Foundation

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

When something is so good, you fear critiquing it ... when something brings you only joy, you hesitate to bring a critical eye to it. You just want to cradle it. Protect it. The thought of covering its beauty and perfection with something from Baby Gap is anathema to your being.

I think of the original Star Wars and its explosion into the zeitgeist. Sure, it's a hokey B-movie plot, but it's also genius. It represents the consummation of idea and cinema that birthed millions of science fiction lovers. How do you review something that moved human consciousness?

I think of the spiritual perfection that was Battlestar Galactica. How subplots sometimes overtook the original's main themes, but what kind of monster are you to bring it up? Or Netflix's Bodies or Amazon's The Expanse. Apple TV's For All Mankind, and how the last aired season left us full but starving for the brilliance of the first two seasons. In these there feels like there is no room for critique, just adoration. Just enjoyment in its purest form. Game of Thrones (Shut the fuck up about the final season. You can not comprehend how good that series was.) The Godfather. The Sopranos. Six Feet Under. Station 11. All movies and television that so beautifully captured the worlds they inhabited you want to only breath in their newborn smell. Fuck your review.

So it is with Apple TV's Foundation series, now starting its third season. I speak now to the most devout science fiction lovers, to those raised in its language, instructed in its brilliance and caressed in its embrace as a mother her child. I speak not with hyperbole, but profundity.

I speak not to the critics of adaptations that stray from the original's canon. "Run back to your 'bible,' you sap!" I speak not to "Murder Bot" sycophants that tip their toes into the genre of Science Fiction ala Avatar and anything Marvel these days. Nay, I speak to the true lovers of science fiction and I say to you: Watch Foundation, episode 1 and 2 of the third season now airing on Apple TV.

The series is based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, a masterpiece that ponders the fall of man and what it would take to save it. It is an award-winning tome. My love for the Foundation books has no bounds, but the series isn't written by Asimov, you twats. So what if the statistician's symbol Mu (which you erroneously mispronounce as 'Mew') isn't mentioned. Shut the fuck up, you Luddite. This is art.

The writing, acting, cinematography, and special effects of the TV series are pure enjoyment for me. It's one of my top 5 visual adaptations of a science fiction novel. It stars Jared Harris, a brilliant casting decision, as Hari Seldon, a mathematician and the creator of Psychohistory, a predictive algorithm that can be applied to the chaos of large complex systems like humanity. Harris' performance is a case study in knowing more than the audience, and playing with that knowledge like a Circue du Soleil juggler: throwing art and magic and visual delight with more and more dexterity the more frequently you watch his performance. I've watched season one three times (starting my fourth in anticipation of Season Three) and each time I'm more amazed about how much foreshadowing Harris can throw in a simple eyebrow lift.

Lee Pace, a stunning specimen of a man, isn't afraid to show off his God-like physique. He portrays the God-like persona of Day, one of three clones representing the Empire: Dawn, Day, and Dusk, an obvious analogy of the Trinity. The clone dynasty has existed for thousands of years, so Day, Dawn, and Dusk are played by multiple actors showing their empire's reign at various ages of the empire and the emperors. But it's Cassian Bilton, Terrance Mann, and of course Pace that fully embody the Empire's cruelty, a trade off for peace. All give performances that rival any Oscar contenders in any year. Profundity, not hyperbole!

The empire is crumbling, as predicted by Seldon. And when it does fall, so does mankind, into a darkness not unlike the barbarian ages, and Seldon predicts this dire age will last longer than the Empire itself. So, it is this belief - that the fall is inevitable, but the length of its effects is not - that drives Seldon in both the books and the series, the series making the Seldon character more aggressive than Asimov's pacifistic rendering.

Laura Brin, as the Empire's long-devoted servant Demerezel, is as frightening as she is beautiful. Leah Harvey as Salvor embodies the naivete of hope that Asimov instills so adeptly and which the series does not fully realize, too caught up in the visual gluttony of CGI. Harvey, like hope, is an indomitable spirit, a Phoenix in a much-needed desert of fire. But it is Lou Llobel as Gaal who has captured the heart of the novel, in my opinion. She is astounding in her role as a pawn to Seldon's predictions, and the embodiment of what it means to be human - something that can feel so elusive in this adaptation with it's violence and destruction. Her love of Raych (Alfred Enoch) is heart breaking and beautiful.

With the start of the third season, I am now rewatching the first two with just as much awe and enthusiasm as I had when I first read Asimov's brilliant novels.

Go watch it. And don't be a goober by saying things like: "But the book . . .".

Let me know your thoughts if you do watch it.

Five out Five Stars