Foundation dropped on Apple TV at just about the perfect time. Not only I am about a month and a half into my three free months of Apple TV thanks to my new iPhone, but I’m also reading the original trilogy (“Foundation”, “Foundation and Empire”, and we just started “Second Foundation”) to the Eldest Kiddo. (He wanted Star Wars, but I don’t have any of the novels and the original Foundation Trilogy was the closest I could come and be relatively age-appropriate. I don’t think he’s ready for something like “The Expanse” just yet.)
I’ve watched the first three episodes of the new show and I think it’s really, really good. Many people have considered The Foundation Trilogy to be unfilmable and there are good reasons to think that. The story takes place over the course of a thousand years. They’re not really novels in the conventional sense of the word- more like novellas that were paired together and have only the loosest possible connection to one and another even within the same book.
There’s also the question of Asimov’s writing style. There’s lots of dialogue and lots of exposition and lots of info-dumping as well. The cardinal rule of “show, don’t tell” sort of gets ignored quite a bit. Consider this excerpt from “Foundation and Empire”:
“The strangers of the Foundation knew nothing of the swirling days and nights of the bloody Sack that had left the University untouched. They knew nothing of the time after the collapse of the Imperial Power, when the students, with their borrowed weapons, and their pale-faced inexperienced bravery, formed a protective volunteer army to protect the central shrine of the science of the galaxy. They knew nothing of the Seven Days Fight, and the armistice that kept the University free, when even the Imperial palace clanged with the boots of Gilmer and his soldiers, during the short interval of their rule.”
That’s three sentences that impart a pretty good amount of information to the reader. But the thing is if you’re Apple TV and you want to really do the entire Foundation series justice, you’re (probably) going to have to show your viewers that at some point. Even if it’s in passing. (And lo and behold in the very first episode, Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) predicts that the great Imperial Library is going to, in fact, burn.) All these books are full of little asides like that- the reader absorbs them, allows them to add context or mood or fill out the narrative a little bit, and then keeps reading.
People were surprised at the choice to have three cloned Emperors being the main antagonists- I’ve seen reviewers praise the choice because it allows for a more consistent antagonist over the arc of a television show, but the thing is I know I’ve read references to this very concept somewhere in the first two books. (I’m thinking it’s probably “Foundation” but I thought it was “Foundation and Empire” as that’s where the reader encounters Cleon II.)
In the show, the character of Raych (Alfred Enoch) was initially totally new to me but what happens when I reach the end of “Foundation and Empire” and found a blurb for “Forward The Foundation” I learn that Raych is a character from the books and his undercover mission is to, in fact, kill Hari Seldon, which clicked a lot of things into place for me.
Apple TV is not attempting to adapt the books for television, it’s taking on the entire series.
It’s a subtle distinction, I’ll grant you, but an important one when you look at the structure of the source material itself. This show could have (and still might be, but we’ll assume that the trajectory of the first three episodes holds true) been a complete mess. So it’s somewhat surprising to see the early reviews be so decidedly mixed.
The cast is excellent. Jared Harris is the perfect Hari Seldon.1 Lee Pace is a fantastic emperor. They gender-swapped some characters around, which I know people reflexively get mad about these days, but honestly, I think it makes both Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) and Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey) more interesting characters, especially the former. Terrence Mann also brings a certain amount of weary gravitas to the role of the Emperor Emeritus, Brother Dusk. Alfred Enoch as I’ve already noted is great as Raych.
I think the general idea with this show is eight, ten-episode seasons and if you want to accurately get a sense of how well this show is going to do, I think you’re going to need to watch more than three episodes to get a good sense of how it’s doing. Is the challenge of adapting Asimov’s writing a great one? Yes, especially with a narrative arc that covers a thousand years and an entire galaxy- but the production value is excellent. It looks great. The cast is great. If they’re given time to really get their teeth into the source material, this show might get the critical praise it deserves.
For now, I’d say it’s really, really good and I can’t wait to watch more of it. I think that’s about all you can say about it, because with seven novels worth of source material written by Asimov himself, but three more novels of The Second Foundation Trilogy are also out there for source material- though how much those will be used, I don’t know, I think it’s just too soon to say whether or not Foundation is going to be a good show. But in terms of adapting one of the great series of science fiction, I think it’s off to a really strong start.
It was also nice to see Alexander Siddig show up in the first episode. He’s an excellent actor and should be in more stuff full stop, but my genre brain immediately gets excited and goes “Oooooh, look, he was in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine!”