Apple TV’s “Foundation” is a bold, daring adaptation that would have been considered unthinkable just a few years ago, much like the film versions of Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” and Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy once were. Isaac Asimov’s original books are gargantuan, spanning millennia and dozens of planets (with even more characters). Indeed, their themes and ideas are so complex that it would have seemed foolish to try to simplify the story to make it into a film or to capture it on a television budget.
The “Foundation” series, however, excels in this area. It brings Asimov’s universe to life with stunning visuals and enormous scope, while condensing and translating the narrative into a digestible sci-fi television epic. Another thing the series does well is humanize characters who were otherwise rather flat on the page and lacked depth (primarily the women in Asimov’s work).
Take Hari Seldon, the man who started the whole story when he proposed psychohistory, a mathematical study that predicted the fall of the Galactic Empire. Seldon dies almost as soon as he enters the story, but he remains a holographic artificial intelligence that interacts with people every hundred years or so following a massive “crisis” that affects the story in a major way.
Speaking to the Lost Angeles Times in 2023, Jared Harris, who plays Seldon on the Apple TV show, compared the character to an iconic villain from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” “The path [Seldon] was originally written, it reminded me of HAL [9000]; he had this sort of disembodied, vaguely menacing feeling [quality]”, the actor explained. “I said to myself, ‘He must be a human being.’ But that wasn’t the case.”
Hari Seldon initially looked more like Hal 9000 on Foundation
Harris describing Seldon as robotic makes sense. The book version of Seldon appears simply as pre-recorded messages played after a crisis, which don’t give much insight into the character’s humanity. It’s also worth noting that the small screen iteration of Seldon was once closer to how he is depicted in Asimov’s work, as that is not at all the case in the series itself.
“One of the questions I asked myself early on with this character was that he was some sort of cipher; he didn’t seem human,” Harris continued. “The conversations were always about how to make him more than the MacGuffin., because he has some kind of magic box that predicts the future, but no one really knows how it works. It’s just a box that you open and you say, “Look, here’s what’s going to happen next.” » »
Of course, the actor’s take on Seldon, especially in seasons 2 and 3 of “Foundation,” is as human as any other character on the show (if not more so). Even as an AI possessing the memories of the real Seldon, he expresses pride, fear, and joy. He even condemns the Foundation and helps the Empire while throwing a tantrum to get the attention of Prime Hari, the original version brought back from the dead. (It’s a long and strange story.)
But it’s not just about the show’s writing, as Harris himself also brings a lot to the table. Season 3 features a major development for Seldon, and the way that plays out on the show has changed dramatically thanks to a suggestion from Harris. Which is to say, we ended up getting a much better version of the character.
