Interestingly enough, the brother Dawn plot line was so close to nailing Asimov's general theme of system regression. If the "imperfections" of brother Dawn's clone were caused by the technology malfunctioning and the empire no longer having the know-how to fix it, this story would serve to a nice juxtaposition to the rise of the Foundation.

I never watched the show, but I have read the books. Seeing that first clip where she goes “Harry said the entire galaxy can pivot around the actions of a single individual” shattered me. How can you possibly get the core of the story absolutely backwards? The idea that individuals aren’t important is what makes the foundation series unique in fiction

An issue that I have is that Asimov portrays the Empire as crumbling infrastructure - he explains that their ships are slow and have to be far away from a planet to commence a jump just because their technology hasn't developed. Later on Foundation invents spaceships that can jump even when close to planets - they are small and their engines are in the walls of the ships if I recall correctly. When the reader progresses in the stories you get this contrast between how rudimental Empire's technology was and how advanced Foundation has become. Since this series starts off with a powerful Empire possessing the greatest technologies, the writers won't be able to accomplish the same Empire-Foundation contrast down the series.

Lee Pace is just amazing as Brother Day.

lee pace carried the whole show. i would have rather it just been about him. i found myself waiting for the next cleon scene while the other plot lines were going

The best sci-fi bit of the series was the idea that Lee Pace could be cloned indefinitely.

Lee Pace as Brother Day is THE thing that made the show for me although the actors that play brothers Dawn and Dusk are amazing but Lee Pace is just *chefs kiss*

I was shocked at how much I like the genetic dynasty story line considering it has nothing in common with the book story. And yet, I think this arc actually encapsulates the “feeling” of the novels more so than anything else in the show outside of the pilot episode!

I was definitely more interested in the Empire than anything else in the show. I really love the actors portraying Cleon.

I'd easily watch a show that only focuses on Empire. They're easily the highlight of the entire series.

9:17 I love how, since he's a clone, Brother Day doesn't have a belly button when you see him shirtless.

The biggest gripe I have with the series (still enjoying it though) - is the technology of the vault. It's such a huge deus ex machina. It's like Hari not only created Psychohistory, but also come up with such an overpowered technology that somehow the Empire didn't find out about. And it basically can do anything the plot needs it to do - as it then does at the last episoded of season 2.

I felt in their enthusiasm to update the technology is Asimov's very 50's sci-fi future, the writers never stopped to think too hard about how it affected the story. If mind copying and AI exist, why bother with imperial clones? Indeed, why bother with a Seldon Vault at all? The genius of Seldon was always the audacity to hope to predict the future accurately enough that you could send VHS tapes to the future and still be smug in them when they got there. If you can upload your brain to a computer and still exist in a few centuries time then psychohistory is hardly as useful or impressive. It undercuts one of the book's core themes.

Normally I only agree with about half of the points in "Just Write" videos, but this one is 100% on point. They took one of the most famous and beloved Sci-Fi book series, stripped off some superficial features and threw the rest away. I don't think I'm being cynical in saying that Hollywood is just using the source material as a recognizable name to try and hook fans while making a generic sci-fi action series to appeal to "normies".

One technological advance in "Foundation" that Asimov was proud of was a hand held device that Seldon used to help with his calculations.Yes, Asimov predicted pocket calculators!

The intermittent crushing on Lee Pace is hilarious 😂

So basically, David S Goyer turns yet another franchise that he has no business having his fingers in into more melodramatic violence porn, gets the themes completely backwards, and spends tons of time setting up future plot details that aren't relevant yet and may not even get closure before the series is cancelled. Who keeps putting him in charge of big franchises?

Western media has trouble telling or coming up with stories that don't revolve around the actions of "main characters" driving the plot and outcomes. This was part of what made the early seasons of Game of Thrones so unique and popular - there was still a character focus, but the drivers of conflict were the great houses themselves and the conflict would have happened regardless of the particular individuals present. Deaths were unpredictable and often shocking because that's how it is in real life. Being an important figure or believing you have some meaningful role to play doesn't imply you are any more immune to death than anyone else, and it's telling how unusual it is to have this realistically portrayed in any media. I do think Asimov's idea understates the impact that the occasional great figure does have on history, as a Genghis Khan or great reformer in the right place at the right time can realistically change the fate of a civilization, or at least nudge it in a direction that would have it looking unrecognizable to any prediction engine in a few decades let alone centuries. But these individuals are never acting alone, and they are the exception rather than the rule. I sometimes wonder if Hollywood has trouble grasping the premise of individually hyper-capable "heroes" being less relatable than people dying for mundane reasons because it grates at some subconscious level on the egos of the people writing and producing the story.

BBC Radio produced a radio series, or a trilogy as originally planned, under the title "Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation", which intrigued me as a teenager. I became an avid listener, but life got in the way and I missed several episodes, and was unable to pick it back up. This was the 70's, so no streaming services, no BBC Sounds, no Audible. Couldn't even record it on tape ☹

Thoroughly agreed on all points. I was disappointed but not surprised since the trailers showed Salvor "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" Hardin with a massive gun... Still impressive how thoroughly they abandoned the original material.

The JJ school of writing, which is characterized by an obsession with mystery boxes and often features characters having knowledge that they wouldn't actually have just because the audience or the writer knows it. It's all so very tiresome and I don't know why it's so common over the last decade. It's not like these people work for cheap or anything, either.

If it wasn’t for the other “science as religion” subtexts, I feel that the plot arc with Brother Day walking the Spiral works pretty well on its own because it’s a hint at the later reveal that he no longer is in sync with his bloodline and develops his character as a counterbalance to Demerzel, who is trying to develop an identity separate from her programming. They also do a really good job at hiding his intentions until the reveal, and then hit you with the second reveal. The scene where he kneels to help the old man, when no one else is present, shows that his monologue in episode 10 where he talks about not having compassion for the individual is just a facade. Lee Pace is just so good in this! Those sort of themes remind me of old school Star Trek TNG, wish the rest of the arcs were that interesting.

"it dilutes the idea that populations can be predictable when there are all these(new) factors adding unpredictability" In that one line you destroy the logic of the show and the misunderstanding of the writers about something THEY should be experts in. But they couldn't miss the mark any more. They used an IP to make their own BS and undermine the original story. Bravo Goyer and crew, you did it once more.

It is such a relief to hear such a thorough and eloquent explanation of what I unconsciously sensed while trying to watch Foundation. I’m either fast asleep or like WHAAAAAT??? Like, I couldn’t tell you what it’s even about. Thanks to the ones like you who patiently have filtered out the noise and sorted through the convoluted plots and offer a video like this so I can go ‘Oh, it’s not just me’. Thank you!

I read Foundation (every book that ties in) before I watched this show. I watched the Expanse before reading the books. One of these is a perfect example of how to adapt a book, the other is a perfect example how not to adapt a book.

Any book-accurate Foundation series is doomed to fail so long as the industry believes that all stories have to be character-centric. Foundation is world-centric by its very concept, so keeping characters in the story long enough for the audience to get invested in them can't happen without messing with the story. A book-accurate adaptation would need to follow the "short story" structure of the original, with a new setting and new characters each season, or even every few episodes, as the world advances in jumps of several decades or centuries at a time. I think it could work, but great effort would need to be taken to get the audience invested in the advancement of the Foundation as a whole, rather than the fate of individual characters. Possibly tie it all together with flashback scenes of the Life and Times of Hari Seldon to provide a consistent "human" element to the story.

Hoo boy. Just finished watching Season 2 and I can't wait for you to cover it. It's... one of the series of all time.

I think the real highlight and "winner" per-se, if there is such a thing, is the fact that we got more Lee Pace content! Not only that, but I would definitely say his section of the season and he, himself, were definitely the best parts of the show so far. The visuals were also all really well done...except for Terminus...everything on that planet looks horrible, and it really feels like it got handled by the 2nd AD/2nd Team on a far away offsite location. I also think the actors/characters in that act of the season was by far the worst. Especially the "Star Wars: you are the chosen(special) one" cringe with the main protagonist. Definitely felt like we were getting the battle of the two Girl Boss' for the future of all mankind! Either way, I thought there was a lot of potential in the show, and actually quite a bit I actually enjoyed about it, but it was definitely a let down that they completely sidelined the main themes of the story. Although, we got some good Lee Pace! lol. I'm still waiting for the day when someone actually tries to adapt a Vonnegut book into a movie/show that has an actual budget. I'd say it's even less likely than Asimov, but probably on par.

I also don't know if Foundation will last 8 seasons, but I'd definitely watch 8 seasons of Lee Pace.

God I loved the Genetic Dynasty plotlines. Yes, the rest of the plotlines lacked. But for me, it was soooo worth it for the Genetic Dynasty stuff.

I read this trilogy about 50 years ago and i was like a disciple, so i was excited to see it appear on Apple TV. Then i tried to watch it. There was some cool stuff to start, but then it seemed to get lost, and i felt that watching it was just like wandering down the endless hallways of that giant building when the emperor guy lived. I go from this story to getting lost wandering down featureless cavernous stone corridors (was there a guy painting a crazy mural on the wall or did i just dream that?), lost in the maze, thinking, "how do i get back to the story, to something interesting?" I come across a room occasionally, with people in it discussing the dynastic succession, and it is boring so i think, "is there still an interesting story for me to find somewhere in all this?" I started getting that feeling where you don't know if you're awake or if you're in a dream that you can't consciously control. Maybe i should just stop watching streaming content for awhile, but can i? How do i do that? I eventually woke up in the room of some bland, tacky little suburban American house thinking, "I'm not really sure i want to go back there again."

25:34 is the root of the problem. The studio immediately jumped back to the hero's journey template, which Foundation never fit and is almost the opposite of

I agree with most of your points. It was nice getting to know the Galactic Empire, which plays little to no role in the original trilogy, if I recall correctly; and the emperor clones were a great idea. Adaptations don't need to be literal, all they have to do is capture the same themes explored in the source material, and they failed at that.

Thank you for writing this. I read the books once forty years ago and as soon as I heard about this series I wondered "are they going to be able to make this about groups of people or are they going to make it about individuals doing the heroic thing to save the day". Too bad.

I watched this before watching the show, wanting to wait for the 2 seasons to be complete before paying for AppleTV. Read the books and loved them. Watched the series and having fun so far. The hoops they jump through to keep characters around are annoying, but as the video mentions a lot, Hollywood sucks at stories not centered around characters, Foundation was never going to be changing that, it would either cave partially or not exist. The clone idea is probably the most amazing addition to an existing lore that I've ever seen. It keeps the actor around and helps explain the decay of the empire with stale ideas and leadership. So far I'm looking forward to how the genetic dynasty and the Demerzel storyline progresses, along with the Foundation and Seldon Crises and the Mule in the background. The books are still around and perfectly readable, whatever they had to say is still available. A faithful adaptation is nice, but kinda not necessary and wouldn't get funding in the magnitude the show does. The clone idea is a good enough addition to justify an adaptation I think, at least it's what is keeping me interested. it's neat to have a new way to get familiar with that material. How many 80 years old (!) books without new representation find new public frequently? It's funny and ironic to see so many people in the comments treat the books and the series with so much tribalism. Obviously people enjoying the show are uneducated idiots too lazy to read the books, or wouldn't understand them anyway. Everyone seems to see themselves as the enlightened genius like Seldon in those sorts of story, not as one of the quadrillions of tribal people Seldon realized were so rigid and predictable he could math them out 30 000 years in the future.

"It's a little more JJ Abrams than Gene Roddenberry" - I like what you did there.👍

Yea i watched the first one and a half episodes, and was like "Yea this aint Foundation. This is badly written Dune Fanfic that calls itself Foundation." Dune and Foundation touches on many of the same points, but have drasticly different approaches and draws drasticly different conclusions.

The show very much missed the whole point of the books, but I think what hurt it most was calling it "Foundation", which meant they had to carry over ideas and characters from the books that hobbled the story the writers were more interested in telling.

I think all of us would love a season 2 follow up. I have not read the books, however i might do so, because just like expanse, i have a feeling that this will go nowhere. As for my initial thoughts.. When season 2 dropped i picked it up and the cool intro made me remember everything that was important. I was just so damn confused about this whole salvo plot(even forgot she existed tbh) and her mother and all this time skips. I remember harry, the foundation, empire, but all this Hollywood mess about guns go pew pew was just so insignificant that I forgot all about it. I seriously think that they should've just went with the story of empire, it would've given the writers more creative freedom, while carrying the only plotline that people seem to like. Expanse had a similar problem, they went nowhere with the protomolecule and thas pisses me off big time. I really dont care for salvo or her Gale, the foundation is a great idea but it could be a plot tool. As for empire its a great concept, one that seems to interest fans and with the amount of money they can throw at it it comes off as actually believeable.

Phenomenal essay! I'd watched the 1st season of Foundation and just now with the 2nd season I have decided to listen to all the Foundation audio books and the impression is that series only touches on the Isaac Asimov's world, points of which you have explained perfectly!

If there is at least one thing I can take away from this, it's that Thranduil and Ronan the Destroyer were played by the same guy and I never noticed and still struggle to see the resemblance, which just goes to show how heavy that make-up was.

One of the things that struck me, as I watched laser gun fight after laser gun fight, was that at the end of one episode, the goodies were wondering what to do about the overwhelming invasion of their planet, and in the next episode loads of 'stuff happened', and they were still wondering what to do about the invasion,; in the next episode more stuff happened, including that someone died, sad face, and everyone was left wondering what to do about the invasion, and so in the next episode, they went to space, stole a spaceship, in the next episode they got the spaceship under control, and then at the end of that episode, they were back on the planet again, wondering what to do about the overwhelming invasion of their planet. Several episodes had passed, loads of 'stuff' that was 'exciting' had happened, but nothing had actually changed. And only after that did someone say 'hey guys, let's work together and be friends', which was all anyone needed to do in the first place, at least according to the book, which is one of the greatest of all sci fi books. So there were several really tedious episodes of boring 'excitement' that added nothing at all. I wish writers would stop trying to make their work so 'exciting', because it's so fucking boring to watch.

You may have wanted to see an adaptation, but what you actually meant was an ACCURATE adaptation. So few of us want to see a Hollywood adaptation.

I like how you gave the show a fair shot. When I hear someone say they read the books first with any content, I automatically think it’s going to be a hit piece.

I can't decide what i hated more, robots killing people or Harding having magical powers. The later is probably the most offensive, in the book he was smart and cunning and was able to reason his way out of problems. In the show she's aided by coin flipping future powers so I guess no real intelligence is needed.

You saw more of Emperor Cleon in half the first episode than you was in all the books, he was basically an off stage character in the book.

I listen to Bear McCreary everyday, and Foundation OST 1& 2 are stuck at the top of my most played. Especially "Dream of Cleon the 1st" + "Brother Constant"

For me, the worst crime of the Foundation series was that they turned a story that was a very strong plea for pacifist solutions into typical western war propaganda. "Hey, let's build some warships and destroy the Empire. Because that's what scientists do." And maybe I'm alone with this interpretation but to me it felt like the show was implying at the end that Seldon was directly complicit in the attacks on the space-lift. Which would be horrible on a whole other level.

I resonate with just about everything you said. SO many technologies included for what seems like little more than convenience. The ONLY compelling story was Dawn’s story. It’s just such a shame that they couldn’t have had more focus. Like, what are they trying to say with all of these different threads? How are they connected. It seems like they aren’t. Also, why don’t they understand the source material? Did they not really want to do this? Why can’t Hollywood find people who care about the art they are making? On a somewhat related note, Disney’s Andor seems to succeed in virtually all of the places Foundation fails. Surprising but true.

Do you plan on doing season 2? I love how you organized and explained things in this video. I’m waiting for tomorrow when the last episode of S2 releases. I have so many issues and I’d love to see your take.

Just discovered your channel. Video was a great watch, well done. Subscribed.

It was very strange that someone would buy rights to a book series which was structurally unfilmable. It would have been a bold move if they actually stuck to source material and took the risk with timeskip and new actors each time. If you're just going to write your own stuff, why not just develop a new story altogether. I'm sure there are so many good scripts out there

Hahaha as someone who hasn't read the books, watching this made me realize that I only really like the trantor plotlines and gaal's story at the beginning of the series. I also wanna push back at the interpretation as Day's story line condemning him for being a man without faith. To me, Demerzel and even Zephyr calls cleon empty because he doesn't stand for anything substantial, nothing real. Everything he does is in service of protecting his own power, and upholding his own narcissistic mythology. He has no family, friends, or community. The system the cleonic dynasty has created won't even allow them to be their own person beyond their roles as the emperor, they won't even allow themselves to have deeper emotional connections to the women they sleep with for fear of espionage or assassination. It's a great metaphor for the empire as a whole, outwardly powerful and rich but ultimately empty inside

i really enjoyed this show and am looking forward to season 3.. Never read the books, but plan on doing so just to see where it divulges.

enjoyable review. Can't wait for your review of Season 2.

I have read the foundation series and the one thing I loved about the books was seeing how much Asimov's writing style changed and matured when he wrote the final book. The last book was written many years after the original stories. The first part was some of his earliest work which first appeared in a Sci/fi magazine he helped publish. Seeing how much his style had changed how much he had learned about writing over the years before he wrote the last one made the last book the best.

Omfg, the finale was The Great Divide all along

The Empire's story has kept me watching this show.

Season 2 started me hopeful, and had me shattered. Also, I really don't get why the Mule is foreshadowed that much. Part of the charme of him was how weirdly unobvious he was. It feels like a needless spoiler that I can only expect to be a huge disappointment.

The intensity with which this adaptation missed the core meanings of the original work makes me think of The Peripheral. They took a source world that was uncanny in its plausibility, lived in by those for whom it is normal, and replaced it with laugh out loud camp villany, each exchange ending up the dramatic dialogue equivalent of the shlock action you described here. Would love to see a video on the show if you've seen it!

My only exposure to the show is this video, but it’s fascinating how even the basic parts of Foundation have been thrown out. My favorite part of the Seldon hologram at the end of each crisis is that Hari Seldon actually has no idea what actually happened; the messages are prerecorded. So his explanations are both specific and vague at the same time. “You were faced with a stronger kingdom and had to use Balance of Power to survive.” He doesn’t know that the kingdom that came out ahead was Anacreon; he just knows that the periphery will have one strong player by this point in history.

2:27 I don't have watched this show, but I believe this is Hardin. Nothing could be more far from reality of book . Hardin is extremely cold, intelligent, systematic. Never dramatic or emotional.

Great insight! Would love to hear your thoughts on the second season.

What I found interesting was the interpersonal dynamics of the emperors and how their personalities were always different. At first I took it for granted that they were identical in all things but age, so that every Day was the same, every Dusk, and every Dawn. After the succession in Ep 3 I thought the same dynamic would be replicated, ie, the new Day would be as aggressive as the old one, and the new Dusk would seek to restrain him. But then it’s clear in Ep 4 that Dusk is still the hothead we’d seen when he was Day, and Day, who’d been a scared little boy as Dawn, condemns Dusk’s actions now that he’s come into his maturity and has precedence. And of course Day rejects Dusk’s advice not to leave Trantor specifically because he distrusts Dusk’s judgment. You can already tell they’re different people who disagree long before they come to blows in the throne room. Day’s pilgrimage is the high point of the entire season but there’s one way it could have been significantly improved. You recapped it as Day doesn’t get a vision and so fakes one. But as the episode airs it’s not clear this is what happened. He seems sincere in recounting his vision. Only Halima doesn’t buy it and plants the seeds of doubt in Demerzel. She later asks him about it privately and he sticks to his story, she remains skeptical and leaves with that “I wouldn’t wish that emptiness on anyone” line, and only then is it confirmed that Day made it up. I think leaving it ambiguous would have made for a much stronger ending to that story. Everything that didn’t have an emperor in it was so boring that my only thought was, I hope we get back to the emperors soon. The show would be no worse if you replaced Terminus, the _Invictus,_ the Vault and all the rest with title cards that said INTERMISSION. Eventually I got to thinking: There are countless sci fi concepts that, even though one writer pioneered them, are essentially free for anyone to use. No one’s going to accuse you of ripping off HG Wells if you tell a time travel story, or Doc Smith if you use FTL starships. Psychohistory has never really made that jump, but there’s no reason it can’t. Given that the people making this show have no interest in faithfully adapting Asimov, and that the most original storylines are the best, why not make an original story about cloned emperors trying to stop the wheel of time from spinning in the face of a challenge from a Seldonesque figure, but without borrowing from Asimov at all?

I watched about one episode this show and stand by my original critique: This show wants to be Dune so badly it's in physical pain. And I don't mean it wanted to be the next Dune, I mean everyone who worked on it seemingly is intensely creatively frustrated that they had to work on Foundation and not Dune, so they just tried to make it as aesthetically Dune as possible. And so, of course, i doesn't work at all, because Issac Asimov's Foundation series is about a series of extremely nebbish men with pocket protectors and giant calculators saving the world through the inevitability of external forces. It's great to modernize the story had they, say, adde a bunch of nebbish women or enbies with pocket protectors and giant calculators - but they needed to have the damn pocket protectors and giant calculators. And everything that doesn't work about this show as ad adaptation - i.e. everything - all extends from that original problem that the creative team doesn't seem to want to be doing what they're doing because they seem uninterested in anything about it.

Can't wait to hear @JustWrite's thoughts on Season 2!

i'd love to see you do a video on The Expanse. thought that show, especially after season one, was phenomenal love your style of commentary btw - you explain things well and in a funny way. usually hard for me to get into these reviews

I read the first book years ago and then binged the entire foundation series literally in anticipation for this series, but I still couldn't will myself to make it past episode 3. What does that tell you? If a sci-fi nerd, who's specifically read a series of 6 books in anticipation of a tv show couldn't make it past 3 esisodes, what hope is there for a general audiance??

As someone who has never read any of the books and went into the show completely blind, you pretty much nailed my experience. Everything outside of the Cleon story was boring/confusing and the Salvor part was the worst, she was basically Michael Burnham 2.0.

finished season 2, and I can say I love this series so far, even if it's not perfect at all.

37:00 I love that episode and I love the bell that plays everytime Mac makes a dumb argument

I'd be very curious of your thoughts on The Expanse, I watched that on a friend's recommendation after my disappointment with this series. I think it's absolutely amazing, and really scratches that hard sci-fi itch way better.

The problem with these adaptations is that they are not adapting anything, merely putting their own ideas down and stealing legitimacy from the name. It’s about the egos of these frankly bad writers, not the legacy or the lessons literature lends.

Seldom in my life have I watched such a smart and well-made and helpful video. Thank you so much. You have saved me from watching 5 episodes. I had kind of enjoyed the Trantor dynamics but the sassy and fierce warrior princess on Terminus - the chosen one - put me off big time. Next thing is I found that video showing me that my instincts were 100% correct. Again, thanks so much!

me having not read the books but recently watched season 1, I searched for a video like this today because I felt the show missed its own point with the whole gaal and salvor plot your video confirmed what I had felt while watching the show. the genetic dynasty is really the plotline that has me coming back for more. personally I don't think I would recommend the show to anyone. its inability to be consistent within its own story is a problem I see a lot with AI written scripts, as we saw with disney star wars trilogy. the visuals are absolutely incredible at times and the actors are doing a good job, especially the Cleons.

when I first read Foundation I found it so funny that Asimov basically just did a capitalist retexturing of Marx's work, which is bascially just mathematically predicting how humanity under capitalism will always devolve into oligarchy/dictatorship and what social/historical forces play into it, right up until the point where to reach the next phase in human development we need to collectivize. I always just interpreted it as him not wanting to be socialist because of the USSR but being the kind of smart that makes you logically come to the same conclusions most socialists do anyway.

The two reasons Seldon gave for his necessary death, I feel played out in the wrong order. If he revealed his illness first, then the reason why he chose to be murdered and by whom would be an interesting conversation. Seldon would appear to be heartlessly calculating, that his murder would boost the odds most. Then the horror of why he chose Rach as his murderer, because she had the best odds of figuring it out instead of Rach, would necessitate the removal of Rach... etc.

I used to read Asimov books when i was far too young to fully grasp the concepts in them but loved sci fi though never read this particular book. I absolutely loved the series and in particular most of the characters in it, the dawn, dusk, day plotline in particular. This video made me glad I hadn't read the books, cant you just enjoy it for what it is and not what its not? Its nice to have some understanding of the difference between book and tv series but the best thing about this video is getting a recap so I can jump back into series 2, thanks! Also im so glad they adapted the story as it sounds like the series you would have wanted would have been boring as hell, great as a book does not mean an entertaining watch.

Sigh... your videos are so good. I am currently in the middle of crafting and world building a giant sci-fi story or novel series and would simply LOVE to sit down and pick your brain on it. You might help me fine tune some of the more important details for the greater universe my story takes place in.

This video captures a lot of how I felt watching the Wheel of Time adaptation. A better author has a complex thematic story they tell? Nah, we know better, let's replace the core with whatever we care about.

I appreciate this video essay, and I especially appreciate your Lee Pace apprectiation! I freakin' LOVE your presentation and analysis of the Soviet Asimov adaptation!

I'd be curious to see a follow up to this video after season 2 is done.

If you see a baby crying in a movie, it means someone pinched it. Now multiply it by how many times one scene can be shot. That's a lot of pinching. And crying. And pinching. And crying.

I just finished watching season 1, and, without having read the books, I agree with what you're saying regarding psychohistory and it being lost on the viewer. At this point, it feels like psychohistory was an excuse for Hari to lead a rebellion. Almost as if Hari is the mastermind behind it, and not predicted by psychohistory.

I really think this would have been great as an anthology show. A series of separate stories that could stand on their own, but that were connected and set in the same universe and that taken together told the meta story-- which is basically what the books were. Such a missed opportunity.

17:30 I got a kick from the use of "nuclear power" when I first read the book because Asimov treated it like it was so high-tech, that members of a galaxy-wide civilization who mastered interstellar travel were threatened by not being able to get their hands on nuclear power plants. Then I remembered it was written in the 50s.

The idea that the Empire is ruled by a secure lineage destroys the entire concept of the Foundation It's instability that allows the Empire to fall. People are too busy looking at taking the Throne to control the Periphery. That's how Bel Roise gets defeated: the active Emperor removed him because he was afraid Riose want to become Emperor himself A stable line of Emperors would mean a different kind of stagnation. It would still kill the Empire, but not in the way that would cause the plot of the books

I never read the books, but I did enjoy most of the season. The way they moved around in different timelines and the mystery box reveal really worked well in getting across the fact that this story is a big picture story, not based around a specific character (in the long run).

Thanks Sage :) Love your narrating style and the liberty you take with those little excursions that many others would deem too risky or time consuming. So thanks again for all those extra insights and the effort of not only showing the validity of your analysis on one aspect but on the whole product.

I appreciate how you really dedicated yourself to finding the areas in this new TV series of Asimov’s Foundation that stuck closest to the main focus of his stories and those areas that veered the strongest away and then gave us your opinions of why the writers and producers probably made the decisions they did. I also very much liked the fact that you went on to try to find the one production of a show that you felt probably got Asimov the most correct except the way the socialist writers decided to end the story which was based on their take of how society really works, as opposed to Asimov, who you pointed out was seemingly motivated by his own western, capitalistic mindset. This is fascinating stuff. Very well analyzed, in my opinion. Thanks for all your great work here. I look forward to viewing your ongoing critics of important new projects and shows.

Oh boy you talking about the Daneel thing made me miss the time before wikipedia and spoilers and all that. It was such a crazy twist, that these two series were connected all along. And literally no one I knew had red the books, so I had no one to spoil me. Just me, alone in the middle of the night. In our grandma's house in lapland. Reading those weird books I had found at the local library with the light of the midnight sun. Huge nostalgia feels, I feel like reading me some Asimov now.

20:00 if they stuck to the stories, the hologram of Hari Seldon would give a pre-recorded speech at the end of every episode. The thing I love the most about The Mule is that he fucks up the galaxy so much that Hari Seldon's recorded message for that era is nonsense, which was my first experience of a wham episode.

The plotline with Day and religion really was amazing, and watching this makes me realize how that and Jared Harris were the only reasons I kept some kind of faith in the season until it's incredibly disappointing ending. However, I didn't find the attribution of capitalist... bias..? Blindspot? in Asimov's works at the end of this video to be all that compelling or supported. The concept of everyone "mind-melding" and having no privacy, or the idea of incentives driving humanity at large scales, doesn't really map onto the concepts of capitalism or socialism in a self-evident way as presented here. It's not very difficult to imagine arguments for or against these things from a variety of perspectives. In fact, the entire concept of psychohistory has always struck me as reminiscent of a Marxist view of history: how humanity progresses through modes of production in a way that is driven by class interests that are larger than any individual. I mean in a way Foundation is kind of about a version of Karl Marx that wrote a sealed letter addressed to 2022 that said "Russia is probably invading Ukraine right about now, an open world Dark Souls game probably won video game of the year, and the workers revolution is due in June 2025." This was a great video nonetheless and a great critique of the show.

Thank you for saving me hours of pain. I started reading The Foundation series in anticipation of the show but it felt so different. You read my mind! Thank you for this essay.

There used to be a time when I hoped my favorite books would get adapted into a movie or a series. After seeing the modern adaptations I now hope for the exact opposite.

I do think that part of the reason for the jumble of different scifi concepts is that they were facing a real problem with a story that would span such a long period of time. If you want to maintain audience connections to specific characters, you're going to need to find a way to keep these characters around through long spans of time. There are a number of ways you can do this: make characters androids, have computer simulations of characters, clones, have characters in cryostasis, and radical life extension. Of these, the show employs ALL of them except the last one. Would it be better to just use one or two? Maybe. But I think they're also expecting a crowd that is well-versed enough in scifi that these methods of extending a character's presence in the show won't feel bizarre. The show uses these technologies, but it's not "about" them. The show isn't "about" these methods of getting these characters to moments in the story any more than a story would be "about" the car or subway a character used to get to plot-relevant location. The idea of cloned emperors isn't just a great idea because it shows how the empire might stagnate, it's a great idea because it will offer a familiar face to the audience even across hundreds of years of story flying by.

you managed to describe what I felt about show vs books perfectly. brilliant stuff, loved the Salvor "Mad Max" Hardin connection, especially with Salvor Hardin being a cigar smoking slick politician. loved it and you made me want to reread the books. also agree that Lee Pace was awesome :)

45:30 I like how they are shooting while _jogging_ . You can _see_ them aiming all over the place. Not even having half of them shooting (while standing) and the other half advancing. Just... yolo everything.

I found this video only now, after watching the first two episodes of the second season. As I feared, Goyer and company have totally misunderstood The Mule. But wait -- the monstrous villain we saw in Gaal's vision of the future (*sigh* -- all the nonsensical baggage hammered onto the works of the most sensible storyteller) totally fits the description of The Mule given by Magnifico: Big guy, able to dangle a person with an outstretched arm, weird eyes, thick glasses. Of course, Magnifico was lying. I see you have also discovered the Soviet version of "The End of Eternity," and I agree it is one of the most faithful Asimov adaptations. I recommend that you also seek out the 1977 Canadian television production of "The Ugly Little Boy," thematically and emotionally true to the original. As for bad adaptations: I see you have sampled the 1962 adaptation of "Little Lost Robot" on the British series "Out of This World." For those who haven't yet seen this, the first half runs remarkably faithful to the original, but then devolves into the Frankenstein complex that Asimov was specifically thwarting with the Three Laws. Worse, Peter Bogert calls Susan Calvin "darling"! Bleah!

One of the most eloquently put summaries of the Foundation show i've ever heard. Sharing with all the book fans i know!