Episode Guide
Preparing to Live: 3.5/5 The Emperor’s Peace: 3.5/5 Preparing to Live: 3/5 The Mathematician’s Ghost: 2/5 Barbarians at the Gate: 3.5/5 Upon Awakening: 2.5/5 Death and the Maiden: 2/5 Mysteries and Martyrs The Missing Piece The First Crisis The Leap: 2.5/5
The 45 million dollar Foundation was created with the intention of showcasing its beautiful set design, wide-spanning alien vistas, and detailed, beautifully set interiors. AppleTV’s sci-fi epic is a visual delight from start to finish. ..
The Foundation is an online magazine that focuses on the visual arts. However, their coverage is superficial and does not reflect the quality of the art inside. ..
Foundation is an AppleTV original series, loosely adapting Isaac Asimov’s novels of the same name. I say loosely because aside from a couple of ideas and placeholder names, this doesn’t have a lot in common with its source material. With the showrunners even confirming as much, referring to this as the MCU equivalent of the comics they’re based on, Foundation trades thought provoking ideas about science and the future of humanity for paper thin characters and big explosions.
The first is the perspective of the protagonist, a young girl who is taken from her home and forced into slavery. The second is the perspective of the main antagonist, a powerful man who leads a brutal life in the slave trade. The third is the perspective of a young boy who befriends the protagonist and helps her escape. ..
The second comes from the Empire’s military. The Trantorian military is one of the most powerful in the galaxy, fielding some of the best pilots and soldiers in the sector. However, their resources are finite and they are constantly at war with other empires. This means that their forces are often stretched thin, leading to them being unable to mount an effective counterattack against any threat. The third comes from the people of Trantor. The Genetic Dynasty has a strict caste system which dictates who can and cannot rule over Trantor. This means that those below are effectively slaves, living in poverty and under constant surveillance. This is a major factor in why the dynasty is so powerful – they can control everything because they have no one above them
Hari Seldon, a brilliant mathematician, discovers a formula that predicts the end of the dynasty and plunging the world into 30,000 years of dark age barbarism, with fighting breaking out and the entire galaxy tumbling into turmoil. However, Hari has a solution that could dramatically reduce that. And part of that key comes from Gaal Dornick.
Hari and the gang are stranded on a hostile world, with no way back home. They must find a way to return home before it’s too late.
Salvor Hardin is a new colony set up on Terminus in the future. Our central pillar there is Salvor Hardin, who finds herself plagued with strange visions and the focal point of a weird object called The Vault.
The Foundation series is in desperate need of direction and pace. The first few episodes are promising but quickly lose their way, with a lot of melodrama and conflict that is not really necessary.
The excessive use of exposition in this show harms the overall immersion into the world and story. For example, The Expanse does it well and in a sci-fi setting, while Game of Thrones does it well and through its rich lore and history. Foundation doesn’t even come close to either. ..
The Foundation on the show is constantly dancing with big ideas, but either over-explaining everything or leaving other characters without a voice.
There is a lot of luck and deus ex machina involved in the plot, something Foundation even points out and references several times in its story – especially late on. While a little is to be expected from any series, Foundation is rife with them. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it even rips whole plot ideas from other sci-fi IPs to pad out its run-time. Most notably is a planet-killing ship late on that could destroy everything (Star Wars anyone?) which, interestingly, doesn’t show up in the book either.
Foundation is a show full of clunky exposition, uninteresting characters and an underdeveloped world begging for better scripts. Apple may have spent 45 million on this show but quite clearly none of that was invested on good scriptwriters. With the show already renewed for a second season, this isn’t the end of the journey but let’s just hope there’s enough people left over to see this through to the end of the scheduled 80 episode run.
