2021-10-17 10:38
Was watching the Foundation series this week. Not having read the books I have no concept of how closely it relates to Asimov's writing, though I can't imagine he wrote the characters with such diversity. The chronology has jumped around quite a lot in a rather bold way, sometimes jumping years at a time back and forth. This is anchored by three cloned emporers, such that Lee Pace can play different clones at the same general age over the course of a long time. By episode four there's also someone coming out of some kind of cryosleep, allowing one of the protagonists to also be the same actor many years apart. So far the effects are impressive and the plot is... ok. At times it feels like the characters don't clearly understand what other characters are saying. There's a whole primary plot about a mathematician who basically makes predictions for the future of society as a whole through his complicated math calculations. No matter how often he says its about large groups of people over time, everyone seems to treat it like everything he says is a true prediction and that his "plan" must be followed and blah blah, and it gets pretty religiously. Religion and religious like institutions wind their way through the plot, so far almost completely with a critical eye on them. The episodes have jumped around so much there isn't a lot of time spent with any individual characters (except the cloned emporers), except the female protagonist who gets an excess of narration about math (which starts to get tired pretty quickly). But it's interesting, and curious to see if it goes somewhere to overcome it's limitations. So far it has thankfully not had an excess of fighting, such that those that happen are more... important than if it were the norm.