Revisiting Apple TV+'s Foundation, with new eyes…

Isaac Asimov was THE author who introduced me to science fiction. I devoured Foundation, the Robot novels, and pretty much everything he ever wrote. So, when Apple TV+ launched their Foundation series, I was very excited… and quickly disappointed.

The show took wild liberties with the source material and at first I struggled with that.

But recently, I went back. Rewatched the end of Season 1. Picked up Season 2. And somewhere along the way, I let go of what it wasn’t… and started appreciating what it is.

It’s not my Foundation. It’s a new interpretation. And when I stopped comparing, I started enjoying the story they’re telling—on its own terms.

If you're a fan of Asimov and walked away like I did… maybe give it another shot. 

You might be surprised.

Foundation Season 2: I came in ready to hate it. Now I'm counting down the days

I went into Apple TV+’s Foundation with an absurd amount of baggage.

I devoured Foundation as a teenager. Not just the original trilogy, but the whole sprawling web of stories, robots, empires, psychohistory, and the slow collapse of civilization stretched across centuries. Those novels lodged themselves in my brain the way great sci-fi tends to when you discover it at exactly the right age.

So when Apple announced an adaptation, I was excited… and deeply skeptical.

Foundation has always felt borderline unadaptable. The books aren’t structured like modern television at all. They’re dense, philosophical, and often more interested in ideas than action. Entire sections are basically conversations between politicians, scientists, traders, and mathematicians trying to outthink history itself.

Which is fantastic on the page.

But television? I honestly couldn’t picture it. I had a hard time imagining mainstream audiences tuning in every week to watch people debate sociology, probability, and the collapse of empire in dimly lit rooms for an hour at a time.

And because Hollywood has a long history of “fixing” cerebral sci-fi by sanding off the weird edges, I fully expected the adaptation to turn into another generic chosen-one space opera with prettier visuals and louder explosions.