Respectfully, I find the Foundation TV series extremely disheartening. I envy those who can watch Lee Pace’s triumphant acting without being completely off put by the appalling writing choices in the show. The fundamental aspects of the Robot, Empire, and Foundation series books clashe so hard with the message being presented in this show. The entire first season doggedly trashed psychohistory’s main point by making single individuals into linchpins. Hari’s double AI clones and his contrived disease was an abomination that undercut his entire function in the story. Demerzel (R Daneel Olivaw) is utterly without connection to their character from the book. It is infuriating to see a character that spent 18 books gently and intelligently guiding humanity towards a harmonious existence be turned into a Cleon sex doll muderbot. None of that should have been possible for them. It would have shredded their mind. In what universe can this character presented be guiding humans towards galaxia or second empire. The “believe in belief” motif of the show is antithetical to Azimovs clearly atheistic writing and goes counter to the whole message of his books. Intellectual pragmatism is replaced by dice rolling space cowboys. In the same way star trek has devolved from following hyper specialized intellectual duty-bound characters to flagrantly stupid/morally reprehensible ones, foundation has made its primary characters into people who ride on luck and faith.
All of this rant comes from a place of geniune distress and I don’t mean to disparage anyone who enjoys the show. I’ve seen so much praise and it’s causing me a lot of cognitive dissonance. I can’t see how people aren’t up in arms about Demerzel and the other character assassinations. I have no issue at all with any of the actor choices, design, artistry, or extraneous changes made to update the show to be a modern adaptation. There are even some good ideas, like the clone dynasty, which serve to enrich the story, but the flaws are to many to overlook. Are there any other foundation universe fans that feel the same way or am I living alone on the moon with a deteriorating positronic brain?
Well, I’ve been quite enjoying it, because I consider it to be a different story from the one that’s in the books. The one that’s in the books is fine, but it’s fine as a book. And it’s rather dated in a lot of regards, too. So when the story was reinterpreted into a modern television series there were always going to be plenty of changes.
Is the story that results from the changes very different - even in some cases diametrically opposite - the story that was told in the books? Sure. Is it good? Well, I rather like it. That’s up to everyone to decide for themselves.
Your level headed approach to viewership of the show is appreciated. I don’t often get perturbed by these types of adaptations. For me the changes are just viscerally unsettling.
Fight Clubs change to the ending after almost faithfully adapting every scene to the letter was jarring, but I viewed it in much the same way that you are viewing Foundation right now.
Perhapse when the series wraps I’ll be able to view it more positively as a whole. I’ll either find some redeeming portions or an alternative to epicac.
Then why bother licensing the IP and getting existing fans excited for an adaptation that is anything but. Just make an original show with similar ideas but how you want to tell it?
If I’m honest, I quite liked the whole cloned Emperor plot they created, and would have watched a show about that, but I don’t want it if I have to watch a bastardised version of some of my favourite books for half the screen time.
It’s not entirely different.
If you don’t want to watch a show because, despite being good, it has the name of a somewhat different story that you read before and also liked, I find that peculiar. If it was bad I could understand being much more incensed.
Good points. And from what I remember of the books, 80% of them was people talking about things that have or will happen, not actually seeing it. I’m not sure a direct dramatasiation of the novel’s would have made great tv.
Yeah. As I recall, everything basically went exactly according to plan for the first book or two and individual characters didn’t matter much. That was interesting when reading because the plan itself was sort of a character. When watching the characters living through all that, though, I prefer seeing people actually struggling and making a difference. That’s also why I like seeing the Empire unraveling first hand, rather than off in the background.
I’m with you. I’m enjoying the Foundation series and, in a way, the departures from the book keep me guessing. But it’s not Asimov. When it stared I wondered how they were going to handle the constantly changing key characters but it seemed they just couldn’t so we have clones, uploads and hypersleep to keep people around for the long span of the stories. That’s disappointing but I’m still enjoying the ride.
Confession: I re-read the first three Foundation books last year but got bogged down in the fourth. The ideas are wonderful and changed science fiction with their scope but the writing is rather dated and, frankly, they are quite long-winded at times. Apologies for the sacrilege.
This is the approach I’ve taken too. I actually didn’t really like the first book (sacrilege, I know) because it was so dated, and because it just didn’t work for me overall. So I didn’t read being that book, but I read up the Cliff notes on where the artist went.
But I’ve found the TV show to be okay. Some parts of the show are very good, others are… not so good. I recalled during season 1 that some key points differ from the book. For those and other reason I think of the show as a kind of alternate universe from the book(s). And that’s kind of weirdly poetic for a story that involves the forking of timelines.
Someone asked why purchase the rights to the books if they were going to make so many changes . That’s a good question. There are a couple of answers to that, the biggest one (which is cynical and shitty) being branding and familiarity. Another one is that there are some great concepts in the overall story, and if they’d have used those in a totally different fictional universe the writers would have been accused of stealing from Asimov. Are either of those good reasons? No, not really. But they are reasons nonetheless.
For me it goes in the category of shows/films that are good with some things borrowed from books.
It is more like “Inspiration from Foundation books”