Falling Down
Asimov’s seminal sci-fi series Foundation gets a deluxe adaptation from Apple TV+
THIS YEAR MARKS THE 70th anniversary of Isaac Asimov’s landmark science fiction series, the Foundation trilogy. Consisting of Foundation, Foundation And Empire and Second Foundation, the trilogy went on to earn Asimov the Hugo Award for “Best All-time Series” in 1966. To this day, they’re still considered mandatory reads for serious science fiction readers, with Asimov weaving the epic, thousand-year history of a Galactic Empire facing its certain demise.
Exploring deep, intellectual, mathematical and existential issues, Foundation has always been categorised as a challenging read, as well as deemed to be virtually impossible to adapt because of its structure, scale and scope. But, as is now becoming commonplace with a lot of sci-fi literature, that isn’t the case any more because technology – especially visual effects – and streaming television have cracked what were once thought of as impossible stories to tell in compact movies.
In 2018, Apple TV+ bought the rights to Foundation as a series, with David S Goyer (Krypton) and Josh Friedman (The Sarah Connor Chronicles) developing it. Friedman left in 2019, with Goyer executive-producing and showrunning the 10-episode first season.
For Goyer, the third time was the charm with the Apple TV+ adaptation of Foundation, as he twice passed on adapting the book over the last 15 years. “It is a very intimidating adaptation,” Goyer admits to Red Alert. “The two
prior times were adapting it into a feature, and I didn’t think it could be done as a two-hour or three-hour film. It wasn’t until shows like Game Of Thrones, with these really complex novelistic, sprawling epics, were taking hold in streaming, that I started to think maybe this is possible.”
With a story that takes place over 1,000 years, Goyer says it took a good amount of time to crack the non-linear structure of the books to make that work for an episodic narrative. “I knew that there would be time jumps in the show,” he says. “And I told everyone at the very beginning, you have to embrace it. I often would say to Apple that time is a character in the show, so we jump forward, we jump backwards.”
Goyer then had to warm up the books, because they are incredibly concept-driven, rather than character-driven – which is the hallmark of great TV. “The series is renowned because it’s full of all these really heady ideas,” Goyer says. “It’s the first piece of science fiction that the world took seriously, but it’s not particularly emotional – and I think Asimov would have been the first person to admit that. It’s a series of books about ideas and philosophy. But people don’t tune into a streaming show just for ideas. They tune in for emotion, they tune in to find out what’s going to happen to their favourite characters.”
Selecting the best character to walk audiences through the world of Foundation became crucial, and Goyer ultimately decided on Gaal Dornick (played by newcomer Lou Llobell), whom the series recasts as a brilliant young female mathematician from the insular and deeply religious world of Synnax. An outlier amongst her own people, Gaal wins a mathematical competition hosted by Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), the renowned mathematician and creator of the algorithmic science known as psychohistory, and travels to the heart of the galaxy Trantor to study with him.
“It made sense, certainly for season one, for Gaal to be the point of view character,” Goyer explains. “She’s never been off her home world. She’s never been on a spaceship before, or known much about the Empire. And so I decided she’s going to travel like a country mouse to the big city. We’re going to learn about the state of the galaxy, and learn about the Empire and psychohistory, and all of these crazy things, through her eyes.”
She’ll also be swept up in the backlash to Seldon’s announcement that his equation foretells that society is doomed. “He predicts the Empire is going to fall, and he says, ‘There’s literally nothing you can do to stop it. It’s too far gone. I can predict it with 99.999% accuracy. But… there’s still a non-zero chance’.”
Goyer explains the show’s central conflict: “There could be an inflection point that could revolve around a single individual that could create a butterfly effect and change the outcome. It’s in that little fuzzy area, that non-zero chance, that all our characters get to play. That’s where they feel like: maybe I can do something that can affect change, and create these ripples that are going to propagate out through all of humanity.”
Foundation’s first three episodes drop on Apple TV+ on 24 September. The rest follow weekly.
It’s the first piece of science fiction that the world took seriously