Foundation TV Series – Becoming The Muse
Foundation is a science fiction television series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman for Apple TV+. The show is loosely based on the Foundation Series of Novels by Isaac Asimov. The cast includes Jared Harris, Lee Pace, Laura Birn, Lou Llobell and Leah Harvey. The show has two season, Season 1 premiered 24 September 2021 and Season 2 was released on 14 July 2023.
The premise of the show revolves around an intergalactic empire ruled by three men – or possibly only one, depending on how you factor in the fact that they are all clones of the same person, in an immortal genetic dynasty.
The Good
Its like Game Of Thrones meets Star Wars and Dune to birth a space opera show with clones, mathematicians, psychohistory, and robots intricately blended together into an intergalactic plot.
The world building and cinematography are top notch… It feels more like a very high budget production when compared to its more modest budget of $40 million for the first season… For comparison a single episode of The Witcher averaged $10million to make, while Game Of Thrones episodes averaged $6 million.
Lee Pace as Brother Day, delivers a stellar performance in all two Seasons of the interstellar show, portraying the middle seat and ruling clone in the Cleon Genetic Dynasty. He captures the subtle differences between the various Days across the ages or seasons.
Laura Birn does a chilling portrayal of Demerzel, the robot adviser to Empire who is thousands of years old and remembers everything.. Acting a robot is not easy, especially one that has complicated directives such as Lady Demerzel, aloof yet empathetic, unyielding yet nurturing.
You cannot watch the show without being drawn to the charismatic mad genius that is Jared Harris’ character Hari Seldon… It takes a sort of beautifully psychotic mind to dream up the psychohistory which Hari uses to predict what happens to future and against all reason you’ll find yourself being reassured he is the man with the plan….
Its a thematically rich series which explores the corrupting nature of power, the inevitability of empires falling, religion, free will and destiny….
Season 2 is significantly better with more personal story arcs being revealed which allows us to be invested in individual character growth, although, strangely in Season 1, Gaal has the stronger character but Salvor goes on to have the more dominant role in the Season 2.
You might think you have figured out where the multi-arc story is going but you still wont see it coming…
The Bad
The shows plays fast and loose with the original source materials that is the Foundation Book Series by Isaac Asimov. For those who like their book to TV adaptations to be exact, then this show will drive you crazy, as sometimes, the only resemblance to the book series, might simply be the characters and names sometimes not even that…..
Three key characters in the series get gender-swapped… Gaal Dornick, Salvor Hardin and Demerzel are males in the books and in the TV series they are female, although their characters do not deviate significantly.
The show has multiple plot and backstories that span thousands of years which is one reason why The Foundation Series had been considered unfilmable. Season 1 particularly suffered from time jumps where you flash forward to several years later a couple of times and then Season 2 begins a 100 years later and that means you wont have time to properly connect with characters as they are only there for a season… no pun intented 😂
For continuity, there are characters who will transcend the episodes, but after awhile it begins to get a tad over the top, clones, resurrections, consciousness uploaded to AI, cryogenic sleep, quantum super position, you might even start asking yourself what death means in the Foundation Universe…
The Ugly
Why didnt they just call it Game of Clones? Cleon in an anagram for clone😂
As a reflection of society, the show paints a grim outlook for the future, from the robot wars when AI becomes more human than humans to the age old tyrannical situation where those in power exploit those without…
I wondered about the casting of The Spacers who seemed to be only black women and if there was any reason for that and if it was not another manifestation of how people of colour tend to get the roles with altered appearances.
Final Thoughts
The show can get a bit confusing and you will likely need someone to talk to about it, to make sense of what you are watching, but that can also be part of the fun, which is why I created a community on the platform formerly known as Twitter to discuss the series… (⚠️don’t join it if you haven’t watched all the epsiodes as there’s now spoilers in the community)
Fun Fact: Lou Llobell who plays the role of Gaal Dornick is a Zimbabwean-Spanish actress born to a Zimbabwean mother and Spanish father. Some episodes are Directed by Mark Tonderai a British Zimbabwean director.
The Dune Book Series by Frank Herbet drew inspiration from The Foundation Books.
Have you watched Foundation… Does it sound like something you would watch?
~B
Becoming The Muse 
Your thoughts.. if you will?