Apple's TV show based on Asimov's FOUNDATION, starring Jared Harris

[David Selig]

I thought the third episode was atrocious. A complete borefest throughout. The first 20 minutes almost put me to sleep, I couldn't care less about the melodrama of the cloned emperors and Eto "Platitudes only" Demerzel. The rest wasn't much better. The show is clearly setting up Hardin to be a Chosen one figure due to her "special" skills and it's just silly and boring. And the Foundation has been on Terminus for decades and they still only have a few buildings and nothing resembling industry or a an actual town. How are they supposed to become a galactic superpower? Besides, their scientists seem completely useless from the scenes they have shown of them.

Edited October 2, 2021 by David Selig

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

ETA - I kept thinking, if I was a viewer with no background with the books who didn't know what Foundation was about, would I now, three hours in, have any idea what Foundation is about? Unfortunately I'm not sure I would have more than a vague notion.

*raises hand*

Not a scooby.

My exact words to my brother as EP3 credits rolled: "Well, this is certainly a weird approach to storytelling."

Looks amazing though.

[Werthead]

16 minutes ago, David Selig said:

The show is clearly setting up Hardin to be a Chosen one figure due to his "special" skills and it's just silly and boring.

Her.

Quote

And the Foundation has been on Terminus for decades and they still only have a few buildings and nothing resembling industry or a an actual town. How are they supposed to become a galactic superpower? Besides, their scientists seem completely useless from the scenes they have shown of them.

That's a reasonably valid point. The first Foundation story (well, second in the book but first-written) is set 50 years after the colonisation of Terminus, which seems to be more or less the timeframe here, but in the book the town on Terminus is bigger, more established and I think is even given a fairly firm population of 100,000, which is much larger than what we see on the show.

However, as in the show, they don't have their own ships and seem defenceless against their neighbours, which quickly becomes a major plot point, as is the lack of military or political acumen among the scientists.

Spoiler

If you don't mind being spoiled, the threat of the attacking Ancreons is averted by the Foundation agreeing to sell them scientific know-how, particularly fusion reactors, which they don't know how to build themselves. Salvor stages something of a coup against the scientists, creating distinct scientist, military and political classes within the Foundation. She (he in the books) also comes up with the idea of establishing a religion around the worship of technology, which takes root on the Ancreon homeworld. When the Ancreons later decide to conquer Terminus, Salvor's successors stage a massive religious uprising on the Ancreon homeworld and collapse the Ancreon government; Terminus steps in to save the people, effectively giving the Foundation control a multi-system mini-empire with its own military.

 

[Winterfell is Burning]

This episode was a failure at every level. It seems to be suffering from the same problem GoT suffered in the later years- it's not that they decided to deviate from the books, the problem is that the writers don't realize they're not as good as Asimov/GRRM, so create a show that satisfies neither people who want fidelity, nor the ones that want something different, and some of the changes simply make no sense whatsoever.

Also, why call characters like Hardin or Demerzel when the characters have absolutely nothing in common with the books? Is one thing to make minor changes, or even gender, another when they are so big that it would be like make Robert Baratheon a celibate monk.

[karaddin]

4 hours ago, mormont said:

ETA - I kept thinking, if I was a viewer with no background with the books who didn't know what Foundation was about, would I now, three hours in, have any idea what Foundation is about? Unfortunately I'm not sure I would have more than a vague notion.

Only thing I know is a vague explanation of psychohistory and its role in the larger scheme and yeah no idea where this is going. Also is this generally considered hard sci fi? Because psychohistory is really just magic, you can call it science and maths all you like but when it has zero connection to any existing technology its the same concept as magic.

I'm also not sure what I'm meant to be viewing as the flaw of this clone emperor setup. Hardin says the problem is that they're a known quantity that doesn't change, but then we have this last episode which is saying (in the language of visual media) that Brother Darkness's appreciation for the weight of history is a good thing, cutting to Brother Day destroying the mural in a suggestion that his lack of that same appreciation is a flaw that's going to cause problems. So is it change or the lack of it which is the problem?

[Ran]

Not yet watched the second and third episodes, but isn't what Foundation about fairly succinctly described, several times, by Seldon? An attempt to reduce a 10,000 years of a Dark Age to 1,000 years through the protection and development of knowledge, while doing so during whatever craziness comes out of the deaththroes of the empire.

[Loge]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Not yet watched the second and third episodes, but isn't what Foundation about fairly succinctly described, several times, by Seldon? An attempt to reduce a 10,000 years of a Dark Age to 1,000 years through the protection and development of knowledge, while doing so during whatever craziness comes out of the deaththroes of the empire.

Haven't seen any of the shows yet. In the books, the rules and what the Seldon plan really is about change with each instalment. First it's all about statistics and how it's possible to predict history with math because individuals don't matter. Later it's the opposite, with telepaths bending people to their will, which shouldn't make much difference if the original premise held, but totally does.

[David Selig]

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

That's a reasonably valid point. The first Foundation story (well, second in the book but first-written) is set 50 years after the colonisation of Terminus, which seems to be more or less the timeframe here, but in the book the town on Terminus is bigger, more established and I think is even given a fairly firm population of 100,000, which is much larger than what we see on the show.

However, as in the show, they don't have their own ships and seem defenceless against their neighbours, which quickly becomes a major plot point, as is the lack of military or political acumen among the scientists.

  Reveal hidden contents

If you don't mind being spoiled, the threat of the attacking Ancreons is averted by the Foundation agreeing to sell them scientific know-how, particularly fusion reactors, which they don't know how to build themselves. Salvor stages something of a coup against the scientists, creating distinct scientist, military and political classes within the Foundation. She (he in the books) also comes up with the idea of establishing a religion around the worship of technology, which takes root on the Ancreon homeworld. When the Ancreons later decide to conquer Terminus, Salvor's successors stage a massive religious uprising on the Ancreon homeworld and collapse the Ancreon government; Terminus steps in to save the people, effectively giving the Foundation control a multi-system mini-empire with its own military.

 

I've read the books, it's quite contrived there too.

Spoiler

How the hell did Anacreon have working spaceships while having no nuclear reactors on their planets? And the whole "Everyone in the Galaxy except in the Foundation just gradually forgot how stuff works" stuff is pretty ridiculous in general. The science as religion stuff is even more silly given the small timeframe of the events and I hope they skip it here.

But in the show the Terminus settlement looks so primitive and tiny that it would be much harder to buy something like this.

9 hours ago, karaddin said:

Only thing I know is a vague explanation of psychohistory and its role in the larger scheme and yeah no idea where this is going. Also is this generally considered hard sci fi? Because psychohistory is really just magic, you can call it science and maths all you like but when it has zero connection to any existing technology its the same concept as magic.

Some people consider the books hard sci-fi, yes, which I've always thought is ridiculous. Not only is the psychohistory math basically magic, but also the whole plot of the series largely relies on

Spoiler

psionic powers.

 

[Ran]

2 hours ago, Loge said:

Haven't seen any of the shows yet. In the books, the rules and what the Seldon plan really is about change with each instalment. First it's all about statistics and how it's possible to predict history with math because individuals don't matter. Later it's the opposite, with telepaths bending people to their will, which shouldn't make much difference if the original premise held, but totally does.

My recollection is that psychohistory can predict history because, yes, individuals generally don't matter... but it can't handle individuals who have wildly outsized impacts because of things like being telepaths (e.g. the Mule). The Second Foundation is founded to try to cancel out the effects of these unpredictable wild cards through covert action, steering the Plan back to where it would have been had these unpredictable impacts not appeared.

[Annara Snow]

11 hours ago, karaddin said:

Only thing I know is a vague explanation of psychohistory and its role in the larger scheme and yeah no idea where this is going. Also is this generally considered hard sci fi? Because psychohistory is really just magic, you can call it science and maths all you like but when it has zero connection to any existing technology its the same concept as magic.

I'm also not sure what I'm meant to be viewing as the flaw of this clone emperor setup. Hardin says the problem is that they're a known quantity that doesn't change, but then we have this last episode which is saying (in the language of visual media) that Brother Darkness's appreciation for the weight of history is a good thing, cutting to Brother Day destroying the mural in a suggestion that his lack of that same appreciation is a flaw that's going to cause problems. So is it change or the lack of it which is the problem?

You mean Brother Dawn (the new one, born in the latest episode and seen as a teenager 17 years later, future Cleon the 14th).

[Annara Snow]

16 hours ago, mormont said:

 

ETA - I kept thinking, if I was a viewer with no background with the books who didn't know what Foundation was about, would I now, three hours in, have any idea what Foundation is about? Unfortunately I'm not sure I would have more than a vague notion.

*raises hand* I have no background with the books - well, just a few vague things I've heard but haven't read them.

I think I'm doing just fine understanding what the show is about (even though the mathetical talk in episode 1 wasn't my strength(, and it's quite interesting so far.

I didn't care about the insta-relationship (insta from our POV, anyway) between Gael and Raych, but other than that, they've been doing decently making the characters interesting. I have no idea where they're going with the time jumps, but there is obviously more about Hari Seldon's character and his plans that hasn't been revealed yet (including his death (?)), and I find the weirdness of the Imperial family kind of fascinating. Looking forward to more seeing more different clone versions. 

I'm guessing there are going to be more jumps back and forward in time and I doubt we've seen the last of Jared Harris, whether it is in flashbacks or some other forms.

[Werthead]

13 hours ago, karaddin said:

Only thing I know is a vague explanation of psychohistory and its role in the larger scheme and yeah no idea where this is going. Also is this generally considered hard sci fi? Because psychohistory is really just magic, you can call it science and maths all you like but when it has zero connection to any existing technology its the same concept as magic.

Asimov did write "hard SF" built around credible ideas and science, like AI ethical issues in I, Robot and its sequels, but Foundation with its magic FTL and magic psychohistory is very much soft SF.

Some, particularly older SF fans who still think Asimov is a god of the genre, disagree on the less-rational basis of "hard SF is what I like."

[AncalagonTheBlack]

This has become a borefest by episode 3. Biggest flaw is that i don't care for a single character so far.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Did it seem odd to anyone else that the Ancreons were flying interstellar spacecraft but their weapons were bows?

[Werthead]

5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Did it seem odd to anyone else that the Ancreons were flying interstellar spacecraft but their weapons were bows?

The Ancreons on the ships hadn't arrived, so I'm assuming these are rebels/runaways of some kind.

[David Selig]

43 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Asimov did write "hard SF" built around credible ideas and science, like AI ethical issues in I, Robot and its sequels, but Foundation with its magic FTL and magic psychohistory is very much soft SF.

Some, particularly older SF fans who still think Asimov is a god of the genre, disagree on the less-rational basis of "hard SF is what I like."

It always makes me laugh when Asimov is mentioned as a prime example of hard science fiction when so much of his work includes psionic powers as a key plot element. And this wasn't just something which he had to include in his stories in the Astounding early in his career because John W. Campbell loved this stuff (though this certainly played a role). When Asimov returned to the Foundation and the Robots settings in the 80s and could write whatever he wanted, there was more psionic powers, not less, even in the Robots novels, where until then they have been quite rare.

IMO the Foundation is pretty bad as soft science fiction too. The sociological and historical ideas in it were quite absurd even back in the early 1940s and today are simply ridiculous. Asimov transported the fall of the Roman empire in space but he clearly didn't know all that much about Roman history when he wrote the early stories or made much of an effort to account for the differences in settings. This leads to absurdities like all the talk how different the Periphery is from the inner worlds when the Empire has a hyperspace jump technology which makes distances irrelevant and doesn't have any external enemies. The whole idea of 30,000 years of barbarism without a single Empire for all mankind is not not only nonsensical, but really regressive and pro-Authoritarianism.

Edited October 2, 2021 by David Selig

[Werthead]

It's clear Asimov didn't have a strong grasp of his idea. As Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth show, set at the exact midpoint of the 1,000-year period of "barbarism," most planets are ticking along very nicely without a centralised Empire, to the point of them all being controlled by a central authority again feels weird (Asimov seemed to agree, hence dropping the whole idea of a Second Empire and thus invalidating the premise of the entire series).

[karaddin]

3 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

You mean Brother Dawn (the new one, born in the latest episode and seen as a teenager 17 years later, future Cleon the 14th).

You're right, he's played by the actor who gets credited as Brother Day so I mixed it up, but at that point he would still be Brother Dawn.

And I should clarify, the details of the larger plot absolutely make sense - what I'm uncertain about is what the emotional story we're being told is. The overarching story could boil down to being a wiki page, but there's got to be something with a more human element in there. I actually did care about Gaal and then she's completely absent from this story and clearly missed the start of the Foundation floating off in stasis in the escape pod somewhere.

I'm also interested in the archive, and find some of the dynamics around the Emperor's quite intriguing but it's just potential for now.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, karaddin said:

You're right, he's played by the actor who gets credited as Brother Day so I mixed it up, but at that point he would still be Brother Dawn.

And I should clarify, the details of the larger plot absolutely make sense - what I'm uncertain about is what the emotional story we're being told is. The overarching story could boil down to being a wiki page, but there's got to be something with a more human element in there. I actually did care about Gaal and then she's completely absent from this story and clearly missed the start of the Foundation floating off in stasis in the escape pod somewhere.

I'm also interested in the archive, and find some of the dynamics around the Emperor's quite intriguing but it's just potential for now.

In the short stories, they flip from protagonist to protagonist; Gaal is the focus of the first story, Harvin the focus of the second and third. My guess is that they cryo-froze Gaal to reawaken her in the present and have her interact with Harvin. I'm assuming Gaal will be blamed as the murderer of Seldon and she'll have to clear her name.

I'm seeing reports by people who saw the screener (which had eight of the ten episodes) that it looks like only two to three of the five stories in the first book are adapted (we're already past "The Psychohistorians" and seem to be in a heavily-changed version of "The Enyclopedists," which will likely roll into a changed version of "The Mayors"). "The Traders" is a very low-key and very short story and "The Merchant Princes" only a bit more interesting, so I'm wondering if they'll skip those, or roll those into the character of Harvin's boyfriend in some fashion. Season 2 could just straight-up adapt Foundation and Empire and bring in the Mule.

The Vault is interesting but the thing floating above it it seems to be a bit close to iconography lifted from No Man's Sky, which is odd.

[Winterfell is Burning]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

It's clear Asimov didn't have a strong grasp of his idea. As Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth show, set at the exact midpoint of the 1,000-year period of "barbarism," most planets are ticking along very nicely without a centralised Empire, to the point of them all being controlled by a central authority again feels weird (Asimov seemed to agree, hence dropping the whole idea of a Second Empire and thus invalidating the premise of the entire series).

  But at that point, a huge chunk, if not most, of the empire is already more or less in control of the Foundation(s).

 

4 hours ago, David Selig said:

It always makes me laugh when Asimov is mentioned as a prime example of hard science fiction when so much of his work includes psionic powers as a key plot element. And this wasn't just something which he had to include in his stories in the Astounding early in his career because John W. Campbell loved this stuff (though this certainly played a role). When Asimov returned to the Foundation and the Robots settings in the 80s and could write whatever he wanted, there was more psionic powers, not less, even in the Robots novels, where until then they have been quite rare.

IMO the Foundation is pretty bad as soft science fiction too. The sociological and historical ideas in it were quite absurd even back in the early 1940s and today are simply ridiculous. Asimov transported the fall of the Roman empire in space but he clearly didn't know all that much about Roman history when he wrote the early stories or made much of an effort to account for the differences in settings. This leads to absurdities like all the talk how different the Periphery is from the inner worlds when the Empire has a hyperspace jump technology which makes distances irrelevant and doesn't have any external enemies. The whole idea of 30,000 years of barbarism without a single Empire for all mankind is not not only nonsensical, but really regressive and pro-Authoritarianism.

I disagree (in part) with you here. First of all, hyperspace is not teleportation, we see in the latter books that trips even in the most modern of the ships can last weeks, if not months, which is, well, the distance from Rome or Constantinople to the edges of the empire.

Second, I hope I don't have to tell you why suggesting that a Russian Jew that flew from America in the 20's would be writing a pro-authoritarianism story in 1942 is absurd.

It's also pretty clear in the story most of the problems are caused by the Empire itself, and the idea of the Foundation is not to impose a dictatorship or control people's lives, but rather have a central authority that can preserve history, culture, science and keep some standards, as well as to stop or mitigate conflicts. One only has to look to Europe during early modern age and compare it with the European Union today to see what's preferable. It's pretty clear either Asimov nor Seldon ever intended to have the Foundation controlling people's ordinary lives, sending them to jail for dissent, etc.

More, in-universe we already saw that this was a culture that lost even the memory of Earth, as well as things like modern genetics, so what Seldon predicts already happened in the past.

That said, of course psychohistory is a lot more magic than science, because, if Asimov or anyone could actually conceive something like that, then it simply wouldn't be science fiction anymore, and even in universe one can only predict based on the behavior several billions or trillions of people, which obviously can't happen.