Demerzel kills the emperor (1 of 3). |
Robots. The original Foundation stories that Asimov wrote in the 1940s did not include robots. During that decade, Asimov also wrote and published many short stories about positronic robots.
cover art by Michael Whelan |
Telepathy. However, the Demerzel robot in Apple TV's Foundation series is very different than Asimov's Demerzel. Two major features of Asimov's robots were 1) they were programmed with the Laws of Robotics and 2) the fact that robots could be endowed with telepathic abilities. Neither of these features of Asimov's robots were explicitly included in Season One of Apple TV's Foundation series. 😞
1942 interior art by Charles Schneeman |
A vision in the Salt Pool. |
psychohistory |
Is it science fiction? Asimov's story of the falling Empire focused on psychohistorical forces such as scientific and technological stagnation. For Apple TV's Foundation series, the issue of stagnation was focused on the the person of the Emperor and the idea that a series of cloned emperors might contribute to the destruction of the Empire. However, if the true cause of the collapse of the Galactic Empire is Demerzel, then does it matter if there are cloned emperors who behaviorally stagnate?
For me, it does matter because Asimov's explanation for the collapse of the Galactic Empire concerns an interesting mechanism that falls in the domain of science and technology.
Halima the soul authority |
Long Distance and Deep Time. Show runner Doyer has commented that Time is like a character in the Foundation Saga. Hollywood story tellers have always struggled to deal with complex stories that unfold across vast distances and long periods of time. In the previous century, science fiction story tellers like Asimov invented ways to tell complex stories like the Foundation Saga and their fans loved it. Apple TV's Foundation series has failed to capture the spatial immensity of the Galactic Empire. 😠
interior art by Charles Schneeman |
Psychohistory. A central science fiction element in the Foundation Saga is the fictional science of psychohistory. Asimov had fun with an audacious analogy in which human populations are treated like collections of molecules. Asimov noted that chemists can use statistical analyses to predict the properties of gasses, so let's imagine a science of psychohistory that can predict the future of civilizations. Due to the butterfly effect, I never took psychohistory very seriously and I like the idea that psychohistory was a smoke-screen for Daneel and his positronic robots who were secretly guiding Humanity into the future.
cover art by Ed Valigursky |
I like the way Apple TV's Foundation series has gone ahead and equipped the Galactic Empire with technologies that Asimov could not imagine in the 1940s. However, they also show technology research and development continuing, even as the Empire if starting to collapse. Maybe Apple TV's Foundation series is going to blame the collapse of the Empire entirely on the Cleon Clones.
Daneel |
It may be that psychohistory was only good enough to predict the fall of the Empire; in Apple TV's Foundation series the predictions of psychohistory were quickly derailed by Gaal. In one interpretation, Gaal is playing the role of the Mule and she derailed the Seldon Plan right at the start of the Apple TV Foundation series.
✅ In terms of the entire Foundation story arc, at the end of Season One, Apple TV's Foundation series is basically where Isaac Asimov was after the first two Seldon Crises.
Will he join the Church of the Galactic Spirit? |
New in Season Two: who is Yanna Seldon? |
I want to know how this type of "mentailic ability" will be developed in coming episodes of the show. However, I don't like all the blood and violence in Apple TV's Foundation series and I doubt if the show runner even cares if there is a science-based explanation for Salvor's unique abilities. It is much easier for Goyer to simply make mindless comicbook fantasy rather than good science fiction in the Asimov style.
Let me out! |
Will I watch Season Two? I doubt it. I wonder if Apple TV will hire someone to do a novel based on the series; I'd prefer to read the story and avoid the visual depiction of blood, death and violence that is in the TV series. Of course, I'd also need to find a way to protect my mind from Apple TV's mind-sapping "null field" of unexplained technobabble such as...
DNA repair nanobots |
Nanoparticle Regimen. When is a clone not a clone? In episode 10, the emperor announces that the rebels hid the secret message inside a droid un-cloned Brother Dawn by "corrupting his nanoparticle regimen". In this disjointed comicbook plot, if you don't want to explain something to the audience then just drop some technobabble into the simmering pot of nonsense. As a nerdy Sci Fi fan, I must take the flying technobabble as a challenge; is there some way to make sense of this? Maybe there are DNA detecting medical scanners that are able to look into the bodies of the clones and find random somatic mutations. Then the medical repair nanobots of the Galactic Empire can venture into cells and repair the altered DNA sequences. How the rebels could interfere in this "genetic cleansing" process remains a mystery.
the end of Terminus |
Viewers are also explicitly told: "The Empire comprises tens of thousands of worlds." Never mind that in Asimov's imagined Galactic Empire there were 25,000,000 inhabited worlds and Asimov worried even that many would be too few for psychohistory to work. Hollywood story tellers can't deal with big distances, long time spans or a saga that sprawls across millions of worlds, so rather than tell Asimov's story, Apple TV's Foundation goes in another direction. For fans of Asimov, this is a source of annoyance.
Nullifying the Foundation. |
One Pill Makes you Reincarnate. Hari also "explains" the magical Vault™: "I swallowed a pill containing millions of self-replicating molecular machines. Those machines began breaking down my body tissue into all its constituent elements. Then those machines recycled those elements, scooping up more material, ice, micrometeoroids, et cetera, assembling the Vault..." ...while also crafting the magical null field which allows the story writers and viewers to turn off their brains and not question all the comicbook nonsense in Apple TV's Foundation. Science fiction is not about turning off your brain, but Hollywood is the land of the dumb blonde.
Related Reading: "The Problem with Apple TV's Foundation" by James Guild
Next: science fiction from 1962 and beyond
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