Foundation (Apple TV+)

Foundation is based to some extent on at least part of a series of books by Issac Asimov. I have read them but several decades ago (maybe more than 40 years for the original trilogy, even the fourth book. That makes my memory between fuzzy and minimal, but there are enough parts that I do remember despite that gap that it clearly captures at least parts of the original but I can’t honestly comment on how faithful it is.

The fact it’s taken this long to make a TV series from it says something about how “unfilmable” a series it is. The first four episodes span about as long as it’s been since I’ve read the books, although a lot of this is done in a single jump. That jump is, eventually, made clear but as I remember the book it’s very explicit. As they’ve chosen to shoot it, it’s really not. That’s a choice that feels unnecessary to be honest, and changes the way the flow feels. There are later time shifts, but they’re shot rather differently and flow much more sensibly. There is, as well as this sprawling sense of time, a huge cast. IMDb lists 150 people (and given it’s such a round number I’m wondering if it was truncated to that). There are times when it feels like all 150 are on screen at once, countered by times when you have small scenes with just one person. Depending on how you do with people and names this may be an issue for you. It certainly feels like hard work at times, not because I struggled keeping the characters clear, but because there are a lot of moving parts that feel easier, for me, in a book than in a TV series. I would say that, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but consistently, these people have their own agendas. Even those from relatively small, dedicated factions like Anachreons on Terminus (about 300 people?) have small splits. The bigger groups (there’s a religion with 3Tn adherents) are riven by schisms. For the well-written and developed groups it makes them vibrant, for too many others it ends up being confusing as the editing choices of being a 10 hour series limit them in ways a book doesn’t have.

That said, this a big, brave TV show. It’s made by a company that doesn’t really need it to be profitable, certainly doesn’t need it to pull in advertising revenue. In a way Netflix certainly used to be and rarely still can be brave with the projects it funds, and is brave compared to its competitors with its foreign language offerings, Apple TV has given us a series that you to have actually actively watch rather than just have on but which rewards you with depth, complexity and richness of story if you put the effort in. I don’t think it could be perfect - there’s a long essay in there somewhere but, in brief, when you adapt a work, or create de novo you create your vision as perfectly as possible. But I filter that creation through my experiences and expectations. What I see and hear is not the same as what they produced. You do the same, and the fact you’re a different age, grew up in a different country, read and watched different media, studied different subjects and so on all affect how we assess what we consume, what we enjoy and don’t.

Clearly in one sense this isn’t unfilmable. I mean, they filmed season one and season two is coming. But I have to wonder if, by any commercial standards, it actually is. I don’t know how Apple counts success and failure of its TV shows. How it measures viewers against the relatively small monthly subscription fee. And you wouldn’t have to binge that hard to watch all ten episodes in the week-long free trial. (I have plenty of other stuff I intend to watch, I’m happy to pay my subs.) roughly I’m going to guess I’ll watch another show this month, and if I’m typical, and you multiply half my subscription by the number of watchers I bet it’s far less than the production costs of the season. Apple can afford that and I, for one, am glad they did.

I often say “this isn’t for everyone” in my reviews. I say it about films/shows with violence, trigger warnings and more. This doesn’t quite have any of those (odd episodes skirt close but don’t get there) but that level of effort leaves it in that category of “not for everyone” just as firmly as any other issue.

Bechdel Test: Pass. There are a lot of named female characters. In a few episodes it’s really marginal but in most there a multiple conversations that pass the test easily.

Ko Test: Pass. Again we have multiple WOC in leading roles, so they all speak English in multiple scenes. There is one who doesn’t only speak English, she’s the leader of a largely male military force and speaks to them in their (I think invented) native tongue. The Ko Test as devised is about speaking English because not speaking English is to lower the status of the woman. I’m not sure that applies here but this is not really the time to debate edge cases of the test.

Russo Test: Fail. This is an old SciFi series. It’s actually largely not bothered about sexuality as was the norm for the time but what we see is very cishet.