Foundation - the book and the TV series

So, first things first, the Foundation TV series is an Apple production and that means in the streaming wars it's only available on Apple TV. And I really wouldn't recommend getting Apple TV if that show is all you want to watch there. I got it for a brief time because there were a few shows I wanted to see and I have to say, it was an annoying and painful viewing experience.

Apple TV is an amateur hour version of better services like Netflix and I kept running into annoying browser session bugs with it nearly constantly. What seemed to happen is that the service would log me out, but still show that I was logged in, which meant that clicking anywhere would throw up error messages until I figured to press logout and log back in. Furthermore, the skip button timings were weird, resuming to the next episode was buggy and the whole site felt sluggish and often times would end up doing ugly double-renders, as if the frontend had some kind of a weird data dependency issue that triggered a re-render deep in the site's code.

So, on the whole the service quality is something only an Apple fan would enjoy. I would suggest to steer clear if you can. Do note that it's likely this experience also contributed to my opinions about the show.

Both the books and the show share the exact same premise: a mathematician called Hari Seldon pioneers a new field of mathematics that is based around the psychology and societal behavior of large masses of people. This new mathematical field, psychohistory, is able to produce probabilistic, predictive models on large-scale events and the flow of history that will follow. Essentially, it is a crystal ball that predicts the future, with the catch that the predictions only account for the actions of large masses of people. Thus, individuals and their actions are unknown to psychohistory.

Through this work, Hari Seldon and his fellow psychohistorians realize that the galactic empire, which is the united government spanning the entire galaxy, is on a path that will lead to its fall and mankind will enter a dark age lasting 10 000 years. They also realize that the path has entered its terminal stage, meaning that the fall of the empire is unavoidable. However, the psychohistorians realize that there is a way to cut the age of darkness down to 1000 years, leading to the creation of a stronger Second Galactic Empire.

In both the book and the TV show, the means of shortening humanity's suffering is a Foundation, created in a strategic location on the periphery of the galaxy. This Foundation is planned to go through a series of "Seldon Crises", major challenges that will shape the Foundation into a society that is able to eventually supercede the Empire and create the circumstances for the galaxy to flourish once again. And in the shadows, a Second Foundation will be created to monitor the progress of the first and ensure the Seldon Plan proceeds on course.

To understand the fall, it's important to understand the Empire. And this is also where the books and the TV show begin to diverge.

In the books, the Empire is a stagnant bureacracy that has long existed without a meaningful external challenge to its existence. However, its leadership has become internally unstable, as the Empire's vastness makes the throne tempting to would-be usurpers. This has lead to the line of short-lived emperors who are overthrown by the next, often another member of their own court. This constant scheming and backstabbing has had a paralyzing effect on the galactic leadership. Meanwhile the day-to-day life of the Empire is handled through an ever-growing, centralized, complex bureaucratic machinery of the Empire on its capital world of Trantor. This centralization itself forms another weakness, as Trantor is a world entirely dependent on imports of goods as all life on Trantor is built solely around the galactic bureaucracy, with little to no local food production or manufacturing.

The lack of an external challenge, internal instability and heavy bureaucracy have caused the whole galaxy to stagnate to such an extent that scientific innovation has essentially stopped and the complex systems created in the past are barely understood. The periphery of the galaxy is poorly governed and at the beginning of the books, some of the outer sectors have begun declaring independence, largely unopposed by the Empire.

So, in summary, the Galactic Empire of the books became too comfortable and this comfort lead to stagnation, as there was no more need to innovate or create. The existing infrastructure and technology were enough to sustain the Empire for so long that it had essentially forgotten how it even works, and thus the only thing left for the powerful to do was to fight over who gets to be the ruler over all of it.

In the TV show, the Empire is very much different. The Empire of the Foundation show was a technological ascendancy seemingly until the emperor Cleon I developed what in the show is referred to as the "genetic dynasty". Essentially, Cleon I determined to prolong his existence through cloning technology such that a series of Cleons would hold the throne forever. The show implies that this act lead to the stagnation of thought in the Empire, as no other viewpoints than Cleon's would ever be allowed in the court. The Empire is also significantly more tyrannical and any defiance of the galactic order is met with immediate and extreme violence, including near-total nuclear annihilation of entire planets if even suspected of harboring revolutionary aspirations.

The Empire also maintains a monopoly on some of the most advanced technologies, such as the jump drives that allow nearly instantaneous space travel. To me this seems like just a weird borrowing of Dune lore and it definitely doesn't support the idea of the Empire being in a decline. In fact, this should make it even harder for the Foundation to catch up and surpass them technologically. In the books the main reason they are able to do so in the first place is because the Empire is standing still and the harsh environment the Foundation is placed in necessitates innovation, due to lacking resources and manpower.

Regardless of how the Empire is about to fall, the constant in both works is that psychohistory has predicted it. And both works offer essentially the same description of psychohistory, including its limitations.

Psychohistory is a tool for analyzing and predicting the behavior of large masses of people over large spans of time. This means that the psychohistory has only been able to arrive to the conclusion that the Empire is about to fall by analyzing basically the entire galaxy and its inhabitants as a whole. This is also how the solution to shortening the dark age is derived, by figuring out what kinds of societal forces need to be applied and when to ensure the galaxy is able to right itself. All of this takes a lot of time and the plans has vulnerabilities to consider as well. Firstly, psychohistory does not account for individuals, and thus particularly powerful individuals are an unpredictable factor. Secondly, psychohistorical analysis and prediction is only valid when the population is not exposed to the results of the prediction, as this would taint the population's behavior.

The TV series quotes both of these limitations essentially verbatim. And then promptly proceeds to break these rules.

A particular challenge with the Foundation books is that they could be somewhat categorized as fiction of a collective, rather than individuals. Individual characters do appear in the books and have an impact on the Seldon Plan, but the books are quick to point out how the Plan is not dependent on these specific individuals. Instead, most of the characters act as representatives of a particular aspect of society and the implication is that if those individuals didn't exist, somebody else in a similar position would have and thus the Plan would have continued on roughly the same course. These individuals also change over the course of the books and thus the same characters only occupy fairly small parts of the story.

This is seemingly hard to convey in the medium of film and it is not that typical even in the context of books, besides those that you might find in the history section. Most stories are built around the trials and tribulations of the individual, presumably because that is relatable to us. And to be fair, even the Foundation books do this, because otherwise the story would end up being mainly just a historical account of the Foundation. However, the books are more readily able to take an individual character and then discard them when their part is done.

But in film this is not usually the case, the parts tend to be big and the stories tend to be built around a small cast of very important characters. Thus you end up with this one specific emperor being the embodiment of the whole of Empire. And how instead of letting Hari Seldon die and only appear in the form of pre-recorded messages, he needs to be kept alive not only in one AI form, but multiple to represent the Plan. And a few other characters become essentially immortal representatives of the (Second) Foundation.

But the problem here is that while the show states what the rules are, it cannot remember them for any length of time. The plan is weak to individuals, but the emperor is an incredibly strong individual. The plan is weak to populations being aware of the psychohistorical predictions, but the Second Foundation immediately shows their hand and directly interacts with the First. The plan is based around significant historical events, but many of the Crises are solved entirely via individual heroics and the show has a hard time justifying how this was psychohistory in action.

I think the first Seldon Crisis is a major sin, because in the books the things are setup perfectly. The first Crisis of the Foundation is the warring periphery kingdoms that have recently become independent. The Foundation is specifically placed in that volatile periphery so that they have to somehow deal with this threat. And the way they first deal with it is by diplomatically playing the kingdoms against each other and then achieving dominance over them by establishing a dominant religion among their populace. Neither of those things happen on the screen in the show, instead the kingdoms of Anacreon and Thespis just kind of end up semi-randomly on the Foundation homeworld of Terminus and the Hari Seldon AI appears and tells the three factions that they should just buddy up. And then they do, because that's how the plot needs to proceed.

Speaking of the characters, I mentioned that the Second Foundation essentially has a couple of immortal representatives. One of them is the other AI copy of Hari Seldon that also becomes a real human for some reason and the other two are Gaal Dornick, a psychohistorian, and Salvor Hardin, a former warden of the Foundation.

The needless keeping-alive of Hari Seldon is in my opinion already pretty bad, because the pre-recorded messages of Hari Seldon in the books is the perfect way to represent how the prediction is proceeding on course, and how it isn't when things end up getting derailed. Hari Seldon being a conscious AI means that the appearances of Seldon ring hollow and instead feel like Seldon is directly guiding the Foundation instead of predicting what has come to pass.

However, the character of Gaal Dornick is just awful in my opinion. Dornick is supposed to be a mathematical genius that Seldon hires to work with the Foundation. Originally she was supposed to go with the First Foundation to Terminus. This on its own is a bad idea, because in the books Seldon specifically ensures that no psychohistorians go with the First Foundation to ensure the Plan remains intact. But okay, in the end Dornick ends up going with the Second Foundation after a needless bit of drama involving her boyfriend killing Seldon (but it was supposed to happen anyway so that Seldon can become AI, this is a fucking ridiculous plot line).

The worst part is that Gaal Dornick is the kind of character archetype that I just hate in media. Because of the aforementioned drama, she spends most of her time doubting Seldon and essentially throwing wrenches into the gears of the Second Foundation and just generally slowing down the plot. And I am indeed calling it an archetype, because this is not the first time I've seen a character whose primary function is to be a good guy, but who also needs to ensure that the plot doesn't move ahead fast enough. She is just kind of frustrating and basically every scene she was in until the very end of season 2 just made me mentally repeat "get on with it" in my mind.

It also doesn't help that she is apparently a "mentalic", meaning that she has mental superpowers, including true precognition. Now, the mentalics are not entirely ridiculous in the context of the Foundation books, because they do make an appearance in Second Foundation (the book, but also the organization), but they are my least favorite part of the book series. And the fact she has true precognition kind of makes the Seldon Plan and psychohistory kind of unnecessary.

So, with the TV show getting itself confused with how psychohistory actually works with the world it has set up for itself, it feels to me like the whole message the show has kind of gets muddled.

The books' central thesis, to me, seems to be a warning about the stagnation caused by becoming too comfortable with the status quo. It also highlights the need for overcoming challenges in order to grow and develop. It probably could also be taken as a social commentary and it's possible to see parallels between the Foundation books and certain viewpoints of left-wing social philosophy.

When it comes to the TV show though, it hardly even practices what it preaches about psychohistory and the only real theme I could see was that all the bad guy's seemed to perpetuate their own existence. So, I guess the message Apple's Foundation wants to send is that it's bad to do that. Oh, and maybe that tyranny is bad also.

It just feels like they didn't quite know how to apply the source material, which is a real shame because I think a cinematic retelling of the Foundation universe would be really cool by itself. But maybe the medium just cannot stretch to those proportions and thus the result just kind of ends up knee-capping itself in the process.

In general, I went into the show quite excited, because I really like the current revival of sci-fi, particularly via the classics like Dune, to be really cool. And I hope we keep seeing more of it, because so many great works have gone largely unexplored and instead the same IPs have been strip-mined of any substance through wholly unnecessary sequels. In a way, going back and finding new works to build movies and TV series around is a way to stave off the kind of stagnancy I believe Foundation to be a warning about. But when it comes to the Foundation TV series, I think it misses its mark. I am not saying it's bad sci-fi, in a vacuum it would probably even be pretty good, but when you are already familiar with its source material, it appears clumsy and confused.

So, instead I would recommend you to read the Foundation books. They are excellent and like I mentioned, much of what they contain lives on in other science fiction. Oh, and go and read the Dune books too, luckily the movies were done so well that they don't pale as much in comparison to their source material.