---
title: 'Foundation: Crucifying A Masterwork'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=AOHfbDnkPEI'
video_id: 'AOHfbDnkPEI'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 4456
---

# Foundation: Crucifying A Masterwork

> Source: [Foundation: Crucifying A Masterwork](https://youtube.com/watch?v=AOHfbDnkPEI)

## Summary

The video is a detailed critique of the Apple TV+ adaptation of Isaac Asimov's *Foundation* series. The creator argues that while the show is visually stunning and has some brilliant original ideas, it fundamentally misunderstands the core themes of the books, replacing sociological insight with generic action and mystery boxes. The video contrasts the show's failures with a successful Soviet adaptation of Asimov's *The End of Eternity*.

### Key Points

- **Pilot Episode Issues** [03:49] — The show's pilot is a jumbled start, introducing too many plotlines and characters at once, including a confusing voiceover and a 'mystery box' scene on Terminus.
- **The Brilliant Genetic Dynasty** [08:01] — The 'genetic dynasty' of cloned Emperors is a brilliant original idea that perfectly visualizes the stagnation of the Empire.
- **Sci-Fi Concept Overload** [16:58] — The show suffers from 'sci-fi concept overload,' throwing too many ideas (clones, robots, precognition) at the audience, which dilutes the focus on psychohistory.
- **The Terrible Terminus Plot** [41:03] — The Terminus plotline is the worst, replacing the book's clever diplomacy with a convoluted, illogical action-thriller involving a ghost ship and a terrorist revenge plot.
- **Salvor Hardin's Character Assassination** [52:00] — The show's Salvor Hardin is a 'chosen one' with supernatural powers, a stark contrast to the book's pragmatic politician who solves problems without violence.
- **Deus Ex Machina Climax** [57:36] — The climax of the Terminus plot has a holographic Hari Seldon magically solve a centuries-old conflict with a single speech, undermining the core idea of psychohistory.
- **A Successful Asimov Adaptation** [63:40] — The 1987 Soviet film *The End of Eternity* is a successful adaptation that takes Asimov's ideas seriously and comes to a different, socialist conclusion.

## Transcript

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