A Foundation Saga for TV

Monty Python's Holy Grail.
a production of Apple's Flying Circus

Development Hell. For many years there had been doubt that anyone in Hollywood could successfully put Foundation on the screen, the problem being that Issac Asimov was a science nerd who wrote the Foundation stories as intellectual puzzles for science fiction fans. The words "television" and "intellectual" don't often appear together. Back in 2020 I started anticipating Apple TV's Foundation, but I was worried because a comic book fan (David Goyer) had been put in charge of the project. Poor Asimov. 😞 Millions of nervous Asimov fans have wondered: what will the Hollywood sausage grinder do to Asimov's sprawling Sci Fi saga? Let's find out!

 Episode 1. To get the story started, I was hoping for some exciting positronic robot action, possibly even a robotic love interest for Seldon, such as Asimov's Tiger Woman. No such luck. Instead, all we got was a wooden Eto Demerzel who is lurking around the palace and irritating the Emperor. In Asimov's Foundation Saga, Demerzel is a telepathic positronic robot who only reveals his true identity to Seldon. 

Daneel

 Robots. In Asimov's imagined Galactic Empire, nobody else, particularly the Emperor, can even be allowed to know that robots exist, let alone that they are guiding Humanity into the future. Telepathy is to be the secret weapon of the Second Foundation, but even Asimov brought telepathy into the saga with glacial slowness, so I suppose we can't expect anything different from Apple TV's Foundation.

The Problem With Telepathy. How can a visual medium like television deal with telepathy? Viewers see the Emperor decide to kill Seldon. Then almost immediately, Demerzel is shown telling Seldon that the Emperor has agreed to establish the Encyclopedia Foundation on Terminus. How did Demerzel over-ride the Emperor? Viewers might believe that a random act of terrorism is what changed the Emperor's thinking, however, fans of Asimov can imagine a telepathic Demerzel treating the Emperor like a puppet. Fans of Asimov's Foundation must wait patiently and wonder if Apple TV will eventually include telepathic positronic robots in their version of the story.

How I imagine Terminus, near
Anacreon, at the edge of the galaxy,
just beyond the border of the Empire.

Rim Shot. As the story is presented by Apple TV, viewers might feel that it really makes no sense to locate the Foundation on Terminus because episode 1 establishes that Anacreon province is a war zone. So why is Seldon seemingly pleased that his Foundation encyclopedia project has been exiled to the edge of the galaxy? Terminus really is the best location for the fledgling Foundation because the turmoil of the galactic rim and its splintering break-away provinces soon isolate the First Foundation from the galactic core and the dying empire. 

In Asimov's story, the decaying galactic empire remains the greatest danger to the Foundation during the first several hundred years of the Foundation's existence, until Trantor is sacked. In Apple TV's Foundation, the diplomats from Anacreon are dressed up like a Sci Fi version of Yertle the Turtle, seemingly to remind Viewers that the clever folks of the First Foundation will have no trouble defending themselves from the petty kingdoms of the galactic rim.

Sciensy!

 Switcho-chango. In the original Foundation Saga of Asimov, there were decades of work by a big team of university researchers that went into developing psychohistory and the Encyclopedia Foundation. Terminus was a distant world, but not a place where the Encyclopedists expected to die from hardship. The Encyclopedia Foundation was a big, Empire-funded project. Goyer made the choice to ignore all of that backstory. Instead, Apple TV's Foundation depicts Seldon as a cult leader who has to bamboozle people into going to Terminus. Supposedly, it is because Hari goes around shaking hands in the laundry room that his followers are motivated to continue on to Terminus. 😛

In Asimov's Foundation Saga, it was only later (after the first Seldon Crisis) that Hardin constructed a religion around science for the purpose of containing the military threat of the Four Kingdoms (particularly Anacreon). Goyer happily pretends that Seldon is like a cult leader right from the beginning, before anyone goes to Terminus. Why?

In Asimov's Foundation Saga, the prime radiant is passed on to the Second Foundation group on Trantor, not sent to Terminus for use by Salvor. In fact, in the original story, for psychohistory to even work, it is important that the people of the First Foundation on Terminus not have a prime radiant and not know about psychohistory. 

Deliverance

 Making bad choices and living with them. Goyer sends Seldon's prime radiant to Terminus where it is later used by Salvor like a magic wand. These kinds of changes to the plot don't matter to Goyer because he does not care if anything makes sense; he's making "exciting" television. As a viewer of Apple TV's Foundation, I'm finding it hard to go along with these choices that Goyer made, choices that change Asimov's well-reasoned intellectual puzzles into comic book-style absurdity.

  Sciensy Fiction. To gain some insight into the thought processes that went into making Apple TV's Foundation, I checked out Apple TV's "official" podcast for Foundation. Goyer says that there is a space elevator in his version of Foundation simply because he always liked space elevators. As long as something (like Raych's jacket) looks cool on the screen, Goyer is happy. Asimov was a trained scientist who understood math and numbers and who knew what a galaxy is. It is not clear that Goyer's understanding of the galaxy extends beyond what he has seen watching Star Wars. 

Save the zygotes!

 Do the Math. After consulting with his sciensy advisors, Goyer believes that when the Encyclopedia Foundation is exiled to Terminus, the spaceship Deliverance travels at half the speed of light. The distance from Trantor (at the center of the galaxy) to Terminus (at the rim of the galaxy) is 50,000 light-years. So just do the math. Doyer concludes that it takes five years to reach Terminus.

 Save the Zygotes! Goyer is convinced that when Deliverance travels to Terminus, the passengers are bombarded by cosmic rays and there is a particular danger to embryos inside pregnant women. The solution? Take the early embryos out of the women and put them into the freezer. Obviously, by putting the cute little zygotes into "cryosleep", that will protect them from the cosmic rays, right? Then once you reach Terminus, just thaw out the embryos and let them finish developing.

The bigger they come,
the harder they fall.

   Space Elevator. The Anacreon war seemingly even reaches Trantor, although the origin of the terrorists is not revealed in episode 1. After establishing that spaceships seemingly equipped with anti-gravity can land on planets, Trantor gets a space elevator. Q: Why?

Answer. So that Trantor's space elevator can be destroyed by terrorists who secretly carry powerful explosives inside their bodies without being detected by the SuperAdvanced™ Scanners of the year 12,067 E.I. (Era Imperial), although they can read your DNA.

Comic Book. I hope there is a good reason for the space elevator, such as Demerzel with a 400-year-long plan to have ready and waiting a way to quickly convince her puppet emperor that Seldon is right about the empire falling. But why must the Imperial Palace have paper books and candle light? It feels like a comic book... nothing needs to make sense in Goyer's Foundation Fantasy. I suppose I should not expect logic or science to guide the plot... this is the Boob Tube.

10,000 years in the future and still using paper.
Apple TV's Saga of the Empire Scrolls.

 Anti-gravity, mandatory sleep during space travel, space elevators, Anti-Asimov. Apple TVs Foundation is merely "inspired" by Asimov's Foudation saga and is free to go in alternative directions. Still, science fiction stories should be internally consistent. However, in episode 1 we are shown that space elevator technology is not needed (unless you want to attract a terrorist attack) and we are quickly told that while spacecraft jump through hyperspace the passengers must be unconscious. Except when one minute later the star of the show does not have to be unconscious during the trip to Trantor. 

comicbook adventure

Just like mixing anti-gravity equipped spaceships and space elevator technology, the whole, "yes, we have hyperspace jump travel to get us across the galaxy, but the na na na Seldon, you can't use it!" shtick was not part of Asimov's future galactic empire. These alternative choices made by Goyer and his comic book writing team are hard to accept. 

planned potty breaks

The writers for Apple TV seem to introduce random technologies simply to advance the plot (or because they look cool on the screen)... and then quickly forget about what they said about the technology in the previous episode. This is not science fiction, it is comic book fantasy for people who don't care and who can't write science fiction. Welcome to Hollywood. Poor Isaac must be spinning in his grave. Can Asimov fans grin and bear it?

physics fail

Apple TV's Foundation show has periods of time when you can wander off without missing anything that is related to Asimov's story. In episode 1, that includes the first half hour.

 Editorial Insert. I think I know why the first half hour of Apple TV's Foundation was inserted into the show. Apple wants to encourage more women to get into technical fields like physics and engineering where mathematics is part of the work. So Apple TV's Foundation depicts a woman as being the greatest mathematician in the galaxy. Nobody can object to that admirable goal (more women learning math in school), but it makes an awkward start to their television program about the Foundation Saga.

video here

 Flight of Fantasy. The prominent flight of fantasy in episode 1 is the Vault™, which literally floats, because it looks cool. Magically, only one person, Salvor Hardin, can penetrate the magic mind scrambler field that surrounds the Vault™.

From First Minister to the Ministry of Silly Costumes. In Asimov's Foundation, Seldon became the Emperor's friend and First Minister. Apple TV completely ignores that part of Asimov's story and simply shows the Emperor condemning Seldon to death for being a crazy university professor, discovering Psychohistory and predicting the end of the Galactic Empire. The Emperor has his own reasons for killing them, but I like to think that the diplomats from Anacreon and Thespis are put to death simply because of their silly costumes. 💂

the cross

 Religion. Before I had a chance to view any episodes from Apple TV's Foundation I was already dreading the huge role for religion that was written into this version of Foundation. Viewers learn about the religious fanatics on Gaal's home world. Gaal's voice-over ramblings state that "stars end" is NOT at the center of the galaxy. However, the big reveal in Asimov's Foundation is that "stars end" is Trantor, at the center of the galaxy.

Where is Apple TV going with the the Seer's Church of Synnax? In Asimov's Foundation Saga, the key folks with telepathic abilities magically show up on Trantor just when they are needed to start forming the UltraSecret™ Second Foundation. Apple TV's Foundation has seemingly shifted the origin of some telepathy genes to Synnax (Gaal). In Asimov's story, other important genes came from Raych. To mix the Raych and Gaal genes, we needed Gaal to have a sex change from Asimov's Foundation in which Gaal is a dude.

jump drive

 Hollywood Go Boom. Apple TVs Foundation had to raise the stakes on galactic terror with Seldon predicting thousands of planets reduced to cinders. That kind of planetary destruction is at home in the Star Wars universe, not Asimov's Foundation. In the first episode, we get millions of deaths from a terrorist attack and a gratuitous murder of an artist by the Emperor. Here is a quote from Asimov: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." We can update that for Apple TVs Foundation: Violence is dished out like candy by Apple TV.

 Telepathy with a twist. In episode 1 there are hints that Gaal has some telepathic abilities. In Asimov's story, Wanda Seldon and Stettin Palver are two telepaths who start the Second Foundation. Is Gaal going to play that role instead of Wanda?

Pace. Already mentioned above, I felt like the first half hour of the first episode was wasted time. They could have started with Seldon's trial. Apparently, it is going to take until episode 9 to reveal the Great Secret of the Vault™. Yawn. 

Haunted planet: the "mysterious" Vault™.

 Teaser. Episode 3 (see below) is called "The Mathematician's Ghost". The annoying voice-over rambles on about how all planets have ghosts. Even more annoyingly, nobody on Terminus knows what the mysterious flying "vault" is, but somehow everyone knows it is a "vault".

In Asimov's Foundation Saga, it was Seldon's helpers like Gaal who took recordings of Seldon from Trantor to Terminus and placed them in the vault, which was housed in an auditorium. Folks on Terminus expected this time-capsule to periodically provide messages to the Foundation of the future.

Where's Robyn?

 The Producers. In Asimov's Foundation Saga, the Encyclopedists knew to expect occasional releases of recorded messages from their founder. These were displayed during periodic "Seldon Crises" and allowed everyone to keep the faith and know that Seldon's Plan was still on track (until the Mule arrives). Viewers get to wonder: Where is Robyn, Asimov's daughter? Did she object to any of the heavy-handed changes made by Goyer to Asimov's story? Who knows?

"The Machine" from Contact

 Eye Candy. Nothing is more deadly for viewers that out-of-control writers who have been told that they have 80 hours with which to bore the viewers. With this glacial pace, I'll be amazed if Apple TV gets to the end of the story before someone pulls the plug on this project. The plan for audience retention seems to be simply throwing in enough explosions and gratuitous violence. The spaceship hyperspace jump drive created for Apple TV's Foundation seems to have been ripped off from Contact. 

Where are the equations?

 Prime Failure. I was expecting 21st century CGI to give us some actual equations being displayed by the Prime Radiant, but I'm not sure that anyone working on the Foundation TV series knows what an equation is, or cares. Apple's TV's strategy: just blow up enough planets and nobody will notice that your show ignored the #1 Sci Fi plot element (the vast system of psychohistorical equations) that fans of Asimov's Foundation Saga really wanted to see on the screen.

How to destroy an empire: clone the Emperor.

 Demerzel. My best guess is that Daneel Demerzel has positioned himself herself close to the Emperor in order to make the Empire collapse. Demerzel needs to bring the Galaxia telepathic group mind into existence, so it is out with the old Empire and in with the Foundations. Using the Zeroth Law, Demerzel can justify the deaths of billions. My guess: it was Demerzel who planned the destruction of the space elevator. Then, afterwards, she had to go "clean up" all the evidence of her involvement by killing the conspirators. Thus, we get the scene where Demerzel's storm troopers kill the bioengineer who made the "walking bomb" terrorists (were they robots?).

Coming from Apple TV: the first spin-off show from Foundation.

The Emperor's latest murder victims.
They are the lucky ones; they got
themselves out early from episode 2!

 Episode 2.
Body Count. With only 100,000,000 people murdered in episode 1, something more horrendous was needed for the next episode lest the writers fail to get their disgusting violence fix. So, two entire planets are viciously blasted by imperial blasters in episode 2. I suppose the writers then lost track of the number of corpses they had created. But have no fear... there are 25,000,000 inhabited planets remaining to be destroyed in the remaining 78 episodes! And that does not even include all the dwarf planets that can be shot-up by the imperial storm troopers (sadly, with two regular planets to bombard, there was only time for one dwarf planet to get attacked in episode 2).

First Law. Demerzel (lower left)
enjoys a good hanging.

Just in case the bombardment from space of planets full of innocent civilians is not enough for your blood lust, we are provided with a set of disgusting hangings of career diplomats (on a peace mission) which Eto Demerzel forces the young son of the Emperor to watch. All the TV fans can gush about the "great production values" in these scenes of sickening violence.

No Nudity Future. Suspecting that Apple TV has turned Asimov's Foundation into some perverse bastard child of Game of Throwns and Dune, viewers of episode 2 have to ask: where's the sex? Soon enough, Raych and Gaal start making babies, but sadly Apple TV's sex scenes are just about as bla as were sexual relationships in Asimov's Foundation Sage. Yawn.

a Foundation fan

"While things get much more entertaining in the back half of the season, you may not want to trudge through Foundation's own dark period to get there." (source)

"...what we get are numerous disparate factions and ideas that feel like a mish-mash..." (source)

"I just hate-watch it now." (source)

"For people who know or are fans of Isaac Asimov and his work, I feel obligated to warn you that if you watch the show, you will see a scene so infuriating that you will tear your TV in two with your bare hands; then you will realize how useless the scene was, and tear it in four." (source)

"If I were to give a Razzie to one series, it would definitely be Foundation from Apple TV plus." (source)

Five year missions to make future galactic empires and alien religions look like Christianity.

 

 Lost in Space. The official name for episode 2 is "Preparing to Live", but I feel it

Destiny ✞

should have been called "Lost in Space". Sadly, we find ourselves on a five year mission to bore viewers with visits to corporate board meetings and even the HiTek™ laundry room of the interstellar spaceship, Deliverance. In case you are wondering, in Asimov's Foundation Saga it could take at most a few months to travel across the galaxy.

Programmed Potty Breaks for Ghosts. Gaal "entertains" viewers by swimming endless laps in the pool and endlessly counting prime numbers. Yawn. Of course, just when attention spans are being stretched to the limit, Apple TV comes to the rescue with a bloody murder scene. Yes, the saintly Seldon must be turned into a martyr so that his followers can rally around. (No, this bloody death of Seldon was not in Asimov's story.) Months ago, I read summaries of the first 10 episodes, so I know that Seldon is going to be brought back from the dead. 

Religio ad absurdum. In Asimov's Foundation, Salvor Hardin cleverly created a "scientific religion" that was used to help the First Foundation defeat the nearby splinter kingdoms of the galactic rim. 

Gaal and Han chillin'

Apple's Flying Circus. I suppose nobody can be surprised to see Hollywood insert assorted Christian religious themes into the television version of Foundation. I'm reminded of the Star Trek episode "Bread and Circuses" where the Children of the Son show up on a distant planet.

What's a zygote to do? Not since Han Solo was put into carbonite have we faced such a dilemma. With Gaal in a cryogenic escape pod and drifting through a Hollywood asteroid field, will her zygote grow up on Terminus and become older than dear old mom? When will Gaal roll aside the stone, walk out of her tomb and be proclaimed a god?

Hi Tek™ of the far future.

 Episode 3.
This could have been a 5 minute episode. Some Klingons Anacreons show up on Terminus with their bat'leths arrows in an attempt to breath life back into the limping plot. I'm pretty sure that I've never previously looked at the clock this many times during an hour of television. Yawn. 

the show is really dragin

How will the young Salvor Hardin save the nerdy Encyclopedists from the saber-rattling Anacreons? Will the poor injured dragon Bishop's claw recover from the Anacreon arrow wound? Does anyone care?

Next from Apple TV

And more importantly, why has Asimov's science fiction classic been morphed into a fantasy story with dragons and a plot featuring the young Dorothy Gaal who goes to Oz Trantor and quickly gets pregnant and then gets dumped from the show and replaced by moldy 10-year-old out-takes swept up from the cutting room floor of The Hunger Games?

The X-Files on Terminus.
 Salvor's futuristic flashlight.

 Little House on the Tundra. Because Salvor is so special, her mom digs out the Prime Radiant that she took from Seldon. However, Salvor, can't magically make use of the Prime Radiant to do advanced math, so this scene feels like another 5 minutes of screen time wasted. Oh, wait... maybe this a hint of things to come?

Salvor Hardin's great⁵⁰⁰-grandfather flipping a coin (1932).
Random chance and the genetics of telepathy.

 Episode 4. In Asimov's Foundation, Salvor Hardin is depicted as flipping a coin while trying to capture the attention of the head of the Encyclopedia Foundation. In Apple TV's Foundation, Salvor repeatedly flips a coin while interrogating (and reading the mind of) Grand Huntress Phara of Anacreon. And Miss Salvor can predict the outcome of the flips. And Salvor has visions of the young Raych. This is apparently somehow related to the Seer Church of Synnax, but nothing about Salvor's telepathic powers is explained. Nobody on Terminus seems at all surprised to have a telepath appear among them... because, plot (it is there on page 11 of Goyer's story outline).

The Emperor's new sex partner.
We wonder: what happened to the last one?

 Get Personal. In Asimov's Foundation, one of the Hi Tek™ inventions of the First Foundation is the personal force shield. For Apple TV's Foundation, the Emperor gets to have a personal force shield. Maybe this is the electronic condom that Demerzel makes the Emperor wear in order to prevent any royal offspring from interfering with the clonal Cleon lineage. Just when the Emperor is getting into heated personal contact with his new concubine, Demerzel walks in and tells him that play time is over. 😕 Cheer up Bucky, there are only 76 more episodes of Apple TV's sorry sex-tease. I guess we are supposed to accept that the Emperor is like James Bond and he gets to use HiTek™ goodies like the personal force shield while nobody else in the galaxy does.

From the list of ten executive producers at Apple TV's website.

Olivia Purnell

 The Writers. Starting in episode 3, there was a different writer credited for each episode. It would be interesting to know what instructions were given to writers such as Olivia Purnell (or was it Jane Espenson?). Maybe Olivia was told: "Give us 50 minutes of screen time that will allow viewers to get to know the Emperor and Salvor". I have to wonder if these writers even know what science fiction is and who Asimov was. It almost feels like The X-Files where there were "monster of the week episodes", unrelated to the "myth arc" episodes. I can picture Lauren Bello (the credited writer for episode 4) reading Asimov's Foundation and deciding on a whim to write the personal force shield into Apple TV's Foundation and not caring who got the technology.

mentalic magic

 Sci Fi Plot Holes. Did show-runner Goyer simply instruct Bello: "For episode 4, step up Salvor's use of her telepathic powers." And Bello dutifully did so, while having nobody around Salvor and not even Salvor herself give any indication that telepathy is unusual? As far as we've been shown in this series, telepathy is not a thing in the Empire. But telepathy gets treated like any other magical technology that Goyer or one of the writers wants to pull out of the prop box. Just advance the plot of this one scene or episode and don't worry if it makes sense or baffles viewers. 

Maybe in the future Galactic Empire miracles are common occurrences. A child (Gaal) grows up on a world (Synnax) where the mathematicians and scientists were all killed, but she magically becomes the greatest mathematician in the galaxy. Slavor is magically the only one who can approach the Vault™ and she's a telepath, but all her friends just shrug and barely seem interested. I'm waiting for an explanation of the magical mental suppression field around the Vault™ and worried that it may have had deleterious effects on the minds of the show writers.

David S. Goyer

Sausage. Some of the credited episode writers are also listed as Foundation "executive producers" by Apple TV, and I'd like to think some of them might have been tasked with paying attention to continuity issues, but mostly I get the feeling that Apple TV's Foundation went out of control during the pandemic and became a multi-headed hydra that tries to walk in ten different directions all at the same time. Folks such as Leigh Dana Jackson came into Apple TV's Foundation project knowing nothing about Asimov's Foundation Saga. In discussing his efforts to herd a stable of writers and create an entertaining show, Jackson said, "The best rooms are a mix of people who understand genre and people who aren't genre people, people who love superheroes..." (source). Sadly, I don't think the non-genre folks in the room ever had a chance to even recognize why Asimov's Foundation Saga is an icon of science fiction. They don't know and they don't care, yet these are the kinds of people making Apple TV's Foundation. 

making sausage Apple TV's Foundation

 Asimov as a Science Fiction Ghost. So, yes, I'll call it the Hollywood sausage grinder where you buy a name like "Foundation" and milk it for whatever you can. It is amusing that Apple TV's Foundation show is full of much angst about how "you can save you're legacy". Soylent Green was made by grinding up dead people to make a convenience food and Apple TV's Foundation is similarly grinding up Asimov's legacy to make pop culture entertainment. Sigh. I suppose I need to be grateful that some ghost-like remnant of Asimov's Foundation Saga made it from pulp magazine to the screen and I have to take the bad with the good. Goyer may have done as good a job as is humanly possible making Foundation in TV Land.

old characters revival week

 Episode 5. Back in the 1970s, I'd watch Star Trek reruns and marvel at the idea that Captain Kirk had to have a fist fight (or a sword fight) in every episode. Here we are, 50 years later, and I have to wonder if it is in the screen writers guild's rule book that you have to have a car chase, fist fight or sword fight in every show. Leigh Dana Jackson seems totally onboard with the need to sicken audiences with disgusting acts of violence. Yes, women have come so far in Hollywood. Now the female characters get to act like idiots and have the fist fights and commit war crimes. Apple TV is so progressive (slaps on the back, high fives). 

Since the Empire has a monopoly on hyper-jump and other cool technology, the Anacreons have to steal some prized technology from an Empire ship... oh, and at the same time they want to wipe out the encyclopedia folks who are working to preserve an archive of the Empire's technology. Or something... plot.

Buck Rodgers in Space!

 Go to Hel(icon). Meanwhile, after drifting through the asteroids for 34 years, Gaal's escape pod floats into an abandoned spaceship that will take her the rest of the way to Seldon's home planet. We are treated to ludicrous scene in which Gaal tricks the spaceship's computer into revealing their location. The look and feel of a silly comic book are on full display in this episode. 

 On-again off-again telepathy. Because there was a different writer for this episode, Salvor's growing telepathic powers that were on display in episode 4 are suddenly reduced back to baseline again in episode 5. 

 Save the sundial! Mercifully, we did not have to spend more time with the Emperor in this episode, only the completely ineffectual Commander Dorwin who has gone out to Terminus to remind the Encyclopedia Foundation to keep submitting their quarterly reports on sundials.

Continuity: "Okay, let's use less blood today
and stab Hari in the chest, not the belly."

 Next: Episode 6 and the end of Season One. 

Related Reading: November 2021, reading the Apple leaves. 

Also: July 2020, Foundation TV.

And: January 2015, suggestions for adapting Asimov's Foundation Saga to the screen.

Coming Soon: Part 3 of "The Cythyrya Investigation".