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I just binged the first 3 eps and wow, this was way better than what I was expecting (as a books nerd). I love the weird clone trifecta Empire, the space elevator was cool, and the adaptation makes sense for screen pretty well. I just hope the production company is willing to commit to 8 seasons 
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Oct 5, 2021 00:27
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D-Pad posted:Well what about his blue eyes that he briefly showed to the Anacreon captain. To me that implied he was secretly letting her know he was on her side? Did I read that wrong? I think that was just a throw-back to the weird blue space pilots from the first episode. He's a space traveler, after all.
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Oct 9, 2021 06:43
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Cojawfee posted:I also have an issue with that somewhat and I'm wondering if it's just because it's dumb or if it is an artifact of how things were in the 50s. It's more about (book stuff spoilered just in case) how big the Galactic Empire is, End of Eternity and the robot books kind of make the point that psychohistory would need a whole lot more human beings to exist than are just on Earth or the "Spacer" colonies before it'd be viable. Rappaport fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Oct 11, 2021 |
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Oct 11, 2021 06:31
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^efbBoris Galerkin posted:My problem is that where the characters say “math” what they really mean is “astrology.” The show would be watchable for me if they would say astrology instead of math to be honest. This show has FTL drives, Empire's personal force shield thingy, heck even the "turn people into fine paste" - gun is a bit questionable, physics-wise. Why can't mathematics be a part of techno-babble? In Asimov's day, psychohistory was just as much of a fantasy as a positronic brain. And it seems that what is seriously called psychohistory these days has little if anything to do with Asimov's ideas. I understand if it's a personal line, I just can't really see the difference myself, as a third-rate mathematician.
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Oct 11, 2021 14:06
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Arglebargle III posted:It's more complicated than that. In this setting, in the Empire's deep past like 20,000 years ago, class divisions in the first few waves of human settlement on other worlds produced very different cultures as those colonies grew into maturity. The colonies founded on AI slave labor were more like modern microstates - playgrounds for the rich and famous where labor was expendable. But their populations stopped growing and their high standards of living became extravagant. Basically everyone could afford to live like a prince with robot slaves tending to their estates. They became these idyllic park planets "ruled" by useless billionaires, but really controlled by the AIs running them. Long post about ancient history, show-wise, from the Robot novels: In the Empire's distant past, and our somewhat-near future, the Robot novels take place on Earth. Earth is a crowded, somewhat dystopic place, and the human off-world colonies, the "Spacer" worlds, have utilized robots to create idle paradises for their inhabitants. Earth doesn't really like robots near humans, and robots are associated with the decadence and air of superiority the Spacers show towards Earthmen. Spacers don't even want to be in the same room as Earthmen! Additionally, the Spacer worlds have effectively blocked Earthmen on Earth, no new colonization has happened in centuries, and to make matters worse, Earthmen live in "caves of steel", massive sprawling domed cities, never seeing the sky. Not really great prospects for space-going frontieerspeople, basically. Then the novels happen, the Spacers back off (a little), and some Earthpeople begin colonizing new worlds again. Because robots are associated with the haughtiness and decadence of the Spacers, no robots are allowed on the new, non-Spacer colonies. The way I recall it working out from there is that because Spacer-worlds and the new colonies want absolutely nothing to do with each other, eventually contact just ceases and the beginnings of Empire just sort of... Forgets the Spacers ever existed, along with the existence of robots. Obviously the show deviates from this since the residents of Empire seem to be aware of what robots are/were, and there were robot wars, even.
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Oct 31, 2021 03:35
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Jerusalem posted:Also "exo.... maybe they jumped outside of the galaxy and meet strange aliens out there!" felt like an incredible stretch out of nowhere. I'm gonna go ahead and guess weird alien parasite that takes over bodies because gently caress it why not go full Event Horizon? Book spoilers, although at this point it seems these won't have anything to do with this show The written-40-odd-years-later sequels (still by Asimov himself) end with Demerzel/Daneel wanting to merge with a highly advanced psychic/telepathic/whatever child in order to live long enough to oversee the creation of 'Galaxia', a galaxy-wide telepathically interlinked humanity in a kind of psychohistory 2.0. The aim of this project is to prepare humanity for any potential alien intruders from other galaxies. Now, even within the Foundation book series time-line this is several centuries after Hari Seldon was alive, so it'd be pretty... Wild that the 
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Nov 5, 2021 10:43
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The soft vs. hard sci-fi discussion is interesting, but that isn't the main problem with this show, IMO. The problem for me isn't a magic FTL drive, or mathematics that could give accurate predictions of the behaviour of collectives of trillions of people, hell even telepathy could be OK, the problem is that everything outside the Empire's Palace is aggressively stupid. Salvor and her coin flips seem to indicate she's in fact the cousin of Teela Brown from Ringworld, and innate luck was pretty dumb there too, but here, whoo boy. Gaal can just see the future now, because ???? And yes, Hari predicting the actions of individuals with magical mathemagics was already lame, but now he's uploaded himself to be a real cyber-boy after all and honestly I'm not even sure what is going on with that plot-line anymore. Everything about the Anacreonians was stupid one way or the other. For the first half of the season, roughly, the mysterious And now with the Space Pope Election plot-line, even brother Day has had some fairly dumb things going on, and never mind Demerzel. Even though the trek along the spiral was interesting, the whole vision business, just ugh. e: put some book spoiler tags just in case! Rappaport fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Nov 6, 2021 |
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Nov 6, 2021 20:57
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Those goons' continued lives weren't necessary for the further personal/plot development of  Yes, I am extremely  that this show shamelessly steals from every sci-fi franchise except the one it's named after 
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Nov 8, 2021 07:51
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Rutibex posted:I guess thats too complex to explain for a TV show "You must travel sub-light, for I am Empire, and I am a cruel despot, mwahahahaha!" vs. "I will give you the shittiest hyperdrive in the galaxy, and you will have to make a pit-stop every 3 light-years, and your trip will take MANY YEARS in this tin-can of the stars, for I am Empire, and will see you leave without fuzzy dice, mwahahahaha!"
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Nov 9, 2021 02:17
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 Now the thread is doing it. It's a minor plot point in one of the Ringworld sequels that the protagonist can't read, because computers read everything aloud to humans in their society...Phenotype posted:I can't wait til this show is finally over so I can read the books. I got em a few weeks back but I figured I might as well wait and not spoil the show for myself, and at this point I'm eager to find out just how terribly this whole thing was adapted, just from all the complaints I read in the thread. I made myself wait til I finished season 2 of the Expanse before I read the books (at the time, the most recent season) and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the show adapted the material, even exceeding the quality of the books in a lot of places. I'm guessing I won't be thinking that here, though. Please post your trip report, I'm curious how this goes the other way 'round. At this point I'm fairly convinced you can't spoil yourself too badly with book lurnin', the show has diverged fairly massively from the "OG source" material. And conversely, has already name-dropped the Second Foundation and the Mule, so good luck making  -level plot twists after that, show-writers! 
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Nov 9, 2021 23:12
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CainFortea posted:I mean, there's not really anything in the books that even tries for that. Except for one thing waaaay later, like outside of the og trilogy. I know, it was a dumb joke, since the show seems to be trying very, very hard to crib all the worst aspects of popular TV shows, so why not go for smoke monster levels of dumb while they're at it. Crib all the popular aspects of popular TV shows in the worst way? Ugh, either way.
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Nov 9, 2021 23:28
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Phenotype posted:Okay so I'm halfway through the first book and What the gently caress? What the fuccck?? Why did they make such a plodding, meandering show out of such a fun little book? All along I've been like "I dunno guys it's not that bad, is it? 
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Nov 12, 2021 01:39
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" and it's just that they decided to make a weird generic uninspired sci-fi show and decorate it with stuff from the Foundation books like tinsel on a Christmas tree. poo poo, I would be pissed too. The show is just such a pointless deviation from a really streamlined little story and basically every deviation is for the worse. This is like The Watch for Asimov fans.
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Honestly, Hari just coming out of the box at the end, I'm Jerry Seinfeld just getting out of the theatre right there, just give me a new season of For All Mankind, there is no way of redeeming this nonsense.
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Nov 13, 2021 12:29
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My problem with this show is still that it constantly undermines its own premises, and it's just all so dumb. Just, dumb. Nothing about Salvor's plotline makes any sense, aside from being a vessel for "space people going pew pew pew", the entire ranting scene from Seldon falls so flat, and on top of that he is some combination of space wizard and hologram I suppose? Rutibex posted:
Childhood's End is very watchable, it has the Game of Thrones man being the Devil, kind of, and for what it is the CGI/makeup is good
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Nov 20, 2021 05:53
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Red Fructidor posted:Yer a wizard, Hari Thread title, please?
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Nov 20, 2021 07:05
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We've now had two brothers Day act in ways that are guaranteed to make them less liked, because they want to be feared I guess, and the show could use it more effectively to show the empire crumbling, but they also sort of want us to think Empire is cool, so it got side-tracked into weird parodies of the Sopranos. And whatever it was that happened with the space pope election plot. Clone Plot is still the best part of the show, but that bar is pretty dang low. At least all the Cleon infighting and scheming makes thematic sense, since Cleons are awful people, but the show is kind of all over the place actually following through with it. Starting out with planetary genocide is fine I guess, but then just randomly murdering 1,500 people, in an empire with trillions of people seems a bit... Low-scale? Obviously it's personal for the Cleons, but they sort of downgraded from space tyrant to petty mobster stuff.
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Nov 21, 2021 15:45
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Nitrousoxide posted:That only puts it at a little less than the density of Maryland. Foundation was written mostly in the 40's, when the global population was what, around 2 billion? Maybe we can excuse Asimov's imagination a little. Book spoiler, I guess But more importantly, the book underlines the point of Trantor's reliance on surrounding farm planets, another thing that IIRC the show just ignored. It was meant to be a very fragile system, which was one of the dangers of the empire going into decay. I suppose it is unrealistic today when we're at least trying to feed billions of people, but in the book it's more about all the dangers facing the empire and the coming Collapse.
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Nov 22, 2021 04:51
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Jerusalem posted:Have Brother Day fall through a wormhole and land on Mars just in time for season 3 of For All Mankind, only he has amnesia and the entire season is about the Commies and the Americans trying to convince him he's from their country so he'll join their respective Mars Basketball Teams in time for the Olympus Mons Games. Please don't ruin For All Mankind, it's the best show out there 
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Nov 29, 2021 02:39
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This show would be vastly improved in season 2 if it had a free-roaming Jeff Goldblum just mocking absolutely everything 
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Nov 30, 2021 18:31
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BetterLekNextTime posted:I’ve recently re-read Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation after not reading them for maybe 20-25 years. They actually held up a little better than I expected. They generally aren’t what you’d call exciting and sometimes get a little monologue heavy but they are quick reads and I mostly liked the style of writing. I wouldn’t say they are must-reads but I also wouldn’t discourage someone from giving them a try. The comedy option is to read the full Foundation series, where after the first three Asimov gets horny. It's tame by sci-fi standards, but still. I think I've actually last re-read the Daneel and Elijah Baley novels, and there's some horny in there, but Elijah at least resembles a character.
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Apr 11, 2022 19:14
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Rutibex posted:I read those novels as a teen and I remember Elijah Baley traveling to a spacer world where some scientist woman was having sex with her own father? This was fine because in their culture every baby is raised by the government or something. It was hosed up Are you conflating Naked Sun and Robots of Dawn? In the first one, there is a weird planet with a complete taboo on personal touch, but Gladia isn't married to her father, and in the latter, she has a relationship with a robot. e: Wait no, I'm misremembering, it's told in Dawn that Han Fastolfe had sex with his daughter in the past. Dang. But it's also implied that Fastolfe is a bit weird, and his daughter resents his behaviour. Either way, if you aren't familiar with Robert Heinlein, sci-fi classics have some messed up horny stuff in them! Rappaport fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Apr 11, 2022 |
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Apr 11, 2022 21:24
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Pham Nuwen posted:I just read these books so let me see if I can remember... Fastolfe was a weirdo who raised his own daughter, when all other children were raised in government nurseries/schools. When she reached whatever age the Spacers considered appropriate for sex, she asked Fastolfe to be her first but he refused, which made her hate him IIRC. drat, that's right, I misremembered twice  Thanks for the correction. It's terrible that Asimov was a sex pest, but I'm not sure the horniness was the point in his fiction, he seemed more interested in exploring weird societies. Earth had weird customs, Solaria had weirder customs, and even Aurora, supposedly the most enlightened Spacer world, was weird. Now that we're talking about this, I wonder if the Spacer-Baley novels would be 'easier' to adapt than Foundation? The stories themselves are just detective novels in weird places, cast Chris Meloni as Baley and I dunno, Tom Hiddleston as Daneel and just let them play the stories as presented.
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Apr 11, 2022 21:53
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Chairman Capone posted:The Bantam Spectra paperback covers in the 1990s clearly used Alec Baldwin as the basis for Baley and Odo from DS9 as Daneel. Those are my childhood memories too for both characters! But Bailey is supposed to be at least somewhat ugly, or rugged, and Daneel is meant to be a beautiful Spacer boy.
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Apr 11, 2022 22:27
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bawfuls posted:the peak of this show was the space elevator collapse, it was all downhill after that The Cleons were the only interesting thing about the show, and they're the only thing that's not at-least-name-lifted from the OG material But the space elevator collapse was incredible, too bad it was in the middle of an otherwise terrible show.
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Dec 3, 2022 05:35
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The Baley books are the best IMO, even if there's some inevitable 20th century sci-fi author sex weirdness involved.
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Dec 3, 2022 07:01
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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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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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Xealot posted:Yeah, I tend to fall on whether or not the people adapting a property care about engaging with the themes or setting earnestly or not. It's funny Starship Troopers came up, because I'd definitely call Verhoeven's take "disrespectful," but Verhoeven obviously understood the source text and chose to satirize it on purpose. Heinlein was a fascist and Verhoeven had something to say about that, which I'd call a pretty earnest engagement. This point is somewhat under-cut by Verhoeven himself stating he never managed to read Starship Troopers, but the movie turned out as great satire anyway so who are we to judge. Foundation the teevee series is fairly clearly an original story with some Asimov-names plastered on, but that story isn't really going anywhere interesting, and more importantly as you say has nothing to do with what Foundation the series of stories was about.
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Dec 10, 2022 07:14
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The trailer had a very angry space doggo in it. I'm... Conflicted. I mean this won't have anything to do with Foundation other than the names at this point, but I'll watch the adventures of Paces, Lee as they try to defeat the immortal hologram of Space Gandalf, I mean Seldon. And maybe they'll even kick-start the Actual Antagonist From The Books story-line this season, too! They could (BOOK STUFF) take the deception about his physical appearance at face value, that'd really crown the "interpretations" this series has been doing  Also, shout-out to The Man From Earth, I watched that again just recently and that's a great little movie.
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Jan 9, 2023 05:42
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:the mule will be another cleon clone played by lee pace and we'll have a shirtless cleon v cleon wrestling match because god dammit they know what we want from this show at this point.  Rectal Death Adept posted:I can't even speculate what the antagonist would be like since this is so different from the Foundation story itself. I'm certain they will use the name for an antagonist, and I'm equally sure it will be something ridiculous. Open Source Idiom posted:Look, I'm happy to watch more of the show tbh. Some of last season was crap, but I'm really not keen to see the thread turn into something super hostile to moderate or positive opinions, which is my concern going forward. I will watch this show too, and I certainly don't mean to be disrespectful to anyone who finds the show compelling on its own merits (somehow?), but there's a difference between being hostile to fellow goons and making fun of a show called Foundation, smacking name-tags from the novels on characters with very loose, at best, connections to the original work, and then making an action hero series out of them, as filler for their admittedly not-half-bad-show about the Clone Emperor dynasty. That's the show we got, and we all gotta live with it!
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Jan 9, 2023 07:07
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Just-In-Timeberlake posted:Apparently you're going to have Lee Pace fighting monsters if this trailer is anything to go by That is still going to be a thousand times better than anything that comes out of the Terminus plotlines. Also, was there a flying lady in the trailer? What is that about? Maybe I should read the novels again.
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May 11, 2023 20:39
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He'll be the Phoenix Jean Grey from the X-men, only he conquers worlds. He'll be talked down by a hologram Hari Seldon, and they won't cast him as a spindly man-spider like he is in the books. There could be an interesting on-screen adaptation of him saying incoherent and weird stuff, and still amaze political leaders, since that was his only super-power. But I do not think this show can explore that in an interesting way. Just make it all Cleons, please.
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May 12, 2023 19:06
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Just-In-Timeberlake posted:I find it hysterical that you all keep describing Elon Musk Elon is a proven moron, but it helps that his audience often is comprised of morons too. The Mule in the books is a sinister and subtle manipulator, and that isn't Elon. But since this show is what it is, if they do a Mule, he'll be some kind of mixture of Elon and Tucker Carlson.
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May 12, 2023 19:12
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Nude Cleon is nice, but was he loving Daneel in the start of that? I'm... Not really okay with this 
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Jul 11, 2023 00:09
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dpkg chopra posted:I hope Daneel has a big ol’ dick and pegs Cleon just to annoy you I wouldn't be surprised, this show does seem to take the weirder aspects of Asimov's writing and turn them into something even dumber. And Daneel's twin was used as a sex toy slash lover.
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Jul 12, 2023 01:53
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stephenthinkpad posted:Watching from work....I have completely forgotten the first season but I am down with the Naked Lee Pace Saga. Yes, the robot lady is Daneel from the robot (I don't remember if he's in I, Robot) series of books with Elijah Baley, the detective.
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Jul 15, 2023 01:09
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D-Pad posted:I mean the real reason is that there isn't any executive in the industry who will put that big of a budget behind an original scifi show but will take the risk for an existing IP. Its dumb but that is where we have gotten to. It's the same in the game industry. I don't disagree with this at all, but my question is, who exactly is the big market for this idea? Asimov is one of the big three, sure, but how popular are the big three these days? I realize us goons are olds now, but why exactly does it seem safer to make a show that isn't actually an adaptation of the IP except in name only, rather than make Three Cleons loving Around and Lee Pace Is Naked A Lot show? I just don't understand it.
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Jul 16, 2023 08:20
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To point 1: R. Daneel Olivaw lived, if a robot can be called 'alive', a point in Asimov's writing to boot, for thousands of years under different names, sometimes, such as Demerzel, but Daneel was most established in the so-called robot series of books, where he and a human being from Earth, Elijah Baley, solved crimes together. There's a couple of scenes with Daneel at the very end of the Foundation books, too, and he's probably in the not-so-good prequel Foundation books somewhere, too.
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Jul 16, 2023 14:22
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Data Graham posted:I mean this isn't even the first time this has happened with Asimov, right? That "i, robot" movie with Will Smith was (if I remember) a completely unrelated story that someone decided to repackage as the Asimov story because everybody was suddenly buying Roombas from iRobot Out of the big three, Clarke was the only one who got a decent shake at movie adaptations of his work. And Clarke worked with Kubrick, too. Heinlein's stuff is probably mostly unfilmable porn, but I would definitely be interested in a genuine-to-text adaptation of the Daneel and Elijah novels from Asimov. Instead, we get... This.
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Jul 16, 2023 14:57
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I still get the heebies from the scene where they torture the brain bug Outside of the porn novels, maybe Moon is a Harsh Mistress could be filmed sort-of straight-up, but these days it'd just end up being some sort of chud parable of Trump taking over against the "liberal elite". Ugh.
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Jul 16, 2023 15:14
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