Warning: SPOILERS for Foundation episodes 1 and 2.
Isaac Asimov's Foundation has been brought to life on the small screen - but many details have been changed from the books along the way. Asimov launched his iconic Foundation series of books and short stories back in 1942, and it had a profound influence on popular culture, blazing the trail for almost every science-fiction that followed. And yet, for all that's the case, filmmakers and showrunners have struggled to bring Foundation to life. They've struggled to deal with the vast period of time encompassed by Asimov's tale, with its initially-anthological structure, and with its cerebral concepts. But the advent of streaming, and the success of long-form TV shows like Game of Thrones, suggests the time has come for Foundation.
Apple TV+'s Foundation series is a lavish reinterpretation of Asimov's stories. It's created by showrunner David Goyer, who reveres the books but understands that what works well in one format will not in another. "I think the secret sauce for adapting Foundation was really rooting it in emotion," he explained. "Really rooting it in character." Although he hopes the fans will enjoy the show, he understands Foundation needs to appeal to more than just the fanbase, and so the key is to focus in on the characters. Given Asimov's own stories are concept-driven, that means conducting substantial rewrites. It also means recognizing dramatic potential and exploiting it; the collapse of the Empire happens off-page in Asimov, but Foundation is unlikely to follow suit.
So what are the key differences between Foundation and the books and short stories that inspired it? Some are related to the characters, with Goyer adding an element of diversity that's not present in Asimov's works; some are conceptual, with the Emperor in particular being more developed; and some are dramatic, with the narrative changing in curious ways.
Several Major Characters Have Been Radically Redesigned
Anyone familiar with the books will immediately realize that several major characters have been switched up quite considerably - including the stars of the series. Gaal Dornick, played by Lou Llobell, is a perfect example; in the books Gaal is male, and there's certainly no romance plot involving the mathematical prodigy. The differences go even deeper than that obvious surface-level change, though, because in the books Gaal Dornick is a celebrated mathematician from a world that seems rather more well-developed than the waterworld of Synnax in Foundation, older and more confident, having already earned a doctorate. Asimov didn't spend much time on Synnax, and the first episode seems to allude to the planet's being a lot more remote and potentially even superstitious than the books suggested.
Gaal Dornick isn't the only one to have been changed significantly. Salvor Hardin has been gender-swapped as well, played by industry newcomer Leah Harvey, and she's been reinvented as the Warden of Terminus rather than its mayor. This fundamentally alters the dynamics on Trantor, because Salvor's role is a military one rather than an administrative one. In the books, Hardin was well-known for his many sayings, with the most famous being that "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." But Foundation's Salvor Hardin feels like a much more action-oriented character, suggesting her role going forward will be very different.
One other character has been gender-swapped as well; the Emperor's adviser Eto Demerzel, played by Laura Birn. Eto is actually a tremendously important figure in Asimov's books, because the legendary sci-fi author retconned this as an alias taken by the hero of his I, Robot books, R. Daneel Olivaw, who bound the two science-fiction franchises together. Asimov ultimately imagined Olivaw as the true architect of the Foundation, and even the one who had inspired Hari Seldon to discover psychohistory.
Raych Foss Is An Original Character (With An Old Name)
Alfred Enoch plays Raych Foss, an important secondary character in the first two episodes - Hari Seldon's closest friend, and ultimately his killer. In a perverse twist of fate, while Raych is seemingly an original character created for Foundation, he appears to be named in honor of Hari's own adoptive son from Asimov's book series. In the prequel novel, "Forward The Foundation", Hari adopts Raych (who has no surname) at the age of 12, and he grows to adult age before being killed. Interestingly, at one point, Raych attempts to go undercover against Hari's enemies, but it captured and reprogrammed to kill his own father - an assassination that is stopped in time. So the TV version of Raych is very different, though he does absorb some scenes involving other figures, such as Seldon's lawyer. David Goyer has explained the key to Foundation lies in finding the emotions underpinning the narrative, and Raych serves an essential part in achieving that in the first two episodes, with his relationships with Hari Seldon and Gaal Dornick driving the story.
Foundation's Emperor Is Totally Different From The Books
Asimov never concerned himself too much with the Emperor, with the books and short stories simply suggesting the latter Emperors were incompetent. Foundation has reinterpreted the Emperor by coming up with the idea of a sort of "genetic dynasty." The Emperor Cleon I established a lineage of clones, with each raised to believe they represented the continuation of his will; the Emperor is thus the personification of the Empire's permanency, constant and unchanging, ever-present and never-failing. In reality, of course, each Emperor grows up in the shadow of his predecessor, meaning they are more individual than they truly believe.
Lee Pace, who plays the Emperor, describes it as like being of two minds; "On one side of their mind, they believe they're the same person. They actually believe this, and they believe that person is the Emperor of the galaxy... And on the other side of that mind, are a series of individuals who, whether they like it or not, are individuals. They do have sentience, they are distinguished from one another, and they're looking at their brothers, and saying, "I'm better than you," or, "I will be better than you, I will be a more honest Emperor than you, I will be a stronger Emperor than you, I will rule in a way that's better than you."' It's a fascinating concept, one entirely alien to Isaac Asimov's novels, but it's not hard to see why Goyer invented it; the books and short stories span a millennium, and viewers need some constant faces to encourage familiarity.
The Terrorist Attacks On Trantor
The ecumenopolis of Trantor - which likely inspired similar city-planets like Coruscant in Star Wars - is lifted fairly accurately from Asimov's books, but the orbital sky bridge is a new idea - one that soon proves to be of real importance to the story of Foundation, when terrorist attacks bring the bridge down around the planet like a garrote, shaking even the Emperor's self-confidence. This terrorist attack is entirely original, but it serves a key role in the narrative, because it inspires the Emperor to fear that Hari Seldon may be right and sign off on the Foundation. It also potentially accelerates the downfall of the Empire, because in the books the Anacreons - one of the races the Empire blame for the terrorist attacks - rebel in an uprising that causes problems for the Foundation. The disturbing question is whether the Anacreons were actually responsible for the attacks in the first place; they seem rather convenient, and it's possible Hari Seldon orchestrated them himself.
Hari Seldon's Death Never Happened In The Books
In Asimov's books and short stories, Hari Seldon lived to a ripe old age and left holographic messages behind in his latter years. Foundation's version of Hari is brutally murdered, however - killed by his friend Raych, for reasons that are initially unrevealed. It's reasonable to assume this was something else Seldon arranged, perhaps because he believed the Foundation needed a martyr in order to be truly committed to his goals. Everything that spins out of Seldon's death - notably including Gaal Dornick being placed in an escape pod in cryogenic suspension - is created just for the show, written into the story to add drama. There may well be another purpose, too; David Goyer has hinted he has come up with several ways to keep key characters around even as the story of Foundation moves ahead by decades, and it's possible Gaal will be kept in cryogenic suspension for quite some time, with the pod serving as a convenient plot device.
The Vault Has Changed Considerably
The Vault is an important part of Asimov lore, but it has been fundamentally transformed for the TV series. In Asimov's novels, the Vault was programmed to open at defining moments in galactic history, so-called "Seldon Crises," and impart essential knowledge in order to orchestrate events across the millennium. It is reasonable to assume the Vault will serve the same purpose in the TV series as well, but here it was sent to Terminus ahead of the colonists, and it possesses a mysterious null field that keeps all living organisms away from it until it open. Salvor Hardin is mysteriously resistant to the null field, making her even more important to the story of Foundation, but that, too, is new.