Foundation

With so many big ideas and complicated storylines involved, Foundation does at times feel a little muddled, because the drawback to having a number of simultaneously running narratives. ... But that ultimately serves as a compliment to the series as a whole; that as big as its scope is, the viewer still gets hooked into individual characters, wanting to know their fate.

“Foundation” sometimes falls short of that same lofty ambition, but there’s more than enough here to make it a universe well worth occupying beyond this initial season-long glimpse.

Foundation’s debut season is a breathtakingly bold undertaking that will dazzle just as much as it confounds, and lays its own foundation for what may prove the most ambitious television yet.

Yes, it can be self-indulgent, meandering and more complicated than need be. But that feels somewhat inevitable, given the scope of the task at hand. That “Foundation” is otherwise nimble and engaging, even for those unfamiliar with the work that first inspired it, is down to its willingness to buck the Cleons’ line of wisdom and change with the times.

Even as Foundation stumbles throughout its execution, it still maintains a grip on the unconditional hope of its characters. But with an inconsistent timeline and innumerable technicalities, this epic series may take more than mathematical prophecies to grip viewers into watching week to week.

In spite of its sporadic shortcomings, the ambition of the series is exciting itself. If it finds the audience that it was made for, could very well become another landmark series for Apple TV+.

By the end of the eight episodes provided for review, Foundation has very much started to reward the effort and developed a habit of ending episodes with breathless cliffhangers that practically dare viewers to stop watching.

For the uninitiated, early episodes of Foundation can be a chore to get through, let alone understand. (Be prepared to replay scenes in order to catch snatches of rushed, whispery or conceptually opaque dialogue.) Which is a particular shame considering how beautiful every single frame looks. ... The storytelling improves markedly beginning in the fourth episode. ... We shouldn’t have to sit through hours of TV that makes our heads spin to get to stuff like this, that entertains and challenges us. But in this case, the patience does pay off.

“Foundation” jumps back and forth in time and from one world to another as it breaks into myriad storylines. It does initially seem a bit too enthralled with bloated world-building but things pick up as they splinter.

It’s an interesting approach, although some of these micro stories are stronger than others.

As a new sci-fi show, it would be fine. As a big-budget, flagship production for Apple it looks like a fine opportunity wasted.

This curious political unit raises interesting questions about individuality and if progress is possible without fundamental change, and it's the main source of fun in the show. ... Alas, the rest of the series lacks the spark of the royal court drama and often feels like a slog. While things get much more entertaining in the back half of the season, you may not want to trudge through Foundation's own dark period to get there.

The results stride with a sense of purpose, pomp, and grandeur; individual scenes are small enough to cut through the excess, but the excess is nearly stupefying.

You might need an antacid - or whatever would remedy the tonal whiplash as Foundation meanders from cerebral contemplation of mankind's fate to a standard-issue shoot-'em-ups involving warring planets. [11 - 24 Oct 2021, p.11]

Not much about Foundation sticks, either emotionally or narratively. There are cause-and-effect relationships between one event and another, but they’re stretched across long-attenuated frames, spun out over distances that are short enough to roughly remember there was a relationship there, but too long for that relationship to retain any urgency or heft.

Despite a deep bench of acting talent (including Lee Pace, who heads up the trio of clone brother emperors) the writing itself lets them down time and again. Not one line of dialogue grabbed my ear as clever or memorable. Very few distinct personalities pop out.

The 10-episode first season looks appropriately epic but struggles to tame a centuries-spanning, complex plot that feels lost in space -- dazzling to look at and confounding to follow.

“Foundation” is more consistent than “Wolves,” but less magnetic because of its concessions to sci-fi expectations. It could have been better, if only, like Hari Seldon’s disciples, it had faith in the plan.

Across the full 10-episode season, no hour of Foundation passed without multiple breathtaking compositions or pieces of well-considered visual world-building. Still, I needed more mind games and machinations, fewer literal tapestries and more tapestries of woven galactic history. The show provokes myriad instances of technical appreciation, yet rarely finds a way to be truly provocative.

The individual parts of this Foundation equation add up to something that’s very pretty and slightly dull. Asimov’s books have long been considered impossible to adapt. This version is a noble effort that can’t quite solve the problem.

Jam-packed with action, the pilot sets the stage for big set pieces in future episodes, but they never happen. Instead, we get decades-long spaceship trips and a lot of talking. “Foundation” rarely builds momentum, abandoning story lines for too long before picking them back up. Once you notice the story is going nowhere, other flaws become apparent.

The series attempts to rescue the novels from their atomic-age limitations but largely squanders its material on a clone of every other blockbuster fantasy quest. ... The larger problem is that Goyer’s “Foundation” seems bored with its source material.

Foundation is a plodding, confusing tale of a civilization’s triumph over its almost certain doom. We’d love to see the parts that show the story’s humanity and hope, but the first episode was just too boring to draw us in.