I agree with you on almost all points. However, I think Star Wars ships are faster over long distances than any non Borg ship or Discovery. It seems like no time to jump from the Outer Rim to the Core world while Voyager was lucky to cross the galaxy in 7 years.
Hyperspace in Star Wars is ridiculously fast, true. The empire/republic is also huge because of this. We’re talking millions of worlds. Absurdly large.
It’s the same thing in Asimov’s Foundation (which everyone should watch, the second season is excellent) where the galactic empire spans the entire milky way. Population is 500 quadrillion apparently.
Ugh, has the second season gotten better? I watched the first two episodes of the second season and was really disappointed… enough that I stopped watching. I didn’t mind that they veered so far from the book the first season, because it was inevitable and they did a great job capturing the feeling.
But the second season is just bonkers and lots of sloppy writing so far. Totally unbelievable stunts for no reason other than suspense (that underwater scene and the mouth-to-mouth rebreathing, for example, was so stupid, and then they sit down and they’re like “phew, anyway”) and suddenly Hari is a split-consciousness main character and there’s forward time travel and no second foundation and two different types of non-psychohistory-developed psychic abilities and WE SEE THE IDENTITY OF THE MULE? Like, come on. In just two episodes they trashed some of the most compelling/thematic material and plot points of the original and turned it into a space-magic grab bag of action tropes.
I’m mostly just salty. Perfectly fine if you enjoy it personally. But maybe some of these points resonate with you and, knowing them, you can convince me to keep watching? Because I did really like the first season.
The Foundation series might be my favorite of all time, but the show is crap. First of all it misses the entire point of the books. Psychohistory is explicitly NOT magic, and not limited to a few special people. And it’s not a drama about the emperor.
It’s a larger scale that means more than an interpersonal drama. If you can’t do that on the screen (and maybe it can’t be done), then the series shouldn’t have been created.
Whatever this show is, it’s not Foundation. All it takes from the books is character names and jargon. It has effectively none of the plot or intent or meaning of the books.
It gets much better, IMHO. The first episodes were a bit annoying, agreed.
Without giving too many spoilers, I suspect some of the dreams are misleading and certain characters are already being manipulated. I also suspect the latest episodes already featured the Mule and he’s not like in the dream, but I’m not sure.
Also, I think certain characters simply don’t know things. For example, in that vision of the future, the Mule learns the location of the second foundation is Ignis, homeworld of the mentalics. But if you’ve read the books, you know that’s not the location of the second foundation at all. Neither is Helicon for that matter. In the books the true location of the second foundation is hidden from the first foundation.
Also, the whole Demerzel being Daneel thing, and how she’s been manipulating Empire, is interesting. Increasingly Game of Thrones like.
TLDR yes, it’s worth watching a few more episodes.
Caveat: it’s been years since I read the books, so I’m not that bothered about the show being its own thing.
Sorry to necro this thread, but I continued watching and although the show was interesting for a while, it then declined sharply and arguably went off the rails again. A lot of drama and stuff like that. Don’t think you’ll enjoy it if you’re a fan of the original books and read them recently.
I couldn’t watch The Expanse after one or two episodes because it strayed from the books, but somehow I stuck with Foundation. I think because it’s so ridiculously far from the books, I have an easier time just watching it as its own thing and have no expectations from it.
I think star wars just put less thought into what galactic distances look like. Han says the falcon can do “0.5 past light speed” but then they move from tattooine in the outer rim to the core world of alderaan in like a couple of days, max.
It’s interesting that people try to explain this away with all kinds of retroactive in-universe technobabble. I mean, I enjoy Star Wars just as much as the next guy but it’s abundantly clear that SW wasn’t meant to be investigated at this level. It’s space mythology, not hard science fiction. And that’s fine! We can have fun asking things like “Why is the Outer Rim considered a backwater if it only takes a few hours to get from galactic center to the rim?” and we don’t really have to stress about answers to those things as fans. Edit: Or we can if that’s what fans enjoy doing, but it just isn’t my thing and I think that’s ok too
The superluminal speed of a hyperdrive was rated on a decreasing scale; the faster the hyperdrive, the lower the rating. These ratings were generally referred to as “Classes” and provided a quick, although often inconsistent or inaccurate, idea of a ship’s hyperdrive speed. It was based on an asymptotic scale with Class 0.0 being infinite speed. In 30 BBY. By the end of the Clone Wars most military starships were using Class 3 or Class 2. During the Galactic Civil War, military capital ships and starfighters were generally equipped with Class 1 or Class 2, industrial freighters and haulers with Class 3 or Class 4, and civilian starships with Class 5 or above. Many vessels mounted backup hyperdrives of much higher—that is, slower—class than their primary hyperdrive.
Some starships, such as the Millennium Falcon, underwent after-market modifications to achieve ratings of Class 0.5, and Dash Rendar’s Outrider also had a hyperdrive Class 0.75, which was also achieved by modifications, although tampering with the generally stable technology of a hyperdrive was considered a dangerous activity. Boba Fett’s Slave I had a class 0.7 hyperdrive. Hyperdrives built by those outside the sphere of the Galactic Republic, Galactic Empire and New Republic, such as the Hapan Froond-class hyperdrive, were not classed in the standard system, as controlled comparisons were difficult to attain. Some Zonama Sekotan ships were able to achieve a Class 0.4 by combining high class hyperdrives with organic technology,[5] as did the Bes’uliik starfighter via fusion of Verpine and Mandalorian technology.
I agree with you on almost all points. However, I think Star Wars ships are faster over long distances than any non Borg ship or Discovery. It seems like no time to jump from the Outer Rim to the Core world while Voyager was lucky to cross the galaxy in 7 years.
Hyperspace in Star Wars is ridiculously fast, true. The empire/republic is also huge because of this. We’re talking millions of worlds. Absurdly large.
It’s the same thing in Asimov’s Foundation (which everyone should watch, the second season is excellent) where the galactic empire spans the entire milky way. Population is 500 quadrillion apparently.
Ugh, has the second season gotten better? I watched the first two episodes of the second season and was really disappointed… enough that I stopped watching. I didn’t mind that they veered so far from the book the first season, because it was inevitable and they did a great job capturing the feeling.
But the second season is just bonkers and lots of sloppy writing so far. Totally unbelievable stunts for no reason other than suspense (that underwater scene and the mouth-to-mouth rebreathing, for example, was so stupid, and then they sit down and they’re like “phew, anyway”) and suddenly Hari is a split-consciousness main character and there’s forward time travel and no second foundation and two different types of non-psychohistory-developed psychic abilities and WE SEE THE IDENTITY OF THE MULE? Like, come on. In just two episodes they trashed some of the most compelling/thematic material and plot points of the original and turned it into a space-magic grab bag of action tropes.
I’m mostly just salty. Perfectly fine if you enjoy it personally. But maybe some of these points resonate with you and, knowing them, you can convince me to keep watching? Because I did really like the first season.
I also stopped around the same time.
The Foundation series might be my favorite of all time, but the show is crap. First of all it misses the entire point of the books. Psychohistory is explicitly NOT magic, and not limited to a few special people. And it’s not a drama about the emperor.
It’s a larger scale that means more than an interpersonal drama. If you can’t do that on the screen (and maybe it can’t be done), then the series shouldn’t have been created.
Whatever this show is, it’s not Foundation. All it takes from the books is character names and jargon. It has effectively none of the plot or intent or meaning of the books.
It gets much better, IMHO. The first episodes were a bit annoying, agreed.
Without giving too many spoilers, I suspect some of the dreams are misleading and certain characters are already being manipulated. I also suspect the latest episodes already featured the Mule and he’s not like in the dream, but I’m not sure.
Also, I think certain characters simply don’t know things. For example, in that vision of the future, the Mule learns the location of the second foundation is Ignis, homeworld of the mentalics. But if you’ve read the books, you know that’s not the location of the second foundation at all. Neither is Helicon for that matter. In the books the true location of the second foundation is hidden from the first foundation.
Also, the whole Demerzel being Daneel thing, and how she’s been manipulating Empire, is interesting. Increasingly Game of Thrones like.
TLDR yes, it’s worth watching a few more episodes.
Caveat: it’s been years since I read the books, so I’m not that bothered about the show being its own thing.
Okay, thanks for the explanation. Maybe I will keep watching, then. That gives me a little hope!
Sorry to necro this thread, but I continued watching and although the show was interesting for a while, it then declined sharply and arguably went off the rails again. A lot of drama and stuff like that. Don’t think you’ll enjoy it if you’re a fan of the original books and read them recently.
Hey, appreciate the update. That’s really too bad!
I couldn’t watch The Expanse after one or two episodes because it strayed from the books, but somehow I stuck with Foundation. I think because it’s so ridiculously far from the books, I have an easier time just watching it as its own thing and have no expectations from it.
I think star wars just put less thought into what galactic distances look like. Han says the falcon can do “0.5 past light speed” but then they move from tattooine in the outer rim to the core world of alderaan in like a couple of days, max.
It’s interesting that people try to explain this away with all kinds of retroactive in-universe technobabble. I mean, I enjoy Star Wars just as much as the next guy but it’s abundantly clear that SW wasn’t meant to be investigated at this level. It’s space mythology, not hard science fiction. And that’s fine! We can have fun asking things like “Why is the Outer Rim considered a backwater if it only takes a few hours to get from galactic center to the rim?” and we don’t really have to stress about answers to those things as fans. Edit: Or we can if that’s what fans enjoy doing, but it just isn’t my thing and I think that’s ok too
The superluminal speed of a hyperdrive was rated on a decreasing scale; the faster the hyperdrive, the lower the rating. These ratings were generally referred to as “Classes” and provided a quick, although often inconsistent or inaccurate, idea of a ship’s hyperdrive speed. It was based on an asymptotic scale with Class 0.0 being infinite speed. In 30 BBY. By the end of the Clone Wars most military starships were using Class 3 or Class 2. During the Galactic Civil War, military capital ships and starfighters were generally equipped with Class 1 or Class 2, industrial freighters and haulers with Class 3 or Class 4, and civilian starships with Class 5 or above. Many vessels mounted backup hyperdrives of much higher—that is, slower—class than their primary hyperdrive.
Some starships, such as the Millennium Falcon, underwent after-market modifications to achieve ratings of Class 0.5, and Dash Rendar’s Outrider also had a hyperdrive Class 0.75, which was also achieved by modifications, although tampering with the generally stable technology of a hyperdrive was considered a dangerous activity. Boba Fett’s Slave I had a class 0.7 hyperdrive. Hyperdrives built by those outside the sphere of the Galactic Republic, Galactic Empire and New Republic, such as the Hapan Froond-class hyperdrive, were not classed in the standard system, as controlled comparisons were difficult to attain. Some Zonama Sekotan ships were able to achieve a Class 0.4 by combining high class hyperdrives with organic technology,[5] as did the Bes’uliik starfighter via fusion of Verpine and Mandalorian technology.
None of them compare with Bistromath powered ships though.
I’m SO glad I don’t have to muck about with all those improbability factors anymore…