[0:00] A couple years ago, I made a video about
[0:01] Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, where
[0:03] I said I'd love to see an adaptation of
[0:05] the material, but that I didn't really
[0:06] think it was going to happen. Now, that
[0:08] was kind of a um bold thing to say,
[0:11] seeing as Apple had already green-lit a
[0:13] TV show, uh but I thought that either it
[0:15] was going to get canceled or that the
[0:17] final product would be so different from
[0:19] the spirit and ideas of the book that
[0:21] calling it an adaptation would be a bit
[0:23] of a stretch.
[0:25] Seldon said, he said
[0:26] an entire galaxy can pivot around the
[0:28] actions of an individual.
[0:30] So, then you are one of those
[0:31] individuals right?
[0:33] And so, while I definitely
[0:34] underestimated the entire industry's
[0:37] aching desire to make uh the next Game
[0:39] of Thrones and Apple's willingness to
[0:40] pump millions of dollars into a show
[0:42] they immediately hid from the homepage
[0:44] on their website on launch days, the
[0:46] show they made is
[0:48] well, it's a little more J.J. Abrams
[0:50] than it is Gene Roddenberry. But, saying
[0:52] this thing is different from its source
[0:53] material is not necessarily the same as
[0:55] saying this thing is bad.
[0:57] For that, we're going to have to do a
[0:59] little bit of work.
[1:07] To recap a little, Foundation is a
[1:09] seven-novel series by science-fiction
[1:11] writer Isaac Asimov. The story is about
[1:13] a mathematician named Hari Seldon who
[1:15] invents a type of math called
[1:17] psychohistory. This allows him to make
[1:19] predictions on what large populations
[1:21] will do over time, and using this, he
[1:23] realizes that the Galactic Empire is
[1:26] going to fall. Stopping the fall is
[1:28] impossible, but the following Dark Ages
[1:30] could be shortened from 12,000 years to
[1:32] just 1,000 years if his plan is
[1:34] followed. This involves a group of
[1:36] scientists making a small settlement on
[1:38] the edge of the galaxy called the
[1:40] Foundation that will eventually start
[1:42] the Second Galactic Empire. The first
[1:44] three novels are actually a collection
[1:46] of nine short stories and novellas,
[1:49] each of which is set decades or
[1:50] centuries after the previous one,
[1:52] meaning very few of the characters are
[1:54] in more than one story. The characters
[1:56] themselves are mostly just plot devices
[1:58] with little in the way of personality or
[1:59] growth, but the charm of the series is
[2:02] that it gives an insight into the larger
[2:04] forces at work in society, political,
[2:06] economic, or social realities. In each
[2:08] story, the Foundation is at risk of
[2:10] being conquered or destroyed, the main
[2:12] characters struggle to save it, but in
[2:14] the end their individual efforts matter
[2:17] a whole lot less than those broader
[2:19] trends at play. Seldon doesn't pin the
[2:22] success of Foundation on any one person
[2:24] heroically battling to the death to save
[2:26] it.
[2:27] Harry said, he said,
[2:28] "An entire galaxy can pivot around the
[2:30] actions of an individual."
[2:32] But on the assumption that groups of
[2:33] people are pretty much the same, and
[2:35] that they're motivated by the same
[2:36] things, and that so long as the people
[2:38] who want to conquer the Foundation are
[2:40] incentivized to leave it alone, they
[2:43] will. So, every story has a sort of
[2:45] anticlimax when it comes to capital A
[2:48] action. There aren't big space battles
[2:50] to read about, but instead the final
[2:52] chapter of any Foundation story is just
[2:54] as thrilling as a Sherlock Holmes
[2:57] revealing a mystery. One of the
[2:58] characters will stand up and explain why
[3:00] things happened the way they did, and
[3:01] the reader slaps their head and says,
[3:03] "Of course." I read these books when I
[3:04] was a teenager, and they were a
[3:06] formative experience for me. Nothing
[3:08] else I read taught me how to look at the
[3:10] world this way, to step outside of the
[3:12] individual or the easy narrative of good
[3:14] versus evil, and look at the desires
[3:17] that motivated society. I honestly do
[3:19] think it is one of the best ways to
[3:21] learn to appreciate systemic issues in
[3:23] our society. And really, if there's
[3:25] anything that I wanted out of an
[3:26] adaptation of this material, it's that
[3:28] it retains this core idea. The exact
[3:30] plots or characters themselves aren't
[3:33] important, so long as the writers come
[3:34] up with new ways to show how societies
[3:36] can behave predictably, and new insights
[3:38] into what motivates those behaviors. So,
[3:41] what did the show do?
[3:43] Well it
[3:45] it's a mixed bag.
[3:49] The pilot episode of the show is really
[3:52] good, Except for the first five minutes,
[3:54] which are really confusing. Rather than
[3:56] organically building the story, the show
[3:58] tries to introduce us to everything
[3:59] everywhere all at once. So, we have our
[4:01] ostensible protagonist, Gaal, giving a
[4:04] voiceover about stuff that doesn't
[4:05] really matter and is sometimes even just
[4:08] incorrect.
[4:09] But I never reached Terminus.
[4:12] Straddling the farthest reaches of
[4:13] civilization.
[4:15] Unsettled by man.
[4:18] This scene on Terminus is here to build
[4:20] up the mystery about what this weird
[4:21] floating vault thing is that people
[4:24] can't seem to get close to, except for
[4:26] this character, Salvor Hardin. It's a
[4:28] literal mystery box, you guys. And then
[4:31] it cuts to 35 years earlier on a
[4:33] different planet, Trantor, and we get
[4:35] exposition on why this guy, Hari Seldon,
[4:37] is so important. And on top of this, the
[4:39] voiceover starts name-dropping
[4:41] characters that do not appear on this
[4:43] season of the show.
[4:44] Hober Mallow.
[4:46] The Mule.
[4:47] I would learn these names one day.
[4:49] These are characters from plotlines that
[4:50] will take entire seasons to fully
[4:52] introduce. So, from the perspective of a
[4:54] new viewer, it's too much information
[4:56] that they'll never remember. And from
[4:58] the perspective of a book reader, it's a
[4:59] huge overcommitment and distracting from
[5:02] the main plot. It's only after all of
[5:03] this that we meet our actual protagonist
[5:05] on a planet called Synnax, and I really
[5:08] wish they started the show here or even
[5:10] earlier. There's a later episode that
[5:12] has a half-hour-long flashback to Gaal's
[5:15] life on this planet that I wish was just
[5:17] the start of the show. In the pilot, we
[5:19] literally only we see her saying goodbye
[5:21] to her parents as she boards a spaceship
[5:22] to go to the capital. But in the
[5:23] flashback episode, we get to see what
[5:25] life is like on her theocratic homeworld
[5:28] that's been ravaged by climate change,
[5:30] how her people are violently opposed to
[5:31] science, how she admires Hari Seldon as
[5:34] a mathematician from afar. There's a
[5:36] whole story surrounding her choice to
[5:38] remove her prayer stones, secretly
[5:40] entering a math competition that will
[5:41] get her off of the planet, how she's
[5:43] motivated to leave so that she can find
[5:45] a solution to her planet's flooding.
[5:47] There's conflict with her religious
[5:48] father, and then finally her leaving her
[5:50] family. That is some really good science
[5:53] fiction character-based drama. This
[5:55] would have made for a great first act of
[5:56] the show, and I secretly believe it may
[5:58] have even originally been written as the
[6:01] introduction, but then the story got
[6:03] rearranged later out of fear that it was
[6:05] too slow of a start. As we'll see with
[6:06] the rest of the show, the writers are
[6:08] very interested in fleshing out the
[6:09] characters of this story, which is
[6:12] excellent. As I said in my last video on
[6:14] Asimov, his characters are the weakest
[6:16] part of his writing. They are
[6:18] one-dimensional. Sometimes they can be
[6:20] quippy and fun, but we don't see them
[6:23] lead interesting emotional lives. It's
[6:25] not what the stories are about.
[6:26] Injecting more of that into the story is
[6:28] great and pretty necessary when it comes
[6:30] to the realities of what gets made into
[6:32] television today. I just wish that they
[6:34] had led with that here rather than a
[6:36] jumbled start of three or four different
[6:38] plot lines. This mysterious scene on
[6:40] Terminus is fine as a cold open, but it
[6:42] doesn't really need the voiceover. And
[6:44] why show us Hari Seldon now when our
[6:46] main character is going to meet him
[6:47] later on, and we're going to have to
[6:49] reintroduce him anyway? Despite all
[6:51] this, the jumbled start, the unnecessary
[6:53] voiceover, the rush to get Gaal off the
[6:55] planet, the rest of the episode is quite
[6:57] good. It's the closest the show comes to
[6:59] directly adapting anything from the
[7:01] books themselves, as this is, with a few
[7:03] additions, a direct adaptation of the
[7:05] first story in the Foundation series,
[7:07] The Psychohistorians. On one side of the
[7:09] plot, we watch Gaal meet Hari Seldon and
[7:11] learn about his discovery that the
[7:12] Empire will fall.
[7:13] The Empire will fall. Interstellar wars
[7:16] will be endless. 10,000
[7:19] worlds reduced to radioactive cinders.
[7:23] The Empire doesn't like that he's been
[7:24] saying this and is worried that it will
[7:26] cause people to lose confidence in the
[7:27] regime, so they have him and Gaal
[7:29] arrested. Hari is tried, and Gaal is
[7:32] pressured into testifying against him.
[7:34] In the end, they both manage to get
[7:35] themselves released because the Empire
[7:37] fears the political backlash of
[7:39] silencing a popular critic. The other
[7:41] half of the episode focuses on the
[7:43] Emperors themselves. That's Emperors
[7:45] plural as there are three of them, all
[7:47] clones of Emperor Cleon from 400 years
[7:50] earlier, but made at different ages.
[7:52] There's Brother Dawn, who is the heir to
[7:54] the throne, Brother Day, who is the
[7:55] ruling Emperor, and Brother Dusk, the
[7:57] former Emperor who is now supposed to
[7:59] act as an advisor.
[8:01] And also add to this giant moving mural
[8:03] of the Empire's history. The Imperial
[8:06] hierarchy is entirely unique to the show
[8:08] and I love this idea so much. First of
[8:11] all, I think it's really funny that the
[8:12] idea probably happened because David
[8:14] Goyer mistyped Emperor Cleon as Emperor
[8:16] Clone and thought, "Hey, that's an
[8:19] idea." Second, because it's a practical
[8:21] way to keep Lee Pace on the show and
[8:23] while I have had words to say about The
[8:25] Hobbit franchise, he was unquestionably
[8:28] the best part of it. And I'm glad to see
[8:29] my favorite man crush have a role where
[8:31] he wasn't covered in obscene amounts of
[8:32] makeup. What was I saying? Um
[8:34] Oh, yeah, third, I like the genetic
[8:36] dynasty as a concept because it
[8:38] perfectly articulates why Hari Seldon is
[8:41] right that the Empire is in trouble. His
[8:44] entire point is that the Empire is
[8:45] stagnant and the Empire is literally run
[8:48] by clones. Their leadership never
[8:50] changes. The Empire cannot adapt with
[8:53] the times and is going to get run over
[8:55] soon.
[8:56] You offer nothing new, just a younger
[8:59] grape
[9:02] from the same vine, destined for the
[9:04] same old bottle.
[9:06] Oof, like damn, that line is perfect.
[9:09] During their half of the pilot, Brother
[9:10] Day is overseeing a dispute between two
[9:12] border regions, Anacreon and Thespis,
[9:15] who have long hated each other. Later,
[9:17] there's a huge terrorist attack on the
[9:19] Star Bridge, this giant elevator that
[9:22] takes people up into space. The attack
[9:24] is immediately blamed on these two
[9:26] factions. The attack is what convinces
[9:27] the Emperor to let Hari start the
[9:29] Foundation at the farthest fringe of the
[9:31] Empire. After episode 1, I felt pretty
[9:34] good about the direction of the show.
[9:36] The main plot has been set up. The
[9:38] explanation for psychohistory is
[9:40] consistent with what the concept is in
[9:41] the books. It feels like an Asimov
[9:44] story. And it looks phenomenal.
[9:47] Seriously, I'm talking mostly about the
[9:48] writing decisions in this video cuz, you
[9:50] know, that's that's my name. But the
[9:52] visual effects are outstanding. The
[9:54] composition direction cinematography
[9:56] it's all top-notch. And it's stunning to
[9:58] get that kind of attention to an Asimov
[10:00] story. An author whose adaptations have
[10:02] typically suffered from being
[10:03] underfunded. So, despite a few issues
[10:05] that are easy to dismiss, this episode
[10:08] was a promising start for the series.
[10:09] Unfortunately, episode two feels like
[10:11] we've built up all this speed and then
[10:13] drove it directly into a wall.
[10:18] Given the more or less direct adaptation
[10:20] of the psychohistorians in episode one,
[10:22] I expected that the show would spend the
[10:23] rest of the season over on Terminus,
[10:26] showing us some version of the first
[10:27] crisis from the second short story, The
[10:30] Encyclopedists.
[10:31] The Encyclopedists. That is what happens
[10:34] after this episode. So, episode two
[10:36] feels more like an extended pilot. But
[10:39] it feels like the pilot episode for a
[10:41] completely different series. At least as
[10:43] far as everything that happens on the
[10:45] ship bound for Terminus is concerned.
[10:47] We're introduced to a bunch of new
[10:49] supporting characters and there are a
[10:50] ton of little side plots about Gaal
[10:53] preparing for life on Terminus. We get a
[10:55] scene where they run a simulation to
[10:57] test their ability to fight off the
[10:58] local wildlife. Her friend Lowry is
[11:00] pregnant and has to decide what to do
[11:02] with the baby since being on the ship
[11:03] with all of this radiation will
[11:05] potentially lead to mutations, while
[11:07] raising a baby on an ice-cold
[11:09] uninhabited Terminus isn't exactly ideal
[11:11] either. Gaal sits in on a budget meeting
[11:13] in Hari's place and gives this big
[11:14] speech about how the Encyclopedia
[11:16] project the Foundation is working on has
[11:18] this enormous responsibility since it's
[11:20] going to choose what gets remembered by
[11:22] the next civilization and that we should
[11:23] be critical of our assumptions about
[11:25] what is important. Hari gives this big
[11:27] speech about how everyone on this
[11:28] project, even the laundry workers, will
[11:30] be memorialized. There's a romance plot
[11:32] line with Gail and Rache falling in
[11:34] love, and Rache is mad at Harry for
[11:36] reasons that we don't know yet. Did uh
[11:38] Did that just sound like a bunch of
[11:40] disconnected stuff? Well, that's what it
[11:41] felt like in the episode, too. There's
[11:43] so many little buds of subplots, so many
[11:46] little half starts, and then
[11:52] Yeah.
[11:54] We spend an entire episode setting up
[11:55] the world of the ship, all of its
[11:57] characters, and then it goes
[11:59] uh pretty much nowhere, at least for
[12:01] Gail. Now, I understand that a lot of
[12:02] this is set up for later stories, but
[12:04] for Gail, it's all just a false start.
[12:07] It feels like an episode of Star Trek
[12:09] where we're setting up all of these
[12:11] inter-crew issues that are going to be
[12:13] the foundation of later episodes, and
[12:16] then it's just not. It's all over much
[12:19] too quickly. She gets put into a cryo
[12:21] pod and shot out of the ship and spends
[12:23] the rest of the season off on her own
[12:25] detour of an adventure. It's here that I
[12:27] really started feeling the influence of
[12:29] Game of Thrones on the plot. You know,
[12:30] as if the creators believed killing this
[12:32] character this way would generate enough
[12:34] mystery and buzz for the show that it
[12:36] would draw in a dedicated audience. But,
[12:39] I think it does the opposite. I think it
[12:41] alienates the audience. This isn't the
[12:43] resolution to a character arc. It's
[12:45] played entirely as a mystery here.
[12:47] There's an earlier scene where Harry is
[12:49] portrayed as insensitive while Rache is
[12:51] tense and resentful that we're meant to
[12:53] take as Rache's motivation for the
[12:54] killing.
[12:55] You probably don't remember the first
[12:57] meal that you and I had together, do
[12:59] you?
[13:01] No,
[13:02] I can't say I do.
[13:04] But, this is all a red herring. The
[13:05] scene hints at a few details from the
[13:07] prequel novels where their relationship
[13:10] is a focus of the story, but here it's
[13:12] just sort of nodded at without being
[13:14] explored. We haven't gotten enough of
[13:16] their dynamic to be invested in what
[13:18] happens here. It's too early for that.
[13:20] The choice seems to me like an effort to
[13:22] throw readers of the books off the
[13:24] scent. A statement of intent that this
[13:26] is a different story than the one we're
[13:28] familiar with, but I don't think it
[13:30] works for either audience. For book
[13:32] readers, it's not surprising or shocking
[13:34] enough to be interesting since we
[13:36] already know the story is going to go
[13:37] far beyond the life of Harry Seldon. And
[13:40] for new viewers, it's just confusing.
[13:43] So, along with all the non-starter
[13:44] subplots, the whole episode feels like
[13:46] wasted time. What isn't wasted time is
[13:48] all of the bonus content I have over on
[13:51] my Patreon. Video about The Batman, all
[13:53] my thumbnail art is HD wallpaper ready
[13:55] JPEGs, a recommended reading list. Some
[13:58] people wanted it. More stuff coming
[14:00] soon. I swear that Clone Wars video is
[14:02] close, I promise. But more than that,
[14:03] you guys have been so phenomenal at
[14:05] supporting the channel recently that we
[14:06] are rapidly approaching our next goal,
[14:09] at which point I'm going to have uh some
[14:11] very simple fun and get all of my Marvel
[14:13] Phase 4 opinions out in one go on a live
[14:15] stream so that I never talk about them
[14:17] again. It'll be the first live stream
[14:18] I've ever made here, so it'll also be a
[14:20] sort of ask me anything stream. If we
[14:22] hit the goal after that, I am also
[14:24] planning on making a video called All My
[14:26] Guilty Pleasures. Ooh, what could that
[14:28] be about? Sounds juicy. Anyway, thanks
[14:30] for supporting the channel. Double thank
[14:31] you if you support the channel on
[14:33] Patreon at patreon.com/justright.
[14:36] Okay, back to complaining about
[14:37] Foundation. The Emperor's plotline in
[14:40] this episode fares better as he takes
[14:42] revenge for the Star Bridge attack by
[14:43] bombing both an Acrion and Thespis to
[14:46] smithereens. This moment really works as
[14:49] it's clear how much of an overreaction
[14:51] this is and how much it is motivated not
[14:53] by truth or justice, but by the selfish
[14:56] preservation of power. And we can see
[14:58] why if they keep making decisions like
[14:59] this, the Empire is going to degrade as
[15:02] people resist their tyrannical control.
[15:05] The other major revelation on this
[15:07] episode is that Demerzel, who we've seen
[15:10] as a loyal servant of the three
[15:11] Emperors, is actually a robot. And wow,
[15:15] is this ever a choice. Demerzel has
[15:18] probably the most interesting history in
[15:19] Asimov's canon. In the books, he's coded
[15:21] male, so I'll call him he there and she
[15:24] here, just so we're clear. The books he
[15:26] originally appears in are sci-fi murder
[15:28] mysteries, where the main character is
[15:29] assisted by a crime-solving robot. Yes,
[15:32] crime-solving robot. I'm just tickled by
[15:34] that, named Daneel Olivaw. So, Daneel is
[15:37] just like the Watson in a sci-fi
[15:39] Sherlock story, but he ends up becoming
[15:41] the lynchpin by which Asimov ties all of
[15:44] his ongoing series into a single mega
[15:46] series with a single timeline. It's kind
[15:49] of insane, cuz he wrote most of the
[15:51] original books in the '50s and didn't
[15:53] even think about tying them together
[15:54] until the '80s. And Daneel's
[15:56] introduction into the Foundation series,
[15:58] which is the moment the two become one,
[16:00] is the coolest thing ever written, cuz
[16:02] the character goes on a galaxy-wide
[16:04] journey to find the radioactive remains
[16:06] of Earth and then finds a robot on the
[16:08] moon, finds Daneel Olivaw on the moon, a
[16:11] crime-solving robot on the moon who
[16:12] explains the secrets of the universe and
[16:14] how he has guided all of humanity for
[16:16] millennia. It's wild stuff. And then and
[16:18] then in the prequels, which are set back
[16:21] on Trantor before the Foundation starts,
[16:23] we meet this guy named Demerzel, who's
[16:25] the advisor to the emperor and it's only
[16:27] at the end that we get the revelation
[16:29] that Demerzel is a robot and that he is
[16:31] Daneel Olivaw thousands of years after
[16:33] we last saw him in the robot series.
[16:35] It's just a very satisfying reveal after
[16:38] How many novels did I read for this
[16:39] video? All of that is to say there's a
[16:41] lot of mystery and history connected to
[16:44] this character, which means it's
[16:46] honestly perplexing when the show is
[16:48] just like, "Oh yeah, here's Demerzel,
[16:49] she's a robot." But Demerzel's early
[16:51] reveal as a robot sets up another issue
[16:54] that I have with the show and that pops
[16:56] up a lot later on, which I'm going to
[16:58] call
[16:58] Sci-fi concept overload.
[17:02] It's not a really snazzy name, but it's
[17:03] the best I got. See, Asimov's writing is
[17:05] very deliberate and focused. His stories
[17:08] typically dealt with a single idea or a
[17:11] single piece of new technology and
[17:12] really considered all of the
[17:14] ramifications of that technology across
[17:16] the entire plot. He is incredibly
[17:19] meticulous and thorough with this and
[17:21] spends so much attention to the details
[17:24] of his ideas. It's what makes the
[17:25] Foundation book series charmingly
[17:27] anachronistic. It's about a galactic
[17:30] empire, but they still write on paper
[17:32] and smoke cigars like it's the 50s.
[17:34] Because Foundation isn't about
[17:35] technology, it's about sociology. Even
[17:37] though he could have had robots in the
[17:39] series throughout and other kinds of
[17:40] science fiction technology, he only
[17:43] introduces them in a small and measured
[17:45] way when it becomes thematically
[17:47] relevant to the ideas that he's
[17:48] exploring. The TV show, on the other
[17:50] hand, is, by comparison, absolutely
[17:53] reckless with the number of science
[17:55] fiction premises it's just throwing at
[17:57] you all at once. Because, okay, so not
[17:59] only is the story about math so advanced
[18:01] can predict the future with extreme
[18:03] accuracy, but it's also about clones and
[18:06] robots and about people with
[18:07] precognition and the ability to insert
[18:09] memories into other people's minds and
[18:11] force fields that can knock you out and
[18:13] technology that allows you to dump your
[18:15] mind into a computer and about medical
[18:17] technology that can create skin and it's
[18:19] about living holograms. I mean, in this
[18:22] show, the fact that the empire has
[18:23] sci-fi tech that forms skin-tight metal
[18:26] restraints is
[18:27] just like a thing that they have. Asimov
[18:29] could have written an entire short story
[18:31] just about that. Now, granted, a lot of
[18:34] the stuff that I just mentioned was
[18:35] eventually part of Foundation. Like,
[18:38] they're not just pulling all of it out
[18:39] of thin air, but it's all just
[18:41] haphazardly thrown into the story at the
[18:43] start rather than carefully built up
[18:46] over the course of episodes or seasons.
[18:48] The effect of this is that it draws
[18:50] attention away from the main science
[18:52] fiction idea that this series has,
[18:54] psychohistory. I wouldn't be surprised
[18:56] if a new viewer completely forgot that
[18:58] this show was supposed to be about
[19:00] psychohistory because it gets sidelined
[19:02] by so many other science fiction ideas.
[19:04] These other kinds of technology could
[19:06] work in this story,
[19:08] but what I would like to see them do is
[19:09] at least spend some attention on how it
[19:11] might affect psychohistory. If a person
[19:13] can go into cryosleep and affect a
[19:15] society hundreds of years in the future,
[19:17] how does that affect Hari's predictions?
[19:19] What about clones or artificial
[19:21] intelligence? Does he know about
[19:23] Demerzel? It sort of dilutes the idea
[19:25] that populations can be predictable when
[19:27] there are all of these factors adding
[19:29] unpredictability to the equation,
[19:31] especially since most of them are there
[19:32] so that the cast doesn't have to be
[19:34] recycled out every story. Like most of
[19:35] these technologies are different ways to
[19:38] cheat death. So, where episode 1 rather
[19:40] cleanly set up the main plot, the second
[19:42] episode is split into two halves that
[19:44] each have huge problems. One feels like
[19:47] it moves forward an inch while clouding
[19:49] everything in meaningless mystery, while
[19:52] the other made my brain short-circuit.
[19:57] From here on out, the show splits up
[19:59] into four major plot lines. So, I think
[20:01] the best way to tackle them is one by
[20:03] one rather than episodically. These four
[20:05] plot lines are of vastly different
[20:07] quality, and each seemingly has a
[20:09] completely different approach on how it
[20:11] adapts or rather doesn't adapt Asimov,
[20:13] which is at least promising because I
[20:15] think a lot of the problems we'll
[20:16] encounter in some plot lines have
[20:18] solutions that can be found in others.
[20:21] Let's start with Gaal. The Gaal Dornick
[20:23] plot line. The shortest subplot is
[20:25] perhaps also its most consequential if
[20:27] the show doesn't get canceled after a
[20:28] second season. After getting blasted out
[20:30] of the ship in a cryopod, Gaal Dornick
[20:32] arrives at a space station that has no
[20:34] one else on it. The computer will only
[20:36] give her basic access to its systems
[20:39] since the entire station was made for
[20:40] Raych. He was supposed to come in the
[20:42] cryopod, but Gaal witnessing the murder
[20:44] changed things. He sent her instead and
[20:46] was then arrested and executed by the
[20:48] Foundation. Using her super-duper math
[20:50] powers, Gaal figures out where in the
[20:52] galaxy she is and where the ship is
[20:54] going before discovering that the
[20:56] station is controlled by
[20:59] Um hold on a second. Uh
[21:02] an artificially intelligent hologram of
[21:04] Hari Seldon that has all of his thoughts
[21:07] and memories because apparently Harry
[21:09] was able to dump his entire
[21:10] consciousness into a little earbud
[21:12] before his death, which was then put
[21:15] into the knife that killed him,
[21:18] which was then the key to the ship that
[21:22] Gaal is now on allowing him to live
[21:24] again as a hologram on board the
[21:27] spaceship.
[21:28] So, uh the mechanics of this plot line
[21:32] are the most convoluted thing I've ever
[21:34] seen.
[21:35] Like, why is the knife also the key?
[21:37] Like, from a screenwriting perspective,
[21:39] I get why this makes sense. It makes the
[21:40] plot more efficient. You only have one
[21:42] object to deal with instead of two, but
[21:44] it just seems like an illogical choice.
[21:46] Like, like Raych could have just also
[21:48] have had a key and the earbud and given
[21:50] it to her instead of a knife. Like,
[21:52] what's the problem? Now, what matters is
[21:54] what this is all in service of and
[21:56] mainly it's in service of getting Jared
[21:57] Harris's big beautiful face back on the
[21:59] screen because by the time he shows up
[22:01] again, it's been four whole episodes
[22:02] without him. And let me tell you, his
[22:04] presence has been missed. Hologram Harry
[22:06] then provides multiple reasons for why
[22:08] he decided to have Raych kill him.
[22:10] The Foundation needs more than a man to
[22:12] inspire it. It needs a myth that can
[22:15] endure for centuries.
[22:20] And it worked.
[22:21] Do you remember what our mortality
[22:23] projections had been for Terminus?
[22:27] 34.2%.
[22:29] The actual rate was nearly half that.
[22:32] My death galvanized the Foundation.
[22:35] And besides, he also had a super
[22:37] convenient illness that would have
[22:39] caused steep cognitive decline and then
[22:42] everyone would chalk up psychohistory as
[22:44] the ravings of a madman.
[22:47] I don't buy it.
[22:49] I mean, you're egotistical, but I can't
[22:52] see you sacrificing your life just to
[22:54] turn yourself into this. Why not just
[22:56] wait
[22:57] Lethe Syndrome.
[22:58] I think it's a bit of a cop-out to
[23:00] provide two completely different
[23:01] rationales for something like this. In
[23:03] real life, people may have more than one
[23:04] motivation, but in stories, it just
[23:07] weakens what the story is about.
[23:08] Once the symptoms manifest, the
[23:10] cognitive decline is steep. Think it
[23:12] through.
[23:13] We reached Terminus, face famine in the
[23:15] elements, but I'm no longer the hand of
[23:17] our salvation, but the crackpot who
[23:19] dragged everyone through a frigid rock.
[23:21] Here, I feel like the decision comes
[23:23] from a place of insecurity over whether
[23:25] the audience would buy the first
[23:27] explanation. The idea that he was
[23:29] deliberately murdering himself is at
[23:31] least a philosophical statement that the
[23:33] story could then explore. But, it's
[23:34] waved away by Harry immediately
[23:36] conceding the point to Gaal and saying,
[23:37] "Well, anyway, I had to do it because of
[23:39] the super specific disease that I had
[23:41] that justifies all of my shitty
[23:42] behavior." The theme is confused here
[23:45] because the writers felt the need to
[23:46] provide an airtight logic to the actions
[23:48] of the characters rather than letting
[23:50] the beliefs of the characters guide
[23:51] their actions. On top of this, there's a
[23:53] whole other rationale for why Raych had
[23:56] to be the one to kill Harry, which is
[23:58] also pretty jarring. Harry did it this
[24:01] way so that Raych would be forced to
[24:03] flee the ship, separating him from Gaal
[24:05] because Gaal is needed on Terminus to
[24:08] lead the Foundation through its first
[24:10] crisis.
[24:11] You were meant to stay on Terminus to
[24:13] lead Terminus.
[24:14] Exactly.
[24:15] And it's right here, right this very
[24:17] second, where book reader Sage gets a
[24:19] little prickly because again, I am ready
[24:22] to embrace a plot line that is different
[24:24] from the book, but what I wanted to see
[24:26] maintained was that central idea of
[24:27] psychohistory, and here it is blasted
[24:30] out of the airlock. The notion that
[24:32] Harry felt a singular specific person
[24:35] needed to be in a singular specific
[24:37] place in order for the Foundation to
[24:39] survive the crisis goes against the very
[24:42] core of what psychohistory implies. Book
[24:44] Seldon's plan is to put the Foundation
[24:46] in a series of scenarios where the
[24:48] Foundation is always at the point of
[24:50] collapse, but where they actually have
[24:52] some sort of social, diplomatic,
[24:54] economic, or religious advantage that
[24:56] isn't totally apparent at the beginning
[24:58] of the story, but which someone, anyone,
[25:01] could figure out. And then, by the
[25:03] inevitability of those forces, the
[25:05] Foundation is kept alive, not through
[25:07] individual heroics. His whole thing is
[25:10] that there's a near statistical
[25:11] certainty that someone will figure the
[25:14] problem out. It's not, "Well, Gaal is
[25:16] really smart, so we need her
[25:18] specifically to be on Terminus."
[25:20] No. And yeah, his plan does go to hell
[25:23] right from the start, and someone else
[25:25] does handle the crisis, but we'll get to
[25:27] that in a minute. And second, it's the
[25:29] idea that Seldon in this scene thinks
[25:32] this that's the problem. I cannot stress
[25:34] this enough that this exact pivot is the
[25:36] precise reason I was so skeptical about
[25:39] an adaptation of Foundation, because
[25:41] Hollywood doesn't know how to tell
[25:42] stories about systems and social
[25:43] politics. It only knows how to tell
[25:46] stories about gun-toting heroes. There's
[25:48] a few more major beats in Gaal's
[25:49] storyline, and and just each just is
[25:52] just like a whole thing. Hari reveals
[25:54] that there isn't going to just be one
[25:55] Foundation, but two. The spaceship
[25:58] they're on is going to his homeworld of
[26:00] Helicon to start the Second Foundation,
[26:02] but it needs Gaal's help. Around this
[26:04] time, Gaal also comes to realize that
[26:06] many of the events in her past can be
[26:08] explained by the fact that she has
[26:10] supernatural powers.
[26:11] What was going to happen before it did.
[26:14] Not through math, not through
[26:16] calculations.
[26:19] I think I can feel the future.
[26:21] There's a lot that's being hinted at
[26:23] here from later installments, but like
[26:25] Demerzel being a robot, it's not really
[26:27] relevant to this story. It's just
[26:29] teasing something that'll be a big deal
[26:30] in a future season. This plotline ends
[26:32] with Gaal saying she wants no more part
[26:34] of Hari's plans, and then she just
[26:37] leaves. Like, she straight-up just
[26:39] ditches this whole thing and goes back
[26:41] home, making this the second main plot
[26:44] that Gaal has been ejected out of, which
[26:46] is really the main problem here. Gaal is
[26:48] one of the main protagonists of the
[26:50] story, but the writers are only
[26:52] interested in using her presence as a
[26:54] way to establish other plot lines and
[26:56] elements of the world rather than
[26:58] telling us a story about Gaal. She's
[27:01] used to set up a bunch of subplots on
[27:03] the first spaceship, and here she's used
[27:04] so that Harry can point to a handful of
[27:06] mystery boxes on the second spaceship.
[27:08] Few sequences in modern television feel
[27:10] like they have done more wheel spinning
[27:12] than this one. Makes me feel like I'm
[27:14] the one in cryosleep. It makes me feel
[27:18] like I'm the one in cryosleep. It makes
[27:21] me feel like I'm the one Thankfully,
[27:23] there is at least one good plot line on
[27:25] this show,
[27:26] but it's back on Trantor.
[27:31] In a strange way, the part of the show
[27:32] that most captures Asimov's core ideas
[27:35] behind psychohistory is the one that has
[27:37] the least to do with psychohistory. And
[27:39] even more strangely, the plot line that
[27:41] is most concerned with religion is the
[27:43] most interesting sociological story on
[27:45] this show, even though religion is not
[27:47] something Asimov's writing is terribly
[27:49] concerned with. Asimov himself was an
[27:51] atheist, and the Foundation series very
[27:52] infrequently touches on religion. There
[27:54] is a section in Prelude to Foundation
[27:56] where Harry takes refuge in a very
[27:58] religious sector of Trantor while being
[28:00] hunted by the emperor. And a great deal
[28:02] of world building is spent establishing
[28:03] the practices of this group, but it's
[28:05] mostly just background flavor to the
[28:06] setting rather than anything central to
[28:08] the plot or themes of that book. What's
[28:10] unique about them is that they are
[28:11] pretty much the only characters that are
[28:13] true believers in the series. The only
[28:15] other instance of religion is in one of
[28:17] the early stories of Foundation, but
[28:19] it's mostly about the political utility
[28:21] of religion, not about belief itself.
[28:23] Here's what I mean. In one story, Hardin
[28:25] realizes that if they give advanced
[28:27] technology to each of the four
[28:28] surrounding kingdoms, then none of the
[28:30] four will allow any of the others to
[28:32] conquer the Foundation. The technology
[28:34] is too valuable. This creates a balance
[28:36] of power that leaves the Foundation
[28:37] independent. Decades pass, and
[28:40] eventually the people of the Foundation
[28:41] begin to become revered by the
[28:43] surrounding regions because of their
[28:45] mastery of technology. They are treated
[28:47] as gods. The scientists of nuclear power
[28:49] plants become priests, and the
[28:51] Foundation is very careful to never
[28:53] explain how any of the technology works
[28:55] to the people from the kingdoms so that
[28:57] they can maintain their political power.
[28:59] When Anacreon becomes powerful enough to
[29:01] conquer the Foundation without fearing
[29:02] the other three kingdoms, its plans are
[29:04] spoiled because the people of Anacreon
[29:06] see the Foundation as the capital of
[29:08] their religion. There are mass protests
[29:10] against the invasion, and the Foundation
[29:12] is spared again. So, religion plays a
[29:14] major part in those first two stories,
[29:16] but again, only politically. It's a
[29:19] religion run by people who explicitly do
[29:21] not believe in it. It's a really
[29:23] pessimistic and cynical presentation of
[29:25] religion, and the story does not even
[29:27] make characters out of any of the people
[29:29] that truly believe in this religion. We
[29:30] only ever hear of them as crowds in the
[29:32] background. In fact, across nearly all
[29:35] of Asimov's writing, religion does not
[29:36] play an extremely important part at all.
[29:38] Probably the most prominent exploration
[29:40] of religion is his work in the short
[29:42] story Nightfall, which was later
[29:43] expanded into a novel and adapted
[29:46] horribly twice. Once more though,
[29:48] religion is only ever presented as
[29:49] something that other people do. The main
[29:51] characters are scientists who live on a
[29:53] planet that has six suns and as a result
[29:55] has never had a single moment of
[29:57] darkness. But, thanks to their
[29:58] calculations, they believe that they are
[30:00] going to experience a day of night soon.
[30:02] Religious people see this as the end of
[30:04] days and have all sorts of unfounded
[30:06] beliefs about the coming of night and
[30:08] what happened on dark days like this
[30:10] thousands of years prior. The scientists
[30:12] treat all of their beliefs as merely
[30:14] hearsay. But, Asimov, the author,
[30:15] doesn't take their side completely. The
[30:18] point of the story is to show that while
[30:19] the scientists think they're being
[30:21] rational and objective about their
[30:23] observations, they are ignorant about
[30:25] some of their own assumptions and are
[30:27] thus very wrong about what happens when
[30:29] night comes. The religious people may be
[30:31] basing their beliefs off of nothing, but
[30:33] the scientists are also wrong. So, he
[30:36] has critiques of science, but he
[30:38] definitely portrays religious people as
[30:40] unintelligent, unserious, and dangerous.
[30:43] That's just the way he sees things. In
[30:46] contrast to that, the TV adaptation
[30:48] treats it as more than just a tool, but
[30:50] as something that is actually believed
[30:52] in by people at all levels of the
[30:54] system. Religious language seeps into
[30:57] every one of the show's plot lines.
[30:59] Like, this is a show where even the
[31:02] robot character is a true believer. So,
[31:05] that brings us to the plot line for
[31:06] Brother Day. Way back in the pilot, Hari
[31:08] warned that among other things, one of
[31:10] the galaxy's major religions would come
[31:12] out against the genetic dynasty. This
[31:15] happens when a contender to become the
[31:16] new Proxima, basically the Pope of the
[31:19] Luminist religion, claims that clones
[31:21] don't have souls. Day sees this as a
[31:23] threat to his power and fears that
[31:25] Seldon was right, so he takes this super
[31:28] seriously, traveling to the center of
[31:29] the faith and influencing who will
[31:31] become the next Proxima. His opponent is
[31:34] Zephyr Halima, who he tries to negotiate
[31:37] with, but he finds that she actually
[31:38] believes what she says and isn't after
[31:40] something else. She can't be bargained
[31:43] with. So, he decides on a riskier course
[31:45] of action to somehow prove that he has a
[31:47] soul, and he does this by undertaking a
[31:50] sacred pilgrimage, a 170-km trek through
[31:53] the spirals of the desert, where you are
[31:55] not allowed to fall on your knees once.
[31:58] A lot of people die doing this, but Day
[31:59] doesn't want to leave anything to chance
[32:01] and risks the pilgrimage, and mhm
[32:04] leap ace.
[32:06] What was I saying? Okay, so the hottest
[32:07] man in the world manages to survive the
[32:09] hottest place in the universe and gets
[32:11] to the end of the cave, where apparently
[32:13] people with souls see a vision of some
[32:15] kind. He sees nothing, so he lies about
[32:18] it, and it's enough to trick the
[32:19] Luminists into confirming his soul
[32:22] havingness, which puts the threat they
[32:24] pose to the empire at rest. Halima's
[32:26] political chances are ruined and Day
[32:28] succeeds completely. There's a lot to
[32:30] like about this plot line. From a
[32:31] sociological perspective, it's the one
[32:33] that gets the closest to what
[32:35] psychohistory is talking about. We have
[32:37] a conflict here that is ideological and
[32:39] political. We have factions that are
[32:41] each making understandable decisions in
[32:43] the pursuit of their individual goals,
[32:45] and we see how each of the players in
[32:47] this conflict are responding to the
[32:49] differing incentives in the institutions
[32:51] and cultural norms that surround them.
[32:53] There's also some ambiguity built around
[32:54] the motivations of the characters.
[32:56] Halima might be a true believer, or she
[32:58] might have just seen a political
[33:00] opportunity to criticize the Empire and
[33:02] gain popularity with the faithful. Then
[33:04] we have the Emperor himself who would
[33:05] not have done anything about this if he
[33:07] hadn't heard Seldon predict that this
[33:09] was a problem. Dusk was originally going
[33:11] to be the one sent to handle this, and
[33:12] given that only surviving this arduous
[33:15] trek allowed Day to solve the problem,
[33:17] it is fair to assume that Dusk would
[33:19] have failed. So we can see how the
[33:20] strategy of the Emperors is changing
[33:22] because of Seldon's predictions, which
[33:24] may in turn give the Emperor a longer
[33:26] lease on life. Everything in this
[33:28] plotline feels motivated and meaningful.
[33:31] It's an effective demonstration in the
[33:32] ways that organized religion and
[33:34] political power can support each other's
[33:36] hegemony or not. I like it. At the same
[33:38] time though, it does feel strange at
[33:40] least to take an author who was an
[33:42] atheist and adapt his work in such an
[33:45] explicitly religious way. Like if I
[33:47] squint, I can kind of see how they got
[33:49] here. The math of psychohistory is said
[33:51] to be so complicated that only a small
[33:53] number of people are even able to
[33:55] understand it. So when Harry Seldon
[33:57] predicts the Empire's fall, for most
[33:59] people they just have to take it on
[34:01] faith, believing in a prophet. It's like
[34:03] a religion. So let's just take that take
[34:06] and make it the whole point of the show.
[34:08] In my I, Robot video, I talked about how
[34:10] Asimov adaptations each resemble the
[34:12] work of the main people involved much
[34:15] more than they resemble each other. Like
[34:17] I, Robot feels nothing like Bicentennial
[34:19] Man, but Bicentennial Man feels a lot
[34:21] like a Robin Williams movie. That's
[34:22] going to be the case with any writer to
[34:24] some degree, but I think it's more
[34:25] pronounced with Asimov because there's
[34:27] this huge gap in his writing since he
[34:30] doesn't put a lot of attention into
[34:31] character or emotion. And that's where
[34:33] an adapter is going to want to leave
[34:35] their mark. In the case of Foundation,
[34:36] the lead creative force is showrunner
[34:38] David Goyer. And the previous piece of
[34:40] media that he worked on that feels most
[34:42] like Foundation is
[34:50] When you think way too long about these
[34:51] things as I have, you can kind of see
[34:53] how the Foundation TV show is cribbing a
[34:55] lot of notes from Superman stories and
[34:58] Man of Steel in particular. So, we have
[35:00] the same conflict of a corrupt society
[35:02] that relies on eugenics and that is
[35:03] crumbling because it didn't listen to
[35:05] the advice of scientists. But right
[35:06] before they fall, a brilliant scientist
[35:08] makes a risky gambit to send some or one
[35:11] of their own to the other side of the
[35:12] galaxy. People who will act as a sort of
[35:14] spiritual redemption for the failures of
[35:17] their original society. That person or
[35:20] people must then contend with the
[35:21] conflicts that plagued their old society
[35:24] and overcome them to establish something
[35:26] new. Language about inspiring hope,
[35:28] becoming a martyr or savior abounds in
[35:31] both stories. I mean, the most obvious
[35:33] statement of the year is that Man of
[35:34] Steel kind of has a lot of religious
[35:36] imagery in it. But just generally, the
[35:38] movie has this kind of reverence for
[35:41] well,
[35:42] reverence.
[35:43] You will give the people of Earth an
[35:45] ideal to strive towards.
[35:47] A pure love for belief itself. It's the
[35:50] whole thrust of that film. And while
[35:52] David Goyer wasn't the only person
[35:54] working on that film or the only person
[35:56] making this show, I find the general
[35:57] ethos of Man of Steel to be the closest
[35:59] example for how this story views belief.
[36:02] It always seems to hit this note of
[36:04] isn't it pretty to believe in something?
[36:06] Don't people need something to believe
[36:08] in? Like it's taken for granted in both
[36:10] pieces of media that the answer to that
[36:12] question is yes. Like obviously. While
[36:14] the emperor gets away with fooling the
[36:16] faithful for the time being, the story
[36:18] condemns him for being basically an
[36:21] atheist.
[36:22] I would not wish that emptiness on
[36:24] anyone.
[36:24] We're meant to pity him because he
[36:26] doesn't have something larger to believe
[36:28] in. Something that is only tragic if
[36:30] you're already bought into the premise
[36:32] that people need something to believe
[36:33] in. Meanwhile, the main characters are
[36:35] admirable because they find something to
[36:37] believe in. And while that's very much a
[36:39] your mileage with this will vary kind of
[36:41] approach, but for me this feels very
[36:43] much beside the point of what this story
[36:44] could be about. It wants to make this
[36:46] claim that Seldon is like a god prophet
[36:48] and psychohistory is like a prophecy
[36:51] religion. So, it can draw this false
[36:53] equivalence between believing in science
[36:55] and believing in religion. Sometimes
[36:57] when I'm watching the show, I feel like
[36:58] I'm arguing with Mac from Always Sunny.
[37:00] Science
[37:01] is a liar sometimes.
[37:03] Oh boy.
[37:04] I find it very eye-rolling whenever it
[37:06] wants to make this comparison because
[37:07] obviously science is not a religion.
[37:10] Like, it's science.
[37:12] You know, science.
[37:13] I didn't even think about the fossil
[37:14] records. I guess I'll concede. Oh, wait.
[37:16] One more thing before I do, Mr.
[37:17] Reynolds.
[37:18] Have you seen these fossil records?
[37:21] Have I seen
[37:23] Huh?
[37:23] Religion as a subject matter works in
[37:25] this plot line because it's one element
[37:27] of a larger political game. But
[37:29] everywhere else, it's paplum. Moving on
[37:32] cuz that point took too long.
[37:37] Dovetailing with the Brother Day
[37:38] religious pilgrimage is the story back
[37:40] on Trantor about the heir to the throne,
[37:42] Brother Dawn, and his growing alienation
[37:45] from the Imperial hierarchy. While not
[37:47] quite as interesting as what Lee Pace is
[37:48] up to, this one still has some points in
[37:50] its favor and is marred only by an
[37:52] over-reliance on contrivance and plot
[37:54] twists. The idea is that Brother Dawn is
[37:56] suicidal because he realizes that he is
[37:58] an imperfect clone. Unlike his brothers,
[38:01] he is colorblind. And he's also noticed
[38:03] that there are many other ways that he
[38:04] is out of sync with the other clones.
[38:06] Proxima Opal has passed, Empire.
[38:09] Our condolences.
[38:10] Condolences.
[38:11] Because the genetic dynasty demands that
[38:13] only perfect clones take the throne,
[38:16] Brother Dawn knows that he will be
[38:17] executed if his {quote} deformity is
[38:21] discovered. And the show has to contrive
[38:23] quite a bit of sci-fi technology to make
[38:25] this make sense. See, apparently the
[38:27] Empire has technology that allows them
[38:28] to transfer memories from one person to
[38:31] another, and they also have backup
[38:33] clones that are asleep in their vats
[38:35] with the memories of their counterparts
[38:37] uploaded into their minds. This makes
[38:39] the individual bodies of the Emperors
[38:41] completely disposable. If anything goes
[38:43] wrong with any of them, whether that's a
[38:45] biological deviation or an accident or
[38:48] an assassination, they just crack open a
[38:50] new clone who is perfectly up to speed
[38:53] on the last Emperor's life, and they
[38:55] continue on like nothing happened. It's
[38:56] contrived in the sense that it's just a
[38:58] little too perfect to make this specific
[39:00] plot line work. Cuz if the Empire didn't
[39:02] have cloning tech and memory upload
[39:04] tech, there wouldn't be any threat to
[39:06] Brother Dawn, because they wouldn't be
[39:07] able to kill him over something so minor
[39:09] as color blindness. And it also kind of
[39:11] asks the question that if they have the
[39:12] memory tech, why do they have the three
[39:14] clones? Like, why not just have one and
[39:16] upload his memory into the new one? But
[39:18] that aside, the setup asks some
[39:20] interesting questions about identity.
[39:22] Does Brother Dawn have an individual
[39:24] identity, or is he just another clone?
[39:26] How meaningful can your life be if
[39:28] someone else can just take your place
[39:30] with all of your memories? Like, this is
[39:32] a story where the ruling power is
[39:34] utterly obsessed with eugenics. It has
[39:36] something to say. But the plot gets a
[39:38] little lost in its own plot twists. So,
[39:40] while feeling suicidal because of all of
[39:42] these problems, Brother Dawn starts to
[39:44] fall in love with a woman who works at
[39:46] the palace. They conspire to run away
[39:47] together, but twist, she's actually part
[39:50] of the resistance. And her entire
[39:52] purpose at the palace was to seduce him
[39:54] so that she could lure him out of the
[39:56] palace, because another twist, decades
[39:58] ago the rebels contaminated the genetic
[40:00] code of the Emperor so that Brother Dawn
[40:02] would grow up with these biological
[40:04] differences that would prompt the very
[40:06] crisis he is dealing with now. And
[40:07] there's another twist, the rebels used
[40:09] the original genetic code to breed their
[40:11] own Emperor who is going to steal the
[40:14] real Brother Dawn's nanobots. Yeah, he's
[40:16] got nanobots in his bloodstream to
[40:18] confirm that he's who he says he is and
[40:20] to keep track of him because
[40:22] Sci-fi concept overload.
[40:25] How could you do this to me?
[40:27] But twist, Brother Dusk was onto this
[40:29] the whole time and sends his secret
[40:31] police to take down the whole
[40:32] resistance. It's just a whole lot of
[40:34] back and forth for a plot line that
[40:35] ultimately ends with Brother Dawn
[40:37] getting unceremoniously executed by his
[40:39] robot mom.
[40:41] No!
[40:45] It's a bit of a shame because again, it
[40:46] feels like the setup for this plot line
[40:47] is pretty unique. It's asking some
[40:49] interesting philosophical questions, but
[40:51] then it just goes down the road of
[40:53] twisty spy thriller rather than sticking
[40:55] with the characters themselves and
[40:56] exploring how they're feeling about
[40:58] these situations.
[41:03] Up until this point, while I've had my
[41:04] gripes with each plot line, I don't
[41:06] think any of them are terrible. Until
[41:08] now. The plot line that actually takes
[41:10] place on the Foundation and the most
[41:13] amount of its runtime is easily the
[41:15] worst, schlockiest, most convoluted of
[41:18] the bunch. It bears little resemblance
[41:20] to anything found in the pages of Asimov
[41:22] both in terms of its general plot and
[41:24] more importantly in terms of its
[41:25] thematic ideas, of which it is lacking.
[41:27] It's unnecessarily long while at the
[41:29] same time being so boneheadedly simple
[41:32] it's boring. If the Brother Day plot
[41:34] line was a good episode of Game of
[41:35] Thrones, this one is a bad season of 24.
[41:38] Okay, enough venom. What's it about?
[41:40] This is the only one of the main four
[41:41] plot lines that is actually adapting
[41:43] material from Asimov. It takes
[41:45] inspiration from the second and third
[41:47] short stories in the first Foundation
[41:49] book, The Encyclopedists and The Mayors,
[41:51] but resembles those stories only at the
[41:53] level of the basic conflict and in the
[41:55] names of some of the characters. So in
[41:57] short, 35 years after the Foundation
[42:00] settles on the planet Terminus, it faces
[42:02] its first crisis. A crisis predicted by
[42:05] Hari Seldon. They're getting invaded by
[42:06] the nearby planet of Anacreon. Remember
[42:08] them? One of the planets that Lee Pace
[42:10] bombed? Well, they're back and they're
[42:12] angry, and they are heavy air quotes
[42:15] barbarians. One of the episodes is even
[42:17] called Barbarians at the Gate. The main
[42:19] character is Salvor Hardin, who is
[42:21] basically in charge of security, but is
[42:23] ostracized by the people in power for
[42:24] reasons that are annoyingly vague. But,
[42:26] it is up to them to stop the Anacreons.
[42:29] But, then we learn that the Anacreons
[42:30] actually have no interest in conquering
[42:32] the Foundation as they did in the book,
[42:33] but they just want to invade so that
[42:35] they can And wait, let me see if I can
[42:37] get this straight. One, take over a
[42:38] communications buoy they can send a
[42:40] distress signal to the Empire so that
[42:42] two, the Empire will send a ship to
[42:44] investigate, then three, take over the
[42:46] Foundation so that they can shoot this
[42:48] ship out of the sky so that they can
[42:50] four, arrest the captain of the ships so
[42:52] that they can five, fly up to a separate
[42:54] ship called the Invictus, which has been
[42:56] uncontrollably hyperspace jumping, and
[42:58] use the captain's nanobots to gain
[43:00] access to the ship so that they can six,
[43:03] fly the ship into Trantor as revenge for
[43:05] the bombing of Anacreon. Did Did I get
[43:07] everything? My biggest problem with all
[43:08] of this is that well,
[43:11] it's action schlock.
[43:15] It's a nonsensical series of standoffs,
[43:18] captures shootouts fistfights and
[43:20] escapes with little to nothing to say
[43:22] about the broader social forces a
[43:24] Foundation story is typically about.
[43:26] Anything remotely sci-fi the series
[43:28] could be saying gets buried under the
[43:30] most generic kind of revenge plot. And,
[43:32] it's just a ridiculously plotted story
[43:35] riddled with leaps of logic that I am
[43:37] now going to indulge in pointing out for
[43:40] fun. So, this whole plot hinges on the
[43:42] Anacreons commandeering the Invictus
[43:44] they can use it to kamikaze the Empire.
[43:46] But, according to Farrah, the Invictus
[43:48] has only just appeared two weeks prior,
[43:50] and they have no idea how long it's
[43:51] going to stay in place before jumping to
[43:53] another part of the galaxy. So,
[43:54] everything they do, from the planning to
[43:56] the execution to the invasion of the
[43:58] Foundation, has to be done as quick as
[43:59] possible with no guarantee that the ship
[44:01] won't just disappear in the meantime.
[44:03] Meaning, everything the Anacreons do is
[44:05] extremely risky and time-sensitive. But,
[44:07] okay, they're mad as hell at the Empire,
[44:09] so they're willing to do whatever to get
[44:10] back at them. So, even if there's only a
[44:12] small chance of success, they're going
[44:14] to do it. So, they land outside
[44:15] Terminus. And even though Salvor had
[44:17] foreknowledge that they were coming, and
[44:19] even though Terminus has a force field
[44:21] fence that the Anacreons can't cross,
[44:23] Salvor still goes outside of the city
[44:25] because they're having visions. But
[44:28] that's okay, because it shows how much
[44:30] unraveling the mystery of these visions
[44:32] means to Salvor. But the Anacreons had
[44:34] no idea Salvor was going to be here, and
[44:36] their entire plan hinges on having
[44:37] someone let them through the force
[44:39] field. So, is their plan to just sit
[44:40] around in this wreck until somebody came
[44:42] by, even though the mission is extremely
[44:44] time sensitive? So, Salvor lets Phara
[44:46] through the field, then manages to get
[44:47] the upper hand on her and has her
[44:49] arrested. But wait, that was actually
[44:50] part of Phara's plan all along. Haha,
[44:52] Batman, I'm the Joker, baby.
[44:56] So, the idea is that Phara knows that
[44:58] she'll get captured, and that she'll be
[45:00] brought to a specific tower in Terminus.
[45:02] And her plan is to use an
[45:03] electromagnetic bomb that she's hidden
[45:06] in an artificial eye, like a GI Joe
[45:09] villain, to blow the thing up, which
[45:11] will then cause the thing to fail so
[45:13] that all the people can take over
[45:14] Terminus in a big
[45:17] action battle sequence. I'd like to take
[45:20] this moment to point out that there is
[45:21] never a battle in the entirety of the
[45:23] Foundation series. Just leaving this
[45:25] here as we mindlessly watch people shoot
[45:27] the guns and shoot more guns and shoot
[45:30] more guns. Steve Jobs died for this.
[45:33] Okay, so why is Phara doing all of this?
[45:36] Well, we learn that she needs two things
[45:38] to commandeer the Invictus. First, she
[45:40] needs someone with Imperial nanobots in
[45:42] their bloodstream to open the doors so
[45:44] they can access the ship. And second,
[45:46] they need people with advanced
[45:47] engineering knowledge to pilot the ship
[45:49] for them. The second reason is why they
[45:51] are invading the Foundation. They're not
[45:53] taking it over, they're just kidnapping
[45:54] three people who are going to help them
[45:56] fly the thing. But everything fails if
[45:58] they don't have the Imperial nanobots as
[46:00] well, which is why they knocked out a
[46:02] communications buoy, prompting the
[46:03] Empire to send a ship to investigate,
[46:06] which they then
[46:07] blast out of the [ __ ] sky. And the
[46:10] it's only after they shoot it out of the
[46:11] sky that we're told that the Anacreons
[46:13] need the Imperial leader, which leads to
[46:16] a comical scene where they are searching
[46:18] through the wreckage to find him. And
[46:20] oh, lucky, there he is. Lucky he didn't
[46:23] freaking die in the explosion. During
[46:24] all of this, Salvor is captured by the
[46:26] Anacreons, but they don't kill them
[46:28] because they might have information they
[46:30] need. And this is where things really
[46:32] start to feel stretched out. Salvor is
[46:34] captured at the end of episode five. At
[46:36] the start of six, she is rescued by some
[46:38] kids, then goes on a mission with her
[46:39] dad and her boyfriend to destroy the
[46:41] Anacreonian ships, cutting off their
[46:43] retreat. Her dad dies on this mission,
[46:45] and then she gets captured by the
[46:47] Anacreonians again. Two back-to-back
[46:50] episodes where the cliffhanger is that
[46:52] Salvor has been captured. But once more,
[46:54] we contrive a rationale to keep Salvor
[46:56] alive. Now that the Anacreons have lost
[46:58] their ships, they need Hugo to get up to
[47:01] the Invictus, but Hugo makes it so that
[47:03] the ship will only work if Salvor is on
[47:05] board. But Salvor doesn't know how to
[47:08] fly the ship, and neither do the
[47:09] Anacreons, so they need Hugo, too. This
[47:12] is so convoluted. Like they've written
[47:15] it so that the Anacreons came for two
[47:17] things: scientists and a guy with
[47:19] Imperial nanobots. And then they
[47:20] realized that they need to contrive a
[47:22] reason for the Anacreons to also need
[47:24] two characters, Salvor and Hugo. So, you
[47:27] know, why not make these two people have
[47:29] these two things? Like make Salvor the
[47:31] scientist they kidnap, and make Hugo the
[47:33] one with the nanobots, or vice versa.
[47:35] You know,
[47:36] instead of this big knot of stupid. So,
[47:38] we cut to the next episode, and despite
[47:40] establishing that the Anacreons need
[47:42] both of these characters alive to pilot
[47:44] Hugo's ship, their only way back down to
[47:46] the planet if A, their extremely risky
[47:48] mission fails, or B, not all of them are
[47:51] needed to go on the suicide run, the
[47:53] Anacreonians decide to bring both of
[47:55] them along on the mission itself to
[47:57] commandeer the Evictus. And there's no
[47:59] reason to bring them. The Anacreons only
[48:01] need the Imperial Commander and the
[48:03] engineers, but they come along anyway.
[48:05] They just spent all of this time
[48:07] dramatizing why who has to go where, and
[48:10] then the next episode they just forget
[48:11] all that. It's so jarring. And it's at
[48:14] this point that if my comparisons to
[48:15] Abrams Trek weren't apt enough, we even
[48:17] have a scene that apes Star Trek Into
[48:19] Darkness's best action scene, even
[48:21] though it's not as good because it's a
[48:22] TV show. Blam blam blam, turns are
[48:24] shooting at them now. They got to get
[48:26] into the ship to escape them. So they
[48:28] get the Imperial Commander to open the
[48:29] door, and then Pharah shoots him
[48:30] immediately.
[48:33] She claims she doesn't need him anymore,
[48:35] so she kills him. This is what Pharah
[48:37] does with people when she no longer has
[48:38] a purpose for them. She shoots them
[48:40] dead. She kills you when you stop being
[48:43] useful to her. Now, luckily for Pharah,
[48:45] this is the last door that requires the
[48:47] Imperial manobots to get through, so she
[48:50] really actually doesn't need him
[48:52] anymore, so she's fine. But there's no
[48:53] way like she could have done that. Like
[48:56] what if there was a second door like 5
[48:58] minutes later where she needs nanobots,
[49:00] and she's like,
[49:01] "Um whoops." As the show cuts to his
[49:05] lifeless body floating in space. What if
[49:08] what if there was like a vegetable?
[49:10] Hilariously, a couple scenes later they
[49:12] do face an obstacle, and lucky enough
[49:14] for them Salvar gets them through. Oh,
[49:16] good thing they brought her. That's you
[49:18] know, they came for the reason for
[49:20] Salvar to be there. Shortly after this
[49:22] though, Salvar tries to escape killing
[49:24] one of Pharah's people. But Pharah is
[49:26] convinced not to kill her because
[49:29] No Pharah.
[49:31] We still need her.
[49:34] There might be more barriers, security
[49:35] protocols to override.
[49:40] There might be other obstacles. So
[49:44] Pharah keeps Salvar alive out of
[49:45] caution, but not the Imperial? No,
[49:48] because he's not a main character in
[49:49] this plot line. Aren't you paying
[49:50] attention? We can kill him, but we
[49:52] cannot kill them. At this point the
[49:53] Dungeon Master got a little bored and
[49:55] recycled some of the monsters that he
[49:56] had previously used and has the
[49:58] characters fight another turret. Salvor
[49:59] gets them past the turret and then
[50:01] immediately tries to escape again. But
[50:03] it's like, you know, good thing the
[50:04] turret was there because if it wasn't
[50:06] there then they would have had no reason
[50:08] to to keep her and then she did exactly
[50:10] what she was definitely going to do,
[50:12] which is escape and work against them.
[50:14] To recap at this point, the Anacreons'
[50:15] plan involves a series of extremely
[50:17] risky moves including having their own
[50:19] commander captured and shooting down the
[50:21] ship that contains someone they need
[50:23] alive and a bunch of contrived
[50:24] decision-making that keeps the main
[50:25] characters involved in the plot. In this
[50:28] plot line, the problem isn't even that
[50:30] what's happening is illogical, it's that
[50:32] it's all in service of schlock action,
[50:35] of knife fights between a hero and a
[50:36] villain we've seen a thousand times, of
[50:38] a dungeon crawl against automated
[50:40] weapons, of laser fights over who
[50:42] controls a Death Star. Even if the plot
[50:45] line did make a lick of sense and was
[50:47] like a good Die Hard, it would still be
[50:50] infuriatingly simple-minded. The story
[50:52] is just a terrorist revenge plot line.
[50:55] The Empire bombed Anacreon, now Anacreon
[50:58] wants to bomb the Empire.
[51:00] Wow.
[51:01] Cool. What defined Asimov's Foundation
[51:04] stories were clever insights into how
[51:06] different relationships of power worked.
[51:09] They might set up a conflict just like
[51:10] this one but then use it to reveal some
[51:12] clever insight into how different
[51:14] institutions functioned. Someone would
[51:15] have an aha moment and find a way
[51:18] through what seemed like an intractable
[51:19] problem. And whatever epiphany they had
[51:22] wouldn't just be an epiphany about the
[51:23] situation at hand but be a realization
[51:25] about like the fundamental laws that
[51:27] govern human relations. That's how it
[51:30] feels to read a Foundation story. This
[51:32] conflict lacks any of that because every
[51:34] decision seems like it was reverse
[51:36] engineered from the need to have a
[51:37] certain number of action scenes across a
[51:39] designated number of episodes. It is
[51:43] vapid.
[51:47] Now, the invasion plot line is the
[51:48] external conflict on Terminus, but I
[51:50] could forgive it being bad if the main
[51:52] character went on a compelling emotional
[51:55] journey. Unfortunately, this character
[51:57] is cynically saddled with the most trite
[51:59] cliches. Cliche number one is that she's
[52:01] Mad Max. I mean, just look at this shot.
[52:04] In the books, Salvor is just like a
[52:06] politician. He's got a little bit of a
[52:08] wit about him, but we learn almost
[52:09] nothing about his personal life. He's
[52:11] just a dude with a job. But his one
[52:13] definable character trait is his motto,
[52:15] which becomes a guiding philosophy for
[52:17] the Foundation afterwards. Violence is
[52:19] the last refuge of the incompetent. He
[52:22] solves the first two crises that the
[52:24] Foundation faces with clever politicking
[52:26] and diplomacy, never with guns. TV show
[52:29] Salvor on the other hand,
[52:31] Where are you going?
[52:33] To check out the armory.
[52:36] The Anacreons come knocking before the
[52:37] Empire. I'd like to know what kind of
[52:39] violence we can muster.
[52:40] She's characterized as the only one who
[52:43] is good at fighting in the entirety of
[52:45] the Foundation. Everyone else is a big
[52:47] dumb idiot who only knows about science,
[52:49] but none of them know how to use a
[52:50] sniper rifle. It's the weirdest choice
[52:53] for a Foundation story just right off
[52:55] the bat. On top of that, there are so
[52:57] many decisions made to bring her more in
[52:59] line with the archetype of a big budget
[53:02] mythological protagonist. Salvor has
[53:05] special powers, for instance, a slight
[53:07] ability to read the future. She can also
[53:09] read people's emotions extremely
[53:11] accurately and intuit their memories.
[53:12] This sets her apart from everyone else
[53:14] in the Foundation in a way that feels
[53:15] very young adult protagonist. She just
[53:18] has that kind of angst. She also has a
[53:21] special relationship with an unknown
[53:23] entity. You know the movie where a young
[53:24] kid has like a space dog or something
[53:26] that they love and have to protect, like
[53:28] Okja or Bumblebee or ET? Salvor has
[53:31] that, but instead of a cute animal, it's
[53:33] a big inanimate object. It's this big
[53:35] diamond thing that is confusingly called
[53:37] the Vault. Salvor thinks that it's
[53:38] giving her visions and spends the whole
[53:40] story trying to intuit what the message
[53:42] is.
[53:43] All these years thinking
[53:45] the ghost was talking to me.
[53:47] But the final nail in the coffin of
[53:49] Mandanity is making them a Star Wars
[53:51] protagonist, because it's not enough
[53:53] that they have special powers, they have
[53:55] to have an important lineage. At the end
[53:57] of the show we learn that she is Gale
[53:59] and Rasha's daughter. It's a decision
[54:00] that I don't think is wrong so much as
[54:02] it is just uninteresting because I've
[54:04] seen this beat stand in place for real
[54:06] drama so many times before. And that's
[54:09] definitely the case here because it
[54:11] happens basically in the epilogue of the
[54:13] story where the character is told she's
[54:15] related to people that she really
[54:16] doesn't even know or have any context
[54:19] for. So who cares that they're related?
[54:21] Why does it matter? Why does every
[54:22] franchise have to reduce itself to the
[54:24] most basic idea of it's about family
[54:26] when there are so many other stories to
[54:28] tell. And on top of all of that is that
[54:30] Salvor sorry is very much focused on the
[54:33] idea that they are some sort of chosen
[54:35] one, that they are special. Everyone in
[54:38] Salvor's personal life believes in their
[54:40] innate specialness and their story is
[54:42] like so many chosen one narratives about
[54:44] just accepting that they are special.
[54:47] And I started to believe
[54:49] that I actually was
[54:52] special.
[54:54] Harrow is guiding you to keep the plan
[54:55] on course.
[54:58] Because I'm what?
[55:00] Special?
[55:01] You are special, Salvor.
[55:03] Which is what takes us away from making
[55:05] this a story about broader social
[55:06] forces. Those don't matter. What matters
[55:09] is the hero with a thousand faces going
[55:11] on a personal journey to discover their
[55:13] own lineage and the source of their
[55:14] supernatural powers. To be clear,
[55:16] there's nothing implicitly wrong with
[55:18] any of these archetypes, with the Mad
[55:20] Max outsider, the young adult
[55:21] protagonist, the boy and his horse
[55:23] story, or the chosen one narrative. The
[55:25] problem with Salvor is the sheer number
[55:27] of archetypes the story heavily relies
[55:29] on and incoherently patches together to
[55:32] form her character that it always feels
[55:34] like the story is trying to ape
[55:35] something else rather than tell a story
[55:37] that is organic to Salvor herself.
[55:43] But by far my biggest problem with this
[55:45] plotline are the implications of its
[55:47] conclusion. So in the first handful of
[55:49] stories in the Foundation series there
[55:51] was a common structure. The Foundation
[55:53] would be faced with an existential
[55:54] threat, someone figures out how to solve
[55:56] it, and then once the conflict was over
[55:58] the characters would all gather and
[55:59] watch a pre-recorded hologram of Hari
[56:01] Seldon who would explain the solution in
[56:03] detail. Sometimes the character who
[56:05] solved the problem would be the one to
[56:06] give the speech. Sometimes it's Hari,
[56:08] but the common element is this, Hari
[56:10] doesn't solve the problem. Hari only
[56:13] explains the solution after the fact. In
[56:15] the show things are quite different.
[56:18] Everything revolves around Hari who both
[56:20] creates and solves all of the problems
[56:23] to the detriment of the rest of the
[56:24] characters. So here's the scene. The
[56:26] Vault has this field that can knock
[56:29] people unconscious and it's knocked
[56:30] everyone unconscious, but then Salvor
[56:32] figures out how to turn it off, but it
[56:35] also activates the Vault which is kind
[56:37] of Hari's casket, like a sci-fi casket
[56:41] that remakes his mind into a hologram.
[56:44] As per my mortality directive, my casket
[56:46] was jettisoned out into space.
[56:49] Those machines began breaking down my
[56:51] body tissue into all its constituent
[56:54] elements.
[56:55] Then those machines recycled those
[56:57] elements scooping up more material. Ice,
[56:59] micro
[56:59] In the meantime though all of the
[57:01] factions of the story converge on each
[57:02] other and have a standoff. You've got
[57:05] Salvor, you've got Farrah, you've got
[57:06] the Foundation, you've got the
[57:08] Anacreons, and you've got the Thespians
[57:10] who show up as well. Farrah shows up
[57:12] last and in an effort to de-escalate the
[57:14] situation Salvor comes up with a
[57:16] solution. The three factions could share
[57:18] the possession of the Invictus and with
[57:20] the help of the Foundation's
[57:21] technological knowledge they could build
[57:23] a fleet that could stand up against the
[57:25] Empire. This is all good, but the thing
[57:27] is Salvor is wrong. Some parts of what
[57:30] they propose are followed through with,
[57:32] but it's Harry who has the real solution
[57:34] here. So, into this huge standoff walked
[57:37] Harry, who delivers a big long monologue
[57:39] about what everyone needs to do going
[57:41] forward. And this is where the show's
[57:42] emphasis on action and irrelevant lore
[57:45] comes back to bite it because there's
[57:47] just way too much to handle at the end
[57:48] here that wasn't set up. Harry starts
[57:50] telling us about the history of Anacreon
[57:52] and Thespis, how the two started to hate
[57:55] one another after the queen of one
[57:56] country married the king of the other,
[57:59] but then died under mysterious
[58:00] circumstances, and each side has their
[58:02] own narrative over what happened, and
[58:04] the incident led to a long history of
[58:05] violence between them. But, Harry
[58:07] reveals that the murderer was actually
[58:09] the reigning Cleon at the time, and that
[58:12] the empire has always been their true
[58:14] enemy. During this entire speech, I I
[58:17] was wondering why this wasn't ever
[58:19] talked about earlier. Like, there's an
[58:20] interesting idea here about how people
[58:22] can be pitted against one another by the
[58:24] powerful, and that the common people
[58:25] need to see through these falsehoods and
[58:27] recognize that despite their grievances,
[58:30] they are class allies. There could have
[58:31] been a mystery that Salvor could have
[58:33] solved here and then used to unite the
[58:36] factions. Like, Salvor could have been
[58:38] the one to uncover this whole murder of
[58:40] the queen plot. Like, remember that
[58:42] whole dungeon crawl on the Invictus?
[58:44] Well, at the end of it, Salvor finds
[58:45] that the crew has been killed, and it's
[58:46] hinted that it's because of aliens. You
[58:48] know,
[58:49] Bye-bye. Concept overload.
[58:50] Thank you. And the placement of this at
[58:52] the climax of the story is so inelegant.
[58:55] Salvor has finally battled her way to
[58:57] the cockpit, where she can control the
[58:59] ship at last, and where the audience is
[59:01] expecting her to discover something
[59:03] important. And what she discovers is
[59:06] another non sequitur teasing at stuff
[59:08] that will happen in future seasons. When
[59:10] it could have been something that tied
[59:11] back to the main players in this story.
[59:14] Like, you know when critics call a story
[59:15] elegant? Like, they do that because each
[59:17] part is accomplishing two or three
[59:20] things at once. Like, this is the
[59:22] opposite of that. Everything only serves
[59:23] one function, and there's plenty of
[59:25] wasted opportunities all over the place.
[59:27] Instead, the whole origins of Anacreon
[59:29] and Thespis' rivalry is both introduced
[59:31] and solved in one scene by Harry. On top
[59:34] of that, it's a pretty tall order on
[59:36] Harry's part to think that the two
[59:37] warring kingdoms will unite after
[59:39] hearing this little tidbit of historical
[59:41] truth. Like this is at least attempting
[59:44] to make a claim on behalf of
[59:45] psychohistory. Harry's prediction is
[59:47] that two groups of people will put aside
[59:49] their differences once their conflict is
[59:51] rationally explained to them as being
[59:52] based on a lie. But I'm pretty skeptical
[59:54] of that claim the story is making, and I
[59:56] think virtually the opposite claim would
[59:59] have been made in the books. There's a
[60:01] strain of cynicism to the way Asimov
[60:03] viewed humanity, where everyone is
[60:06] ultimately pretty selfish. By that, I
[60:08] mean I can very easily imagine the book
[60:11] version of Harry Seldon explaining that
[60:13] there's only like a 2% chance or
[60:15] whatever that these two factions would
[60:17] forget their entire history with one
[60:19] another and unite against the Empire.
[60:21] And that actually they would keep
[60:23] fighting each other even if the original
[60:25] conflict was fabricated. But that's more
[60:27] of a philosophical difference that I
[60:28] have with the claims being made by the
[60:30] story. But then again, the story itself
[60:32] seems to admit how improbable it all is.
[60:34] Salvor's mother says of it all that
[60:35] Salvor succeeded against all odds.
[60:39] We survived.
[60:42] Against all odds.
[60:43] In contrast, here's how Seldon describes
[60:45] the solution to the first crisis in the
[60:48] books. If you are not here, then the
[60:50] second crisis has been too much for you.
[60:52] He smiled engagingly. I doubt that,
[60:53] however, for my figures show a 98.4%
[60:57] probability that there is to be no
[60:58] significant deviation from the plan in
[61:00] the first 80 years.
[61:02] Against all odds.
[61:03] 98.4%.
[61:05] Against all odds.
[61:06] There's just a very different effect
[61:08] that the show is going for with this
[61:09] idea. It wants to inspire. It wants the
[61:12] audience to be awed and comforted by the
[61:14] idea that warring people will unite
[61:16] against the greater danger. It means
[61:18] deemphasizing the core idea of
[61:20] psychohistory, that people will respond
[61:22] naturally to the incentives around them.
[61:24] Not that a spaceman will walk out of a
[61:26] deus ex machina, lecture people about
[61:28] their own political aims, and then have
[61:29] that work out. And that is the end of
[61:32] the first season of Foundation. A story
[61:34] of two halves. One where it's completely
[61:36] invented plot lines more effectively
[61:38] capture the philosophical nature of its
[61:40] source material, but where the stories
[61:41] based on his actual work throw out
[61:43] everything that made them interesting in
[61:45] favor of either mystery boxing parts of
[61:47] the world or devolving into nonsensical
[61:49] action. But not all hope is lost. This
[61:52] show is getting a second season, and
[61:53] David Goyer is on record saying he wants
[61:55] to have eight seasons to tell the
[61:57] complete Foundation saga. Given the
[61:59] viewership numbers of the first season,
[62:00] I feel like that's probably unlikely,
[62:03] but hey, I thought they never managed to
[62:05] make a first season, so what do I know?
[62:06] Well, here's what I believe. The show
[62:08] won't last if it only aspires to be a
[62:10] generic space blockbuster. Action scenes
[62:12] will not save this franchise, and
[62:14] dropping in oblique references to later
[62:16] installments will not set the Reddit
[62:18] hive mind alive the way it did for Game
[62:20] of Thrones. But telling clearly defined,
[62:23] philosophically coherent science fiction
[62:25] stories, that's what can make a show
[62:27] like this something that people could
[62:28] conceivably recommend. I don't know who
[62:30] this show was supposed to be for right
[62:32] now, but I know that it could find an
[62:34] audience if it told the best sci-fi
[62:36] stories on television. Foundation is
[62:38] capable of that because the series
[62:40] approaches science fiction from a
[62:42] perspective that no other series really
[62:44] does. The formula in the books is a
[62:46] recipe to make interesting and
[62:48] compelling observations about how
[62:50] systems work, how they fail, how they
[62:52] are challenged, how they are eroded, and
[62:55] how they are saved. In a world where
[62:56] seemingly all of our institutions are in
[62:59] constant crisis, isn't a story that says
[63:02] something about that more interesting
[63:04] than telling yet another oh no terrorist
[63:06] plot line? But while I was making this
[63:08] video, I thought to myself that I
[63:10] couldn't just complain about how not to
[63:13] do an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's work.
[63:15] It'd be better if I could find an
[63:16] example of someone, somewhere, who
[63:19] figured out how to do it well. So,
[63:21] that's what I did. I watched every movie
[63:23] based on Asimov's work, and I read every
[63:26] short story and novel that they were
[63:27] based on. Now, most of that journey I
[63:29] cataloged in my previous video on I,
[63:31] Robot and a whole bunch of other stuff.
[63:33] But, there's one movie that I didn't
[63:35] talk about in that video or in this one
[63:38] yet, and it's the one that did it right.
[63:40] No American has figured out how to adapt
[63:42] Asimov, but someone in his country of
[63:45] origin did because in 1987 in the Soviet
[63:48] Union, they made Marvel's Loki season 1.
[63:53] Yes, you know the Marvel show that was
[63:55] arguably the most unique and
[63:56] consistently good part of Marvel's phase
[63:57] 4? Well,
[63:59] it turns out they totally ripped off the
[64:01] end of eternity. Check this out. Loki is
[64:03] about a guy named Loki who works for a
[64:06] supernatural bureaucracy that has
[64:08] control over time travel. But, when Loki
[64:10] falls in love with a woman that doesn't
[64:11] fit in with the bureaucracy's plans, he
[64:13] rebels against the system leading to the
[64:15] fall of the organization and the
[64:17] creation of a new reality. The end of
[64:19] eternity is about a guy named Harlan who
[64:21] works for a supernatural bureaucracy
[64:22] that has control over time travel. But,
[64:24] when Harlan falls in love with a woman
[64:25] that doesn't fit into the bureaucracy's
[64:27] plans, he rebels against the system
[64:29] leading to the fall of the organization
[64:31] and the creation of a new reality. Don't
[64:34] get mad at me for saying Loki is
[64:35] derivative. Everything is a little
[64:37] derivative. This is just a useful way
[64:38] for me to explain End of Eternity.
[64:40] Though, Loki's existence does sort of
[64:41] mean that this, the second easiest
[64:43] Asimov book to adapt behind Caves of
[64:44] Steel, will likely never get a big
[64:46] American adaptation and that kind of
[64:47] sucks. It's possible this movie is the
[64:49] most obscure piece of media that I've
[64:51] ever covered on this channel. I had a
[64:53] ton of trouble even finding it to watch
[64:55] and was dreading watching it. But, in a
[64:56] miraculous coincidence, after I found
[64:59] it, there's this other channel called
[65:00] Not Just Right that uploaded it onto
[65:02] Dailymotion. How strange. The movie is
[65:04] based on Asimov's book of the same name
[65:06] from 1955. It's a TV movie which aired
[65:09] as two-hour long episodes and is a
[65:12] mostly faithful recreation of the story
[65:14] except for the ending because
[65:16] oh, the ending. What I was most
[65:18] pleasantly surprised by with this movie
[65:20] was its atmosphere and tone. The world
[65:23] of Eternity, this giant machine that
[65:25] controls time, is such an oppressive
[65:28] setting. The set design really sells
[65:30] this as does Oleg Vavilov as Andrew
[65:32] Harlan, whose stony-faced lack of
[65:34] expression covers up an internal turmoil
[65:36] that increases over the course of the
[65:37] story in a really compelling way. This
[65:39] is the hardest of sci-fi's with the
[65:42] hardest of sci-fi soundtracks.
[65:52] From its first beats, it's clear that no
[65:54] other country in the world could have
[65:55] made this movie in quite this way.
[65:57] Granted, as someone who was raised in
[65:58] the West, I don't have a great eye for
[66:00] the nuances of Soviet Russian '80s
[66:02] culture, but when your dystopian sci-fi
[66:05] movie opens with a central planning
[66:06] committee, it feels pretty Soviet. The
[66:08] institution of Eternity itself is a
[66:10] send-up of socialist institutions.
[66:12] Eternity is a place where the worker
[66:13] must sacrifice his individual identity
[66:16] to the noble cause of improving mankind
[66:18] as a whole. They aren't allowed to have
[66:20] relationships and they have to do
[66:22] whatever the all-powerful committee
[66:23] tells them to do. I imagine all of this
[66:25] is what probably attracted Russian
[66:26] filmmakers to the project in the first
[66:28] place compared to any of Asimov's other
[66:30] work. The protagonist is someone who
[66:32] begins the movie utterly loyal to the
[66:33] cause of Eternity, but then he falls in
[66:35] love, which breaks the rules of the
[66:37] organization. Later, he learns that in a
[66:39] new update to the timeline, the woman he
[66:41] loves, Noys, is going to be written out
[66:43] of existence. And so, he decides to
[66:45] rebel against the system, hiding her in
[66:47] the hidden centuries, a stretch of time
[66:49] that Eternity has been unable to reach.
[66:52] But then, of course, he finds out that
[66:53] even his rebellion against the system
[66:54] was planned by Eternity. It's a real
[66:57] Matrix Reloaded Architect kind of moment
[66:59] because the story we're watching is part
[67:01] of a time loop that is necessary for
[67:03] Eternity to exist at all. Harlan is
[67:06] supposed to be training this guy who
[67:07] will eventually go back in time and
[67:09] invent the technology that all of this
[67:11] relies on. So, everything has to play
[67:12] out this way even though Harlan has to
[67:14] break the rules. I mention all of that
[67:16] because it sets up the story's final
[67:18] choice. And here is where the novel and
[67:20] the movie wildly diverge in the most
[67:22] interesting way possible. In both
[67:23] stories, Harlan goes back in time to our
[67:26] time and gets to decide the fate of
[67:28] eternity. In both, he destroys eternity,
[67:30] but for different reasons and to
[67:32] different results. In the book, Harlan
[67:34] goes back to the present day with Noys
[67:36] and learns that she's from the hidden
[67:37] centuries. She explains that the
[67:39] timeline eternity presided over is just
[67:41] one in a multiverse of other
[67:43] possibilities. She's really like, "Oh,
[67:44] you're a time lord? That's cute. I'm a
[67:46] multiversal god." She believes that
[67:48] eternity needs to end because humanity
[67:50] has stopped evolving under eternity's
[67:52] control. All of the decisions eternity
[67:54] makes has been about avoiding harm to
[67:56] humanity, but as a result, Noys argues
[67:58] that they've deprived humanity of
[68:00] triumphs as well, which means that both
[68:01] biologically and socially, humanity has
[68:04] stopped needing to grow or change.
[68:06] They've become stagnant. Stagnancy is a
[68:09] theme that comes up constantly across
[68:11] Asimov's work. The unchanging nature of
[68:14] a society built on the backs of robots
[68:16] is a huge theme in the robot series. And
[68:18] like in this book, it is ultimately
[68:20] decided that humanity needs adversity
[68:22] and hardship to grow across the galaxy.
[68:24] It's also the climax of the Foundation
[68:26] series that humanity needs to evolve
[68:28] into a new life form, in that case, a
[68:31] weird hippie hive mind. Just because
[68:33] someone says, "Hey, maybe there might be
[68:35] aliens out there and it'd be better if
[68:36] we were a stronger, more united species
[68:38] when that happened, even though that
[68:40] means sacrificing all privacy." The
[68:42] general logic of adversity creating
[68:45] hardships which spur innovations and
[68:47] change is totally unquestioned in his
[68:49] work. Even though it's not, you know,
[68:52] necessarily true. And like I think it's
[68:54] just as plausible to say that a society
[68:56] which faces less adversity can grow and
[68:59] innovate more because it's not being
[69:00] disrupted. And even if Asimov is right
[69:02] about it, there is a more nuanced
[69:04] philosophical debate to be had for
[69:06] whether or not it's worth it to build a
[69:08] society around this constant fear. Like,
[69:11] I get that aliens are a threat, but does
[69:12] that mean my stepmother needs to hear my
[69:14] every waking thought? When I see him
[69:16] propose this idea again and again at the
[69:18] climax of his stories, it feels colored
[69:20] by a certain kind of free market
[69:22] capitalistic thinking that has bled into
[69:24] all other aspects of life. Throughout
[69:27] this video, I've been praising his
[69:28] ability to tell stories about broader
[69:30] systemic and social forces, but even
[69:32] there, the way he does so is often in
[69:34] the language of capitalism. The people
[69:36] in his stories without fault respond
[69:38] rationally to incentives. Foundation is,
[69:41] in many ways, a capitalistic fantasy of
[69:44] how history plays out, where everyone
[69:46] is, for lack of a better word, a robot.
[69:49] It's for all of these reasons that the
[69:50] Soviets changed the ending. In the
[69:53] movie, Harlan is shocked to learn that
[69:55] Noys is from the Hidden Centuries, and
[69:57] freaks out that she's been lying to him
[69:58] about this. They break up, and then in
[70:00] his rage, he destroys Eternity,
[70:02] preventing it from ever having existed
[70:04] in the first place. Once again, he
[70:05] thinks he has successfully rebelled
[70:07] against the system. But in the final,
[70:09] brilliant, wordless ending, he's walking
[70:12] through 1980s West Germany, and he sees
[70:14] a couple of bougie guys get out of a
[70:16] Rolls-Royce and walk into a corporate
[70:18] headquarters. Except, no wait, those
[70:20] aren't just random guys. That's Harlan's
[70:22] two superiors from Eternity who, in this
[70:25] new eternity-less universe, have become
[70:28] the bourgeoisie.
[70:35] I love this ending. This ending is so
[70:38] loaded, because there's a lot of
[70:39] potential implications here. It seems to
[70:41] say, "Yes, sure, this central planning
[70:43] socialist bureaucracy kind of sucks, and
[70:45] you have to sacrifice too much of
[70:46] yourself for it. But even if you rebel
[70:49] against it, the guys at the top are just
[70:51] going to anamorphed into bougie
[70:52] capitalists the moment you win, and
[70:53] you'll be left on the street worse off
[70:55] than if you just played along with the
[70:56] regime. It's an idea that is highly
[70:58] prescient of what happened to Russia in
[71:00] the years after this movie released. Or
[71:02] perhaps everything Harlan did was just
[71:04] part of the plan all along and they
[71:06] manipulated him again for their own
[71:08] gain. Like they wanted to be transformed
[71:10] into Rolls-Royce owning CEOs. There's
[71:13] ambiguity here because the movie ends
[71:14] with him seeing this and then walking
[71:16] down a highway exhausted and demoralized
[71:19] by every aspect of his existence. Oh,
[71:21] Harlan, I know how you feel. Unlike all
[71:23] of the other major Asimov adaptations
[71:25] that I've talked about, the 1987 version
[71:27] of The End of Eternity is hard sci-fi.
[71:30] It takes his ideas and grapples with
[71:32] them seriously, but comes to a
[71:33] completely different and essentially
[71:35] socialist conclusion. So, once more, we
[71:37] have an Asimov adaptation where his
[71:39] stories are twisted to the purposes of
[71:41] the adapters. Where Foundation tries to
[71:43] make his story a religious allegory, End
[71:45] of Eternity makes it socialist
[71:46] propaganda. The difference is ultimately
[71:48] one of focus. End of Eternity's final
[71:51] minute left turn is clear and
[71:53] purposeful. Foundation grasps that
[71:55] meaning in a hundred different
[71:56] directions, but to use a math phrase,
[71:59] the whole is less than the sum of its
[72:01] parts.
[72:03] Asimov's stories cover entire planets,
[72:05] galaxies, and universes with thousands
[72:08] of characters and relationships that
[72:10] were probably pretty difficult to keep
[72:12] track of. Not that that ever slowed him
[72:13] down.
[72:15] If you're like me and you enjoy creating
[72:16] worlds for novels, tabletop RPGs, or
[72:19] some other creative project, then you've
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[72:23] everything organized in a way that lets
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[73:16] Thanks for watching, everybody, and a
[73:18] big thank you to my patrons for
[73:19] supporting me on Patreon, including Mike
[73:21] Moss and Doug Best Dog. If you want to
[73:24] support the show and get your name in
[73:25] the credits, just go to
[73:26] patreon.com/justwrite.
[73:28] Keep writing, everyone.