Over the last few years my family and I have binged all of Star Trek, then moved on to Star Trek adjacent shows like The Orville and Stargate. At the moment we’re not really watching anything sci-fi. I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for similar shows (or maybe some books) that fill the void left by Star Trek. In particular I really like the episodes that deal with interacting with other civilizations, diplomacy, and exploration more-so than say, an anomaly episode.
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.
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.