The Genetic Dynasty storyline is entirely original and it’s easily the best part of the show, one of my favorite sci-fi concepts ever. Lee Pace is just so fucking good as Empire in all seasons. Demrezel is also right up there as the best character in the show.
Just can’t get enough of this.
Season 3 is streaming rn and it’s amazing so far. Absolutely phenomenal performances from Lee Pace and Laura Birn. I highly recommend watching it if you like sci-fi.
It sucks in a cool way.
The original book is basically “hey I’ve invented mathematical space materialism, and also great man theory is dumb, it’s all people at large scales.”
The TV series needed characters so now everyone is super special, magical, and important to history.
It’s dogshit but it’s pretty dogshit, with some original cool concepts like the genetic dynasty on Trantor. Literally I think the writers just misread “Cleon dynasty” as “clone dynasty” a few too many times and decided to roll with it.
But yeah the series has the opposite message of the books.
lmao we have essentially the same opinion on it. I also thought the clone thing was cool. If they just did that it would have been a great addition to the book plot, honestly.
Honestly I agree, I’d swallow that change entirely. Problem is a TV show needs super special characters that do things.
Normal people running a marxist institution designed to endure the fall of space rome and preserve knowledge isn’t interesting TV.
Normal people running a marxist institution designed to endure the fall of space rome and preserve knowledge isn’t interesting TV
IT IS TO ME!!!
interesting in real life: sure; but not on tv.
Maybe it could be done as fictional documentary?
it’s pronounced “annie may”
I’d do it Inside Out style with the institution represented by a metaphorical character doing the interesting TV things but then we also see the actual people inside the institution interacting with each other to make the machine run.
i’m going to be real, 10000000% pin me to the cross and make sacrilege of me if i’m wrong but the only reason it’s any different on TV is because Americans can’t be fucked to learn who new characters are every other episode at a rate that would make The Walking Dead ashamed at its turnover
that and the showrunner explicitly was like “I wanna do my own sci fi schlock lol i’m doin’ it”
I bet you could do it sort of like those anthology shows where its the same cast but a different set of characters. Like, each generation/era you recycle the cast into new roles that either complement or contrast their role in the previous generation/era. It would still have some wiff of “Great Man” to it, but at least you could probably get closer to the actual themes of the book.
uh that’s an opinion and a shit one imo
It absolutely could be interesting TV, but under the capitalist organisation of the creative industries, certain ideas become structurally unimaginable.
Think about pitching a story where a Marxist mass is the hero to the average American television executive/sex-pest. You’d be thrown out of the room. That executive doesn’t give a shit about making “interesting” television.
I have absolutely separated this show from the book in my mind.
Wise. You’re having more fun than me.
In the grand scheme of things it still follows the same principle except for the Mule. Demrezel can not stop Empire’s decline, Gaal just fucks around mostly and while Hari does somewhat guide the foundation, his actual influence is minimal. In the scope of thousands of years, they literally don’t matter as much.
I’ve been a sci-fi orphan ever since The Expanse ended, but Alien Earth has been scratching that particular itch. I gotta check this one out sometime
I’ve been a sci-fi orphan ever since The Expanse ended
God, that describes me. Read the books as well, but since then I’ve been looking for sci-fi with the same vibe.
have you read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky?
Scavengers Reign?
Scavengers Reign was great.
I just wish I could cancel my Netflix account again to show them how disappointed I am.
am i the only one picking up on the 1980’s scifi cinema aesthetic?
is it because i’m old enough to remember being impressed by the retro-futurism from the 80’s in the movie theater?
Alien Earth has been shockingly excellent so far!
Unless at some point after I stopped watching the show stopped being entirely original nonsense wearing the fucking skin of the Asimov work it’s named after, essentially using it as cheap marketing for the showrunner doing their own sci fi b.s. instead of being honest about what it was, then no it isn’t and also fuck you and also fuck everyone in this thread. The triumvirate of clones was kind of cool but, again, unless literally everything about it changed after I stopped watching, it was not “Foundation,” a show based on a book series I actually really liked and was consequently very much looking forward to seeing and VERY FUCKING DISAPPOINTED ABOUT IT NOT BEING
Yeah this.
I don’t know if i’m wrong because i stopped watching the show or just being gaslit by people who didn’t like the book for the exact same special interest reasons as me 😔
It’s me. I’m gaslighting you by sharing a quantum linked braincell that vibrates on the same special interest frequency.
Sorry for saying fuck you and fuck everyone in this thread btw i don’t mean it im glad y’all are having fun with it i just really liked the book 😔
Couldn’t agree more, Foundation is just as political as sci-fi should be and it doesn’t try to hide it at all.
Honorary mention of the actor who plays the Mule, really takes the cake this season with his erraticness
Honorary mention of the actor who plays the Mule, really takes the cake this season with his erraticness
he’s supposed to be ugly god damn it
but sure let’s get euron fuckin’ greyjoy over to be “the mule” fuck YOUUU (not you gingerbrat, the writers)Sheesh, calm down
Seriously, I totally get being pissed at unfaithful adaptations, I think it’s deeply human. Still, despite this, I think that this show was working at a huge disadvantage. You don’t just easily adapt Asimov to the big screen, so they did what they could.
they did what they could.
Which was iirc the showrunners own sci fi schlock instead of “foundation”
I mean, it is Foundation, just not Asimov’s books. It takes stuff from the books, modifies it, sometimes leaves it out, and adds somethings new - just like adaptations do. Some adaptations are close to the source material, others are just adaptations in name only. You don’t like this one, while I do, and both is ok.
im pretty sure the showrunner literally said in an interview how they couldn’t get their own shit approved so no it’s not just an adaptation it’s literally like not even a fan fiction at this point because it’s fan fiction that wasn’t even written about Foundation
Well, if that’s the case, then that’s the case. Sorry it’s not to your liking, but like I said, you don’t like it, I do, and both opinions valid.
I’d recommend watching the complete season first before coming to conclusions.
What, did everyone on the planet hit their fucking heads and forget building a vault with a Seldon hologram and forget why they turned on an alien pain field around it and then after the first season it actually follows the books
i just looked up spoilers about the vault and jfc it’s worse than i thought this shit is just BAD and I hate that you people are supporting it. “Everybody hit their heads and just forgot building it” actually makes MORE SENSE than what literally happened
the show is fucking great because at every turn they said “what would make that bigoted asshole turn in his grave?” and I respect the hell out of that.
it’s also good bc Lee fucking Pace is beautiful.
Was Asimov canceled?
Asimov was both a bigot in general and a raging misogynist in particular, like to the point where even some of his contemporaries were grossed out by it.
and you can easily see the misogyny just from reading any of his books.
I hoped it would be a faithful adaptation of the books. It’s very much not, but it’s good for the most part. Except for the “I uploaded my consciousness in the magic quantum thingy so I’m immortal now” part
I also really enjoy this series. Lots of good acting and fun concepts. I have not read the books so I can’t fault any changes that were made.
I have not read the books so I can’t fault, any changes that were made
okay well spoiler but what you should have gotten was basically Historical Materialism: The Show, where
spoiler in case the show adapted more of the book than i thought idk i stopped watching mad and angry like a nerd after a few episodes
Hari Seldon essentially codifies Marxism and mass psychology and an insane amount of math to make an actual predictive model of the universe (or at least the general mass actions and politics of galactic civilization). He uses this to trick the empire into setting in motion the rise of the titular Foundation, creating it in just such conditions that he’s calculated are juuuust right to shorten what he predicted to be over ten thousand years of galactic barbarism, warlords and factionalism and death on a scale that would make a Warhammer nerd weep (or cum idk) to a period of just a few hundred as the Foundation will find itself poised to reassert itself politically and technologically and become essentially a new Empire and re-stabilize the galaxy
The first book presents a series of crises, i.e. the Foundation needing to trade and interact with its neighbors who are at present more technologically and economically powerful than it and, in the waning influence of the distant and apathetic empire, it finds itself potentially subject to their authority. People have to figure out, how do we deal with that? So they slowly make their neighbors dependent on their technical expertise and trade and in doing so subvert their neighbors and force them to bend their knee in turn when they declare war on the Foundation for its riches only to find their warships don’t work anymore. Or iirc another instance where a prolonged seige turns off the treat pipeline, forcing them to come to terms with the Foundation. Stuff like that.
And every fifty or hundred years the vault, which instead of being something where everybody is like HUH WHAT’S THAT WEIRD ALIEN THING is known to be a time capsule with a hologram of hari seldon, opens up and the vault opens up and a hologram plays where Seldon is like “haha! According to my super marxism, i expect you’ll find yourself to be dealing with [whatever crisis] after having just [done thing to avert crisis and further the political development of the foundation as a force in local politics]. Well, good luck! The math says you’ve probably got this!”
And then like more stuff happens after the first book but that’s basically how it goes
And SORRY TO BE A NERD but i just love all of that and I’m really mad that’s not what I got on the TV because iirc the show runner wanted to do their own sci fi story instead and just idk did that while saying it’s Foundation and i’ll die mad
Had a feeling something was missing because the way the crisis were spoken about to be distilled like this I thought hmmm maybe reading the book will be better
ten thousand years of galactic barbarism, warlords and factionalism and death on a scale that would make a Warhammer nerd weep (or
definitely the second one
lol why did you add a comma in the sentence you quoted
I second this opinion, and, having read the books, I can easily say you’re not missing much, and most of the changes were for the better.
The responses I got here were very funny
It’s a complete inversion of the book.
If I’d read the books, I might fault the tv series for that.
Interesting. I just had someone recommend this to me. Guess I might bite sooner than later
There’s a good ongoing Sci Fi show? Dang. Guess I gotta watch it.
I just started watching last week, already half way through season 2. It truly is some of the best sci-fi tv ever made. I will die mad that Raised by Wolves got cancelled but Foundation is the closest i think another show has come to it.
I really liked the books and so I checked out in like episode 3 when it was clear they weren’t following them. This is one of very few cases where I think trying to use the title of a known work for an adaptation with lots of changes completely backfires.
Agreed, I love this too! Nothing has scratched my sci fi itch since Raised by Wolves
I’ve watched season 1 & 2 and they are OK. Good cinematography and I do like the Genetic Dynasty idea and how it changes (or not) over time.
Would recommend!
I’m still stuck at the point where I’ve listened the audio books earlier this year and my brain keeps sayin, “Nuh uh, what is this, dat’ didn’t happen, who’re all these people?”
Its on my list of things to watch and I’ve got through an episode or two but it hasn’t “clicked” with me.
I appreciate your excitement though, it gives me hope that my brain will forget the books soon enough and I can just enjoy the thing for itself.
Treat them as entirely different things. The show is way too different from the Books but in a good way.
