Foundation – Season 1

Because I bought an Apple TV subscription in order to watch Murderbot I figured that I might as well make the most of it and try some of their other SF output too. There has been a lot of interesting chat about Foundation online, so I dived in.

It is quite a while since I read Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. I’m pretty sure that it was before I went to university, which is a very long time ago indeed. I have had no desire to read the books again since, or indeed any other Asimov.

However, the one thing that everyone seems to agree upon about the Foundation TV series is that it bears almost no resemblance to Asimov’s books. It has the concept of psychohistory, and some of the named characters and planets are in both (though often very different). Nothing much else is the same. Some people are absolutely outraged about this. Others are duly relieved. I am in the latter camp.

I’m not going to go into detail about what is different between the books and the TV series. That’s partly because I can’t remember much about the books, but mainly because I don’t care. The TV series has to be able to stand on its own, and if it does that then the books are only relevant to people who have a huge attachment to them.

And stand on its own it does. At least as far as season 1 is concerned, Foundation is solid, thoughtful science fiction. It pulls ideas from Asimov, but it is very much its own thing.

The biggest problem with adapting the Foundation Trilogy to the screen is the timescale. The books take place over many generations, as indeed is necessary to explore the concept of psychohistory. The TV series leans into this by having the Emperor Cleon repeatedly cloned to ensure the continuity of the galactic empire. Three generations of Cleon, of different ages, are alive at once. They are named Dawn, Day and Dusk, and a new Dawn is decanted each time a Dusk dies. In theory they are all the same person. In practice, of course, each is shaped by his environment, and they are inevitably different.

They are, however, mostly played by the same actors. That is, Day is always Lee Pace; Dusk is always Terrance Mann. Dawn is harder as they need different actors dependent on whether he is a baby, a child or a young man, but the concept remains.

Other science fictional concepts used include cryogenics, mind-uploading and robots. Gaal Dornick spends a lot of time in cryonic suspension while traveling through space. Hari Seldon dies early on in the series (sorry, spoiler) but comes back as an uploaded mind. Robots have supposedly been outlawed in the empire, but the Cleons have kept one on as a composite advisor and nanny. This Demerzel is supposed to provide continuity of policy down the generations, but of course has a mind of her own. All of these things allow the scriptwriters to preserve a sense of continuity through the vast periods of time over which the story unfolds.

Oh, and they also steal the collapse of the space elevator scene from Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy. It is a bit shameless, but it is a fabulous set-piece and I’m glad someone has used it.

All of this makes for a solid concept following the collapse of the empire, and the attempts of the Foundation to preserve knowledge. The scriptwriters are duly suspicious of the concept of psychohistory, but also of the attempts of the Cleons to preserve themselves and their empire in stasis.

What struck me most about the series, however, is that it is about trying to preserve human knowledge and culture through a time of social collapse. We happen to be living through a time when social collapse seems likely as a result of climate change, and when fascists such as Trump and his cronies are actively destroying scientific knowledge and cultural capital. That makes this series very relevant. I will be interested to see where it goes in the other two seasons that have been broadcast.