Good god I hate his
performance. I know he’s been in some things, I remember him from How to Get
Away With Murder, which I watched the first season of. I recall in that series
he was playing kind of a nerdy, type-A personality, who got himself in a big
mess and was flustered and jittery all the time. I think he was well cast for
that role. But this role, I don’t even know what he’s going for. He cycles
through exaggerated facial expressions seemingly at random, like a
malfunctioning Mr. Potato Head, it’s indecipherable. The romance stuff with
Gaal was painfully devoid of chemistry, every scene between them felt
interminably long. I literally took a nap in the middle of the second episode
rather than watch it straight through.
The weakness of the cast just baffles me because of how
expensive the other elements of the production are. Apple TV+ has not been
cheap in budgeting its shows, and yet this seems like the cheapest cast you
could possibly assemble for a space drama.
The story is clearly kind of a dog’s breakfast of different
ideas and plot threads, I think you’ll need some charisma in the casting to
carry it through the rough patches where the plotting is difficult to follow.
The fact that it looks so good all the time helps to carry it through these
first two episodes, but I’ll grow bored with this if the cast continues to be
this weak (outside of the Empire stuff, where again, I’m loving Lee Pace).
If you are worried the plot will offer a genuine, sensitive sendup of religion in the modern world, you can banish that thought. If they are taking any cues from the book, they are merely laying the groundwork for one of the more cynical, but interesting, takes on religious authority to come out of the era. Asimov, like most of his peers, didn’t write about religion positively very much.
Don’t worry, you won’t miss any connections to the books because there aren’t any.
why so anti-math? rude.
Can we address the fact that the solution to the crumbling galactic empire appears to be Wikipedia (and maybe WikiHow)? I understand that when the books were written, the internet wasn’t an idea yet. But this is a sufficiently loose adaptation that they should be able to deal with the fact that in the last half century humans have made some advances towards resolving the central problem posed here.