Foundation: Crucifying A Masterwork

I never watched the show, but I have read the books. Seeing that first clip where she goes “Harry said the entire galaxy can pivot around the actions of a single individual” shattered me. How can you possibly get the core of the story absolutely backwards? The idea that individuals aren’t important is what makes the foundation series unique in fiction

Interestingly enough, the brother Dawn plot line was so close to nailing Asimov's general theme of system regression. If the "imperfections" of brother Dawn's clone were caused by the technology malfunctioning and the empire no longer having the know-how to fix it, this story would serve to a nice juxtaposition to the rise of the Foundation.

Lee Pace is just amazing as Brother Day.

An issue that I have is that Asimov portrays the Empire as crumbling infrastructure - he explains that their ships are slow and have to be far away from a planet to commence a jump just because their technology hasn't developed. Later on Foundation invents spaceships that can jump even when close to planets - they are small and their engines are in the walls of the ships if I recall correctly. When the reader progresses in the stories you get this contrast between how rudimental Empire's technology was and how advanced Foundation has become. Since this series starts off with a powerful Empire possessing the greatest technologies, the writers won't be able to accomplish the same Empire-Foundation contrast down the series.

lee pace carried the whole show. i would have rather it just been about him. i found myself waiting for the next cleon scene while the other plot lines were going

I'd easily watch a show that only focuses on Empire. They're easily the highlight of the entire series.

Lee Pace as Brother Day is THE thing that made the show for me although the actors that play brothers Dawn and Dusk are amazing but Lee Pace is just chefs kiss

I was shocked at how much I like the genetic dynasty story line considering it has nothing in common with the book story. And yet, I think this arc actually encapsulates the “feeling” of the novels more so than anything else in the show outside of the pilot episode!

The best sci-fi bit of the series was the idea that Lee Pace could be cloned indefinitely.

I was definitely more interested in the Empire than anything else in the show. I really love the actors portraying Cleon.

The biggest gripe I have with the series (still enjoying it though) - is the technology of the vault. It's such a huge deus ex machina. It's like Hari not only created Psychohistory, but also come up with such an overpowered technology that somehow the Empire didn't find out about. And it basically can do anything the plot needs it to do - as it then does at the last episoded of season 2.

9:17 I love how, since he's a clone, Brother Day doesn't have a belly button when you see him shirtless.

I felt in their enthusiasm to update the technology is Asimov's very 50's sci-fi future, the writers never stopped to think too hard about how it affected the story. If mind copying and AI exist, why bother with imperial clones? Indeed, why bother with a Seldon Vault at all? The genius of Seldon was always the audacity to hope to predict the future accurately enough that you could send VHS tapes to the future and still be smug in them when they got there. If you can upload your brain to a computer and still exist in a few centuries time then psychohistory is hardly as useful or impressive. It undercuts one of the book's core themes.

Normally I only agree with about half of the points in "Just Write" videos, but this one is 100% on point. They took one of the most famous and beloved Sci-Fi book series, stripped off some superficial features and threw the rest away. I don't think I'm being cynical in saying that Hollywood is just using the source material as a recognizable name to try and hook fans while making a generic sci-fi action series to appeal to "normies".

One technological advance in "Foundation" that Asimov was proud of was a hand held device that Seldon used to help with his calculations.Yes, Asimov predicted pocket calculators!

The intermittent crushing on Lee Pace is hilarious 😂

The JJ school of writing, which is characterized by an obsession with mystery boxes and often features characters having knowledge that they wouldn't actually have just because the audience or the writer knows it. It's all so very tiresome and I don't know why it's so common over the last decade. It's not like these people work for cheap or anything, either.

I read Foundation (every book that ties in) before I watched this show. I watched the Expanse before reading the books. One of these is a perfect example of how to adapt a book, the other is a perfect example how not to adapt a book.

Thoroughly agreed on all points. I was disappointed but not surprised since the trailers showed Salvor "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" Hardin with a massive gun... Still impressive how thoroughly they abandoned the original material.

BBC Radio produced a radio series, or a trilogy as originally planned, under the title "Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation", which intrigued me as a teenager. I became an avid listener, but life got in the way and I missed several episodes, and was unable to pick it back up. This was the 70's, so no streaming services, no BBC Sounds, no Audible. Couldn't even record it on tape ☹