Three seasons, Apple TV+
The third season of Apple’s Isaac Asimov adaptation Foundation settles into cutting-edge filmmaking and beautiful colour design, quickly becoming compelling – if flawed – viewing.
Foundation’s premise remains recognisable from Asimov’s books. In the far future, Hari Seldon, a mathematician, hits upon a method of accurately predicting the long-term future and foresees the galaxy-spanning empire’s fall and thousands of years of barbarism. He is exiled for suggesting a method of limiting that dark age to a thousand years. He sets up the Foundation to navigate the chaos and save humankind. Of course, it’s never that simple.
At the start of this third season, the Foundation has survived two of Seldon’s predicted crises to become a legitimate political force. The military defeats at the end of season two mean the empire’s dynastic hold on galactic power has been waning for centuries. Each of the three cloned emperors harbour doubts about their nature, purpose and legacy. A new figure – The Mule, a psychic with a talent for conquering worlds – appears, challenging the existing order and the accuracy of Seldon’s maths.
The older actors – Jared Harris and Terrence Mann – steal every scene they are in. Lou Llobell as Gaal Dornick is the closest thing to a protagonist, and many of the supporting cast, including Laura Brin, Ella-Rae Smith, Isabella Laughland and Kulvinder Ghir, have played their roles to perfection. Game of Thrones’ Pilou Asbæk as The Mule embodies chaos, anger and psychosis all rolled into one.
Lee Pace – playing cloned variants of the same antagonist across different centuries – is sometimes magnificent as Brother Day, the principal tyrant and galactic dictator. At times he’s hammy, at others he’s boo-hiss villainy, revelling in needless cruelty and caring little for the individual when there’s a galaxy-wide dominion to maintain. Yet, his 170-mile barefoot pilgrimage in season two deepens his character, making him both more and less human. He is excellent in the third season as a stoner version of the same character, becoming sympathetic as he seeks out the courtesan he loved after she has her memory wiped.
Episodes continue to suffer leaps in narrative logic and are still marred by pointless voiceover. Storytelling has declined massively over the last decade or so and those faults are present here. The adaptation continues taking liberties with the original story, largely in the name of maintaining a consistent cast across a generational story. Many will take exception to the race and gender-swapping of key characters. And yes, protagonist Gaal Dornick embodies the biggest of modern storytelling clichés – the girl who is the key to everything.
The incompetent bureaucrats and petty tyrants are predictably all heterosexual white males. Everyone else is inexplicably diverse and gay – including, cliché of clichés, the sailors. Even the nun is called “Brother.” And the empire is secretly run by an enslaved female android. Androids, we come to learn, are matriarchal. The Mule twist at the end of season three, with its blink-and-you’ll-miss-it climax and plot reveal, ruins much that preceded it. The viewer’s ability to enjoy the show will depend on whether these contrivances can be overlooked.
Whatever one makes of these revisions, they unfold against visuals of such scale and precision that ideology seems almost beside the point. The aesthetics are beautiful – whichever version of Unreal Engine is being used, the visuals of endless inhabited satellites and worlds are breathtaking. The colour palettes, art direction and cinematography push the envelope of cinematic grammar. Little in either TV, streaming or cinema comes close to matching the look. Key sets and props owe debts to Hellraiser and Stanley Kubrick.
Perfect? No. Faithful to the books? Again, no. Suffers needless race and gender swapping? Yes. Stunning to look at and credibly executed? Without fail. Does it put everything else currently being produced in the genre to shame? Yes. Asimov’s books are the granddaddy of epic sci-fi and it’s nice to see an adaptation – however impressionistic – attempted. The showrunners should be congratulated for working out how to put the galaxy-spanning story on screen. The scale and scope of their vision make Villeneuve’s Dune movies look like a provincial footnote. Apple, can we have A Princess of Mars next, please?
If you can look past the narrative flaws and accept the show as an interpretation rather than a faithful adaptation, then this is cutting-edge modern filmmaking. Anyone who has tried to read the books must struggle with its ever-changing cast and Asimov’s dated prose style. The series avoids these issues, giving us likeable and hateable characters set against epic backdrops and futuristic vistas. Apple again proves itself the home of premium modern entertainment and streaming excellence. For all the noise and confusion of season three’s finale, season four can’t come soon enough.
Lee Russell Wilkes 