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

[karaddin]

1 minute ago, IlyaP said:

Lee Pace. Jeezus. Look at those abs. Boy howdy. Way to make a boy feel like he needs to go to gym more often, Lee! 

That's another win for Lee Pace's workout routine! There's a whole scene of him 

Spoiler

fighting off an assassination attempt completely in the buff. They blocked it very well to not show certain parts but the rest of his workout routine was not left to the imagination lol. He's putting in work for this role.

 

[IlyaP]

18 minutes ago, karaddin said:

That's another win for Lee Pace's workout routine! There's a whole scene of him 

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fighting off an assassination attempt completely in the buff. They blocked it very well to not show certain parts but the rest of his workout routine was not left to the imagination lol. He's putting in work for this role.

 

You know I'm just gonna end up watching this and thinking "I need to go to the gym more often. I need to go to the gym more often. DAMMIT I NEED to go to the gym more often!"  

[SpaceChampion]

On 7/17/2023 at 9:47 AM, Theda Baratheon said:

For someone who hasn’t read the source material - Is it a good science fiction show worth watching? 
 

Aren't you a big fan of Dune?  Or am I thinking of Bladerunner?  Anyway, Dune and Foundation are kind of in conversation with each other.   Both are about determinism and free will, and how future humanity deals with that.

However, the Foundation series is written as sort of logic puzzles.  There isn't a lot of emotional connection in that, as far as I can remember, largely due to changing characters every story, and each story turning on figuring out coldly what the logical thing to do to get through the current Crisis.  So those decrying the lack of "faithfulness" to the storyline when that storyline is fairly dry and cold and disconnected from emotional resonance, I don't have sympathy for.   The change to make the Genetic Dynasty a thing through clones is great, and most here seem to enjoy that though that's in no way faithful to the book series, it arguably improves the basis on which the Seldon Plan can make predictions about the future.  That the next step is cloning Hari Seldon and giving him all the mind and memories of the original Seldon doesn't seem out of step to me, and potentially will add emotional resonance through the complexity of his relationships with his disciples.  This all seems a good thing to me.

 

[Theda Baratheon]

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Aren't you a big fan of Dune?  Or am I thinking of Bladerunner?  Anyway, Dune and Foundation are kind of in conversation with each other.   Both are about determinism and free will, and how future humanity deals with that.

However, the Foundation series is written as sort of logic puzzles.  There isn't a lot of emotional connection in that, as far as I can remember, largely due to changing characters every story, and each story turning on figuring out coldly what the logical thing to do to get through the current Crisis.  So those decrying the lack of "faithfulness" to the storyline when that storyline is fairly dry and cold and disconnected from emotional resonance, I don't have sympathy for.   The change to make the Genetic Dynasty a thing through clones is great, and most here seem to enjoy that though that's in no way faithful to the book series, it arguably improves the basis on which the Seldon Plan can make predictions about the future.  That the next step is cloning Hari Seldon and giving him all the mind and memories of the original Seldon doesn't seem out of step to me, and potentially will add emotional resonance through the complexity of his relationships with his disciples.  This all seems a good thing to me.

 

Blade Runner is my favourite film but I love the Dune films. I haven’t read the book (yet) but have actually just started it  I’ve spent so many hours reading about Dune-lore though so I guess you could say I am also a fan! 

[Gronzag]

I am absolutely floored by the production values of this thing. I really can't think of any other show that looks anywhere near as good as this. The visuals are really good enough for a theatrically released big budget sci fi film. I would love to know the budget per episode.

Unfortunately, the writing and characters aren't that great. The Empire story line seemed like it had great potential, but now even that is starting to feel like it isn't going anywhere interesting enough justify the rest of the show.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Gronzag

[Ran]

Yeah, the visuals of the show, and the production design, are really incredible. But...

You might find it more tolerable to just fast forward through everything that doesn't have Empire in it. Honestly, after the first couple of episodes, the stories are entirely disconnected from one another.

[Ran]

Finally caught up -- we were on vacation with dodgy internet, and since part of the appeal of the show for us is just how splendid it looks in 4k, we decided to wait until we returned.

I recently saw some posts on Reddit arguing that he show is improving from the first season, and I think in a way this is true -- the bad is not quite as godawful bad as it was. That said, I would not be leaping forward to suggest this thing is a good show, much less a great show. Right now the Empire storyline seems to get about a quarter to a third of the runtime, so... that knocks the grade down, not up, from the first season, just because an incremental improvement in the quality of non-Empire stories does not equal the loss of having Empire take a back seat.

I could see how this season is stripmining more of the Foundation series for characters, places, and even (vaguely) scenarios -- characters like Bel Riose and Hober Mallow, for example, are based (very, very loosely) on counterparts in the novel -- while at the same time they seem to be going more and more inventive with the Hari Seldon simulacrum/Gaal/Salvor part of the story. And I'm not sure the inventions are good, because they feel very deliberately mysterious to the point of being nonsensical

Spoiler

Where did Seldon get all this technology? The stuff the Vault is doing is seemingly beyond the ken of anyone. And WTF is going on with the ancient mathematician Kalle apparently being alive and well and seemingly masterminding some of this stuff? 

One bit I remember from the Foundation novels is the turn of the Foundation of proselytizing "scientcism" and using technology to seem to work miracles, and they do a pretty good job with that aspect, though there's a weird comedic thing going on as well which I'm not sure works like they intended. It doesn't have the wit and verve to seem like anything more than mediocre sitcom scenarios. Which is a shame.

But I do really like the Empire and Dominion storyline. It's so science-fictional, with casual discussion of memory-wiping and decanting clones and all that jazz, and Lee Pace has been fantastic.

[karaddin]

It's not just Pace for me either, Dawn and Dusk are both doing a great job as well and Dominion has injected some excellent tension. She's playing a very dangerous game but at least so far in a way that's believable and feels like when the tension breaks things are going to go to hell very quickly.

The Bel Riose/Hover Mallow storyline has me a lot more interested after the episode from last week, which probably means it's departing further from pretending to adapt the books lol. My speculation on where it's going

Spoiler

Bel is who Hober is being sent to negotiate with to position that fleet as the dagger behind the back. The Foundation having fold ships and personal aura seemed to really throw him and I think helps position the Foundation as an alternative to Empire in his head.

The big question mark for me is what Demerzal is playing at. If I'm remembering correctly she's the architect of the generic dynasty and seems remarkably unconcerned with how Day is set to dismantle it, so I'm assuming she's up to something we're not seeing yet.

[IlyaP]

On 8/9/2023 at 6:09 AM, Ran said:

Lee Pace has been fantastic.

Especially his abs

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 hours ago, karaddin said:

The big question mark for me is what Demerzal is playing at. If I'm remembering correctly she's the architect of the generic dynasty and seems remarkably unconcerned with how Day is set to dismantle it, so I'm assuming she's up to something we're not seeing yet.

She was very disturbed at being used as an assassin last season.  Perhaps she’s slowly undermining the Dynasty?

[karaddin]

38 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

She was very disturbed at being used as an assassin last season.  Perhaps she’s slowly undermining the Dynasty?

She could do it a lot faster, so I assume there's more to her game if she's taking it so slowly. And yeah, potentially also to do with the clones not having a soul according to that religion. We don't know that Day ever told her he lied about having a vision (I don't think) but the point of including that can only be it's impact on Demerzal after we skipped ahead, so I have to assume he did at some point.

[Ran]

Latest episode does some weird stuff with mentalics and the Second Foundation, but I guess it's just another path to get there. This episode and the previous have given Terrence Mann more to do, which is all to the good, but I question the idea that prior Cleons didn't ever look at the fact that Cleon I had way more memory stored than they themselves do and wonder. My guess? Cleon I buried a bunch of stuff involving failures and faults, and probably a lot of the stuff having to do with Demerzel's role in his reign. Speaking of Cleon I, interesting that they can speak with a simulacrum of him.

My guess is Demerzel has decided that with the corruption of the Cleonic genepool, that it's time to move away from that. She's almost certainly been the person who has gotten Day to decide to get married and have an heir, and I suspect her glimpsing at the image of the empresses of a past dynasty may sugggest she had a role in their rule and is imagining a fresh start. (But this, of course, turns on the idea that Demerzel is basically just doing the same stuff as R. Daneel Olivaw).

 

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

What was that?  It seems odd to resurrect Seldon… just to turn around and kill him…

[karaddin]

Yeah. That was an episode that spent half of its run time giving the back story of someone it was in the middle of killing (if we take it at face value) rendering the entire thing pointless so of course we're going to assume there's more going on, but it didn't work well even if he's not dead

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

What is also difficult for me is that the acting is quite good even if the story isn’t…

[Ran]

I keep marveling at how visually impressive the show is. Even down to the production design, things as simple as the set that was Seldon's living quarters at the university he was teaching at, there's real quality. The clothing, too, was sort of interesting: a kind of retro-futuristic take on what's essentially Western 1950s-1960s clothes.

I have to say, this episode is the first time where I was really digging the non-Empire story. Possibly this is in part because Jane Espenson wrote the teleplay, and has been involved a lot in other scripts this season. In any case, I rather enjoyed much of it. But it also helps that they have just largely given up any pretense of trying to adapt the books -- none of the stuff going on basically has anything recognizable to do with them at this stage, other than some names.

That said, maybe one detail in this episode makes me wonder.... spoiler for the Foundation prequels:

Spoiler

Yanna's arrival, her throwing herself into Seldon's life, her encouraging and helping his work, her attempting to urge him to go to Trantor... and when that failed, her apparent death did what her persuasion was unable to do. A death Seldon knew of only because of a conveniently-timed gift of the heartbeat transmitter necklace [whose shape, I noticed, is rather Vault-like]....

Well, this makes me think of Asimov's two prequels, and specifically the characters of Dors Venabili, who essentially is the role that Yanna takes over. In Prelude to Foundation, a few little details about her as she forms a relationship with Seldon and ends up helping to save his life and push forward his reearch come together with the conclusion from Seldon... that she's actually an android, who has been sent by R. Daneel Olivaw to watch over him.

I can't help but think that Yanna was all an elaborate effort (either by Demerzel or whatever is going on with that allegedly-long-dead poet-mathematician) to nudge Seldon along to where he is now.

 

[Gronzag]

This is a show without a single likable character that fans can latch onto and root for. Seldon is really unlikable. Gaal is a bland underdeveloped character but is apparently destined to become a galactic Messiah. Hardin is supposed to be this strong female character archetype but writers obviously have no idea what to do with her so she's just awkwardly around, being this assertive soldier and whatnot. I think the two monks and the pilot are supposed to become fan favorites but I just don't care for any of them. The only thing that I find interesting are Demerzel's machinations with the dynasty.

By the way, while the visuals are stunning, the show feels really small scale. I'm not under the impression that what we are seeing is a Galaxy spanning empire with thousands of planets and trillions of people. More like a single solar system with unusually high number of terrestrial planets that are sparsely settled.

[karaddin]

So I'm sticking with my interpretation that Bel Riose was actually who Hober was sent to meet. Going to the Spacers works as both a misdirect to the audience (and Hober) but it was simply necessary for first contract with Riose to be via this route and revealing the home swarm to him, with the opalesque carrot dangling for them as an additional benefit.

Still can't figure out what Demerzal is working towards - I don't think her current actions are necessary for ending the genetic dynasty which is ending already. I suspect it's indirect and hard to see because she's working around her zeroth law which is presumably an extension of protecting humans at scale in humanity/embodied in Empire to override the individual 3 laws that preceded it.

I think I'm enjoying all 3/4 plot threads at this point in the season which lifts it well ahead of season 1. No idea where Ignus is going, I don't buy that Hari and Salvor were both offed and I'm confident Gaal isn't actually trusting the others - "now is not the time" was a comment on the timing rather than denying the suspicion and Salvor missed that.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

‘Just started watching:

Episode 1:

Yeah! Get that man a towel for Pete’s sake! Although if they wanted to grease up Lee Pace for a whole season of Greco Roman wrasslin’, I’d be fine with that. And I’m totally straight!

Good to see Holt McCallany in this show as the Warden of Terminus. I’m sure he’s going to feature heavily in future episodes. 

Episode 2:

Re: Holt McCallany, Oops. 

I’m getting a funny feeling about that droid…

The Brothers are hilarious. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

That was interesting.