TV Series· 2021· Science Fiction

Foundation

by David S. Goyer

Foundation: it draws on 1 recorded source.

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The works this one is recorded as drawing on.

Foundation

Book · 1951

AdaptationHIGH

Goyer's Apple series from Asimov's Foundation sequence. The most heavily restructured adaptation on this list, and necessarily so: the books are a series of talky, decades-apart episodes with almost no recurring cast, which is very close to unfilmable as written. What the series invents to solve that:

  • Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin become women and become continuing leads
  • The Cleon genetic dynasty, an imperial through-line the books have no equivalent of
  • Demerzel made central far earlier than the novels place her

What survives is the actual idea: psychohistory, the Seldon Plan, and a fall that can be shortened but not stopped. Filed HIGH because that idea is the work.

About the work

Foundation

A mathematician predicts the fall of a galactic empire and thirty thousand years of darkness, is exiled for saying so, and sets up an institute at the edge of the galaxy to shorten it. The adaptation invents a dynasty of cloned emperors so a thousand-year story can have continuous faces.