I hope I'm wrong and that Apple sees value in producing wonderful, niche TV. But at the same time that's not really Apple's ethos.
Sometimes less is more.
I've read the "Second Foundation trilogy" written by other renowned sci-fi authors, as well as the later Foundation books written by Asimov. They had typical main characters with hero's arcs driving the story. I much preferred the originals.
Especially the first book. It's refreshing to read a story where events occur because of unstoppable historical forces instead of the superhuman actions of a hero.
If I wanted a story about a hero, I could read...well...just about any other book ever written.
Generally that takes the form of characters who experience things — ideally growing or changing in response, although many genres and formats don’t require that part. It’s unnecessary since part of the medium of television, unlike the novel, is people putting on a show to entertain you which is different from reading, an inherently more-individual experience. Part of what TV is selling is a group of people to hang out with every week. Generally.
Which is not to say always — shows like Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt proved the anthology format has a wide audience. But they had the advantage of a brand new paradigm each week, which creates a relationship with the show itself (but even TZ allowed the audience Serling).
Foundation def be done as anthology style episodes with some crossovers/overlap, but again practical realities make it difficult to guarantee narratively-necessary access to actors due to contract and scheduling factors, and you have the issue of both too big for standard structure and “not big enough” for a true anthology at its core. Not saying it couldn’t work it’d just be more difficult, which is not a quality that makes studios likely to invest.
Either way though, there are issues with the adaptation that are quite distinct from eschewing the episodic arc of the original trilogy. It's full of spiritual woo for one, which is entirely antithetical to Azimov's vision. It's also more than fond of sadistic violence. Azimov's whole method as a writer was to have smart characters solve difficult problems intellectually. 'Violence is the last resort of the incompetent' after all.
That recurrence that wouldn’t be possible for a Foundation series without suggesting characters themselves are repeating through time, which would seem to lean even harder into woo, which I’m sensing is not your bag.
On goodreads Foundation (which IMHO is not even among the best Asimov works) is rated noticeably higher than The Three Body Problem, and as a reader I feel it is justified.
If you take into account the novelty factor, it will probably sink to the average rating of mediocrity in a couple of decades.
Re: A hero's journey, hard disagree. There are numerous heroes in the original foundation series, and the later books have one very well drawn one - Golan Trevize, in addition to a host of memorable characters.
Rather put the money into an Apple Robot. The robot needs to have Eddye Cue eyes and that constant grin.
And there are extra characters who are not in the books at all.
So I'm pretty sure they're adapting heavily just to avoid the second and third book things.
It's a reddit link but some details in the comments and the original source did seem a bit tabloidy.
So my hope would be they would realize that, lean into it, and cut their other experiments or just not do movies as much.
I know for me anytime I see a new science fiction show on Apple TV I feel like it is at least worth checking out the first couple episodes, and I have not been upset yet.