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Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

Graham Roland: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm3169366/

Enjoyed LOST and Fringe.

Jack Ryan seasons tended to start off strong, but then lose my interest as they got to the end. To be fair, that's also true of their source: the beginnings of Tom Clancy books are more interesting than their resolution.

We'll see.

Hopefully this doesn't go Altered Carbon and decide "This bit is too complicated for the audience, so we'll rewrite it." (Envoys were UN black ops used for civilian unrest suppression, some of whom defected, which was way more interesting than TV's "they're rebels")

Edit: What happened to Gibson being historically unwilling to sell media rights, after dissatisfaction with previous attempts?

And also, reference to the New Rose Hotel movie that was supposedly Gibson's fave: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0133122/

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Foundation is so awful it makes me sad. Fringe is one of my all-time favorites. Silo is pretty awesome. Jack Ryan was too Reacher (Krasinski was bad casting, and it felt like it was written by 16 yos).

I hardly know what to think…

I thought Foundation was great. A direct adaptation of the books would have been terrible, which is why nobody had done it yet. In case it helps, the companion podcast gives an episode-by-episode story of the changes - I agree with most of them, but can understand why they're controversial.

https://podcasts.apple.com/si/podcast/foundation-the-officia...

https://open.spotify.com/show/1SIqjOZcJrJSrpcDjI9fyy

The empire parts are done well, and a nice solution to not having the same characters around when the time jumps. The production and design is good (at least for space/empire parts).

But then they also made other characters move through time so that... because they are special, and only they can save the plan!

It _entirely_ inverts (at least what I remember being) the entire point of the book, that individuals aren't uniquely special. It makes "The plan" look like a plan that needed to be actively managed by the uniquely special people involved - the same people, because they travel through time actively managing it - rather than an actual inevitable projection of history.

This then completely undercuts anything special about the Mule because, oops, we already gave people superpowers, so now it's just a generic action badass dude we have to fight.

At this point you aren't adapting foundation, you are fan-fictioning it. I guess attaching the name gets you money though.

> "The plan" look like a plan that needed to be actively managed by the uniquely special people involved - the same people, because they travel through time actively managing it - rather than an actual inevitable projection of history.

It was a rather important, though not initially revealed, point in the original trilogy that the plan was a plan that needed to be actively managed, by uniquely special people (including, but not exclusively, the strongest telepaths that could be found and gathered.)

Revealing this before the Mule is a radical change to the structure of the story, sure, moreso than changing the nature of the specialness of the guardians.

Right, the radical change is showing the Second Foundation getting built (and it having interesting reasons, in part due to individual mistakes, why it is getting built very slowly in time) not that the Second Foundation exists.

It's definitely an interesting storytelling change, and probably for the better. Second Foundation in the books is very much a seat of the pants deus ex machina where Asimov seemed to write himself into a clever puzzle with no easy answer and cleverly solved it "at the last minute" with a retcon, then sort of took another trilogy and a half to complete the retcon and deal with the consequences.

> It makes "The plan" look like a plan that needed to be actively managed

The plan was managed to an extent. That was the second foundation's job. And if you read far enough, even that and the Empire before it was quietly tuned from afar by R. Daneel.

R. Daneel was a later retcon though.

So was Hari's exile to Terminus, which IIRC wasn't mentioned in the original stories that later formed the 1950's trilogy. That first part of the first book was written a few years after the original 8 shorts and IIRC contained things not at all alluded to in those shorts.

Thats an interesting detail I wasn't aware of.

It's in the book series though. So they did the rather sensible thing of not doing the sudden reveal, but slowly building the anticipation and understanding that there are people with immense psychic powers etc.

I mean, in the book series there's even the out-of-the-blue Mule without any retconning.

I haven't seen season 2 though

I have a philosophy here. I read a book, and see it on another medium? Well, I pretend it's an account by another person who was there.

If 5 people are in a room during a big event, and you interview them, you will get 5 different accounts. Where they were looking when the event happened, what their allegiances are, who their friends are, their background, etc etc all results in a different takeaway.

So I'm OK with change. I can live with it.

Yet, Foundation IMO was well beyond this degree of change. And very very important things were left out, and could have been told.

For example, Asimov constantly described a broken culture of innovation. How many no longer even understood how the machines around them worked, and maintained them by rote. How scientists would merely read old books and papers, and debate that, instead of engaging in new research. This was a strong theme, and a massive reason for the Empire to fall, yet there were only hints of it in the TV series.

This could easily have been in the series, but I really don't think many people on staff even read all the books, and it shows.

I'm a huge Asimov fan (read the Foundation series multiple times) and I couldn't make it through three episodes of the horrible Apple series. And no, it wasn't because of the changes they made, the basics didn't work either. The adapted story wasn't comppeling, the characters/actors weren't well chosen for their roles, the script wasn't good, basically, every part of it was subpar. It's like it was written and directed by someone who wasn't an Asimov fan and who never read the books.

It reminded me of Amazon's horrible Tolkien series (Rings of Power), that is, exceptional special effects, but everything else sucked.

I urge you to try and re-read the Foundation series as an Asimov fan. The books are... barely passable. With the exception of the first one.

People claiming that series is bad haven't read the books in a long times.

There are no characters. There are talking heads that speak at each other. Women are non-existent. Every single person is a knight without fear or reproach. Huge galaxy-spanning powers come and go in lieu of interesting ideas (first the Mule and the R. Daneel).

The TV series (at least season 1, haven't seen season 2) is the best that could happen to the books IMO.

They butchered the entire terminus plot line by making it a series of badly done, saved by dumb luck action scenes.

I enjoyed the other stuff, though it was more “inspired by the foundation universe”.

If you’re going to rewrite terminus, give us a hint as to how these people are going to wind up dominating the galaxy technologically.

I enjoyed what we got in Season 2 of the "Brothers" of the pseudo-religion going out into the galaxy and sharing Terminus technology with already technologically fallen behind worlds. I wouldn't have minded more of that. I think that was at least a small hint as to how Terminus is going to wind up dominating the galaxy technologically.

Agree completely. There’s no rule that adaptations have to be 1:1, indeed that’s usually a bad idea.

After the last two seasons the Empire is the only interesting thing so they might have well just got rid of the parts of the story that was in the book of foundation but that would be two people talking to each other …

I'm a huge fan of the books since childhood and hated Season 1. One big speech after another by some god/demagogue/mathematician. It took me months to bother watching Season 2 but was happily surprised to find it as good as Season 1 was bad. Not without flaw, for sure, but certainly more watchable.

> One big speech after another by some god/demagogue/mathematician.

You were a fan of the books, but disliked this? ;)

That seems strange to me -- I was meh about season 1. I watched the first (maybe first 2?) of season 2 and dropped it like a hot rock.

I hate-watched the first season just because I love Jared Harris and Lee Pace, held off on S2 but actually enjoyed it a lot more than the first one when I got around to it.

I think I enjoyed season 2 in part because I didn't have any expectations that it would be a faithful adaptation. I just enjoyed it for what it was. I think if I rewatched season 1 with the same attitude I'd probably like it more. It's a really solid SciFi show if you can just view it as its own thing and not constantly compare it to the books.

I watched season 1 with interest, but by the time I got an episode or two into season 2, I just couldn't muster the interest. Sounds like I should give it another try…

Has anybody here listened to the BBC drama version? https://archive.org/details/foundation-trilogy_bbc-radio_197...

I enjoyed it, but I haven't watch the TV series or actually read the books, so I no idea how it lines up...

I found silo to be about three times longer than the story warranted. Typical Streaming bloat.

Remember Magnolia? People said that was bloated.

It was a slow burn for sure, but I loved every minute of it.

Haven't watched the others, Foundation put me off doing so.

Why don't you like Foundation?

It’s antithetical to the books and it’s just painful, to me, to watch. I kind of like what they did with Empire in the first season, but only made it through two episodes of this latest season before giving up. I hate-read summaries of the rest of the season on Wikipedia and nothing I saw made me reconsider my choice. I’ll grant that Lee Pace is great but they stranded Jared Harris.

I think the number of people who read the books is quite small so they kind of had to pander to an audience that hadn't. I kind of enjoyed it but it is a bit...strange.

I read the books. But not many years ago like most people who claim to be Asimov fans or something. I went ahead and re-read the entire series before Season 1 was released.

Asimov is a horrible writer. The books are just bad (with the exception of the first one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39555390). And if you take the series as whole, what they did in the show is really good. Imagine springing the Mule or R.Daneel Olivaw out of nowhere like the books do?

Not the PP, however it seems Foundation is one of those series both the audience and the actors themselves must sort of adapt to. I didn't read the Asimov original books (well I started like 40 years ago but gave up after finding them boring in contrast to short and non SF stories by him) so I didn't have any expectations, and was mostly satisfied with the series that appears getting better and better with time. Definitely not a masterpiece, but quite good.

Foundation the books... doesn't have good characterization. At all. But, Asimov, so that goes without saying.

It does have some clever plot reveals, but at some point the "Ha! Little did you know this was the plan all along" becomes rote.

The failure in adaptations I see is not understanding why people liked the source and leaning into that.

It's not the window dressing / surface-level stuff that's too often mimicked: it's a more core, simple... thing.

To me, Foundation was about 'epicness across time'

But, if I wanted a better written version of that, I'd read the first 3 Dune novels.

The only somewhat valid criticism I've read is that it's not exactly like the book. I went in fresh to the show and loved it so much that I decided to start the books. I'm enjoying both and mostly agree with the adaption changes to keep some semblance of familiar characters over a story taking place over hundreds of years. But I can see how it can be jarring if you went in expecting huge cast changes constantly.

Some parts of the internet however dislike the adaptation because the main cast is no longer almost entirely male and really hate the skin color of some of the actors.

> it's not exactly like the book

It's very, _very_ far from the books. There's no point calling it "The Foundation". It's not even the same genre - how much action is in Asimov?

It's fine to judge it on its own and say it's good or bad, but then why the name? Basically for the tv show equivalent of clickbait. Which is why I hate it.

>It's not even the same genre - how much action is in Asimov?

An entire season of characters just talking about what happened instead of actually showing what happened would be painfully boring to watch.

I've only completed the first book, but thought the show did a decent enough job of having action while condensing the characters down so they could be available over multiple arcs for consistency for the contents of the first book.

People make a similar defense of Paramount's Halo.

>An emotionless supersoldier mary sue? It would never work as a TV series, we need to explore the spartans' emotions!

And so we get some garbage that misses what was beloved by fans and features Master Chief with his helmet off, being sad on the subway. Feels like it's written by people totally unconcerned with the source material, just like Apple-Foundation.

Unlike Apple-foundation, glimpses of what a proper Halo adaptation could have been exist:

https://youtu.be/XRMUYpH7bQk https://youtu.be/SyOAdrxlPVs https://youtu.be/40jdpzrpIps https://youtu.be/P63er_GRH1o

I'd trade the whole apple-foundation series for two minutes of content by people who cared about the books.

> An entire season of characters just talking about what happened instead of actually showing what happened would be painfully boring to watch.

Is this an argument that the series is the same as the books? "Any changes that are necessary are not really changes" or such? I didn't argue that the changes are unnnecessary, or even bad. Just that they exist, and they are many. Sure sounds like you agree with me.

> The only somewhat valid criticism I've read is that it's not exactly like the book

The Foundation TV show did not even have the same ethos, the same world-view, the same philosophical view of history as the books.

Apple wanted a big dumb heroic VFX-driven sci-fi saga TV show; and we can understand why. However, the source material that they chose is about history, and is actively hostile to the "heroic" view of history. It actually seems to be a critique of the heroic derring-do sci-fi of the day and the "great man" theory of history. (1)

It's like the showrunners did actually understand what the books were _about_, but decided to deliberately do the opposite. Maybe they actively hated the books.

I could not care less if they change skin colour or gender; or spice up the action scenes, updates like that are good, but IMHO this is by far the least of the problems with the _Foundation_ TV series.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory

A lot of Season 1 and Season 2 have been showing Hari and Gaal making huge mistakes. The Second Foundation is way behind schedule and probably going to be founded "in the wrong place" versus the books and almost seems like it won't be strong enough when it is needed to face The Mule. The "real" Hari ("Knife Hari") is shown to be a fallible slimeball just as much as the religion around the "fake" "Prophet Hari" gels around his seeming "infallibility".

I think to some extent the TV show is showing a variation of the timeline with respect to the rules of psychohistory: it doesn't account for individual actions (including/especially mistakes). I personally don't think it is trying to be a "Great man theory" version of Foundation, because so many of the "changes" are mistakes from the seemingly more "pristine" timeline of the books (or at least how we perceive them from how the Encyclopedia Galactica documented them).

I can definitely appreciate where that criticism comes from though, I appreciate that it is a valid point of view of the show. I just find it worthwhile to point out that I don't feel like the showrunners are as oblivious as that and I don't think they are intending a "great man" take on the show and at least in my reading of the show so far I do think there are other ways to read what they are trying to do, plus or minus the format constraints of trying to do it as a TV show with the contractual and budget/production reality of needing to keep some cast member stability from episode to episode and season to season.

Oh ok, anyone who disagrees with me is a racist. Nice fact based argument there thanks.

That's not what parent said. Some part have a problem with same characters are played by non white people or a different gender.

That's a fact.

Nobody said all who disliked it did because of the casting.

I hate this sort of "woke" argument. It's a way of shutting down valid criticism by portraying anyone who didn't like the show as a racist. I thought Foundation was a badly written show and poorly cast, but it had nothing to do with the gender or race of anyone, I just thought the cast mostly didn't give a shit, had never read the books, combined with a poor script.

But there were also people who criticized black female actors playing white male roles from the book, and that's not a valid critique if the gender and skin color isn't a necessary part of the role.

Besides, Asimov's book tend to have neither female characters nor people of color.

I think Foundation admits people of other races exist by book 5, in passing. And there are like two (maybe?) notable female characters in the entire book series.

So why are getting offended about call outs of actual racism if you aren't upset about the races of the characters?

The second part of your comment could have been anywhere in this thread, especially if you actually had specific complaints.

But you had to use the word woke and get angry, so you could pretend there haven't been racist comments about the show on the internet from the sci-fi community?

Pretending nobody is racist helps no one but actual racists from getting called out.

Oh I wasn't calling you a racist I was just saying that a lot of racists agree with you.

How is someone supposed to take that? Refuting an argument not made is either a great way to make a point or a great way to make someone really unhappy.

I'm not buying this argument that it is ok to dog whistle and don't really care about the feelings of people who want to engage in that activity.

If you're agreeing with their viewpoint but for a different reason, explain the reasoning.

If you don't feel like typing out a substantive comment, why would anyone want to read the comment you barely felt like typing out.

Dog whistling is like sealioning. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but it's the least worrisome and bothering thing on the Internet.

If someone is dog whistling they are effectively conceding the argument because they're too ashamed to make the case plainly. Just take the W. The alternative is to explain to someone (and some hypothetical audience) that you you know what's going on inside someone's mind better then they do.

And again - there are people who will literally say they are Nazi's. There are people who will make not dog whistle or beat around the bush argument but straight up I am not ashamed to say arguments for awful things.

If you like Foundation and disagree with the arguments that it's not good then engage the argument made - just saying that you think there's an unstated argument and you'd like to engage with that particular one doesn't really get you anywhere.

That first season of Altered Carbon was pretty fun ... the second not so much.

Woken Furies (the 3rd book) is my favorite of the trilogy, which is the other reason I'm salty about the Envoy rewrite, as it made reusing the plot impossible.

Perhaps once you reach 75 (76 in 3 weeks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson) you take a different view of media rights, what with your heirs not knowing how to extract maximum value.

> Jack Ryan seasons tended to start off strong, but then lose my interest as they got to the end. To be fair, that's also true of their source: the beginnings of Tom Clancy books are more interesting than their resolution.

To be fair, the Amazon Jack Ryan series is only related to Tom Clancy's in name(s) only. Loosely based on, Inspired by, or some other weasel words should be permanently affixed to the title screen.

On a tangent, I think the series Designated Survivor should be called Blatantly Ripped Off Clancy Plot

They track fairly closely with Clancy in tone and plot progression, IMHO.

To me, Clancy was always {interesting event} -> {discovery of unexpectedly serious implications of event} -> {race to uncover extent of implications, before it's too late}.

And I get why he converged on that! That's a banger plot, guaranteed to sell copies!

His earlier stuff bucks this trope (e.g. Red October and Red Storm Rising), but he was something of a different author in his more technically curious years.

To be fair, that's also true of Tom Clancy books.

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