When it comes to the commonly misunderstood sci-fi subgenre space opera, few TV shows have ever fared as well as Apple TV’s three-season masterpiece, Foundation. Gripping and cohesive in narrative terms, with visuals which are both dazzling and believable, this show about a dystopian intergalactic future is small-screen speculative fiction at its finest.
Not many sci-fi shows can rival The Expanse or Star Wars for sci-fi world-building in outer space that’s as bold and dramatic as it is fluid, but Foundation is one of them. The show arguably hangs together better than anything belonging to George Lucas, and is even more ambitious than the TV adaptation of James S. A. Corey’s magnum opus.
This Apple TV modern classic doesn’t get nearly enough recognition in conversations about the best sci-fi shows of television’s golden age in the 21st century, yet it’s right up there with the all-time greats. This beautiful, sprawling space epic is everything a top-tier TV space opera should be.
Apple TV’s Foundation Shows How Space Opera Should Be Done
Apple TV is renowned for the quality of its sci-fi series, and this modern-day adaptation of a legendary novel series many believed was impossible to render onscreen is the platform’s highest-quality of all. After its spectacular series finale was released in 2025, many Foundation fans justifiably suggested it was better than Star Wars TV series of a similar caliber.
The show attempts something extraordinary in trying to turn Isaac Asimov’s all-encompassing vision into small-screen visuals, but exceeds our wildest expectations. While its first season may be difficult to absorb in full for those not previously acquainted with the Foundation novels, it rewards the patience of viewers in spades further down the line.
This series is everything a great space opera should be. It’s panoramic in narrative scope, but goes as deep as it does broad with characterization and scene-setting. What’s more, Foundation’s entire story is grounded in a representation of the speculative future it depicts that feels authentic to us as we watch on.
The Show Honors Isaac Asimov’s Iconic Sci-fi Novel Series
Apple TV’s version of Isaac Azimov’s seminal sci-fi saga does its source material justice in ways that no fan of the author could have predicted. For almost three quarters of a century, the shadow of Azimov’s Foundation had loomed large over screen sci-fi, informing everything from Star Wars and Blade Runner to Dune and Battlestar Galactica.
The novel series concerns a group of humans in a faroff future who deal in the fictional mathematic discipline of psychohistory. They use this field of study to predict terrible events brought on by the impending collapse of a tyrannical intergalactic empire.
This complex subject matter is difficult enough to adapt in itself, without the added responsibility of bringing the beloved work of science fiction that effectively created the space opera subgenre to the screen. But Apple TV’s Foundation honors Azimov’s books precisely because it doesn’t bring everything to the screen exactly as the author wrote it.
The show adapts Asimov’s writings to its medium, changing timelines and plot arcs where necessary, to create a cohesive and accessible – if still very complicated – whole. Foundation genuinely feels operatic in scale because it takes on a narrative shape befitting a true space opera.
Foundation Is A Masterpiece Of TV World-Building
Nevertheless, just as the series honors Asimov in spirit by changing elements of his narrative structure, it honors the author’s incomparable story universe down to the last detail of visual rendering. Foundation’s world of despotic emperors and interplanetary disharmony is quite possibly the best-designed outer space setting in TV history.
The show deserves all the plaudits it gets and more, and will hopefully draw in new viewers as its legacy continues to grow over the coming years. Foundation is the very definition of a space opera onscreen, and will hopefully inspire equally ambitious sci-fi TV projects in the decade ahead of us.
- Release Date
-
September 23, 2021
- Network
-
Apple TV+
- Showrunner
-
David S. Goyer
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
