Nick C

This series works fairly well as a big budget sci-fi show with many great performances and high quality production value, and if one were to only measure in that context then it would be an easy 4 or 5 stars, but this series was specifically marketed as an adaptation of Asimov's Foundation series and in that context it fails utterly. I can appreciate the creation of new cultures and religions to give a broader view of the varied peoples of the empire and I can understand the micro view taken by the storyline even though the original story was generally more macro in scope. But what I find generally objectionable was the apparent need to rewrite large swaths of the book's fictional history in a seemingly needless fashion, genetic clones and the romance trope between Raych and Gaal to name but two. I don't have any problem with changing the gender of certain characters but the fact that almost all the main characters were changed to females with the exception of Hari and the Emperor just stinks of overcompensation. But the most objectionable parts of this whole mess is the obvious display of Demerzel as a robot and the explicit reveal of the location for the Second Foundation. Demerzel's status as the last robot was a little known secret and he was always in the shadows, not in such an obvious role, in the original books, this implied status as a shadow emperor was always a far more compelling story element. And the mystery of the location of the Second Foundation was a key element in the later novels, but in this series it is simply tossed out as a few lines of dialogue. People can choose to defend this series since all adaptations make changes but this 'adaptation' changes so much that it isn't recognizable as the Foundation series anymore, honestly they should have just put a different name on this TV show.