Some of you may have seen the trailer for the Apple TV series based on Isaac Asimov's iconic sci-fi books Foundation. (The trailer doesn't give away much about whether they will deviate much from the original story, but that's not what this post is about.)

I had a reaction which surprised me a little, especially considering my love for this series (written in the 50s) and that this is the first time anyone has managed to bring it to the big or small screen.

It probably won't surprise you that at least three male characters, one of them a core character, have been made into female characters instead. Normally I'm highly suspicious about this, but in this case it didn't bother me, so I've been trying to figure out why.

One thing is that the books (particularly the original three) contain almost zero female characters. I'd say the ratio is lower even than Lord of the Rings.

Another is that the characters - no offence to Asimov - don't face many personal challenges or personal description in the books, and so are not really well-explored, beloved characters in the usual sense. If I recall, they aren't sufficiently described even to be able to determine their ethnicity. (This is different from Asimov's Robot series.) Without giving too much away, the plot of Foundation is very "big picture". It takes place over the course of generations with the characters behaving more like chess pieces, each leaving their mark on the political history within the universe.

Finally, I feel like we're moving past the more clumsy attempts of filmmakers in the last decade to make didactic, political statements instead of good filmmaking. I think the former has now been thoroughly discredited. I'm starting to see women actors doing better in lead roles because the character, story, etc. are good, not because they're women.

I just hope they don't ruin Foundation!