this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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For All Mankind is the Star Trek prequel we should have had. Co-created by Ron Moore (Deep Space Nine, Battlestar Galactica), the show has a bunch of Trek alumni working behind the scenes. It features human drama (and sometimes melodrama), geopolitical diplomacy, sweeping cultural change and scientific adventure against the backdrop of a multi generational future history, starting with the first moon landing.
I'm going to tag on to this and say another more adult themed Sci-Fi trip you should take on Apple TV+ is Foundation. It is somewhere between GoT, The Expanse, and Star Trek. It is loosely based on the Foundation book series by Isaac Asimov. I highly recommend it.
If you have read the Foundation books, the series will piss you off. Not just because it has very little in common with the books but because it goes against what the books stood for. And the most interesting parts of the Foundation tv series are the emperor arcs, which are original and arent from the books.
It seems to me that the creator wanted to make a scifi series of his own but just used the Foundation name for branding, name dropping and some abstract story elements. And then try to marry all the elements with some inane movie alchemy bullshit.
I read the books and ultimately didn’t like them very much. I recognize their value but they just weren’t for me. I don’t remember a lot about them, enough, say, to get upset about how they changed this or that character.
And I found that show to be an utter mess. Just a mess. It’s a mess absolutely chock full of stuff. It’s a very beautiful mess. It’s a mess with amazing production values. But it’s still a hot mess. Forget adapting the books… what in the world is it about at all?? Ultimately it seemed to just get stuck on its emperor character and invented various struggles to take him down. Totally empty in the end.
Huh. Watched the TV show and haven’t read the books. It did feel a little odd in a way that was hard to put my finger on. Maybe it’s that? What’s the pitch on the books if they’re that different from what I see in the show?
What would you say the show is about? And not just the starting premise. Having seen the whole thing, what’s at the center?
I found it to be a huge morass of sound and fury orbiting an empty center.
I think the show has some decent themes that connect together alright. There's a bit of a free will vs determinism thing going on. A bit of what is a human/transporter problem with the robot, the emperor clones, and Harry's mind copies.
But there's also a lot of other noise that kinda makes the show too unfocused to properly explore those ideas. There's some war on terror/fall of Rome imagery. There's the weird religious stuff around the Church of Seldon. The mentalists wanting to put their leader into Gale's body, etc.
Some of the books are small stories that take part throughout the ages and have different characters. In the series they decided to have the same protagonists, so they went through insanely convoluted plot devices to achieve that and to move them around the place and have them being related.
But my real issue is that they really changed not only Hari Seldon's and "Demerzel"'s characters but what the series is about. They are kinda making it a religion and then say "oh it isnt a religion thing, it is just a tool, oh nvm, it is a religion, ha just kidding, not a religion or maybe it is". The foundation series is pretty atheistic in nature. And while religion is used(as a tool against the outsiders), the tv series makes Seldon a televangelist.
The tv series is full of deus ex machina and not even good deus ex machina. Maybe they felt the initial stories would appear somewhat simplistic and tried to modernize them and make them "edgy". Generally, 90% of the plot isnt from the books.
"Demerzel" is a couple characters combined from the books but ultimately she is the most important character of the show(well i assume so, because she isnt a 1:1 character from the books). And she cannot be religious.
Most of these issues could be solved by simply renaming the series and some story editing to make it tighter and less convoluted. You dont need to have the same characters be everywhere, at every period and be related to each other, it is silly and cringe, just like Rey ~~Palpatine~~ Skywalker.
I will still watch future seasons and the show has many stories and scenes that are great(most of the Empire stuff, which are original). But even without knowledge of the books, i feel those artificial story arcs that try to connect characters are bad.
TLDR : If the books are Star Trek TNG, the series is Star Trek Discovery
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent
I can't think of a better way to explain the difference between the books and the show then that quote.
Can you imagine Salvor of the show ever saying that?
This is the most parroted comment on this topic. Please actually say something original.
No.
Nice to see For All Mankind getting some love. Absolutely fantastic show, and definitely feels true to Roddenberry's vision.
Thanks. Downloading it now.
Yeah, I just signed up for Apple TV primarily for this show! Haven’t started it yet npbut that may be my weekend
I’m curious about The Foundation as well, since that was one of my favorite book series, but I just don’t see that working on TV
As others have pointed out, Foundation isn't a particularly faithful adaptation of Asimov's stories, but there good things in it. It might be more accurately titled Foundation and Empire IMO, because it focuses as much on the Empire side of the story as the Foundation. The first season was lopsided. The Empire plotline was compelling, the Foundation ones were... not. Haven't watched the second season yet, but apparently it's more consistent.
Thanks. It is still on my list to check out, but I’m giving it three months to decide whether to keep that streaming service. So far, I’ve watched some fantastic shows and movies, but do get annoyed at the lack of separation between what I’ve paid for and what they want to sell me.
I’m still trying to figure out how to browse: all too often I’m guided toward things that cost extra instead of the things I’ve paid for. At least as importantly, after watching something, why do I see so many potentially I terestng choices that I can never seem to find by browsing? It seems like the Home Screen only lets you browse a limited selection, half at extra cost, and you can only see the rest if you happen to watch some5ing they think is related
Man, FAMK was dragging its feet for me. Too slow, i could only force myself to watch the second episode before i stopped completely. Foundation however was damn good. Almost like Raised by Wolves but a different dimension.