FOUNDATION: BIG IDEAS, GRAND VISUALS

The ocean planet Synnax, from AppleTV+'s Foundation.

In an era when everyone seems to be scouring the same old creative ground, producing prequels and “origin stories” for minor characters in every universe you care to name—STAR WARS, STAR TREK, MARVEL, DC—it’s rare to find a science fiction television series that explores new territory.

I found it with the visually beautiful Foundation on Apple TV+, based on the trilogy and related novels by classic SF author Isaac Asimov. I had hesitated to try this show from 2021, created by showrunners Josh Friedman (Snowpiercer, the television show) and David S. Goyer (writer of DARK CITY, THE DARK KNIGHT and BATMAN BEGINS), because it so far offers only one season and Season Two won’t debut until 2023. Then too, I had read Asimov’s dry-as-dust Foundation books years ago and barely understood them.

Friedman and Goyer did a great job of simplifying the source material to make it accessible to their viewers. The books were complex and written in the days long before “character-driven” science fiction was even a thing. The ideas were supposed to engage the readers; Asimov’s protagonists were an afterthought, cardboard figures meant to represent some ideal. By contrast, Foundation’s showrunners focused their version of the story on the characters and cut away all the “textbook-y” backstory, of which there was plenty in Asimov’s work.

The show starts with the central character, Hari Seldon (played by Jared Harris, son of actor Richard Harris, and most recently seen as Queen Elizabeth’s father George VI in The Crown). Hari is a mathematician, who has used something he calls “psychohistory” to predict the inevitable downfall of the Empire that has ruled the galaxy for 30,000 years. This collapse is going to happen within 500 years, and it can be slowed, but it cannot be prevented, he tells the rulers of the Empire. They are three clones of the founding Emperor Cleon I, each at different life stages: Dawn (played in most of the first season by Cassion Bilton), Day (Lee Pace, known to fantasy fans for portraying Thranduil, Legolas’s father, in Peter Jackson’s THE HOBBIT) and Dusk (Terrance Mann).

For his trouble Seldon is exiled to a distant planet called Terminus, where he will be allowed to establish a colony to preserve the knowledge of the galaxy in case his predictions come true—The Foundation of a new civilization. The Empire thinks they are getting rid of him; for Seldon it’s all part of his plan.

Going with him will be his new “apprentice” Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), a young woman from an ocean planet who has won a math contest by solving a seemingly impossible equation. The people of her planet have rejected all science and math, forcing Gaal to study in secret to hone her intuitive talent for mathematics. She has only just arrived on the home world of the Empire, Trantor, when she is exiled with Hari.

But not before an act of astonishing terrorism provides the first proof of Hari’s theory. Individuals shouting slogans in the languages of each of two rival worlds from the Empire’s Outer Reaches set off bombs that destroy the “Star Bridge,” a suborbital platform/ transportation corridor that allows people and goods to flow between space and the surface of the planet. In the collapse of the massive construct, millions die. Brother Day, the “active” member of the clone trio governing the empire, responds by ordering an attack on the “responsible” planets Anacreon and Thespis that kills more innocent millions.

All this in the first episode! But in the second episode, we must begin to deal with a necessary drawback in the series, held over from a drawback in Asimov’s books. Years pass between one episode and the next, sometimes between one scene and the next. Some viewers might not have the patience for this kind of thing, especially when the characters onscreen don’t seem to change. (Because they are clones and simply different versions of the same genetic person or because they have been in cryogenic stasis for years drifting through space or because they are holograms. Or something.) This is not a show for SF newbies.

Starting in Episode Two, some of the main themes of the series—how will humanity persevere despite the collapse of everything around them and the challenges of survival on a desolate planet—are taken up by a new heroine, Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), Warden of Terminus, who finds herself with powers of both insight and foresight, thanks to her unusual parentage. (No spoilers here, that’s a fun little detail I won’t give away.) She provides a bridge between the old foes, Anacreon and Thespis, when she and her lover Hugo (Daniel McPherson) salvage a jump ship stolen by the Anacreons who have invaded Terminus. In the future, the goal will be to unite all three planets—Anacreon, Thespis and Terminus—under Seldon’s banner to attack the Empire.

Other subplots deal with the definition of humanity itself and whether a clone (or a robot, the last example of which is represented by the servant of the Empire Demerzel, played by Laura Birn), can have a soul. Brother Day undertakes a journey to a planet ruled by a religious sect called the Luminists to prove he in fact has one. He undergoes the grueling ritual of The Spiral, in search of a vision from the Luminists’ Three-Part Goddess (Maiden, Mother and Crone). He completes the ritual, and he says he sees something that unifies the Empire with the Luminists, but Day is not to be trusted. The question is whether his behavior is a result of his lack of soul, or just a consequence of his lack of growth as a human stuck in what amounts to a single lifetime.

That question becomes even more urgent when it is revealed that another group of rebels have corrupted the DNA from which the clones have been derived, leading to changes in the latest iteration—left-handedness, color-blindness, and, worst of all, self-doubt. Where does that leave a leadership model based on the infallibility of the original DNA of Cleon I?

But naturally, the questions that arise concerning Cleon’s original DNA also apply to Seldon’s original psychohistory model. The clones that govern the Empire cannot change and grow, leading to inevitable stagnation in the Empire. In the same way, Salvor Hardin is a “wild card” even Seldon hadn’t foreseen because the random combination of her genes produced something new.

These ideas are fun to think about in themselves, but lucky for us, Foundation’s television characters are well-drawn and well-acted, providing us with fully dimensional beings to illustrate the philosophies inherent in the show. And the costuming, makeup and CGI visuals of spaceships and planets, gilded imperial halls and gritty colonial hovels are amazing. If nothing else, the show is worth watching just for the credible escape it provides to other worlds. For the hour you’re watching each episode, you simply aren’t anywhere near Earth.

My only regret is that the final episode left me wanting more, and more won’t be available for some time. Apple TV+ hasn’t even announced a release date for Season Two, though the series has been confirmed for another season. (Or several; one source says the show’s creators have an eight-season arc in mind.) Such is the disruption caused by the COVID pandemic, lest you have forgotten we’re still dealing with that.

The good thing is, this is not just another clone of Star Trek or Star Wars. And we didn’t have to wait 30,000 years for the galaxy to produce this example of something new.

Cheers, Donna