‘Foundation’ Series Premiere Recap: The Beginning of the End

“It will all work out, Raych.”

“Everything is dying.”

“That doesn’t mean it won’t all work out.”

That, in a nutshell, is Foundation, the new science fiction series from creators David S. Goyer (the journeyman genre storyteller of Dark Knight Trilogy fame) and Josh Friedman. Adapted—in some cases very loosely—from the landmark series of novels by sci-fi godhead Isaac Asimov, Foundation is a story about people anticipating the greatest calamity ever to befall humankind, and choosing to look at it as a glass-half-full situation.

Foremost among these forward-thinking individuals in this premiere episode (“The Emperor’s Peace”) is Professor Hari Seldon, played by Jared Harris (who if you’re a fan of Mad Men or The Terror or Chernobyl is probably the reason you’re tuning in to begin with). Seldon is the founder and seemingly sole practitioner of a new field of mathematics called psychohistory, which concerns itself with predicting the future behavior of large populations. The galaxy-spanning Empire in which he and some eight trillion other humans now reside is the subject of his study, and unfortunately for all of them, he has some bad news: The Empire is dying, its capital world of Trantor will lie in ruins within 500 years, and some 30,000 years of war and barbarism will follow.

Keep in mind here that “psychohistory,” though a compelling little neologism, is a bit of a misnomer. This isn’t about either psychology or history, except insofar as they inform Seldon’s impenetrable calculations. This is math, people, and math never lies. Humanity is doomed.

Unless, that is, Seldon is allowed to carry out his plan for its future survival. Brought to trial for treason by the triumvirate Emperor (about whom more later), Seldon rebuts the prosecutor (played by Star Trek/Game of Thrones vet Alexander Siddig) and puts forth a plan for a Foundation on which the devastated human race can rebuild—an “Encyclopedia Galactica” that will preserve all knowledge and help reduce the coming Dark Ages from 30 millennia down to just a thousand years. As harm reduction goes, it’s a pretty swell idea.

But to pull it off, Seldon will need help, and that’s where our audience-identification character Gaal Dornick comes in. Played by Lou Lllobell (like many characters from the novels, Gaal has been gender-swapped), Gaal is a prodigy-slash-refugee from a far-flung world where science and math are deemed heresy. Somehow, she entered and won a contest to solve a famously impenetrable equation, or something, called Abraxas, which brought her to Seldon’s attention. Having removed the distinctive “prayer stones” that dot the faces of her people, she is transported via “jump” technology (she awakens from forced sleep in the middle of the process just to observe the passing stars, at which point benevolent robots knock her back out again) to Trantor.

There, she’s greeted by Raych (Alfred Enoch), Seldon’s other main protégé. Through them, we take in the technological marvel that is Trantor: a world almost entirely encased in a human-made dome, beneath which are hundreds of layers of planet-spanning subterranean cities. The planet is linked to its spaceport by a massive construction called the spacebridge—essentially a gigantic elevator that transports travelers to the surface via a 14-hour descent.

Once she arrives and meets Seldon, however, she’s informed with almost comical speed that he and she alike are most likely going to be arrested the next day. Seldon will stand trial for his heretical thought, but Gaal’s arrest is primarily a smokescreen; as the person who solved Abraxas, perhaps only she can understand, and subsequently debunk, Seldon’s findings about the future of the Empire.

This is all of keen interest to the Emperor, er, themselves. In a big departure from Asimov’s novels, the ruler of the galaxy is here presented as a trio of clones of the same original Emperor, “decanted” at different stages of life. Brother Dawn (Cooper Carter) is a child, tutored in the ways of ruling by his elders Brother Day (Lee Pace, the leading edge of the triangle) and Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann, an unexpected treat for fans of his theater work). When Brother Day isn’t busy greeting visiting diplomats from the various belligerent barbarian kingdoms at the Empire’s edge or disintegrating palace servants who’ve dared to read Seldon’s work, he takes a keen interest in the psychohistorian’s trial, apparently broadcast live to the whole world(s?); not exactly how I’d handle a heretic whose ideas I want to suppress, but hey, you do you, Brother Day.

All of this comes crashing down, pretty literally, when a pair of suicide bombers from the aforementioned warring barbarian kingdoms both (a bit too coincidentally) detonate themselves at once, sending the massive skybridge edifice crashing down and through Trantor’s technological exoskeleton. It’s a bravura special-effects sequence, full of terrifying imagery of people tumbling, falling, getting sucked into space, plummeting planetside like so many meteorites; watching the long ribbon-like structure slowly devastate the constructed shell of Trantor—literally tearing down its artificial sky—is one of the more memorable images genre TV is likely to serve up this year.

One hundred million people die in the skybridge’s collapse, which, needless to say, adds urgency to Hari and Gaal’s trial. Thinking on her feet, Gaal uses the uncertainty brought about by this calamity to their advantage: She claims, falsely, that Seldon’s calculations indicate a more rapid collapse of the Empire if he is executed. Cowed by her claim, Brother Day sentences Seldon and Gaal to exile on the Galaxy’s most remote habitable planet, Terminus—a fate Seldon had anticipated and hoped for all along. Terminus also provides the episode with its framing device, concerning a settler named Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey) and a massive, floating, diamond-shaped Vault (you can hear the capitalization) that radiates a forcefield only Salvor can withstand and push through to get to whatever is stored within.

As science-fiction epics go, Foundation makes for strange cargo for its storytellers. Like this autumn’s other major SF project, Dune, it bears all the features of mid–20th century work within the genre—a post-fascism/Communism/World War II/atomic-era fascination with predicting the behavior of mass quantities of people, as vital to the fiction as such then–far out ideas as space travel and robotics. Goyer and Friedman introduce a lot of interpersonal drama and spectacular violence to compensate for what are really some pretty dry and heady ideas in terms of fuel for the narrative.

Do they succeed? Well, that depends. Are Gaal and Hari particularly recognizable, relatable human beings? Not really, though Hari’s tender embrace of Raych during the conversation recounted above is an affecting moment. (Gaal’s rejection of her home planet’s religion is meant to humanize her, but it feels a bit too arch to really connect with.)

On the other hand, are Jared Harris and Lee Pace a pleasure to watch? Absolutely, as any fan of The Terror or Halt and Catch Fire, their two for-the-ages television series, can tell you. Pace has played this kind of role before in the Thor and Hobbit franchises, and can look lethally regal in his sleep; Harris truly seems like the kind of guy who bangs his head against the wall because his internal wisdom can’t move or motivate the people around him. Llobell is given less to do insofar as her role consists primarily of looking stern and concerned, but it’s hard to believe that people who cast Harris and Pace would select someone who wasn’t up to the task of warming up some fairly cold material in the long run.

The wild card here, according to Gaal’s narration, is Salvor Hardin, and what she may find within that Vault. “I think that’s what he feared the most,” Gaal says, referring to Seldon and how Hardin’s infiltration of that sinister structure will affect the fate of the entire galaxy. But Seldon’s fear is the audience’s hope: that some kind of compelling human drama of the sort great TV shows are made of will manifest itself through the characters’ individual actions—actions Seldon’s mathematics cannot predict. That’s the real variable in Foundation’s equation. Let’s see how the show solves it.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Foundation Episode 1 on Apple TV+