Foundation: The top 12 hunks of the tv series based on Isaac Asimov's incredibly boring "classic" science fiction

Link to the n*de dudes

Every three or four years since I was around 15, I've picked up Isaac Asimov's Foundation (1951), lured by assurances that it's a magnificent accomplishment, a classic, essential reading, the book that propelled science fiction from Buck Rogers-style space operas to college literature classrooms.

So I start.  And it's just so darn bo--rrrr--ing that I give up after 10 or 20 pages.  Asimov is obsessed with politics, economics, and business, three of the dullest topics imaginable.  

There's a Foundation tv series on Apple Plus, but from the description it seems to committing an even worse sin: rampant heteronormativity.  So I don't think I'll be watching.  Let's just look at the hunks instead.

We've seen the premise 100 times before, but I suppose that in 1951, it was brand new:  12,000 years after the beginning of the Galactic Empire, it is in decline.  Just like...um...er...the Roman Empire?   Asimov is not good at cultural changes, so people 20,000 or so years from now act exactly the way they did in 1951, smoking cigars, wearing neckties, and filling their offices with men only.  They don't even have automatic elevators.

There are five or six parts, each with different characters.  I've only read the first:  A  young man named Gael travels from the provinces to the galactic hub planet of Trantor.  En route, he explains in detail how the spaceship works, which seems ridiculous.  Do you usually spend your flight thinking about how airplanes work?

1. Alfred Enoch as Raych. There are no women in Foundation except for nondescript wives, so in the tv series Gael becomes a woman, to add gender diversity (and heterosexism).  She gets a boyfriend, Raych, her boss's son.

In the city, Gael befriends a man named Jalen or something (naturally -- there are only male characters).  I'm thinking  "Gay subtext!"  But Jalen turns out to be a spy of the Galactic Empire, trying to get the dirt on his new boss, Hari Seldom or something.

2. Jared Harris as Hari Seldon.

Hairy has invented the field of psychohistory, which can predict societal change.  Asimov obviously doesn't know anything about the social sciences -- societal change is a matter for sociology, not psychology.  He has determined that the Galactic Empire is falling apart, leading to 30,000 years of Dark Ages. 

3. Lee Pace as Brother Day, one of the three emperor clones.  I don't think he appears in the original novels.

Predicting the fall of the Empire doesn't sit well with the Galactic Bigwigs:  They think that Hogwarts is trying to bring about the downfall.  So after an inquisition and trial,  they exile Hungover, Gael, and their workers (plus wives and children) to the planet of Terminus, on the far edge of the galaxy (20,000 years, and they still revere Latin?).

4. Cassion Bilton as Brother Dawn, another of the Emperor Clones.  Don't get excited, he's with a girl.

But it turns out that Hinkley has been manipulating the Galactic Big Wigs behind the scenes.  He wanted to go to Terminus, but he didn't think that his workers would go unless they were forced.  He needs a safe space to work on the vast Encyclopedia Galactica, which will preserve human knowledge and reduce the Dark Ages from 30,000 years to 1,000 years.  

Except it's all a trick.  A distraction.  The narrative switches to many years later, and a man named Salvor Hardin, who I thought was Hari Seldom's great-great grandson, but turns out to be just someone with an equally forgettable four-syllable name.  He discovers that the real goal of the Encyclopedists to start a revolt against...well, I don't know who.  

5. Daniel MacPherson as Hugo Cranst.  In the tv series, Salvor Hardin has become a woman too, so she can fall in love with a Han Solo-type.

By this point, I'm thinking "Life is too short.  I could be reading The Hobbit."  And I understand that the tv series is nothing like the books, anyway.

6. Brandon B. Bell as Han Pritcher, who falls in love with Gael (after her first boyfriend disintegrates) and works for the Foundation, although his real allegiance is to the Second Foundation.  I don't know what that means, either.

More hunks after the break

Kurt Ostlund: The Disney Channel's Slab, comic book fan, bank robber, gay best friend, n*de bodybuilder

 Link to Kurt's d*ck

Mr. Young (2011-13), on Disney XD, featured Brendan Meyer as a genius who graduates from college at age 15 and, instead of taking a professorship at MIT and working on the string theory of the universe, becomes a high school science teacher.  In standard teencom style, he has a best friend, a crush, and a bully -- all students at the school --  and hilarity ensues.  And a lot of tongue-lolling, jaw-dropping "Girl of My Dreams" heteronormative ideology

But it wasn't totally execrable. There was a gay-subtext bromance between the buddies, and the bully Slab (Kurt Ostlund) only expressed heterosexual interest once.  Plus he had some gender-atypical traits that key in to gay stereotypes.

I've checked the adult careers of the three main male actors, and it looks like Slab is the only one with gay potential.  So let's take a look:

Our guy went on to play more slabs in heteronormative projects:

Hothead in Mark & Russell's Wild Ride (2015): two high schoolers try to win the Girl of Their Dreams or something.

Oggy in Unseen (2016): A family man who's invisible searches for his missing daughter.  It's not a comedy.

But then he went full-on bear to play gay-vague or "no expression of heterosexual interest" characters, such as a comic book fan who is targeted by a ghost for stealing important issues in an episode of Supernatural (2018).

Soldiers in Project Blue Book (2019) and The Terror (2019).

Strong Boy in 15 episodes of Snowpiercer (2020-2022), about a train that carries the last survivors of humanity after the world becomes a frozen wasteland.  He is brain-addled from his trauma, but eventually recovers, joins the resistance (there's always a resistance), and sacrifices himself to save his friends.

More after the break

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Boldly Going Where No Heterosexual Has Gone Before

Science fiction has been notorious for promoting an exclusively heterosexual future, insisting over and over again that gay people do not exist.  The Star Trek tv series have been the worse offenders, and Deep Space Nine (1993-1999) the worst of the lot, trying over and over again to be as heteronormative as possible, ignoring countless blatant opportunities for inclusivity.

The premise: On a far-off space station (but only about a day's flight from Earth), United Federation of Planets is assisting the planet of Bajor, which has just won its independence from the brutal Cardassians.  Meanwhile a wormhole opens up to the other side of the galaxy, bringing new possibilities for exploration, plus the threat of the Dominion.

The politics get complicated, and rather boring.  And all of the characters, bar none, are heterosexual:

Odo (Rene Auberjonois) is a changeling, a liquid in his natural state, capable of adopting any form he wishes.  He usually adopts the form of a humanoid male -- who is attracted to women.

Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) is a trill: a symbiont named Dax "joined" to a humanoid host.  Dax has lived in seven hosts before; its last was Curzon, an elderly man very, very interested in ladies.  Now that it's living in a female host, however, it's very, very interested in men.

The possibility of same-sex desire intrudes in a few episodes, briefly:

1. The Ferengi, space capitalists/Jewish stereotypes, do not allow women to go to work, so Pel (Helene Udy) disguised herself as a man to become a waiter at the bar/restaurant run by Quark (Armin Shimmerman). "He" falls in love with him, and seeks the advice of Dax, who is not surprised by what she thinks is same-sex desire.

Later "he" grabs and kisses Quark.  They are interrupted in media res by aliens, who assume that they are a same-sex couple.

Quark responds to the same-sex advance by ignoring it.

Pel: "I kissed you."

Quark: "No, you didn't."

2. Dax and her boyfriend Worf (the Klingon from The Next Generation)  go to the pleasure planet Risa, which seems to be a gigantic tropical brothel, with scantily clad women walking around saying "Everything we have is yours."  Dax reunites with a woman "he" dated as Curzon.  They get altogether chummy, even though Dax is now female, and Worf suspects that they are involved.

3. In a parallel mirror universe, the counterpart of Bajoran Major Kira Nerys is slinky, seductive, and  predatory, hinting that she's bisexual.

And some gay-subtext bromances.

1. Garak (Andrew G. Robinson), the only Cardassian left on the space station, is a fey, androgynous tailor who seems to be hitting on Dr. Julian Bashir.  Then they settle in for a romantic friendship, as each pursues hetero-romances.

Robinson later stated that he played the character as bisexual and in love with Bashir, but it was "a family show," so he couldn't be open about it -- can't let those kids know that gay or bi people exist!

2. Jake, son of the station commander (Cirroq Lofton), and Nog, Quark's nephew (Aron Eisenberg), are teenage best buds who have a quasi-romantic relationship.

By the way, after Nog joins Star Fleet, take a look at him in his uniform.  You'll soon find out why they generally film him from the waist up.

Beefcake is practically non-existent.  None of the main cast are ever shown shirtless.  Occasionally one of the women hooks up with a muscle man.

Lieutenant Manuele Atoa (Sidney Liufau) performs a Hawaiian fire-dance at Dax's pre-marital party.


Of all the Star Trek series, I like Deep Space 9 the least.  Instead of exploring strange new worlds, it's internecene politics.  Instead of boldly going where no man has gone before, it retreads the same old tired "no gays in space" mantra.