The Leap

This sets things up well for season 2. There were still a few meh lines here and there, but I love what they did with this episode, especially the Empire storyline. It's nice to see Gail's get some more solid movement as well.

This is the best show in the world. I can't wait for season two. 450 million dollars well spent, the show is beautiful, in a few years, when a viewer finds himself seeing it all in one breath 4-5 entire seasons will be catapulted into a new world. The world of Foundation. Thanks Apple.

...the 'not the book' and 'whaaaa they messing up the robots!!!' crowd continue in their inchoate rage, swarming the place, instead of just letting those who actually understood Asimov's corpus just enjoy the show..

The Zeroth Law of Robotics , the most important Law for Giskardian robots, was phrased multiple ways:

'A robot may not harm humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.'

'Humanity as a whole is placed over the fate of a single human.'

'A robot must act in the long-range interest of humanity as a whole, and may overrule all other laws whenever it seems necessary for that ultimate good.'

That is why Demerzel can kill. Try to keep up.

The First Crisis played out as in the books, but with a lot of fleshing out that Asimov didn't bother with (not a criticism of Asimov - he realised that and worked assiduously to rectify it, something Not The Bookers seem wilfully blind to - seriously, listen to the official podcast and wipe the scales from your eyes: Not The Books is just silly).

And a thoroughly nasty Empire is being destroyed from within. By the Zeroth Law, while decent humans are being left to work out their future - so much so that even the Second Foundation found its own way, rather than Seldon's.

A fantastic, thoughtful and vibrant adaptation that deeply understood the books strengths *and* weaknesses.

More please, Apple.

As a fan of the novels, I'm very disappointed in Season 1. IF it had been advertised as 'inspired by" Isaac Asimov's Foundation, I probably would have given the whole season a 5 or 6 rating judging it on its own merits.

But, claiming to be "based on" Asimov's work, there are too many deviations. Demerzel as a robot was terrible. I had no issues with it being recast as a woman, same as with Gael and Salvor Hardin. Asimov's works were written in a male dominated society with a male target audience.

I'm issues were the fact that there is no way the original robot who developed and adopted the "zeroth" Law of Robotics would have directly killed someone. Salvor was a Trader, not warrior, who was noted for his anti-violence quote "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.". I'm also having a hard time w/ the Salvor/Gael relationship due to the similar ages of the actresses.

The jumping through time, forward and back made it hard to follow.

What happened to "Psycohistory"? This seems more about the Cleon's and the Empire.

As to the acting, I think the cast did a pretty good job of portraying what the script asked of them. I didn't necessarily like the acting, but it didn't really detract for me. The boring monologs did that for me.

The Foundation writers & producers should watch Amazon Prime's "Wheel of Time" Season 1 and read the books by Robert Jordan to see what "based on" looks like. Were there some changes, yes. But the Producer was very open with why he made that change. It will be interesting to see how much gets crammed into Season 1. There's enough material in each book to make several seasons out of, especially the later books, so there could be 15 seasons or more unless they cut out massive parts of the books. So far, this is much more faithful to the books that Foundation is.

I won't be keeping my Apple TV+ subscription beyond the free 12 months I got last year if this is the crap I get for $5/mo.

Once again the emperors story is the best part of the show. The rest is dross. Lee Pace holds the cameras attention. He carries the show.

The rest of the non Asimov story doesn't stand on its own. Frankly were the entire Foundation to have an accident the show would improve a lot.