David Goyer adapting Asimov's Foundation books for Apple+ (Previously: Jonathan Nolan adapting Asimov's Foundation books for HBO)

HMMMM.

hard to imagine any sci-fi classic that would be more boring to watch onscreen. these books are quite literally action-free.

aren't they mostly about math?

i actually read at least 4 or 5 of them when i was 10 or 11, but i can barely remember anything about them.

i love these books to a ridiculous degree but i don't think they would make particularly good movies.

There's an amazing twist with the Mule at the end of book 2, if i recall, so definitely think this could be compelling.

Well, the original involves empires, and this is HBO, so no doubt they'll find ways to write in intrigue and boobs

they span thousands (millions?) of years, have no central characters... this is a stupid idea

xp

long (reallllly long) expository sections in place of characters interacting

they probably were just like "game of thrones in spaaaaaace" and HBO said go for it. (not that they are really similar, just "beloved book series")

"And what are your credentials?"

"I just cowrote a big space movie with my brother! With emotion! Which I will bring to this adaptation!"

"Uh...okay."

yeah i reread them last year and once the mule enters the picture the whole thing becomes way more gripping. the problem i've always had recommending them to people is that the first book is by far the worst, but asimov was like 21 when he started writing them so watching him gradually become a better writer is fascinating in and of itself. also some surprisingly strong and interesting female characters in the second and third books, along with some of the weirdest and most convoluted plots i can remember in any classic SF stuff.

there is a lot of intrigue, but it's all so divorced from, like, actual humans - the Mule is good but so much of the series is this giant abstraction

the later foundation books are mostly really terrible but iirc the very last one asimov wrote right before he died, about the early life of hari seldon, is pretty good.

j.d. otm that the first three books get better as they go

love love love second foundation so much

don't think they would make good movies, though

pretty much because of what was said upthread re: giant abstraction

"Ars has confirmed not only that Foundation was in development, but it has now been given a full series order—meaning we're definitely going to see it." #AsimovFTW https://t.co/YnzcjTcQZx

— Ars Technica (@arstechnica) August 29, 2018

It’s probably going to look amazing and it’s definitely going to be better than that insipid Star Trek revive that was only watched by people who write nerd tv recaps for their side gig

Discovery was pretty good. Definitely wouldn't call it insipid.

It wasn’t. You should.

Took forever but some actual news (also, on Apple+ TV now):

https://deadline.com/2019/10/foundation-lee-pace-jared-harris-cast-star-in-apple-series-based-on-isaac-asimovs-sci-fi-classic-1202765708/

Lee Pace (Halt and Catch Fire) and Jared Harris (Chernobyl) have been tapped as leads in Foundation, Apple TV+’s upcoming drama series based on Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novel trilogy.

Harris as Seldon, Pace as the Emperor "Brother Day" which...what?

happy 100th, isaac

Y'all saw that a black woman was cast as Salvor Hardin, right? The furious nerd tears are going to be so delicious.

after the racist "joke" Asimov aimed at Samuel Delaney when he won a slew of awards and the repeated, documented sexual harassment and assault Asimov was known to engage in.... good

Love Lee Pace, love Harris, and especially love the books but I can't see this series keeping the spirit of the books while staying watchable

Well we got a sort-of trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgbPSA94Rqg

Hm hm hm, maybe. But per Eliza's post there a few back, all the better that the main figures aren't ALL white dudes...even with Goyer Goyering, though, so we'll see. If anything this seems more like a riff on the core story, and I'm not sure still what the whole 'Brother Day' thing is w/r/t the Empire, especially since there are two other characters called "Brother Dawn" and "Brother Dusk."

My thing is he is somehow the worse Nolan

Looks like that Nolan's not actually involved now, though, just Goyer and others. Should update the subject line.

It’d be nice if Goyer has figured out how to write a single woman by this point

not as in uncoupled, but (1) character who is a woman

That's a claim:

"Foundation" writer and showrunner David Goyer is ambitiously hoping to tell Isaac Asimov's science-fiction story over the course of eighty hours.

Well, anyway, it's almost here. Goyer interview has this bit:

“The book series itself makes these massive leaps forward in time, and particularly the first book is very ontological,” Goyer said. “Very few characters continue from one story to the next. My very first meeting at Apple, I said to them, ‘Guys, time is a character. You’re just going to have to embrace that.’ We do time jumps. We’re going to jump forward. We’re going to jump backwards. Sometimes we’re going to tell two parallel storylines that are operating at different times. We just have to embrace it. It would be insanity not to embrace it. And fortunately, everyone embraced it.”

Which, honestly, I have no problem with -- would actually explain some of the trailers we've seen.

It’d be nice if Goyer has figured out how to write a single woman by this point

Annnnnnd maybe he hasn't but:

“In this case, because Asimov wasn’t alive, I was talking to his estate, to his daughter, and I said, I want to make sure that I’ve identified the core ingredients that make Foundation, Foundation. Fortunately, they said, yeah, we feel like you’ve zeroed in on the most important elements. And because we’re adapting it now, over 70 years after Asimov first wrote it—you know, it was a metaphorical story back in the post-World War II environment—some of the events, some of the things that we’re interrogating, we’re going to have to change because we’re speaking to an audience of today and not an audience post-World War II.”

The first big, important change: diversifying the characters. “Because there are virtually no female characters in the first book, I said to the Asimov estate, ‘How would you how would you feel if we gender-flipped a couple of the characters?’ And they said, ‘We love it. We think Asimov himself would have completely embraced that,’” Goyer said.

Not that that gets him automatic points for trying for any number of reasons, but I guess we'll see.

Asimov well known for completely embracing female convention goers

Ugh

Of the Big Three, I sort only have time for Arthur C. Clarke these days, but would watch this, especially for Jared Harris.

Asimov’s son a piece of work too, but maybe shouldn’t go there.

I remember reading something Fred Pohl said about Asimov’s behavior. Actually I met both of them and for some reason liked Pohl a lot better than Asimov.

Lee Pace says things. Apparently the future is we're all dominated by endless Lee Pace clones, and I fail to see the problem.

https://gizmodo.com/foundations-lee-pace-i-love-science-fiction-1847708416

So this thread then? Albums covers that depict the artists hanging out with their clones

i like this? not terribly fast-moving, but i'm okay with that. not sure i believe the lead actress is 26

lose the voiceovers tho

Saw the first episode and was honestly most intrigued by how they were trying to solve the problem of 'things which everyone now knows from what's come after/ripped it off so how do we do it differently?' eg making Trantor not quite Coruscant, trying to figure out a new way to do faster than light speed, etc. Lee Pace perfectly cast of course.

I was amused by the entire imperial library being smaller than big city central libraries I've known. Though maybe the rest of it goes eight miles deep or something.

Enjoying this so far, I was wondering if the 80 hours idea is for real? I'm only two episodes in and they've gone quite a ways into Asimov's story already.

Well yes and no, in terms of the original stories they’ve essentially only done the very first, the rest is stuff drawn out from the prequels, most of which I’d forgotten about, or wholly invented.

So, at this rate, if the show gets canned at the end of S3 they'll probably have done most of the book series before they start making stuff up.

Perhaps? They're definitely tempting fate a bit with that initial voiceover going all in on naming Hober Mallow and the Mule. The fact that they're leaning into the robot stuff early, again not surprising given the prequel books, but also I think they figured there was more potential for actual drama beyond stories that mostly could be filmed as stage plays with people batting ideas back and forth.

Further elaborating a bit but again I am amused but not surprised at how thoroughly it's repurposing just about everything from a ton of filmed SF of recent years. Inevitable Galactica vibes on this colonist ship, the floating particle stuff reminds me of Krypton from Man of Steel, lots of anime vibes from spaceships in general, etc. etc. Arguably the basic story is just a gloss over the rest. That said, again given the plainness of that basic story stylistically, seeing them tackle questions of design, costume, etc. in particular is of interest since there's no real guide and I've kinda been pleasantly surprised -- it'll be interesting to contrast that against the designs in the new Dune.

i haven't read these books in well over 35 years so looking forward to watching this series without that baggage

Ha, same, pretty much.

ben daniels is the most intriguing actor in this show and they’re not doing enough with him

also everything on this mentalist planet is corny af

also also can robots nullify the three laws if they commit to holding their arms that way for millennia on end or what

ben daniels is the most intriguing actor in this show and they’re not doing enough with him

Would agree.

Yesterday's episode: best of the season, especially with the mask-off on the mentalist planet. Ends on just the right note. It's seriously Good TV all around.

Did I miss the scene that explained how Salvor didn’t die in the last episode and was instead moved to a pit prison? Seemed like they just ignored their own plotting.

Otherwise agree this was good episode that felt like it was building toward the climax.

the bad woman is putting visions in peoples’s heads (including ours)

not entirely sure why she bothered, tho

I lol’d at Hari having an epiphany about the second Foundation and conveniently summarizing major plot arcs which the writers clearly know are hard to follow.

wau

definitely wau

i apologize for having ever suggested that things don't actually happen too much in this series

did hari seldon really compensate for the gravometric effect of lee pace's eyebrows tho

I like this show but damn do I want to punch Lee Pace's big sweaty face so bad.

that final shot of the newest episode might have been the first time I’d agree

some real viewer-teasing going on here by just dumping everything they’d foreshadowed in one episode

Rather. Intrigued to see where/how this exactly resolves.

idk man

love a demerzel showcase but magicking everyone on terminus back to life is lame af. while still killing the two (three?) most interesting characters! also the whole side quest on ignis was essentially pointless imo

hoping mikael persbrandt survives until series three in 2025 i guess

While I liked it more than you did, yeah I was kinda pissed to lose Leah Harvey in particular. (I kept half guessing that the young kid was going to BE the Mule later on, but I guess that's not happening!) Also unless the whole idea is to change around the future timeline and shorten things -- which, why not, the whole idea of the Mule is that he's the unforeseen chaos factor and here the series has been basically setting him up as a threat for almost the whole season -- seems like we'd lose Isabella Laughland's character as well by default, which sucks. I was amused by Vault TARDIS Emergency Vehicle but I had to figure there was going to be some sort of save -- part of me almost wonders if they're going to go Cylon Homeworld somehow -- and until the episode was far enough along I kept wondering if Hari had stuffed Day into a pocket universe of some sort while in the Vault. As for the Ignis sideplot, I kept waiting for some sort of info dump that basically confirmed whatshername old Empress was a robot and that Hari was dumped into a robot body of his own. I suppose that could still happen? But hm either way. My own minor nit was Sareth and Dawn flying off and me going "But the Empire doesn't have small jumpships so how far do they think they're going to get."

Persbrandt's great casting and I kinda appreciate they're just ditching the whole 'who is the Mule' thing in favor of just introducing a straight up jacked Terminatorish fascist asshole, but I would have been amused to see him introduced in a scene capering on the beach busking while wearing a clown outfit or whatever.

One other thing, looking back a couple of weeks: I appreciated how the Salvor/Hari-on-Terminus conversation essentially implied that the latter is outside of conventional time, since he only knows to call Hober Mallow precisely because Salvor tells him to, and thus explains the name appearing on the vault in delightful cursive a few episodes prior. But I'm beginning to wonder if that was just a weird one-off instead of an actually interesting plot device.

Non-spoiler since it addresses several bits from the season: My assumption that the brief inter-Hari communication was a sign that were partially viewing multiple points in time now, if not separate timelines that are entangled via the prime radiant. There’s a bunch of very fast travel throughout space and cryosleep so there’s no reason we couldn’t have one Hari far ahead of another.

Anyway, couple of Goyer interviews out there about it all, spoilers obv

https://www.tvguide.com/news/foundation-season-2-finale-david-s-goyer/

This bit isn't a spoiler but does maybe indicate that if the strikes get resolved we might get season 3 on schedule, more or less:

We've written Season 3 — because we have to write these seasons sometimes years in advance — and as wild as Season 2 has gotten, in many ways it's only prelude for Season 3. Season 3 will get even wilder.

And this, well, if you guys can actually pull it off, god love ya:

We have the broad strokes of (Season) 4 all mapped out. We know where all the major characters wind up at the end of (Season) 4. It doesn't mean we might not shimmy along the way. We have some very broad strokes for how some of the subsequent seasons would map out. I don't know how many seasons I'm going to get and I don't want to leave the audience hanging, so we're building a satisfying offramp that can be achieved at the end (Season) 4 and another one at the end of (Season) 6, and the ultimate one at the end of (Season) 8.

Really enjoyed S10, but the mule is corny as f

^that's me in the future obv, E10

This show has gotten to the point where, when Hari and Gaal explain how Hari didn’t die a few episodes back, I just roll my eyes and say “okay, Foundation,” and we just move on.

Goyer’s gotten a little better with a team of writers working for him but he’s definitely a sucker for the plot cliche where it’s revealed someone actually disarmed the threatening bomb three episodes ago, you just didn’t see that

It’s kinda funny to follow up watching Foundation with Mrs Davis (which I’m currently doing)—two shows that do a lot of hand-wavey plot explication, but where Foundation is stone faced and serious, it’s basically the punchline of Mrs Davis.

I just finished bingeing both seasons over the last week and I honestly still don’t know if I actually like this show. A lot of the acting isn’t great. And there’s a couple of things that are personally very nails-on-chalkboard to me, e.g. Gaal’s accent (sorry to any SA ilxors but that accent is just ugh to my ears), and Sareth’s posture/body language/facial movements (I keep thinking an alien is about to burst out of her). Also Dawn and Day pronounce it Demerzel and Dusk sounds like he’s saying Demrezel. Dusk looks like he’s wearing poorly fitted dentures.

Demerzel is probably my favorite character.

And how did everyone get into the vault in time? The Invictus was beating down on everyone, miles away from the vault.

I have my suspicions that they’re “in the vault” kind of how Hari is in the vault

I think Brother Constant might have been my favorite character of the season. Just great work playing against a variety of different characters. And how did I not realize until now that her name (well, not her real name) is a riff on Brother Dawn/Brother Dusk/Brother Day. sheesh.

Yeah Isabella Laughland is kinda my 'how did I not know about her before' discovery of the season.

I enjoyed this season more than season two but it definitely had some moments where I was like “ok just ride the wave, just ride the wave”.

Do the books explain how psychohistory/the prime radiant actually work? Because iirc the show doesn’t explain anything. Like, I’m down for believing mathematics can predict a lot of stuff about the progress of civilization but the explicitness of psychohistory - even with the caveat that it can’t predict individual action, only mass population action - is a little tougher for me to buy. Also how did he get his hands on all the tech for the creation of the vault and the prime radiant?? He was obviously being surveilled by the Imperium for a long time. And how is the Invictus tech - 700 yrs old - not so completely out of date?

Also also also did I miss something or is it still not clear who was really responsible for the bombing of the star bridge?

xp this was season two. stop posting from the future

Like, I’m down for believing mathematics can predict a lot of stuff about the progress of civilization but the explicitness of psychohistory - even with the caveat that it can’t predict individual action, only mass population action - is a little tougher for me to buy.

It still bugs me that they keep saying that about specific individuals yet Hari keeps zeroing in on “outliers” whose specific actions derail his plans.

iirc In the books Psychohistory predicted everything basically right up until the Mule arrived, and that was because he was a mutant? The show already has a planet full of mutants.

I've been wondering how the books and series compare, anyone care to summarize the differences?

the major difference is that the books were actually collections of short stories, and each story was set in a different time had no characters from the previous stories, other than H.Selden's hologram.

they took a few ideas from the books (psychohistory, crises, mentalics, Foundation spreading influence through different ways like religion and trade) and character names and basically made up a brand new story/characters from it. the best thing by far about the books is the ideas, not Asimov's writing or characters or stories, so they're taking the right approach. loved season 2 btw, might be my favorite show running now

Yeah by essentially leaning into space opera more than the actual stories did (and matching that with some really impressive sense of design and how technology could work), they cracked a code very well.

Speaking of space opera, that last episode battle reminded me a lot of that uh more popular space opera

i kinda disagree - some of the "best ideas" of the books seem like they were imported without retaining the most interesting parts. the Mule, for instance (though i am certain there's a "twist" planned there, i love the way Asimov chose to tell his story: as a kid i was genuinely flabbergasted by it.) or Seldon's simulacrum; I always thought there was a profound lesson in the programmed piece of software that increasingly grows out of sync with reality. best laid plans...

but then i'm among that minority that despises the slow shift of all television into action film

No I actually agree with you re: the Mule and was a little disappointed myself. Not every change they've made has been for the better, certainly.
But they've taken a different introduction to the Mule and I'll stay open to what they do with that story. In general, I think the books get better as they go and could be adapted to TV with less changes, but they've committed to the remix approach that lets them keep some actors/locations from season to season, which is its own thing and might have been necessary from a budget or sellability standpoint

While we're on the subject, another change I'm not crazy about is Seldon's direct involvement in so many events, the "thumb on the scale" as they describe it, which imo goes against the spirit of psychohistory. May have preferred them to give Seldon a reduced role as he has in the books if Jared Harris wasn't such a captivating actor

Heh I think we're saying the same thing about Seldon

ya - they were right to draw out the theme of the books of whether history is a story of individual actors or of movements, but mostly that theme feels like lip-service: by focusing so much on Seldon, Salvor, Day, etc, it kind of eliminates the question. it's boring imo to experience history as the psychodrama of a few immortal action heroes.

Nice interview with Goyer on the season

https://decider.com/2023/10/25/foundation-david-s-goyer-interview/

Hey, we got good news:

https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/news/2023/12/apple-tv-renews-global-hit-epic-sci-fi-saga-foundation-for-season-three/

I’d have been extremely irritated if they didn’t!

We got Preem Palver

Meantime, hmm, but guess we'll see what results.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/foundation-david-s-goyer-steps-down-showrunner-season-3-1235834630/

This is the part that I'm actually concerned about the most: given the general excellence of the visual effects in combination with the design, it would hurt if that was cut back some.

Sources say Goyer and executives at the show’s production company, Skydance, clashed over the budget for the upcoming season. TV budgets are under scrutiny across the industry as streamers right-size their slates with an eye toward boosting profitability.

Yeah losing Goyer as well as budget is a pretty bad sign. Visual effects are a big part of the show's appeal