The Empire, gentlemen, as has just been said, has stood twelve thousand years. The dark ages to come will endure not twelve, but thirty thousand years. A Second Empire will rise, but between it and our civilization will be one thousand generations of suffering humanity. We must fight that.
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
Are we seeing a rebirth of brainy sci-fi on televisions and at the cinema, or are we witnessing a false dawn? Apple TV+ certainly hoped for the former when it picked up the rights to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels. Foundation‘s grand backdrop all but screams event television: a decrepit Galactic Empire spanning thousands of planets on the verge of collapse, with 30,000 years of barbarism ahead unless the tide can be staunched. How? Through logic, science and reason, of course. (If such a sentiment seems particularly resonant now during our time of COVID, it just goes to show you that history repeats: Asimov was inspired by Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)
Reading Foundation from beginning to end (or beginning to prequels, in this case) is an immersive, sometimes confounding experience. The series began as a serial in the 1940s and was still rolling at the time of Asimov’s death in 1992, so tackling each book in order is like taking a journey through time, from the gee-whiz spectacle of Amazing Stories-era science fiction to the darker, more speculative strains of the ’80s. The narrative skips forward decades and centuries at a time (often within the same book), with later installments injecting strange twists (the random introduction of a “living” civilization where all animals and nature share the same consciousness, the revelation that robots have been controlling humankind’s destiny for millennia). Nevertheless, the scale of the enterprise is thrilling, and at its best, the Foundation saga shows how much fun Big Ideas can be, even if they’re sometimes egg-headed. (For a comprehensive look at the entire series, we recommend io9’s overview.)
While Foundation allows for plenty of good guys and bad guys, science is at the heart of the tale. Aged Dr. Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) has formulated a theory of “psychohistory” which can foretell the future based on equations and probabilities. Anticipating the fall of the Empire, Seldon devises a plan to build a new, stronger empire by maneuvering events to create a remote colony called “The Foundation” that will eventually rise to power. Each book sees The Foundation facing various crises, with psychohistory decreeing that only one true solution to each crisis exists. (In effect, the future has already been decided upon.) On the one hand, it’s a fundamentally optimistic idea: we can count on ourselves to collectively make the right choice when the time comes. On the other hand, it’s a decidedly un-heroic concept: individual actions don’t matter much compared to the tidal wave of history.
Of course, Seldon’s plan goes awry in unforeseen ways, and individual agency comes into play every so often, but all that’s left to future installments. The first Foundation novel is about setting up the rules of the game, and its episodic, hopscotch narrative doesn’t lend itself to a consistent storyline, or characters who linger past a few chapters. In other words, executive producer David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, Man of Steel) had his work cut out for him in translating Asimov’s ideas to a 10-episode series. The Foundation novels dazzle not because of heroes and villains (in matters of characterization, Asimov was indifferent at best) but because of its narrative sweep, the moves and countermoves of the plot, as if we’re watching an epic, galaxy-spanning chess match play out over centuries. There’s plenty of wars and battles in the margins, but the books are more interested in the mind games, the debates over decisions, with ideas taking precedent over derring-do. In an era of prestige TV in which audiences expect forthright action and strong, complicated figures in their shows, how would this fly?
Goyer responds by preserving the basic plot of Asimov’s work while embellishing it with tons of substories and ornamental detail. As a work of universe-building, his Foundation is impressive: in the first two episodes we’re granted glimpses of numerous awe-inspiring worlds and cultures, propped up with movie-quality special effects. To keep viewers invested, Game of Thrones-style political intrigue has been amped up, and many of the major male characters have been changed to women (not an unwelcome development, as Asimov’s females tended to be nubile, winsome young things when they weren’t fading into the background). Goyer has also attempted to humanize the narrative via genius mathematician Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell)—a minor player in the book, she’s now the series’ narrator, and in stark contrast to the sexlessness of Asimov’s early work, she gets hot and heavy with Seldon’s right-hand man Raych (Albert Enoch), albeit on a PG level. Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), one of the major protagonists, was famous for saying “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”; here she’s introduced as a scavenger with a rifle strapped to her back. Your father’s Foundation, this ain’t.
If you’re a Foundation devotee, whether you appreciate these changes or not will depend on how attached you are to the source material, but even if you’re unfamiliar with the overarching story, the first episode of Foundation does yeoman’s work in setting up the stakes. An unsettling scene in which a suborbital transport tube to the imperial capital world of Trantor gets destroyed sets up a terrorist conspiracy storyline no doubt intended to hold audience interest while Seldon’s plan gets off the ground. The first episodes contain twists that open up further questions, such as the true identity of Laura Birn’s imperial advisor Demerzel (those familiar with Asimov’s work will know this one). In one respect, Goyer has come up with an ingenious solution to the books’ lack of consistent characters: to perpetuate his rule, the emperor has cloned himself into three versions of varying ages (Cooper Carter, Lee Pace, Terrence Mann), and these same actors will surely play future versions of themselves as the centuries pass. Their presence makes for a neat callback to triumvirates from Roman history, while also rendering imperial stagnation in visual terms. “A younger grape from the same vine, destined for the same old bottle,” comments Seldon.
Goyer’s Foundation wants to be all things to all people: it attempts to maintain a foothold on Asimov’s original ideas even as it fills in its canvas with visual eye candy, an occasional action scene to keep the young’uns interested, and a preoccupation with character drama and cross-plotting that’s par for the course for high-class streaming TV. (It says something that the dry science of psychohistory is represented by glowing F/X-heavy balls of light.) What it lacks is confidence in Asimov’s original conceit, and a singular hook to pull it all together. Jared Harris’s Seldon is the closest the story comes to an organizing presence, but his character is diminished in stature: at first presented as a wry, inscrutable genius who’s obsessed with the big picture, he’s reduced to giving unconvincing pep talks to laundry workers by episode 2. We’re meant to root for Llobell’s lonely yet determined Dornick as she flees her homeworld into a larger universe, but soon she’s simply a sap in love, the camera ogling her bikini bottom as she makes out with Raych. As the strongest leg of the ruling triumvirate, Pace can play imperious in his sleep—unfortunately, that’s pretty much all he’s been given to play thus far.
Goyer is a decent ideas man, but his tin ear for character interaction remains intact; one would be hard-pressed to find one original or humanizing moment amidst the sluggish back-and-forth dialogue. (Ironically enough, for a show that tries to stress the human element that Asimov lacked, we find ourselves impatient to get past the blather and back to the story.) Stilted characters in sci-fi isn’t a new thing—even The Expanse, a far superior show in the same genre, isn’t immune to clunky character bits. But at least The Expanse engages with its far-out ideas even as it connects on a visceral level: space is vast and wondrous, but it can also kill you at a moment’s notice. Apart from its high-priced effects, Foundation‘s only attraction is the mechanical whirrings of its plot. And while Asimov, who freely admitted later in life that his initial Foundation novels were too dry, might have approved of many of the changes to his story, what would he have made of the sloppy use of science? At one point, we’re told that a destination 50,000 light years away can be reached by a sub-light ship in around 900 days, which would mean a speed of thousands of times the speed of light. (One smiles at the thought of Asimov eviscerating that flub in his usual sardonic style.)
The second episode of Foundation is punctuated by a manufactured shocker of an ending which will no doubt be expanded upon in future episodes—Goyer is thorough in wanting to overexplain everything, if nothing else. But in privileging twists and mini-mysteries over grand notions, the series is in danger of losing sight of the big picture, and ending up as just another sci-fi potboiler that’s more interested in its trappings than its ideas. And yet it says something about the staying power of Asimov’s imagination that one can’t help but remain intrigued with Foundation, and desire to see how the story unfolds, no matter how much it gets corrupted. Maybe Big Ideas aren’t so out of date, after all. ■
