Apple Gives Series Order for Isaac Asimov's Foundation

[zeph]

They Said Foundation Couldn't Be Filmed, and It Still Hasn't Been

I agree with this:

Foundation doesn’t want to be Foundation. It wants to be the heady, thoughtful, revelatory first season of Westworld, so it pontificates about politics and religion and souls, but it doesn’t have the depth to say anything important. The TV series also wants to be Game of Thrones with its political manoeuvring (most of which is invented wholesale for the show), but once Hari Seldon’s spaceship takes off, those imperial politics have virtually nothing to do with the Foundation. It also wants to be a sci-fi action show.


It’s so busy trying to be all of these things that it doesn’t have the time to be Foundation. For people who don’t know or care about the source material, the result is extremely pretty but not particularly compelling sci-fi. For people who know or are fans of Isaac Asimov and his work, I feel compelled to warn you that if you watch the show you will see a scene so enraging that you will tear your TV in two with your bare hands; then you’ll realise how utterly unnecessary the scene was, and tear it into four."

 

[Elckerlyc]

They Said Foundation Couldn't Be Filmed, and It Still Hasn't Been

And that article says it all.
I don't recall the books in detail and don't see myself as a fan of the books. So I'm fine with some deviation from the original text. It's not exactly sacrilege, but necessary for telling the story on a different medium.
The books are, as the article points out, about The Plan, not the characters. And that doesn't work with me. I need a protagonist with who I can identify. Every chapter another or, worse, new lead character puts me off. I quit reading Foundation because I found it boring, no matter how intriguing the Plan or how grand the scale of the story was.
So, the only concern I had when I sat down to watch the first 2 episodes was that it might be... boring. And it was.

The imagery was absolute wonderful, the characters did their best, but the writers produced something that was either unconvincing or going nowhere. It failed to be gripping, it failed to engage me. It tried to hard to be something that it was not and totally lost it. It had been better if they had simply followed The Plan.

Spoiler: Will I keep waching?

Well, I want to know which excuse they have invented for the ending of episode 2. And why their ship is going so slow while it has to cover 50,000 lightyears in 878(?) days, which they kept pointing out. And why it flew so close to an dense asteroid field. And why any sane person would send a rescue pod containing the one you love into the middle of such a field.
But I fear the series is fundamentally flawed. If the scenery of episode 3 disappoints me I quit.

 

[AE35Unit]

Saw a trailer for it yesterday, nice to see Jared Harris in it, though I don't know who he's playing. I won't be able to watch it though as we don't have, or want, Apple TV. Disappointed its not on Netflix or Prime

 

[Vince W]

Harris is playing Hair Seldon, albeit younger than in the book. I saved my Apple TV trial to watch this.

 

[AE35Unit]

Harris is playing Hair Seldon, albeit younger than in the book. I saved my Apple TV trial to watch this.

I never noticed how old Seldon was supposed to be! To be honest Foundation was not an easy read!

 

[Vince W]

I always thought Seldon was quite old at the start. Like he had spent his life developing psychohistory and was now passing the responsibility off. But that's just me, maybe.

 

[AE35Unit]

I'd like to try reading the series again, but its so big

 

[Vince W]

It's big, but it's not mega-fantasy big.

 

[Parson]

I waited until I'd seen (most of) the first episode before I read this. My opinion --- it's not really "Foundation" but so far it is something I think I'll enjoy.

 

[AE35Unit]

It's big, but it's not mega-fantasy big.

What I mean is, its expansive as a series. There's the original 'trilogy', then Foundations Edge, then some later Asimov books that tie it in with the Robot books (my fave), and then its resurrected by other authors.

 

[LordOfWizards]

I started a thread on the Apple TV+ series in the TV section.

Foundation

We got free Apple TV+ from T-mobile, and guess what they have? The Foundation series - Issac Asimov. And it's a series. So far I'm enjoying it, and it follows the book pretty well. Almost too well because of all the ceremony and such kind of slows it down. Anyone found this yet?

www.sffchronicles.com