A few weeks back I wrote about one of my favorite books of all time. In that article I mentioned the Apple TV+ show that is probably responsible for introducing more people to the existence of the book than any other single source, but I didn't mention at the time that I was watching said show. That's what we're here for today, after all. To talk about the show.
Unlike Dune, from earlier this year, this adaptation gets to exist without the baggage of previous failed adaptations, which means my expectations were certainly higher than my expectations for Dune. But the Foundation TV show benefits from a surprising fact; it's not really an adaptation of Foundation.
Hot takes here, get your hot takes folks! See, Asimov's work in general is not well suited for visual mediums. The visual appearance of his worlds is a secondary concern to him in virtually all of his stories, and the stories themselves are about concepts and themes more than they are about characters or, heck, stories. So if you're going to adapt that to a visual medium that is focused mainly on character stories, where do you start?
Well, the consensus so far seems to be that you start by throwing out anything that resembles a plot in the original work. Okay, to be fair, you don't throw it out completely. But if you're trying to create a story that feels like an Asimov story but still plays like a movie, the thing from the books that you really care about are the themes and the concepts. The question of artificial life. The idea of The Three Laws of Robotics. Stuff like that.
If you're wondering why I'm bringing up artificial life and the three laws instead of talking about Foundation, that's because I want to compare the Foundation show to something you might have seen before; I, Robot. I, Robot started life out as a project inspired by but not affiliated with Asimov's Robot books and mythos. Later on during the production the writers and producers were able to get the rights to call the thing I, Robot, after Asimov's first published collection of robot short stories. At which point they changed the title, changed a few of the character's names, and added more overt references to the three laws of robotics, but otherwise changed very little. The resulting movie is a fun action flick and, somewhat surprisingly, a reasonably good adaptation of the themes and concepts Asimov wrote about in several of his published robot short stories.
I would not call I, Robot an adaptation of the book I, Robot. The story is new, the characters fundamentally changed. But the best thing they did in tying that film to the book was by listing in the credits that it was inspired by the book I, Robot, not based on it. The themes and concepts of the movie are actually quite true to the themes and concepts Asimov explored, and so the movie comes off feeling like a considerate homage, even if the style of film it is didn't appeal to the majority of Asimov's existing fanbase.
Foundation, the TV show, does claim to be based off the book Foundation. And to its credit, it sticks much more closely to the subject matter than I, Robot did. But for the most part I would still say that the show is inspired by the book, rather than based off of it. Several of the major events have been lifted directly from the book, along with some of the characters. But many of the characters are new, many of the situations are altered or introduced, and there are entire major plotlines that are invented specifically for the show. But the show does, in fact, do quite a good job of bringing the themes and concepts explored by the book Foundation to life on screen. So to me at least, it gets a passing grade as an Asimov adaptation.
Now, how about the show itself? How does it do at being, you know... an entertaining show?
The first thing I'll say is that it's a character drama, more than anything else, but it is very much a sci-fi character drama. It even maintains the source material's hard sci-fi-ness, meaning that the character drama requires at least a rudimentary understanding of the science of the show in order to be meaningful (don't worry, it's all just fictional genetics and statistics, and they explain everything you need to know pretty clearly). In those ways it does feel very much like Foundation, but the stories being told are about characters. Some of whose names you will recognize if you've read the book, even if you don't recognize basically anything else about them.
A lot of the design of the story is in service of this character drama, and frankly, it's all done pretty well. The casting is also excellent, particularly as relates to the Cleons (a statement that does not mean what you think it means, I promise). The three (four?) actors portraying Cleon absolutely knock their respective performances out of the park, even as it spans generations. It's absolutely lovely. Jared Harris also shines as Hari Seldon, portraying a personage that is both sympathetic and incredibly analytical, no mean feat considering how hard it was for Asimov to get the character to feel that way in Forward the Foundation. The rest of the cast is also great, their performances were overall exemplary.
But the real star of this show is the visual design itself. Foundation takes place in a far-future, technologically advanced universe of the sort that needed to feel alien to us as "modern" humans in order for it to work. And Foundation absolutely nails that while being simply stunning to look at as well. It is everything I ever wanted out of a modern, CG-heavy Star Trek show in terms of its visual design and polish. It's a shame I couldn't get that out of the visually disappointing actual modern Star Trek movies and shows, but whatever.
The technology is incredibly well thought out and consistent, the visual design familiar while also being unique and subtly alien. It feels like a galaxy-spanning society too, with the half dozen locales we are introduced to though the course of the show feeling distinct from each other, as if they are in fact a snapshot of an entire culture. This lends the sort of galactic scale to the production that few other things have ever really achieved, including early Star Trek and its budgetarily mandated reuse of sets. The visuals are the standout of an otherwise excellent show, managing to pull off a feat I really didn't think was going to be possible in the year 2021; displacing Dune.
Dune was a pretty, pretty movie, and the production design was carefully thought through and extremely well executed. But for the simple fact that Foundation is all of that but deals with more than just the two primary locales, I actually prefer the look of Foundation to Dune. I want it to be clear that even I think this is nuts. Dune is so, so gorgeously designed. I never would have guessed Foundation would come close to matching it.
Let alone beating it.
So the show is good. Is it the book? No. That's actually something I sorta love about the Asimov-inspired visual products we've gotten so far. Foundation and I, Robot are both good books; you should read them. And the movie I, Robot? Also a good movie. You should watch it. The show Foundation is good too, you should watch that. Go ahead and do all of those things at the same time. Because reading the books won't spoil the movie, and watching the show won't spoil the book. They're all very similar, but yet, quite different.
Which is sort of an unusual thing in the world of book adaptations, come to think of it.
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