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Personally I kinda liked the first season. It's better if you forget the original Asimov story and just watch it as its own thing because it diverges from it quite a bit.
Season 2 Full Trailer - Youtube
Looking forward to see where they go after that ballsy season 1 ending. Lee Pace will continue to kill it no doubt.
That episode with the middle emperor proving himself. Fucking amazing TV
I found that there were two stories, one with with emporers which was really compelling and another story with the Foundation which was really dull which is why I give it an overall rating of 5/10
I actually get the feeling this started out as a totally different series about an empire of clone rulers existing over millennia, and they struggled to sell it so they reworked it into a hodgepodge adaptation of bits from every major asimoverse book combined and time-shifted into one series.
When Alexander Siddig (Dr. Bashir) showed up for like five minutes I was like “Wait no! Don’t go!” as his scene was ending.
I've read the whole series and absolutely love it, but I know that a direct adaptation would have been a failure.
I really enjoyed S1, they've taken some ideas from other Asimov universe series (Empire and Robots) and combined it into a pretty fascinating alternate take on the foundation universe.
It's visually stunning, has some great acting and direction and I'm really looking forward to S2
“Aaand here’s episode 3, it’s 200 years later and all the characters you saw before are dead. Moving on!”
that's pretty much how the main trilogy of books works too.
I would have enjoyed it, but I can very much understand why it wasn't done that way. :)
I think it’s just as much a problem when reading the books. But the problem is that a TV show must succeed with a popular audience, whereas a book can please a niche audience.
I read the entire series as well. Seems pretty much on story line to me? They don't go into as great of detail (kind of with they dug into the library's work more and psychohistory), but seems pretty much what I remember.
"on story line" but with significant embellishing, and a fair bit of time changes.
The Genetic dynasty, demerzel and the rules of robotics (might be more addressed on this in s2...), the "terrorist" attacks on trantor, the "death" of seldon, the vault.... etc...
I've never heard of it before but I am gonna pick up the first book next week now.
Just keep in mind it is a pretty old book, and was originally a collection of short stories so it jumps around a bit.
Unfortunately I didn't enjoy the 1st season, just like other commenters here. A preliminary reason could be that the story is very different from the book, which is one of my most favourite sci-fi books ever. But even simply seeing this series as something different from the book, if found it too cheap: the characters are half-stereotypes, the events are what you'd expect, usual blood and sex to attract viewers...
Should go without saying, just my personal opinion and tastes. I'm happy that others enjoyed the series and I hope it'll made them curious to read the books.
I love the books. I've read the original trilogy three times, as well as heard the BBC radio dramatization (from the 1970s). My anticipation for this series was sky-high.
Halfway through Season One I stopped watching, baffled in an uninterested way about how they dropped everything that had the original Foundation spirit, I recognized the names of most characters and some planets, but everything in between was crammed with Goyer's self-important posturing, insistence on mystery boxes and artificial cliffhangers.
The books will live on, they are immortal. The series, not so much, it will age quickly and badly.
Thank God we also have Villeneuve and Dune right now.
Agree 200%!
Honestly, I'm just rewatching The Expanse (6th time) instead. 🤌🏼
That's a great idea, cheers!
I also loved the books and I think this might be the difference. It’s only very loosely based on the books. Those who seem to enjoy the show often haven’t read the books at all, or don’t have much of a connection with them.
I just wish Hollywood would stop butchering such amazing IP. They should create new IP if they have such disdain for the original content.
I read the books (the first one anyway) and it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the series significantly, IMO. I recognize that they're very different mediums and written in very different contexts, so it's fine for them both to be their own things.
An analogous case that I think is probably quite similar to this was "I, Robot." The short story collection was classic and I enjoyed much of them, and the Will Smith "adaptation" was extremely different. But The Will Smith movie's story was still an exploration of the Asimovian three laws and so IMO was worthy of being included in the "anthology." I thought it was a good movie.
Generally speaking, books make for poor movie scripts and vice versa. The best adaptations require a lot of changes. The only prominent counterexample that comes to mind is Lord of the Rings, and even that one garnered a lot of complaints about the bits that were cut or tweaked.
I don't quite understand why they do this with books. Maybe it's because they have to, since many names and pieces obviously refer to the book. Or maybe they do it to attract people who have read the books.
It's not really free tho, since IP rights cost a ton of money. And honestly, adaptations that aren't true to the source don't tend to do well, at least not beyond the first product.
It used to be the case that studios could buy IP rights for peanuts and make a cheap knockoff, but that's not the case anymore.
@WhoRoger free was wrong phrasing. I meant that it was a way to sidestep the lack of familiarity that stops people from trying new media. People will give Spiderman xyzabc a shot rather than try out a completely unknown IP. In a congested streaming economy, that advantage is worth quite a bit.
The only parts of the show I enjoyed was the segments about the Emperor(s), which was a completely new invention of the show. It felt like somehow the writing A-team had snuck off to make some kind of weird original scifi thing, while the B-team was writing the “main” Foundation centered plot.
Putting aside any love for the books, I found the Foundation sections to be bad on their own terms. I stopped watching when the gang did a Call Of Duty mission into a ghost ship.
I agree! I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy the Hitchhiker's Guide movie. Is it the same story? No. Is it still good? Absolutely
Yeah. I'm not a fan of this "in name only" practice. And being a fan of the books, and the greater Asimov universe, I did struggle at first.
Once I accepted how completely they were going to abandon the original, I did manage to enjoy what they did produce. It wasn't weaker so much as just a completely different beast.
Going into S2 with this expectation, if the quality is as high as in S1, it should be well worth a watch.
(I can't say the same of Wheel of Time. The TV series is just weaker, it's a mess, a bigger mess than the first book which definitely had its issues. Damn shame, I really was hoping for an attempt to stay closer to the source without Rafe 'updating it' for what he thinks Jordan would have written today)
The worst was the Without Remorse movie. It wasn't bad, bit it had almost nothing to do with the book it was supposedly based on
I really tried, but I definitely gave up on S01 when I burst into laughter during the scene where the people find the commander of the crashed ship crawling away. Good grief.
So much of that show is like written by a 6yo. Or a very primitive AI.
Oh and relation to Foundation? Zero. I believe the first few books are difficult to adapt, but not even try?
Hell, I was on the fence by that point, but when the teacher-student romance BS setup was nauseatingly obvious — and then they actually opened with it the very next episode?! FFS. What is this, Outlander-in-space? Ge' tae fucc.
I enjoyed the story, but even if I hadn't, I would have watched this just for the eye candy. The show is a visual feast. It's one of my go-to examples of how big-budget TV has become visually indistinguishable from big-budget movies.
I just got done watching Silo and I really enjoyed it and now I’m looking for something new! Maybe I’ll give this a shot
I have to admit I didn't enjoy the first series and didn't finish it. I found the series overwritten with a convoluted plot, and barely recognisable as an adaptation of the book series.
I'm also not a fan of a series that turns books that are grounded in science and believability into a story featuring people with magic abilities like precognition and magic powers. It rather misses the whole point of the books, and just felt silly.
Having said that I'm going to rewatch it and try and finish it, hoping I've misjudged it.
I’m also not a fan of a series that turns books that are grounded in science and believability into a story featuring people with magic abilities like precognition and magic powers.
For me, the "grounded in science" ship had already sailed by the end of the original trilogy, when
book spoilers
the Second Foundation was revealed to be a shadowy group of mind-manipulating telepaths.
I partly agree with your comment about the books. But there's a curious historical element to consider: at that time telepathy was really discussed in the mainstream scientific literature as a scientific possibility. Not in a crackpot way, but in a scientific way: theories were developed, tests and experiments made, and then it was concluded that it doesn't exist, with explanations about why.
Since it was a scientific possibility at that time, or at least it wasn't seen as crackpottery, it was obviously used in science-based sci-fi books (not only Asimov's).
It's a little like they do in today's sci-fi with "parallel universes" or "quantum theory & consciousness" and similar stuff, which is discussed in today's scientific literature. Maybe (or very probably, in my opinion) in 50 or 100 years they'll laugh their arses off looking at our "science-based" sci-fi of today.
I never read the original, but the series is quite engaging. Looking forward to S2!
Ya it was student from the books but I think the changes were necessary. In the books, we get a whole new set of characters every 30 pages or so. It wouldn't work for tv where shows are often character driven. As someone who lives the books, I enjoyed the show adaptation and the changes made.
I've been waiting for this for what feels like years.
Yay I’m really excited for this one!
I'm surprised by the pushback (although I haven't read the books and thus did not have any preconceived notions). I loved season 1 and have watched it multiple times. I love shows that builds a world, and this one does so epically. I also am intrigued by the immense time scales involved. I also thought the pacing of the mysteries introduced was very good (I've been a bit disappointed in Silo for that reason). Anyway, I can't wait for season 2!
I'm not going to shit on your excitement, I just want to give my perspective (and I liked the show!).
You're right, this is a series that "builds a world". The main grip I (as many others) have, in relation to the books, is that the books build a universe and a whole history, in addition to the series. The characters themselves, aside from Hari Seldon and a couple of others, are relatively unimportant, and that's the beauty of it: it's a way of showing how psychohistory works, by not focusing on the individual but the whole society around them.
This, of course, is quite difficult to translate to screen, but having one character being "the special one" goes really against the whole spirit of the worldbuilding set in the books (and that's why I'm quite interested in seeing how they portray The Mule). The gender and ethnicity changes I couldn't care less, but these kind of things... eh, they strip the story of what made it special in the first place.
I honestly could not make it through the first... 4 or 5 episodes. Didn't help that I had just reread the series prior to watching and it honestly felt like they went out of their way to completely shit all over the source material.
Idk maybe I'll try watching it again one day.