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

I think Hugo faked his miss/death so he could go for reinforcements

He did. He deliberately flew off so he could sneak back in.

(but yes, all those bits flying about in spacesuits and nothing else and somehow succeeding were redic implausible but I'm bad at willing suspension of disbelief)

i was more bitter about the anacreons surviving the naked jump and then somehow being allowed to take over ships again

fuckin figure it out, thespins

Man, this show. It seems like it has some pretty obvious flaws - lot of telling instead of showing, unevenly paced, some so-so acting - but I loved these 10 episodes. I do think it kind of lacks the spirit of the Asimov books (was very weird to see a robot kill someone!) but keeps the scope and the interesting ideas, and the writers somehow turned that into something very compelling and visually gorgeous. So glad that it's getting another season!

Ya good point about the robot

Tbf, the robot laws never made a lot of sense

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2021 season is nominated in the ILX TV poll, with voting ending this weekend:

ILX's Best Television of 2021 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 31, 2022

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Sorta slipped past but Season 2 went ahead and filmed earlier this year -- only image released so far is this:

https://dl.moviesr.net/images/dn9sN.jpg

Which, hm. (Flashback to Foundation founding? Some later meetup with another clone?) -- new cast members: Isabella Laughland, Kulvinder Ghir, Mikael Persbrandt, Sandra Yi Sencindiver, Holt McCallany, Ella-Rae Smith, Dimitri Leonidas, Ben Daniels, Rachel House, and Nimrat Kaur.

And per burblings today but which date back a couple of months as well, Season 3 renewed and filming starting in April, so the five season plan may actually happen here.

Per an article back in February, here's who's playing what in Season 2.

(In reading that closely, we're getting some familiar characters from the original stories -- Poly Verisof, Hober Mallow, Bel Riose and 'the Warlord of Kalgan,' who I kinda assume is the one that the Mule ends up defeating -- notably no mention of that character quite yet.)

Show is a drastic remix of the books so I doubt the TV characters will bear much resemblance but I am interested to see how they eventually handle the Mule, one of the few standout characters. I already said it upthread but despite its many flaws I am very excited to watch more Foundation

Given the latitude -- and some of the aspects of the characterization in the first Mule story -- wouldn't be surprised if they do some other kind of hiding-in-plain-sight approach. The mention of the 'Mentallics' in that Deadline piece from February is making me assume that'll be where the Second Foundation element ends up.

Yes I think that approach will get used also. The books don't really translate well into TV but that reveal would

Initial teaser here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGWT-t7AS74

And we got full trailer -- new season starts July 14.

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

So per io9 beyond Mr Pace there, just to re-sum up where we're at:

The rest of Foundation’s starring cast includes Jared Harris, Lou Llobell, and Leah Harvey; also returning are Laura Birn, Cassian Bilton and Terrence Mann. Season two brings in even more cast members: Isabella Laughland (Brother Constant), Kulvinder Ghir (Poly Verisof), Ella-Rae Smith (Queen Sareth of Cloud Dominion), Holt McCallany (Warden Jaegger Fount), Rachel House (Tellem Bond), Nimrat Kaur (Yanna Seldon), Ben Daniels (Bel Riose), and Dimitri Leonidas (Hober Mallow).

...KINDA guessing that means the Mule is third season though as I muttered upthread wouldn't be surprised if the character has been drastically redone and will be hiding in plain sight.

Oh and official synopsis:

“More than a century after the season one finale, tension mounts throughout the galaxy in Foundation season two. As the Cleons unravel, a vengeful queen plots to destroy Empire from within. Hari, Gaal, and Salvor discover a colony of Mentalics with psionic abilities that threaten to alter psychohistory itself. The Foundation has entered its religious phase, promulgating the Church of Seldon throughout the Outer Reach and inciting the Second Crisis: war with Empire. The monumental adaptation of Foundation chronicles the stories of four crucial individuals transcending space and time as they overcome deadly crises, shifting loyalties and complicated relationships that will ultimately determine the fate of humanity.”

Phew, well, sure are amping up the space opera here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t0BGkVQMuQ

And one more trailer to go...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBHT1oebvDk

All I remember is thinking of the combinatorial explosion of different clone-age actors they had to consider in order to match Lee Pace's eyebrows, but then I remembered they can CG that stuff now. And now I'm thinking how much of the FX budget is reserved for eyebrow continuity.

I re-binged the first season over the last few days in hopes of remembering the complexities and nuances of this show before the new season started. Watching it all, with subtitles, in basically three sessions definitely helped.

The first couple episodes were still tough to wrap my head around without consulting some episode summaries to help me keep track of it all. (If it’s not obvious, I never read the books). The time jumps remained confusing. And even though I understood the concept of the aging Cleons I still had some dissonance and had to keep reminding me that the brother dusk in one episode was brother day in the previous episode.

In any case’s case I settled into it more and more as it went on and by the end the time jumps made sense and Hari repeatedly showing up wasn’t dumb or weird. And now I’m properly primed and ready for s2.

The one thing that still bugged me was that Hari’s mathematical theories supposedly predicted things that would happen at an epic thousand-year scale, and he said repeatedly he couldn’t predict what would happen at an individual level. And yet he was constantly orchestrating hyper-specific things or actions - and the idea that two specific people falling in love had the potential to derail all his predictions. I could never really square this.

if i were trying to placate you, i would suggest that dude predicted at least *someone* would solve his proofs, and that they might well be attracted to someone *else* who at least knew what they were talking about

but yeah it's handwaving

the TV series must create its own drama because the books honestly have very little (and essentially none on a human level)

it's doing a decent enough job so far

Interview with Goyer about things

https://gizmodo.com/foundation-s2-asimov-apple-tv-david-s-goyer-interview-1850596741

Ho ho he make joke:

I told [Demerzel actor] Laura Birn when she joined the show that her character was a slow burn—we don’t get into her interior life that much in season one. And then slowly, we peel back the layers

Anyway, first episode of the new season was pretty good all around, I thought. The show is even more off in its own zone at this point but it did get right what Rings of Power didn't in general in terms of how to loosely adapt something from a source and make it interesting in its own sphere, and the design remains remarkable on several levels. Some spoilery thoughts:

However handwavey it is (and boy is it) getting Gaal, Salvor and Hari together in 'real space' makes for good TV, and Lou Llobell and Leah Harvey in particular make for a good combination of actors playing one of the weirdest dynamics ever set up. If they end up somehow being a combination Greek chorus/narrator across the entire series via a series of convenient hibernations, well, why not. The sense of everything being more fraught and baroque on the Empire end of things was nicely done; the time jump allows for a fully new set of the three Emperors and the unspoken sense of how things are just more fragile and loaded now is clear enough. Also it's nice to see all three actors playing slightly different versions of themselves again (Demerzel as the constant I do want to see a little more of). Smushing details of a slew of stories together -- "The Mayors," "The Merchant Princes," "The General" and given we know Kalgan shows up in some form this season possibly the start of "The Mule" itself -- isn't a bad idea, really. If anything the small hint dropped in the brief Terminus scene that the Seldon cult, explicitly said in the stories to be designed for the off-world rubes, has an actual presence in the society itself is a smart one.

I’m catching up on s2 today. After watching the most recent episode of The Righteous Gemstones, who knew I’d so soon have another naked fight scene to compare! (Gemstones was better and, er, braver.)

I was happy when the Mindhunter actor showed up, but then oh

ha I was trying to remember what I knew him from.

I've never read the books but based on commentary in this thread I'm happy to see that The Mule has showed up. Based on comments further upthread it sounded like that plot point could've been much further off in the series.

As usual this show is still daffy and dense but I'm happy to keep going along with it. I appreciate its ambitions.

https://imgopt03.mrskincdn.com/mrman/blog_resource/000/000/003/084/women_in_love_nude_wrestling-e0ee453e_featured.png?1576764862

"who knew I’d so soon have another naked fight scene to compare! (Gemstones was better and, er, braver.)"

xpost Yeah the Mule showing up even as a future projection/vision accelerates a lot of things. Mikael Persbrandt was already announced as the 'Warlord of Kalgan' but yeah, the Mule, so that makes sense per the original stories. Assuming this isn't some sort of weird headfake and the 'real' Mule isn't more like the character as revealed in the stories, it's a massive revamp -- the Mule in the stories is slight, physically unimposing, hides in plain sight. That's one reason why I figured Persbrandt WASN'T the Mule because he's anything but such a small and seemingly quiet figure in real life, and turning him into a Robert Z'Dar style cyborg executioner from a direct to TV 1990s Sci-Fi Channel movie is, I admit, a choice, but given the revamping of so much else about the story I'm just rolling with it. The show continues to look remarkable at the least.

I do think it's kind of a smart move to have introduced both Riose and Mallow by name but we haven't seen either yet.

suddenly we're swearing a lot

Well it's later in time, they teach those words in primary school now.

And anyway we get Hober and Bel at last. I was amused at how a key plot point of "The Traders" was delivered and then completely undercut.

I'm on board with most of this show except I still find all the plot logic around Hari Seldon's character to be really tough to swallow. It switches between complex/arbitrary at the drop of a hat. At one point Gaal says "pychohistory is not omniscient!" and Hari simply replies "It is now!" Like OK writers, thanks for trying.

It's probably the most handwavey part of it all. Though arguably the more Asimov himself wrote about psychohistory the more handwavey THAT got.

Not a bad ep this week but def felt like they were moving the pieces on the chessboard.

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