Here's why it's hard for me (& perhaps others) to love the show using Lee's "Halt & Catch Fire" as a contrast

Here's why this first season has basically made me not look forward to the next two with the caveat that the show remains watchable and doesn't turn into Battlestar Galactica: The Gospel of Angel Kara/Starbuck, which was pretty much when I'd stopped watching and got the periodic summary from friends were still into the show.

The best way to describe this feeling is to illustrate it against a prior show staring Lee Pace, 'Halt & Catch Fire'. First of all, the show started with a reasonably mundane premise and that was the start of the laptop/portable PC clone business in Texas's "Silicon Prairie" in the metro Dallas area. It was loosely influenced by the rise of Compaq computers when IBM was the de facto PC megalith.

So with the above in mind, I was expecting it to be some corporate snooze-fest, using tactics from age old soap operas like 'Dallas' or what have you, to keep it going. Instead, for at least the first season, as the adjacent characters were being fleshed out like Cameron and Donna, Lee Pace as tech visionary/salesman Jim Macmillan, put the entire show on his back and carried it to the finale.

And he was fabulous.

Thanks to excellent writers, he played the snarkiest and most manipulative business visionary I've ever seen on the small screen. It was almost as if the writers needed time to build up the show's supporting cast (since the first techie, Gordon, wasn't so engaging of a sidekick) so they let Jim Macmillan have the first season for himself.

And given that it was the city of Dallas, also a part of the 70s/80s Oil Patch, Macmillan blew the likes of the more cartoonish JR Ewing out of the water in terms of believably, authenticity, and a man of pure conviction in his ideals despite being a constant deceiver.

He pushed around the supporting characters around him in every possible devious way, until those first PC clones shipped by the finale, indicating that IBM (or Texas Instruments, as some local in-town rival) would not have a monopoly on the laptop/desktop and that they'd be the first of the successful PC clone makers.

Sure, the following seasons spread the work load out among others, so that Lee Pace wasn't the single torch bearer, but the point was that his performance along with good writing made the show's debut season a stunning success. And yes, Cameron was a firecracker, along with sidekick Donna, as time went by which only made the show's seasons 2 to 4, entertaining and fun to watch.

In contrast, nothing of interpersonal meaning happened in 'Foundation'.

Lee Pace was yes, a "Jim Macmillan-ish" Emperor but there was little there, since they didn't develop his inner thoughts on the spiral walk nor his relationship with Dawn, prior to his death by Ito. Pace was just being regal and authoritarian. And throughout the time, the writers were just bouncing around the various expositions on the cloning process, the paintings on the wall, etc. Even the description of Trantorian life, outside of the palace, was scant.

And as for Demerzel, as time went by, she seemed more like some schizophrenic android than an advanced AI who's been at the game of 'rule from behind the throne' for 11 millennia.

And despite Jared Harris being a talented actor, Hari Seldon was merely a pontificating professor whose 11th hour arrival as an AI was completely predictable.

And as for the psychic mother and daughter, they were just that … being psychic. Most viewers know what psychism is. It's a well developed ability in countless movies and TV shows, outside of stage mentalists like Uri Gellar. The show attempted to make it some startling revelation when it's a rather trite point once you've observe it, either on the screen or as a parlor game among performers.

Sorry, but that doesn't make for a good season 1.

Watch 'Halt & Catch Fire' if you want to know how to take an average story and make something great out of it with Lee Pace at the helm.