Apple TV Foundation series review

A purist’s rant

*Image from Apple TV. No copyright infringement intended.

February 20, 2025

Categorization: Science Fiction

Where watched: Apple TV

Nonspoiler review because I didn’t (couldn’t) finish the series and thus wouldn’t be able to spoil it anyway.

Fair warning, this post is going to be a long grumpy post from an unapologetically purist goblin about all the things that Apple TV did wrong with the Foundation series source material.

I mean, I know I’m a purist, but out of a scale of one to ten (10 being the most purist (purest?)), I would say I’m only about an 8, like, I don’t even think I’m that bad.

Some things I enjoyed that took some liberties with the source material: Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (of course), Shadow & Bone from Netflix, and you know what? I only just realized I like the Breakfast at Tiffany’s movie just as much as the short story. Where would we be without the inclusion of the song Moon River, am I right? So no, I think it’s safe to say that I don’t just go off on a purist tangent when a movie or series is not exactly like the book.

What I can’t stand is when lesser minds will take a work of greatness and then tamper with it for no discernable purpose.

OK, maybe some of the things I will complain about in the Apple TV’s Foundation do have a discernable purpose eventually, but by the time the purpose is revealed, they have lost members of their audience who have read Asimov’s Foundation, haven’t they?

Pensive thoughts.

It only now occurs to me writing this that it is likely then that Apple TV did not give two turds about appealing to fans and stans (did I use that correctly?) of Asimov’s Foundation series. And why should they? The books were written (googles) in 1951 (dear Lord, I had not realized they were that old), meaning it is likely that their purist-leaning fan demographic is probably vanishingly small.

And yet this elder goblin must persist, because evil can only happen when good men (and women) do nothing.

Going back to my previous tangent – I have no problems with TV or movie liberties on a source work that are to make that work more understandable, relatable, or believable by modern audiences. To some extent, I will even allow small adaptations that make source work more exciting when translated on the visual screen (see Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King), as no doubt some liberties must be taken to evoke excitement in viewers, in the way that the book meant to evoke excitement in its readers. In fact, let’s take this a little further and say that when a part of a book intends to evoke a certain emotion in its reader, liberties can be taken so that the movie or series can evoke the same emotion in its viewer. Let’s be even more generous and say that we may allow liberties to be taken in a movie or TV adaptation so they can properly convey an idea to its viewer that the book intended to convey to its reader.

So exactly what emotion is the 3 clones (Dawn, Day, and Dusk, was it?) concept in Apple TV’s Cleon emperors supposed to take? Aside from it being, admittedly, a sort of cool concept, what was its purpose? Without even going to what emotion from the book it meant to evoke in the viewer, just tell me, what emotion was it supposed to evoke at all?

You may say that I am being too harsh and too much of a purist, but trust me, I wanted to love Apple TV’s Foundation series, and when I was first confronted with this 3 clone idea, I was taken in (into the ride of the first 6 and a half episodes, at least). I thought it symbolized perhaps the sterility and complacency of the Empire that was to eventually lead to its downfall, but after watching 6 episodes and seeing the beginnings of what looked like a weird psychotic love interest for one of the Cleons, I could not buy into this disbelief anymore. It had deviated too far from the source material for me to appreciate it. I was no longer watching the Foundation, I was watching some fan fiction of it that someone put together. That may be fine for some, but it was a definite no for this elder goblin.

Next up: Salvor Hardin. Now this just makes me mad. If men and women are for all intents, purposes, and modern beliefs equal, then why on Earth was it necessary to make Salvor Hardin into a woman, when in the book he is indisputably a man? What did that change have to do with literally anything in the series? And more importantly, why was Salvor Hardin demoted to being some border guard in the Apple TV series, when he was supposed to be the Mayor of Terminus City with corresponding policy-making authority that was CENTRAL to the book’s plot?

And lastly, what the flying saucers was that giant thing on Terminus that caused all those who came near it to faint? It has been some years since I read the books but I don’t remember anything like that. At first (again, me trying to find the kind, forgiving goblin I know is somewhere deep inside) I thought it was the Vault (with the Hari Seldon holos), so I persisted for a few episodes, but by, like I said, the sixth and a half episode, the giant thing was still there, still unexplained, still not the Vault, and so this combined with all the aforementioned annoyances caused me to lose interest in the series completely. Apple is not going to be able to notch this elder goblin’s details into its list of those who finished its Foundation series, no siree. They haven’t got my vote. This is a two wrinkly thumbs down, for sure.

For this goblin, Apple has no right (except for the legal right that they bought with tons of money) to use the word “Foundation” as the title to this TV series. It is completely misleading.

And now I have to wonder again, am I (and my fellow purist elder goblins) such a minority with such little market power that Apple can just take one of the most famous Science Fiction series ever written and say, “should we even try to follow this? nah… why bother”. But my question is, was there absolutely no way that they could have made the series that would appeal to the masses who haven’t read the series, without antagonizing those who love it? And what they did, was truly an act of war against me and my fellow elder goblins, who have been waiting for this classic to be translated to the big screen for decades.

And I don’t know if this Foundation series made money for Apple in itself, but only a few days ago there were news articles (like this https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/apple-tv-plus-streaming-losses-1-billion-per-year-1236344052/ ) that said Apple TV is losing USD1 Billion a year. That is a lot of simoleons. So perhaps something about their TV-making strategy is not sitting quite right with a lot of people.

A last word to the Estate of Isaac Asimov, which Estate is probably sitting on a pile of Apple’s money in some island and not caring what some grouchy elder goblins get up to on the internet, but it needs to be said anyway – you literally had one job, which was to protect Isaac Asimov’s intellectual property. Shame on you.