"Foundation" season 1
Jul. 27th, 2023 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sasha_featherFoundation, tv show based on the Asimov books, season 1.
Professor Hari Seldon has developed "psychohistory", math that can predict patterns of future society, and his math has predicted the fall of the galactic empire. To counter the chaos that will follow, he creates the Foundation. The story here is complicated, focuses on a number of different people and places, and thus is rather difficult to summarize.
The good: It's just extremely beautiful! The blues and golds and teals!. It's well lit and gorgeous. There are 2 Black actors (Lou Llobell, Leah Harvey) and at least 2 queer actors (Lee Pace, and Harvey again), in the main cast. Lee Pace is so pretty, he struts around a lot and it seems like they make excuses to show him naked or nearly so.
There are some nice themes of embracing change and listening to Black women.
There's a particular hard Sci-Fi itch that this scratches: there are space ships of several types, a space elevator, a robot, a beautiful water planet, cool costumes.
The bad: This has Prestige Drama vibes, and they went too far with that, so it's heavy, nearly humorless, and way too slow. It is also sometimes confusing because it moves around in time. And it's not gay enough; the main relationships shown are hetero ones. I have some issues with the way the characters insist that clones are the same person, and we haven't seen people expressing a counterpoint to that, but maybe the show will eventually get there. (Clones are not the same person and this seems super obvious to me given that identical siblings exist fairly commonly in our world).
The ugly: There are some disturbing moments and images that seem to want to show us that the Emperor is capable of great evil, and again they go way too far with that, particularly when he describes to a person how he is going to torture her. Gross!! Then there's occasional body horror. Plus a whole sub-plot about a "defective" clone, again why.
So, a mixed bag. Overall I am finding it enjoyable enough to continue. I read all these books and many more Asimov books as a teen. I don't remember them well enough to compare to the show. Most of Asimov's work doesn't translate well to the screen because it's cerebral, more about the ideas than the characters, and for me was about the way it opened up ideas in my head. That was such a fantastic feeling of expansion!
Professor Hari Seldon has developed "psychohistory", math that can predict patterns of future society, and his math has predicted the fall of the galactic empire. To counter the chaos that will follow, he creates the Foundation. The story here is complicated, focuses on a number of different people and places, and thus is rather difficult to summarize.
The good: It's just extremely beautiful! The blues and golds and teals!. It's well lit and gorgeous. There are 2 Black actors (Lou Llobell, Leah Harvey) and at least 2 queer actors (Lee Pace, and Harvey again), in the main cast. Lee Pace is so pretty, he struts around a lot and it seems like they make excuses to show him naked or nearly so.
There are some nice themes of embracing change and listening to Black women.
There's a particular hard Sci-Fi itch that this scratches: there are space ships of several types, a space elevator, a robot, a beautiful water planet, cool costumes.
The bad: This has Prestige Drama vibes, and they went too far with that, so it's heavy, nearly humorless, and way too slow. It is also sometimes confusing because it moves around in time. And it's not gay enough; the main relationships shown are hetero ones. I have some issues with the way the characters insist that clones are the same person, and we haven't seen people expressing a counterpoint to that, but maybe the show will eventually get there. (Clones are not the same person and this seems super obvious to me given that identical siblings exist fairly commonly in our world).
The ugly: There are some disturbing moments and images that seem to want to show us that the Emperor is capable of great evil, and again they go way too far with that, particularly when he describes to a person how he is going to torture her. Gross!! Then there's occasional body horror. Plus a whole sub-plot about a "defective" clone, again why.
So, a mixed bag. Overall I am finding it enjoyable enough to continue. I read all these books and many more Asimov books as a teen. I don't remember them well enough to compare to the show. Most of Asimov's work doesn't translate well to the screen because it's cerebral, more about the ideas than the characters, and for me was about the way it opened up ideas in my head. That was such a fantastic feeling of expansion!
no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-29 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 03:30 pm (UTC)Like you, I have fond memories of the Big Ideas from my teenage reading. Thanks for the content notes so I can avoid the show.
If there's enough source for it, I'd love a naked-Lee-Pace vid.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-29 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-29 11:00 pm (UTC)I’m always amazed at just how tall he is — a stallion among the puppies.