Foundation, one of the most famous science fiction book series of all time, was finally adapted into a television show. At least, that’s what I thought. Apple TV+, a private streaming TV network owned by Apple Inc, with a backsliding revenue caused by the Covid 19 pandemic (they say), tried to invigorate their subscription base with this ambitious project. So, they gave free hand to David S. Goyer (Blade Trilogy, Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, etc – screenwriter) and Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds – 2005, The Black Dahlia – 2006, Avatar 2 – end of 2022, screenwriter) to create a 10 episode season of the Asimov’s Foundation.
Foundation – poster
[source of all pics: imdb]
Prelude to Foundation
“When I wrote ‘Foundation,’ which appeared in the May 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, I had no idea that I had begun a series of stories that would eventually grow into six volumes and a total of 650,000 words,” said Isaac Asimov in the Prelude to Foundation, a book he published years after the others, but chronologically is the first of the Foundation cycle. Only the proper Foundation forms a seven volumes cycle. The books were not written in the order in which they should be read.
The whole series has fifteen books and a story, which should be read in the following order, just to understand the author’s logical vision:
1. The Complete Robot (1982) is a collection of 31 robot short stories plus Robot Dreams, another story;
2. The Caves of Steel (1954), the first robot novel;
3. The Naked Sun (1957), the second robot novel;
4. The Robots of Dawn (1983), the third robot novel;
5. Robots and Empire (1985), the fourth robot novel;
6. The Currents of Space (1952), the first Empire novel;
7. The Stars, Like Dust (1951), the second Empire novel;
8. Pebble in the Sky (1950), the third Empire novel;
9. Prelude to Foundation (1988), the first Foundation novel, the second last published;
10. Forward the Foundation (published in 1993), the second Foundation novel, the last published, posthumous;
11. Foundation (1951), the third Foundation novel, is made up of four stories;
12. Foundation and Empire (1952), the fourth Foundation novel, is made up of two stories;
13. Second Foundation (1953), the fifth Foundation novel, is made up of two stories;
14. Foundation’s Edge (1982), the sixth Foundation novel;
15. Foundation and Earth (1983), the seventh Foundation novel.
For the sake of simplicity, try to remember to start with the robot stories, continue with the four Daneel Olivaw novels, then with the three Empire novels, and then with the seven Foundation novels. You’ll be amazed.
Why is Apple TV+’s Foundation a Joke?
At least the books have a certain logic in describing the action, the vision, and the goal. I’m talking about the proper Foundation, I’m not including Daneel Olivaw’s books or the Empire’s. It would be great, but alas, the TV show has a different agenda. I don’t say it’s bad, but is not what one may expect, and, unfortunately for me, it was a disappointment. They have to combine modern progressivism with the “war on terror”, pushing “diversity” by all means, and invent new stories to support or justify it. Mass and individual surveillance are normal in the future and the retribution for crime is swift, even when it is alleged. This storyline is something quite different than Asimov’s.
I found a review that said about the series beginning will be quite difficult for the non-initiated and that Goyer’s transcription is much improved because despite almost all major characters in the book being men, he made Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin women. This is nonsense. What means “non-initiate”? It was obviously created for people who didn’t read the books, exactly for these “non-initiates”. There, in the book (Foundation), Salvor Hardin was the massive mayor of the Foundation on Terminus, an exceptionally bright, brave, and cunning leader who directed a coup against the scientists, gathers absolute power, and solves the first Seldon Crisis, thirty-five years after the colonization. Here, in the show, he is Foundation’s warden, a black girl with many talents, of whom you’ll learn a great deal from other sources. Gaal Dornick is a young mathematician invited by Hary Seldon on Trantor to help him elaborate the science of Psychohistory, a combination of psychology and history, put on a mathematical frame. Where others see chaos, Seldon sees patterns, so he can predict the future of the Empire. Gaal’s adventure on Trantor and wherever covers around fifty pages on Foundation, the third book of the cycle, published in 1951. Goyer’s Gaal Dornik is another young black girl which seems gifted and she is maybe the third major star of the show, after Seldon and the Emperor. My dissatisfaction is greater because ten episodes were spent with a contradicting babble covering only the first 35 years of the Foundation, the result being a mess.
The biggest twist pulled by Goyer is making Eto Demerzel, the true preserver of the Empire, the mind behind the Emperor, a woman android. Below is an extract from “Encyclopedia Galactica” from Forward to Foundation:
DEMERZEL, ETO— … While there is no question that Eto Demerzel was the real power in the government during much of the reign of Emperor Cleon I, historians are divided as to the nature of his rule. The classic interpretation is that he was another in the long line of strong and ruthless oppressors in the last century of the undivided Galactic Empire, but there are revisionist views that have surfaced and that insist his was, if a despotism, a benevolent one. Much is made, in this view, of his relationship with Hari Seldon, though that remains forever uncertain…
Making it a woman is nothing because, on paper, nobody knew its nature, except Hari Seldon who figured out that he must be a robot. We learn this at the end of Prelude, as a pleasant surprise. The absurdness of the situation is that Goyer also dismisses the three laws of robotics. Without them, the logic falls. His Demerzel kills “in cold blood”, or its equivalent, considering that she’s a robot.
The three laws of Robotics (as elaborated by Isac Asimov and exposed in all of his robot novels):
1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2) A robot must obey orders given in to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
We don’t have any common robot in “Demerzel”, we have R Daneel Olivaw in person, a character with a four books collection named after him. Anyway, the illogical issues faced with Asimov’s concept or even faced with the “science” in science fiction, make a long list. If you are a modern product of our days and philosophies, these will not count. Reading all fifteen Foundation books is a huge task for you, or even reading the last seven (the proper Foundation), so the probability to be disturbed by the new storyline is reduced to an absolute minimum. It’s OK, it is another thing altogether. It can look even spectacular, in its lack of coherence and logic. The magnificent CGI is what got most of the reviewers’ eyes, so they mostly praised the show.
Plot
In Trantor, the capital planet of the Galactic Empire, mathematician Hari Seldon conceives a theory about the Empire’s inevitable collapse in less than five hundred years and then returning to barbarianism. Revealing it publicly attracts the Emperor’s wrath. This is correlated with a terrorist double attack over a huge and planetary tall space elevator called Starbridge, killing a hundred and fifty million. The attack seems to be linked to two feuding planets at the end of the Galaxy. The two human bombs that strategically placed themselves to effectively put out the station were allegedly from Anacreon and Thespis because their last cries were recorded in those languages. Another theory was that Hari Seldon’s proselytes staged the attacks to look like made by the peripheral already called barbaric people. Fearing a martyrdom concerning Seldon, the Emperor exiles Seldon and his disciples, actually, a big bunch of scientists, to Terminus, on the periphery.
The conspiracy was never solved, and what or where is the periphery remains clouded, but never mind, new characters are invented and the few original ones are re-invented. In the meantime, the two alleged culprit planets suffer swift retribution; they are blasted by the Empire’s ships like Afghanistan by the US Army after 9/11.
The Trantor story evolves in parallel with another one, thirty-five years after the colonization of Terminus, a planet looking far away from how it should look after all those years. The scientists still live in containers, like in a small technological bidonville.
Lee Pace in Foundation
Cast
Jared Harris is Hari Seldon, the genius mathematician who developed psychohistory. Lee Pace is the Emperor, the middle and vigorous one, I’m not explaining the concept, you’ll figure it out by watching. Lou Lobell is Gaal Dornick, a cute mathematical prodigy with origins on Synnax, a planet where the rulers are religious freaks who killed all intellectuals. It’s a miracle how a girl with two bigot parents could solve some unsolvable mathematical equation. She sends it to Trantor, to Seldon, at the University and gets invited to the “machine world”. Leah Harvey is Salvor Hardin, another twenty-something young woman who is the warden of Terminus. She knows a lot: martial arts, piloting spaceships, warfare tactics, electronics, physics, and has also other talents you’ll discover yourselves. Laura Birn is Eto Demerzel, the Emperor’s majordomo, protector, and devotee. The Emperor is called “Empire”, so, she is loyal to the Empire.
Others don’t count, I’m sorry. These are Asimov’s characters who are got right by the producers. There’s also a Raych, but it seems to be just a coincidence. He has little to do with the ragged ruffian who helped Seldon escape the Imperial security forces in the past, conform to the written word, of course.
[My bad for not publishing when I wrote this review, in November 2021]
Trailer
The show may be a lesson of what you have to understand. Forget the death penalty’s abolishment. If you are not killed by a bomb or a blast, your king will execute you. The governing power is in the masters of your universe’s hands, and it is more than hereditary, it is perpetual, the master is cloning itself so you’ll never get rid of him.
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