Foundation, Seven Episodes In

 There's a balance to be struck with adapting Foundation.

There are a lot of ways in which Foundation, particularly its first few "books" or "chapters" or "segments" or whatever you want to call them, is deeply unconventional in terms of story structure.

We get a protagonist who usually represents some change to the status quo within the Foundation, which is often doubted by the establishment, but their alteration of the Foundation's course turns out not only to be what's necessary to preserve it and its mission, but also precisely what Hari Seldon predicted.

Dramatically, it self-sabotages, but in the interest of pursuing a really interesting intellectual concept.

At the heart of the story is the notion that human society is shaped by immense forces, rather than great individuals. It's a refutation of the "Great Man of History" theory.

But there's a great irony to that - after all, what is the Foundation if not the product of a Great Man like Hari Seldon?

I don't know if Asmiov intended this irony or if he would suggest that the development of Psychohistory was going to happen regardless.

Still, taken as a whole, those first few chapters serve less as a chance for drama itself (though there are space-battles and such) as it is to set up an expectation. With each chapter ending with one of Seldon's prerecorded messages showing that, yes, while things looked dicey there, he knew it was going to happen and it's all going according to plan.

And then the Mule shows up. A nobody who happens to have a genetic mutation that allows him to instantly alter the emotional reaction people have to him through some sort of psionic ability, the Mule rapidly gains power as he simply turns the powerful military leaders he encounters into loyal subjects who are fiercely devoted to him without losing any cognitive ability. And, as someone who suffered before he developed this ability, he has a vindictive grudge to go along with his imperial ambitions.

Probably the best scene in the "Foundation Trilogy" (the stories continued past them, and the stories were not originally published this way, but Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation are the books I've read) is when, in the midst of what the Foundation assumes is the latest Seldon Crisis, they go to the vault where his holographic recordings are viewed, expecting the message to describe their current situation and how it will be resolved - only for Seldon's premise to be utterly wrong, with his expecting them to be on the tail end of some civil war (one that was averted in the name of standing united against the Mule) and how this will bring about some crucial reforms and changes to the working of the Foundation that will guide them forward.

Suddenly, Seldon, who has been dead for centuries at this point, is no longer the omniscient, paternal reassurance, but just a video tape. And panic erupts.

The Mule takes up two of the "chapters" of the Foundation series, (if I recall correctly, the back half of Foundation and Empire and the first half of Second Foundation) but that reversal almost makes the somewhat stuffy narrative of the first book and a half worth it.

So, the needs of a TV show are different.

But I do wonder if Apple TV's Foundation is taking too many liberties - not just with plot, but through its plot, theme.

Supposedly, one of Frank Herbert's inspirations for Dune was a rejection of Asimov's core premise for Foundation - in Foundation, the Mule is an aberration meant to be corrected for, and by the end of the first half of Second Foundation, the eponymous organization basically succeeds. Herbert, however, thought that it was far more interesting to have a protagonist who upsets the status quo.

In fact, you could argue that it's Jessica, not Paul, who is the real protagonist of Dune. She is the one who chooses to have a son rather than a daughter, and thus upset millennia of careful planning by the Bene Gesserit.

In a lot of ways, the Bene Gesserit share a lot with the Foundation - they guide humanity, and likely think they are safeguarding humanity in doing so. Jessica's decision might not have been intended to upset that balance, but it does awaken a certain ability in Paul that he was not supposed to have. And then, it's her decision to have Paul play the part of the Fremen messianic figure.

Paul is an aberration as well - not only in his special abilities (which were intended for the son he was supposed to mother - though given Leto II's role in the narrative, I sort of feel like it might have actually worked out that way anyway?) but also because he upends the plans of the major factions.

Anyway, Dune has, I'd say, a more compelling narrative (I think Herbert was also just a better writer of characters and prose). And so I'm given to understand that by sticking more or less with the plot as shown in the book with the new movie, said movie has been a big success (I'm probably going to see it tomorrow).

Anyway, the point is:

The Apple TV show has vastly expanded the plot of the first "chapter" of the story. Honestly, the stuff with the invading Anacreons and the stuff with the Emperor has been pretty decent. Where I find myself growing frustrated is the stuff with Gaal.

It's pretty clear to me that this is meant to set up the backstory for the Second Foundation - especially with the reveal that Gaal has some kind of psychic ability. But there are a few things that feel like they're really flying in the face of the story:

For one, we have Hari Seldon masterminding not just broad movements of history, but micromanaging individuals - claiming that Raych had to be the one to found the Second Foundation and Gaal had to be running the first one. But Psychohistory as a sci-fi concept only seems believable because of the modesty of its claims - it only works when the anomalies of individuals are smoothed down by the enormous sample size. I could even imagine Seldon suggesting that it wouldn't work for a single planet (like our modern Earth) because the sample size is too small and individuals have too much of an outsized influence. The Galactic Empire imagined by Asmiov is one in which entire worlds are just a tiny fraction of the population.

I also think that it's important that the Second Foundation isn't born out of people who have spontaneously developed psionic abilities - instead, it's that while the first Foundation is preserving and developing physical sciences and technology, the Second Foundation is dedicated to developing, effectively, psychological technology.

What the show is doing, effectively, is making Gaal into a Mule way before the story is ready for a Mule.

Indeed, I think that the show has done a decent enough job of selling the stakes of the invading Anacreons that it could pull off the "yep, everything's going according to plan" thing without feeling too dramatically undercut. But I think that the showrunners have mistaken the central figures of each chapter as being "chosen ones" rather than simply "the person who happens to fill the role that history was going to give someone". While yes, I get that that's more conventional storytelling, I think you're totally missing the point of Foundation.

And if you wanted to subvert the point (or maybe interpreted Asimov's stories as being a refutation of their own initial premise, which is an argument I'd be willing to hear,) you could do it in a less hackneyed way.

As great as Jared Harris is, I don't want to have a sentient hologram of his Hari Seldon effectively keeping his character alive indefinitely.

Am I going to keep watching? Yes, probably. I've really liked the stuff with the three emperors (basically one huge invention of the show, but a successful one) and the ways in which seemingly benign things (like the current Dawn's attempts to hide his deficiencies and live his life) will, presumably, play a major role in the downfall of the Empire.

But I don't really have any faith that the show is going to commit to the heady concepts that are at the core of Asimov's works.

(The early introduction of Demerzel is interesting. I've been watching her with an understanding of what she really represents - I'd love to see the show actually go into the three laws of robotics (and the zeroth law) though I also understand that, given her position, she can't really talk about anything but the 2nd when interacting with the Emperor. In the books, of course, it's eventually revealed that she - or rather he, in the books - has actually been playing the Bene Gesserit role since the very beginning of the empire and before, and that he's actually R. Daneel Olivaw, the very first sentient robot and one who figured out that it was robots' responsibility to preserve humanity. Among the things he does is subtly nudge Hari Seldon into developing psychohistory. Not sure what to make of the idea in the show that she at least claims to follow Luminism.)