Salvor Hardin has also been given a gender (and race) swap. Gaal is sent on a solo mission, Dr Seldon pops up now and then through holograms, but most of the action is set on Terminus, where a future leader grapples with the responsibility they’ve been given. Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) in a still from Foundation.Īfter a couple of episodes devoted to setting the table, Foundation branches out in such a dramatic fashion that you’ll need all your faculties in place (and possibly a doctorate) to follow along. The team will be sent to the remote planet Terminus, where they will carry out the mission, which would continue for centuries after everyone involved in its inception, including Dr Seldon himself, has died. He will put together a team of exiles whose only job will be to compile all recorded data to give future humans a leg-up, as and when they need to hasten the evolution process. He tells the Emperor that the impending dark age can be shortened, and he has a plan. And like most tyrants made insecure by the power that they wield, the Emperor of the Galaxy puts him to trial, and tries to coerce Gaal - the only other person capable of understanding Dr Seldon’s theories - to refute his findings.īut Dr Seldon has a trick or two up his sleeve. In a way, Dr Seldon is the ultimate voice of dissent. Trantor will fall, he tells Gaal gravely, and so will the dynastic rulers at its helm.

He isn’t as much worried about having predicted the future as he is that people believe he has. Unsurprisingly, it’s a discovery that hasn’t gone down too well with the ruling elite. Dr Seldon has crunched the numbers and learned that the entire galaxy is on the verge of collapse and will soon plunge into 30,000-year dark age. Now pronounced ‘Gayle’, she is a teenage prodigy from the fringe planet of Synnax, who accepts an invitation from the celebrated psychohistorian Dr Hari Seldon ( Jared Harris) to visit Trantor, the capital.īut moments after coming face-to-face with her idol, she is told that her being summoned was an elaborate rouse. For starters, it’s essentially told through the perspective of Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), a character who has received the now-customary gender-swap treatment in pop-culture re-imaginings. It tries its best to dumb things down, though. Spanning a millennium and juggling at least half-a-dozen narratives at any given moment, Foundation is suitably epic to behold, but has the emotional intensity of a lecture on particle physics. Cast: Jared Harris, Lou Llobell, Lee Pace, Leah Harvey, Kubbra Saitīlessed with the budget it deserves, Apple’s sprawling adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s seminal science-fiction saga Foundation is a story of Biblical proportions that might be too dense for lesser mortals to follow.

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