User Reviews

I've always been a fan of slow burn space operas that develop their characters over time: Firefly, Caprica and The Expanse come to mind.

And I'm not against changing the characters around for the screen:

For example, Gaal Dornick was an excellent choice of character to gender swap. The swap enhanced the sense of vulnerability we felt and made her someone who appeared oh so very out of her depth as she arrived on Trantor. She came across as having suffered emotionally and she portrayed that very well. She is a character that we can immediately relate too and have so much empathy with.

But Salvor fricking Hardin? Jesus Christ, his character is F-ed Up Beyond All Recognition. She is not just an adaptation, she is basically the antithesis of the Salvor Hardin from the novels.

Salvor Hardin in the novels was a charismatic, cunning, and morally somewhat vague man whose pragmatism and political brinksmanship saw him rise to the top. Able to adapt to new situations and ride the waves of populism, he was perfect man for the job and saved Terminus... twice.

Apple's Salvor Hardin is a physically powerful, emotionally stunted, verbally abrasive, charismaless introvert. She is plagued with (currently-popular on TV and in the movies) crushing emo self doubt despite her obvious advantages over others. Yet she is selfless and altruistic, morally whiter than white and oh yeah, has extra sensory powers and a direct connection to the vault which she somehow believes is a message from Hari Seldon.

Gender swap aside, she has almost superhuman advantages over others and I just don't find her growing Rey-like characteristics thought-provoking or even appealing at all. Not the Salvor Hardin from the book who had to do all the work the hard way without special powers and you couldn't help but like despite knowing how smug and insufferable he could be.

There is also so little chemistry between her and anyone else on screen (although, that could arguably be because she is portrayed as maybe being somewhere on the spectrum) and all she does is constantly scowl glumly, even when in bed with her lover/partner.

Hari's followers appear to be morphing into a doomsday cult. The writers are really screwing up the story. Any trace of charisma or personality from any of the actors is completely missing. They are just announcing their lines. The director must be in a coma.

Below what i think of the series so far with these 4 episodes:

If they adapted literally the first book, the characters would be uni-dimensional and very, very boring.

What Makes the first book great are his ideas, world and universe constructions and the scientic stuffs, like psicho-Story; and the stories in first novel are very short to create a series. And because this, i expected many changes in the adaptation, specially in a series with 10 episodes. So i expected much more new material in characters like Gaal Dornick, Salvor Hardin and many many Others. And the result it´s beautiful and great, they expand the Foundation in a much larger universe and a mix of the 2 preludes of Asimov.

So yes, the series it´s great, and considering that is the irregular David Goyer as Showrunner, the Show it´s a great surprise.

P. S: If you is still pissed with the series because principally of Gender Swaps of some characters, like Demerzel or Gaal or Salvor Hardin, please go watch american football, because if you want only man, watch male sports. The first book almost don´t have women, so it´s acceptable these changes.

The show was going well, I really liked the first three episodes*, but this one pissed me off for the same reason it did to many other people reviewing. Salvor Hardin just turned everything into a joke, apparently she's so cool not only the Vault doesn't affect her, but she can also read people's minds, she's the best fighter, head-strong and can deal with everything concerning the Foundation!

I love space operas, it's my favorite thing ever; but adding a Mary Sue into the equation? Huge mistake.

*At least from the point of view of someone who has not read the books, I'd probably think different if I had, apparently some characters have been gender-swapped and that's something I'd never support.

At the start of the episode it was gratifying to see an important character realize that he'd never get a real answer from a team of scientists who had been coerced all their lives to be yes-men. It seems timely somehow..

I also found it wryly amusing that the entire point of Hardin's dismissive response to "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" was easily missed. The rebuttal Hardin got, not to mention the whole theme of the episode (not to mention that another important character far away is grappling with it at the same time) is exploring this very point that becomes their quote later

It's character development, and it's a way of showing the point rather than spelling it out in a date with Doctor Obvious. But if I've learned anything from reading sci fi all my life, including all the Asimov universe books (Robots and Foundation), you can't please everyone if you avoid Doctor Obvious. However, if you often find you need to hand hold people through basic points when talking about the sci fi you like, you might find yourself enjoying this show.

This story would have been better in the traditional way moving forward only, and showing brief flashbacks for deeper stories that only book fans would know about.

You should only have back and forth time jumps in a TV adaption when the source material's fanbase is massive. Like DC Comics, Marvel, Harry Potter, even The Bible!

But doing it with a book many have never heard about written by an author that again, many have never heard about? Bad choice...

Alas, now that I understand that there will be time jumps in either direction, I can somewhat enjoy this series as a sci-fi enthusiast. Though I know it will just not live up to episode one's high bar, which I must say again was near perfect.

PS: Not a fan of the books. Never even heard of neither the author nor the book series. But, I will certainly give the books a read because episode one was that good.

This was a better episode than the last one! I think now they are getting the right direction, they kind lost show Direction with ep 2 & 3 . Looking forward for 5 ep!

After three slow episodes, this is where it starts gets interesting and also starts to pick up pace, hope it continues like this.

The episode began with an introduction to the now-teenage Brother Dawn as he struggles with his life in general. Cassian Bilton did a phenomenal job of channeling Lee Pace's Emperor, mimicking his expressions and tone of voice just enough to make the clone storyline quite believable. At the beginning of the episode, Dawn attempted to kill himself by jumping off a building, but a forcefield that protects him stopped him from dying. This left viewers with a question: Did he know the forcefield would protect him? Was the forcefield originally put in place to stop assassination attempts or to prevent the Cleons from killing themselves as teenagers? It is difficult to know just how much individuality these clones have, but we can glean patters such as Brother Day being impulsive and rules with a hammer, while Brother Dusk slowly becoming more compassionate as he ages. As these changes happen, Dusk and Dawn grow more at odds. Brother Dawn is a teenage Cleon who appears to be different from the other Cleons in that he is left-handed and is developing feelings for the gardener. This is the first time we've seen a teenage Dawn, so it's unclear which part of his actions follow a predetermined pattern. There are hints that this Dawn may be different than the other Cleons, such as his left-handedness and his romantic proclivities towards the android. The Brother Dawn is resentful of Dusk for the decisions he made that pulled the Empire into further chaos, and is planning to address more issues with the Empire personally. He is also limiting Dusk's activities more than normal and is planning to address more issues with the Empire personally. However, Demerzel's sarcastic comment suggests that despite his attempts to be different, Day is ultimately on the same path as any of the other clones would be at this point. One has to wonder if his impulsivity might put his life at risk since things are so much less stable now. And what would happen to the Empire if Brother Dawn had to take over leading it now, far earlier than normal? The invasion of Terminus is intensifying, with a huge army of invaders ready to raze the town and destroy the Foundation's work. Phara is one of the few survivors of the planet that the Empire irradiated as retribution for the sky bridge attack. Salvor believes Phara is not honest about her group's intentions, but it is difficult to decipher who is right and who is wrong. At the end of the episode, Gaal was shown to still be in stasis after Raych killed Hari, and her stasis chamber was picked up by a mysterious ship. It is not clear what this means, but Gaal is narrating the scenes from some point in the future and may play a role in rebuilding society after Salvor and the Foundation team have completed their mission. Raych has been surprisingly quiet about his fate so far.

Down the line, as foundation unravels we will discover that not only is psychohistory inaccurate on individuals choices, but that peoples reaction to stimuli remains constant. Unfortunately, much about human senses was not factored in in the novels by Hari Seldom. Individuals with large and full controlled psionic individuals are therefore able to skew the psychohistorical analysis. The introduction of characters with high deductive reasoning capabilities as well as lower end psionic able personalities changes the parameters of psychohistory in the Series. These individuals are the diamond nuggets we should all be observing as the Series progresses. But so far so good.

I must be wrong. It can't be.

The woman they call Salvor Hardin, when another character reminded her that "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent", did she really respond "that an old man's doctrine"???

They took the one fundamental phrase of Hardin, defining SO MUCH about his philosophy and his cleverness to avoid violence, and turned it around like it's something someone else believes and this pathetic Hardin opposes.

It's like watching a TV series upon the Pope where they make him say abortion is great, and poors and migrants should all be killed.

No seriously, it can't be. It's getting worse and worse.

Further and further from what Asimov wrote. In this episode there is NOTHING IN COMMON with Asimov's novel, not even a comma.

Please don't call this Foundation, change the name asap. Each episode is worse than the former.

This review is coming from a person who's never read the books.

After the first two episodes I find the series to be deeply boring. The lack of character development and flat acting about 85% of the time is making this show turning into white noise really fast.

A lot of the important events are being told in dialogs between poorly developed characters played by actors that are hardly convincing. I would much rather see scenes from some of the events that are talked about, instead of people just having conversations. Show, don't tell.

Another thing that's been really sticking out is how Salvor Hardin is just giving everyone attitude and trying to fit in as a warrior, interrogator, negotiator etc. It just makes this character superficial and more of a Mary Sue.

Unless this show really picks up the pace and does some better character development, it would be another wasted opportunity.

Ep 1 was promising, then it went downhill from there. Every episode was more boring than the previous one. I can't take it anymore. The show goes nowhere and I don't care about any of the characters.

Are you kidding me?!?!? It's a poor sci-fi with poor acting performance. But it's probably the most expensive in its category (B).

...But since it's "based on the book by Isaac Asimov", I give only one star, because there's still no Asimov in this show. If it was announced as an original story, I'd have no complaints.

This series has great potential even while deviating from the books and below average acting, the chosen dialog tells a story that is all over the place. Very little lends to character development and is mostly forgettable. Gone are the days where we had a constant stream of great shows with epic writing. Breaking Bad, Sopranos, The Wire, the early seasons of Game Of Thrones and The Walking Dead.. these shows had dialog you could follow and are so interesting you can re-watch them over and over. The incoherent drivel we're left with today bodes the question, where have all the great script writers gone!?

The show has been hijacked by Salvor Hardin, whose written as a messianic character that espouses sexist, ignorant, nonsense so often its worthy of a groan. I mean, come on Apple, we get it already, you've created an inclusive, diverse cast of characters. Can you at least make them palpable? Five episodes in and I'm just about ready to call it quits.