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The show also made psychohistory (and by extension mathematics) into literal magic powers, which is the opposite of the message of the book(s) and indeed is the reasoning behind the Big Bad that appears later in the story.
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Dec 5, 2022 06:39
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Also Psychohistory is supposed to simply predict broad future trends, that empires will rise and fall within a given space of time that includes centuries, and such. Even in the text of the show Hari says exactly this, but then he also can predict that this person will do exactly that at this moment when this happens, or that these exactly people will be standing here at this exact time. It contradicts itself within the show. Not only that, a big part of is that one person can't change history, that things move too grand a scale to alter the way things are going, but again, the show has exactly the opposite happening. This is why the Mule was such a threat in the books because he was, I don't know, invisible maybe, to Pyschohistry due to his powers. It failed to account for someone with his mental powers appearing and completely changing what would have been a predictable march of time. When the Muledoes show up, he's going to be throwing people around and shooting lightning out of his hands like he's the Emperor or something, i just know it.
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Dec 5, 2022 06:54
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twistedmentat posted:When the Muledoes show up, he's going to be throwing people around and shooting lightning out of his hands like he's the Emperor or something, i just know it. The only thing dumber I could think of is the mule turns out to be Gal all along, who leads a cult of her religious zealots from her homeworld who revere her as 'the sleeper' on a quest to destroy all technology in the galaxy starting with psychohistory, her biggest threat!, so its probably a toss up if its that or lightning hands.
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Dec 5, 2022 07:16
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twistedmentat posted:Also Psychohistory is supposed to simply predict broad future trends, that empires will rise and fall within a given space of time that includes centuries, and such. Even in the text of the show Hari says exactly this, but then he also can predict that this person will do exactly that at this moment when this happens, or that these exactly people will be standing here at this exact time. It contradicts itself within the show. Not only that, a big part of is that one person can't change history, that things move too grand a scale to alter the way things are going, but again, the show has exactly the opposite happening. This is not meant to be a defense of the mess of a show that we got, and the inconsistent message within this show itself was its own kind of unsatisfying, but even if the show were otherwise good it would have to struggle with that contradiction. I'm not sure how you make a compelling modern TV show that's about the grand scale of social forces, and has all its characters just being swept along by forces outside their control, without making the characters and their stories feel useless and unsatisfying. Actually, wait, no, I think I'm describing Andor. Andor nailed that balance between driving social forces and compelling individual stories.
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Dec 5, 2022 08:20
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Eiba posted:I'm not sure how you make a compelling modern TV show that's about the grand scale of social forces, and has all its characters just being swept along by forces outside their control, without making the characters and their stories feel useless and unsatisfying. The Wire
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Dec 5, 2022 08:29
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Eiba posted:I think this whole premise works better in a series of short episodes in a book. If you sat down for a prestige TV show and followed all the action and drama of the characters going around trying to do things and then the twist at the end was that the heroes literally could not fail because of historical forces outside of anyone's control, it's going to make you wonder why you spent so much time with these characters and their struggles. In the books my memory is you didn't really spend all that much time with it. Just enough to understand the situation and see their perspective before Seldon popped up to explain how there was only ever one possible outcome. It was a fun puzzle, but not compelling drama. Kind of an anti-drama actually. I think this is one of the biggest strengths of the books, and would translate well into a prestige show in particular because (book spoilers) it lulls you into the sort of anti-drama you're talking about, where the heroes can't fail, and at the end of each bit he pops up with a pre-recorded message to tell them he knew it all along and they couldn't have failed, for a book and a half. Then the Mule comes out of nowhere, all of a sudden the recordings are saying the wrong things, and the characters and reader realizes oh poo poo, everything went off the rails. If you don't build up that repetitive sort of anti drama and you were instead on the edge of failure the whole time, the Mule is just yet another threat like all the others. He's no different from the Huntress if the viewer and characters aren't feeling 'cocky' about their place in the story.
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Dec 5, 2022 09:07
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twistedmentat posted:Also Psychohistory is supposed to simply predict broad future trends, that empires will rise and fall within a given space of time that includes centuries, and such. Even in the text of the show Hari says exactly this, but then he also can predict that this person will do exactly that at this moment when this happens, or that these exactly people will be standing here at this exact time. It contradicts itself within the show. Not only that, a big part of is that one person can't change history, that things move too grand a scale to alter the way things are going, but again, the show has exactly the opposite happening. To be fair Asimov himself abandoned Psychohistoy as a concept when he found out about Chaos Theory. Its not a very well developed concept.
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Dec 5, 2022 10:02
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Eiba posted:I think this whole premise works better in a series of short episodes in a book. If you sat down for a prestige TV show and followed all the action and drama of the characters going around trying to do things and then the twist at the end was that the heroes literally could not fail because of historical forces outside of anyone's control, it's going to make you wonder why you spent so much time with these characters and their struggles. In the books my memory is you didn't really spend all that much time with it. Just enough to understand the situation and see their perspective before Seldon popped up to explain how there was only ever one possible outcome. It was a fun puzzle, but not compelling drama. Kind of an anti-drama actually. Yeah, Foundation should have been done super rapid pace. One hour long episode per short story. We should have been complete all three books by the end of season 1. But that would be hell on budget, and you can't have any actors the same between episodes. Not impossible, Black Mirror does it
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Dec 5, 2022 10:06
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Season 1 should have been the whole first book, roughly 2 episodes per "era" in that book. They didn't do this because it would have meant a different cast of characters every 2 episodes. But if they'd had some faith in the writing and production, they'd get rewarded with two books worth of characters to follow closely after that. Or they could spread the first book out over 2 seasons maybe. But getting only to the first crisis in the first season is way too slow and was obviously done so they could use the same cast the whole way. Casting choices are also clearly the driver behind the Immortal TimeLord Wizard Hari Seldon poo poo too, although even that seems stupid because you'd still get Hari showing up every couple episodes to give a speech which is about all they're using him for now anyway. bawfuls fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Dec 5, 2022 |
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Dec 5, 2022 17:37
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Rutibex posted:To be fair Asimov himself abandoned Psychohistoy as a concept when he found out about Chaos Theory. Its not a very well developed concept. It's a concept that Asimov came up with for a short story when he was like 20. It's admittedly a pretty cool concept, which is why he kept coming back to it for so long (and why we're still talking about it 80 years later), but it was never intended to be a real-world scientific theory. And besides, in one of the prequel books, there's mention of the "achaotic equations" that handwave the entire chaos issue away, just like the Heisenberg compensators do for the transporter in Star Trek.
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Dec 5, 2022 18:33
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Is there legal grounds to sue Apple for naming the show Foundation and claiming its tied to the book?
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Dec 5, 2022 18:40
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Wafflecopper posted:The Wire Tom Guycot posted:I think this is one of the biggest strengths of the books, and would translate well into a prestige show in particular because (book spoilers) it lulls you into the sort of anti-drama you're talking about, where the heroes can't fail, and at the end of each bit he pops up with a pre-recorded message to tell them he knew it all along and they couldn't have failed, for a book and a half. Then the Mule comes out of nowhere, all of a sudden the recordings are saying the wrong things, and the characters and reader realizes oh poo poo, everything went off the rails. If you don't build up that repetitive sort of anti drama and you were instead on the edge of failure the whole time, the Mule is just yet another threat like all the others. He's no different from the Huntress if the viewer and characters aren't feeling 'cocky' about their place in the story.
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Dec 5, 2022 19:18
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Kramering ITT to ask if we've gotten the Mule in this show yet? I kind of lost interest quickly so I don't know how far the story has progressed.
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Dec 5, 2022 20:54
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lol He just ... tweeted it out
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Dec 5, 2022 20:55
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Mister Speaker posted:Kramering ITT to ask if we've gotten the Mule in this show yet? I kind of lost interest quickly so I don't know how far the story has progressed. Maybe some mule foreshadowing?
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Dec 5, 2022 20:57
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Mister Speaker posted:Kramering ITT to ask if we've gotten the Mule in this show yet? I kind of lost interest quickly so I don't know how far the story has progressed. When the Mule does show up I assume they’ll be seeing the future without psychohistory, and like breaking rocks by yelling at them , and saying things like “The sleeper has awakened” or “I am the ersatz haderach, a completely novel concept invented by David S Goyer,” based on how the show has been going so far.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:12
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The Mule is going to be an actual Mule
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Dec 5, 2022 21:14
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I hope the Mule has powers like Vegeta and the second foundation has to send their most powerful psychic warriors to defeat him in cosmic battle
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Dec 5, 2022 21:14
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Eiba posted:Honestly that's the other one that came to mind when I was trying to imagine a show that did all that. Andor seemed more relevant as a space opera, though The Wire obviously did it a lot better.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:29
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Mister Speaker posted:Kramering ITT to ask if we've gotten the Mule in this show yet? I kind of lost interest quickly so I don't know how far the story has progressed.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:31
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bawfuls posted:The season finale was the First Crisis, so at this rate no, not for another several seasons. But they'll probably shoehorn it into next season in some ham-fisted way. Certainly doesn't seem like a show thst is doing to be beloved on season 7 to warrant a season 8.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:51
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From what little has been announced for season 2, it seems like it's going to incorporate at least parts of the last three stories in Foundation, and the first half of Foundation and Empire.
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Dec 5, 2022 22:15
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no surprise, they'll rush into the Mule storyline and surely mangle that as well
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Dec 5, 2022 22:17
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I'm surprised they would rush the first part of the second book into a season with all the other stuff. They seem to want to drag things out and the whole Bel Riose saga could easily be stretched by prestige tv writers into a whole season. They combined the first 2 crisis into one for the show, and i assumed they would combine the traders into 1 season, then do the first part of Foundation and empire in a season 3. my guess is they'll just basically dumpsters all the trader stuff (dropping the whole tech religion kind of negates what the point of what the traders was and what they solved) beyond the basic concept that traders exist, and combine the traders with the empire war into one big thing and it will be solved by gal and hardin teaming up to travel to trantor and killing the emperor or blowing up a mcguffin I guess if you just do the traders there isn't a lot for Lee Pace to do.
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Dec 5, 2022 22:32
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Looking at the credits, it seems like the first season was a pretty fraught production. e.g. Jane Espenson, a writer, coming in for a producer credit on the eighth episode and the eighth episode only. I'm wondering if we'll see something fairly different in the show's second season.
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Dec 5, 2022 22:36
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I think the main problem with adapting Foundation is that it was written in a time where science fiction characters hopped in a spaceship and warped off to the stars and today's science fiction is more about characters in grimy overalls in the bowels of the ship talking about how the engines aren't working right
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Dec 6, 2022 02:08
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Eiba posted:Honestly that's the other one that came to mind when I was trying to imagine a show that did all that. Andor seemed more relevant as a space opera, though The Wire obviously did it a lot better. Yea I really like that idea. It would be way more compelling to throw a huge curveball when you think everythings just going so well than mystery boxes that exist for the sake of it. MarcusSA posted:The Mule is going to be an actual Mule Not going to lie, when i read Foundation for the first time when i was like 15 that's what I imagined.
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Dec 6, 2022 02:26
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I was weird and read Foundation's Edge first because I found a copy at a used book sale, and for some reason I was under the impression that the Mule and Hari Seldon were the same person. Which I wouldn't put it past the show to try and do!
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Dec 6, 2022 02:40
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I think the main problem with adapting Foundation is that it was written in a time where science fiction characters hopped in a spaceship and warped off to the stars and today's science fiction is more about characters in grimy overalls in the bowels of the ship talking about how the engines aren't working right And Sci fi is worse for it.
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Dec 6, 2022 02:55
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Chairman Capone posted:I was weird and read Foundation's Edge first because I found a copy at a used book sale, and for some reason I was under the impression that the Mule and Hari Seldon were the same person. Which I wouldn't put it past the show to try and do! Wellll... there _are_ two digital copies of Hari Seldon floating around now so the show could decide to turn one of them into The Mule.
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Dec 6, 2022 03:12
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Seems like the show is already setting up Gaal or Salvor to be the Mule which is uhhhhhhhh real dumb
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Dec 6, 2022 03:20
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Hillary 2024 posted:Wellll... there _are_ two digital copies of Hari Seldon floating around now so the show could decide to turn one of them into The Mule. Oh god... what if this is why there are 2 Seldon ghosts made through completely different means? Thats so stupid you're probably right.
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Dec 6, 2022 03:42
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Tom Guycot posted:Oh god... what if this is why there are 2 Seldon ghosts made through completely different means? Thats so stupid you're probably right.
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Dec 6, 2022 04:29
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Peachfart posted:And Sci fi is worse for it. There is an author named Jack McDevitt who is still cranking out the very milquetoast 40's/50's/60's sci-fi of people in flowing robes pressing buttons on giant computers before they hop into capsules that hyperspace them across the galaxy but he's in no way as popular as your Expanse or your Andy Weir books
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Dec 6, 2022 04:40
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I think the main problem with adapting Foundation is that it was written in a time where science fiction characters hopped in a spaceship and warped off to the stars and today's science fiction is more about characters in grimy overalls in the bowels of the ship talking about how the engines aren't working right Even under this paradigm, a lot of classic sci-fi could still be adapted to the formula. If we just look at the other 2 from the "big three", Clarke had one novel that's a straight-up disaster story, and something less esoteric from Heinlein such as Methuselah's Children could make for a mini-series that focuses on the normal Joes of the Families, which the story already does anyway. The problem with Foundation is that it's a series of stories about politics, or in other words a bunch of people talking about things for the most part. And since each story snippet takes place in a different era, you'd need an ensemble cast that changes every couple of episodes. As bawfuls pointed out, this is certainly doable, and eventually the story would get to a point where you could have a season's worth with the same main folks, but to get there you'd have to make people invested in the political drama of the galactic under-dog colony slowly power-creeping its way to a local power. And obviously the creators here were also interested in what happens at the Imperial centre, which is very incidental to the stuff on Terminus for a long while. We do have political drama shows, but those tend to focus on the characters and how they're assholes and/or relatable, but maybe that's a hard sell when you add a sci-fi sticker to it. The fantasy equivalent at least has dragons in it, and those are visceral things, having space ships go WHOOOOOSH in the background probably doesn't have the same inherent punch to it.
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Dec 6, 2022 07:08
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a M.U.L.E. can be configured to harvest Energy, Food, Smithore
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Dec 6, 2022 08:48
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According to io9, Foundation has already been renewed for a third season.
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Dec 9, 2022 19:10
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Chairman Capone posted:According to io9, Foundation has already been renewed for a third season. 
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Dec 9, 2022 20:12
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I wonder if Jared Harris already scrammed to the next project, leaving this series high and dry figuring out how to go on without him.
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Dec 9, 2022 20:35
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Combat Pretzel posted:I wonder if Jared Harris already scrammed to the next project, leaving this series high and dry figuring out how to go on without him. I'm surprised he hasn't been snatched up for an MCU or Star Wars project yet.
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Dec 9, 2022 22:01
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