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

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.

I love how poor Lee Pace is any casting director's go-to when a show needs a pompous monologuing douche.

i love how his eyebrows couldn't help but influence the casting of his counterparts

i commented elsewhere - have only watched ep1 but was super irritated/rmde by how hard they were hammering “do u seeeeee” 9/11 parallels. (but i am not a fan of scifi when it tries to overtly refer to current/recent events anyway in general)

it looks amazing though, -and i love the acting, esp love jared harris & lee pace !!

it is intriguing to me how jared harris is actually kind of an ugly man but also compelling/attractive

i think it’s his speaking voice & kind eyes

was super irritated/rmde by how hard they were hammering “do u seeeeee” 9/11 parallels

Yet another Galactica callback as well, I figure (or rather, Caprica)

I think a lot of The Terror fans think Harris is hot.

this really is extremely slow/laid back . . . and i'm okay with it

Yeah, works for me. Also don't mind the time-hopping.

I thought episode 3 might start with Raych getting airlocked into space for murder, but it's fine that they advance the story forward and leave it to your own imagination to fill in the blanks. This is easily the best sci-fi series since The Expanse so far.

Kind of glad I havent read the books but I skimmed the outlines enogh to know the show's not really sticking to them, but yeah I'm enjoying this too. It is visually spectacular.

I haven't got a clue about the books but according to imdb both Dornick (last seen hopelessly floating through an asteroid field in a liquid chamber) and Seldon last seen ... are both featured in 9-10 episodes, so I presume there will be some flashbacking to come or maybe just voiceovers.

Both Dornick and Seldon only feature as living characters in the very first short story, more or less adapted fully in the first episode; Dornick is mentioned briefly in the second story, where Salvor Hardin is introduced, but is implied to have already passed, Seldon being long dead. But since the time structure is indeed all over the place, who knows?

wouldn't be too surprised if 'dornick and seldon are featured in 9-10 episodes' is a red herring just to keep people guessing. although i guess the dornick actress is also our voiceoverer

it would be odd to keep dornick's fate unresolved tho!

maybe quite mischievously they've given a credit to Harris for every time his character's statue is in shot on Terminus.

Today's episode was pretty great -- love the way they're ratcheting things up. (Also are we getting a full Aliens tribute with that last shot there?)

Word went around they've renewed for a second season.

I love the way brother day is such a consistently repeating arrogant arsehole to the point that even when he matures into brother dusk he's still going to blame his older predecessor (himself) for everything that goes wrong! And then every time he's got old enough to learn an iota of humility and wisdom they atomise the fucker into dust.

I do like how they're slowly setting up how 'the system' is all clearly going to screw up and fall apart on their end. One of the middle-run of original Foundation stories has a great emperor character -- not a clone per se and rules alone but definitely stands out some, and is named Cleon of course -- but I can see how some elements already in play will help to shape the portrayal of him down the road.

cleon wears his war wound like a crown

maybe quite mischievously they've given a credit to Harris for every time his character's statue is in shot on Terminus.

just the credits and how many episode he's listed in imdb as being in. I haven't a clue about Apple TV. I get it all from my usenet account.

Ah, I see. Anyway now that Jared Harris is off of this show, mostly, I can go back to seeing what he is up to as I continue to catch up on The Expanse.

unnecessary flashback, and i'm starting to worry that things are so stretched out because they don't have enough story

Yeah the first part flashback was little more than addendum -- could have done that in even a couple of minutes I think -- but excellent build of weird tension throughout. Now that we have the big reveal at the end that answers a few questions at least, more to come.

I gotta give Goyer this much, he may (may) have pulled a Lindelof in getting a good creative team together to actually do something that's more watchable than expected. Depends on how they stick the season landing but halfway through this season, I'm good with it.

Season ending but season landing works!

lol how crap was that imperial ship, just one surface to air shot and it's completely taken out.

"Say Captain there's some big gun pointed our direction."

"Eh whatever."

I want less action

But I thought everybody wanted a piece of the *is stifled*

Fight scene zzzzz, innocents in a settlement being terrorized by soldiers zzzzz, gimme more standing around in very high ceilinged rooms plz

so [redacted] designed his own space coffin and then something happens at the end of this ep. That would be a good way of skipping a few boring decades on Terminus but not so good for his accomplice! Yeah I prefer the long boring bits to the action as well.

Agreed re trying to figure things out on a deserted ship.

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