Apple TV's Foundation - General Thoughts

Adapting Asimov ‘s Foundation for TV is an ambitious undertaking. Just as psychohistory deals with human nature based on massive swaths of population, so too does the thrust of the Asimov’s stories. The books will highlight clever escapades of clever individuals, but it is reinforced, through direct mention or subtle innuendo, that the outcome according to the Seldon plan, will remain the same despite the individual catalyst. In short, the Seldon plan is the main character in Asimov’s books.

This presents a challenge for the Foundation showrunners. How do you forward a narrative that spans a millennium, while developing characters? Well, it’s not easy, and the big question I have to ask is: Is making a show like this even worth it?

To solve the aforementioned plot/character dilemma they have found ways to keep certain main characters the same throughout the centuries. Hari Seldon is a computer program of his consciousness. The emperors are clones, so they are essentially the same person throughout the centuries. Salvor Hardin and Gaal Dornick have been in cryo-sleep for 100+ years and, presumably will return thitherto. Eto Dzemeral is a robot about twenty-thousand years old, (which to be fair they are in the books). Of course, by making these character changes, the showrunners have to make major changes to the stories in Asimov's books. And, given such a complex undertaking, I’m not quite sure they could have executed the show a whole lot better, but I still find the relation of characters to plot to be awkward and clunky at times. This brings me back to my original question: Should this show have been made at all, or should all of this time and money have been put into a different property?

The answer I have is yes, <insert eye-roll emoji here> If you like Asimov, and you like science fiction space operas, then the show is worth watching. The visuals and the world building are satisfying albeit simplistic. The characters can be boring, and the acting can be melodramatic and even a little annoying. But again, the Foundation series (the original trilogy at least,) is not really about individuals people making individual decisions; it’s mainly about the big picture. Along the big-picture lines, the showrunners have paid homage to source material places, times, crises and concepts, even if they made big changes thereto. So, my qualms about the show are not necessarily the execution, as I personally enjoy watching it. My qualms remain simply with the fact that the quality of the show is greatly limited by how non-conducive the Foundation series is to production on the small screen. All things considered, I think the showrunners have done well within the restrictive constraints of the source content. The issue remains, of course, that the showrunners willingly volunteered to be bound by said constraints.

Stay tuned, individual episode reviews to come.