[Larrikin]

The only somewhat valid criticism I've read is that it's not exactly like the book. I went in fresh to the show and loved it so much that I decided to start the books. I'm enjoying both and mostly agree with the adaption changes to keep some semblance of familiar characters over a story taking place over hundreds of years. But I can see how it can be jarring if you went in expecting huge cast changes constantly.

Some parts of the internet however dislike the adaptation because the main cast is no longer almost entirely male and really hate the skin color of some of the actors.

[lucianbr]

> it's not exactly like the book

It's very, _very_ far from the books. There's no point calling it "The Foundation". It's not even the same genre - how much action is in Asimov?

It's fine to judge it on its own and say it's good or bad, but then why the name? Basically for the tv show equivalent of clickbait. Which is why I hate it.

[Larrikin]

>It's not even the same genre - how much action is in Asimov?

An entire season of characters just talking about what happened instead of actually showing what happened would be painfully boring to watch.

I've only completed the first book, but thought the show did a decent enough job of having action while condensing the characters down so they could be available over multiple arcs for consistency for the contents of the first book.

[boppo1]

People make a similar defense of Paramount's Halo.

>An emotionless supersoldier mary sue? It would never work as a TV series, we need to explore the spartans' emotions!

And so we get some garbage that misses what was beloved by fans and features Master Chief with his helmet off, being sad on the subway. Feels like it's written by people totally unconcerned with the source material, just like Apple-Foundation.

Unlike Apple-foundation, glimpses of what a proper Halo adaptation could have been exist:

https://youtu.be/XRMUYpH7bQk https://youtu.be/SyOAdrxlPVs https://youtu.be/40jdpzrpIps https://youtu.be/P63er_GRH1o

I'd trade the whole apple-foundation series for two minutes of content by people who cared about the books.

[lucianbr]

> An entire season of characters just talking about what happened instead of actually showing what happened would be painfully boring to watch.

Is this an argument that the series is the same as the books? "Any changes that are necessary are not really changes" or such? I didn't argue that the changes are unnnecessary, or even bad. Just that they exist, and they are many. Sure sounds like you agree with me.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> The only somewhat valid criticism I've read is that it's not exactly like the book

The Foundation TV show did not even have the same ethos, the same world-view, the same philosophical view of history as the books.

Apple wanted a big dumb heroic VFX-driven sci-fi saga TV show; and we can understand why. However, the source material that they chose is about history, and is actively hostile to the "heroic" view of history. It actually seems to be a critique of the heroic derring-do sci-fi of the day and the "great man" theory of history. (1)

It's like the showrunners did actually understand what the books were _about_, but decided to deliberately do the opposite. Maybe they actively hated the books.

I could not care less if they change skin colour or gender; or spice up the action scenes, updates like that are good, but IMHO this is by far the least of the problems with the _Foundation_ TV series.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory

[WorldMaker]

A lot of Season 1 and Season 2 have been showing Hari and Gaal making huge mistakes. The Second Foundation is way behind schedule and probably going to be founded "in the wrong place" versus the books and almost seems like it won't be strong enough when it is needed to face The Mule. The "real" Hari ("Knife Hari") is shown to be a fallible slimeball just as much as the religion around the "fake" "Prophet Hari" gels around his seeming "infallibility".

I think to some extent the TV show is showing a variation of the timeline with respect to the rules of psychohistory: it doesn't account for individual actions (including/especially mistakes). I personally don't think it is trying to be a "Great man theory" version of Foundation, because so many of the "changes" are mistakes from the seemingly more "pristine" timeline of the books (or at least how we perceive them from how the Encyclopedia Galactica documented them).

I can definitely appreciate where that criticism comes from though, I appreciate that it is a valid point of view of the show. I just find it worthwhile to point out that I don't feel like the showrunners are as oblivious as that and I don't think they are intending a "great man" take on the show and at least in my reading of the show so far I do think there are other ways to read what they are trying to do, plus or minus the format constraints of trying to do it as a TV show with the contractual and budget/production reality of needing to keep some cast member stability from episode to episode and season to season.

[zpeti]

Oh ok, anyone who disagrees with me is a racist. Nice fact based argument there thanks.

[croes]

That's not what parent said. Some part have a problem with same characters are played by non white people or a different gender.

That's a fact.

Nobody said all who disliked it did because of the casting.

[saberience]

I hate this sort of "woke" argument. It's a way of shutting down valid criticism by portraying anyone who didn't like the show as a racist. I thought Foundation was a badly written show and poorly cast, but it had nothing to do with the gender or race of anyone, I just thought the cast mostly didn't give a shit, had never read the books, combined with a poor script.

[croes]

But there were also people who criticized black female actors playing white male roles from the book, and that's not a valid critique if the gender and skin color isn't a necessary part of the role.

[troupo]

Besides, Asimov's book tend to have neither female characters nor people of color.

I think Foundation admits people of other races exist by book 5, in passing. And there are like two (maybe?) notable female characters in the entire book series.

[Larrikin]

So why are getting offended about call outs of actual racism if you aren't upset about the races of the characters?

The second part of your comment could have been anywhere in this thread, especially if you actually had specific complaints.

But you had to use the word woke and get angry, so you could pretend there haven't been racist comments about the show on the internet from the sci-fi community?

Pretending nobody is racist helps no one but actual racists from getting called out.

[hackeraccount]

Oh I wasn't calling you a racist I was just saying that a lot of racists agree with you.

How is someone supposed to take that? Refuting an argument not made is either a great way to make a point or a great way to make someone really unhappy.

[Larrikin]

I'm not buying this argument that it is ok to dog whistle and don't really care about the feelings of people who want to engage in that activity.

If you're agreeing with their viewpoint but for a different reason, explain the reasoning.

If you don't feel like typing out a substantive comment, why would anyone want to read the comment you barely felt like typing out.