3 Body Problem is a science fiction series adapted from the popular novel trilogy of the same name by Liu Cixin. David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo are co-creators, executive producers and writers of the series. While Derek Tsang, Andrew Stanton, Minkie Spiro and Jeremy Podeswa directed the show. Consisting of 8 episodes, it has a runtime of about 44-60 minutes.
The story starts in China during the 1960s. A young woman makes a significant decision that has an impact that echoes through time and space until the present day. When the laws of nature begin to unravel inexplicably, a group of brilliant scientists come together to work with an unflinching detective to stop the most significant threat to humanity.
The cast of the series includes Benedict Wong as Da Shi, Jess Hong as Jin Cheng, Jovan Adepo as Saul Durand, Eiza González as Augustina “Auggie” Salazar, John Bradley as Jack Rooney, Alex Sharp as Will Downing, Rosalind Chao as adult Ye Wenjie, Zine Tseng as teenage Ye Wenjie, Jonathan Pryce as Mike Evans, Liam Cunningham as Wade, Marlo Kelly as Tatiana, Sea Shimooka as Sophon, Saamer Usmani as Raj Varma, Vedette Lim as Vera Ye and several others.
3 Body Problem Review
The show takes off in 1966, Beijing, where Ye Wenjie, a graduate in astrophysics from Tsinghua University, witnesses her father (Professor of physics) being beaten to death by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. All because he taught Einstein’s theory of relativity to his students and as a result, she was labelled a traitor as well and was sent to work in a labour brigade.
Later, she gets sentenced to prison for owning a banned English book. While in prison, Wenjie is approached by two military physicists who were working under Red Coast, a secret Chinese initiative that aimed to search for extraterrestrial life.
While working with them, she discovers the possibility of amplifying outgoing radio waves by using microwave cavities within the Sun. In secret, she sent an interstellar message to test her theory. After eight long years, Ye Wenjie received an unexpected message from a concerned alien pacifist from another planet. The alien warned her not to respond, explaining that if she did, the inhabitants of his planet would invade Earth.
Despite the warning, Ye responded anyway, driven by her disillusionment with the political chaos and her growing disdain for humankind. She invited the aliens to invade the Earth and offered her assistance in doing so.
Meanwhile, in present-day London, several scientists across nations have either stopped working on their research completely or killed themselves because they saw their lifespan ticking like a timer in front of their eyes, with only a few days to live. Some were also found to have been playing a game on a unique metallic virtual reality headset, believing it could have led them to their decision. Detective Shi has been assigned to solve these mysterious deaths and the latest one turned out to be of Vera Ye, Wenjie’s daughter, who jumped to her own death. Meanwhile, her friend Auggie, working on a nano fibre technology starts seeing the same timer.
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Along with the timer, strange things start to happen, the stars start flickering weirdly as if giving a signal of a superbeing’s existence – as exactly stated by an unknown girl who urges Auggie to stop her work if she wants to live. On the other hand, Vera’s other friend, Jin Cheng discovers the metallic headset and immerses herself in the game, where she has to save a civilisation from extinction due to extreme weather. She also indulges another friend, Jack Rooney but together they get too invested in it. While Auggie is wary of even touching the headset, Jin and Jack can’t be stopped and eventually get themselves in a grave situation with an otherworldly entity.
The first thought that comes to mind while watching the series is how eerily similar it feels to what has happened in the world. Nations censoring their citizens from consuming anything that they don’t approve of, people standing for themselves getting punished, many citizens losing trust in science – deeming it as evil or something used to harm masses, a rise of radical ideas or groups and a collective sense of wanting doom. Call it science fiction or fantasy but it’s deep-rooted in the catastrophic histories that people have suffered time and again.
Secondly, being created by the Game of Thrones creators, there’s quite a similarity in how the storyline unfolds. For example, there’s the famous ‘Winter is coming’ looming prophecy that makes everyone fearful but also sceptical if it will ever come. Similarly, in 3 Body Problem, the characters keep on repeating ‘they are coming’ and hinting at some supreme Lords, which we can consider akin to White Walkers. Seeing how they refer to aliens as ‘Lord’ or ‘Saviour’ makes one think how it’s nothing more than a cult, wanting to serve some supreme being that nobody has seen but that one person, and everyone blindly believes them.
It also makes you wonder if the aliens did make contact with Earth, and they turned out to be super advanced with answers to all the human problems – life & death – would they replace the Gods, we currently worship? I mean God gives a person faith that their life will be good, full of blessings etc.
But if this extra-terrestrial can show you, give everything you want in a beat – make your dead one alive, cure cancer and whatnot, then do they become our true ‘Lord’? At the rate we are going, sooner or later we might see aliens intervene in our worldly affairs, stop potential nuclear war maybe or just make us aware that we are some B-grade science project on some Alien’s research table.
Coming to reality, the show is a commentary on how humans destroy their own planet for nefarious reasons, make their own world worse and then waste loads of money to make technologies to discover aliens or inhabit space. Despite having advanced technology, they don’t seem keen to make human life better but are more concerned with an alien invasion that might take hundreds of years, if it even happens. We see this contrast with the characters Jin Cheng and Auggie. Jin is absolutely brilliant scientist with revolutionary ideas but instead of solving regular issues, she is more passionate about achieving things that no human has. Even if it means taking some lives in the process.
On the other hand, Auggie is no less but she doesn’t want to be part of something that destroys numerous lives to get one right answer. She rather use her knowledge to help people with daily problems like drought or other issues which will make the lives of many humans better. We get to see the two sides of science and how it affects our world. There are definitely no complaints about how the story unfolds so interestingly, grabbing your attention instantly and throwing you down a rabbit hole, where you need to get the answers.
However, there are some things that felt abandoned. Like the VR game played by the characters, that’s said to be designed by the aliens. After revolving half the story around the game, there’s no mention in the second half. They do not build or properly explain any relation or significance to the story. Why is it that the aliens used the game to find like-minded people, who might take their side? What’s the meaning of the content of the game? Are they seeking human help to solve their own planetary issues? Or is it some kind of test to know which human to trust?
Not having read the trilogy books, there must be numerous questions floating around in the audience’s minds after watching the show. While it’s not clear if there will be more seasons, if not then despite the glorious storyline, it just leaves you hanging with the half-baked plot. Surely, the show is tweaked for the screen and quite different from the book, for example, Wenjie marries the physicist at Red Coast and meets Mike Evans quite later in life.
But then, the creators needed to be much clearer in what they wanted to convey, if they didn’t want people to double-check the storyline with the books. Overall, it’s a mind-boggling series with exceptional visuals and an intriguing story with hard-core science elements. Even if you are not much of a science nerd, the show urges you to restropect the world we live in and how that could on one bad day, become our own reality.
Rating: 4/5
3 Body Problem is available to watch on Netflix.
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