3 Body Problem:
This is some solid scifi TV, based on some very solid scifi novels, brought to us by some very solid TV producers (aka, Those Guys Who Made Game of Thrones).
I’ll try to avoid spoilers, and I won’t bury the lede: it’s a great show, with a ton of tension, a very wide-scale story, and generally excellent acting. Unlike a lot of modern scifi, it very firmly keeps the “science” present in the science fiction, and it doesn’t treat the audience like we’re idiots and need everything signposted. The production values are super-high, much as they were for GoT, and the characters usually act like adults. Compare this to another recent and highly hyped Netflix project like Damsel, where everything was telegraphed and the acting was cartoonish, and it feels like night and day. The tone and quality of this is—to me—what Netflix should be shooting for with more of its projects (scifi and otherwise).
All of that said, though, there are some minor, er, problems I had with 3BP.
I don’t think it’s giving anything away to refer to these silver VR helmets that are used by some characters during the course of the show because they’re shown in the trailers. And the experience of people using them is handled very well. But they don’t use the things enough! Some of the best parts of this scifi (and a lot of other scifi) are making the audience feel the sense not knowing what’s going on, immersing them in alien culture, and showing off amazing tech. The headgear segments do all of this really well, so I don’t know why we don’t get more of it. And I could be less irked by that if what we got instead was also usually gripping and fun, but we often don’t. Sometimes we get juicy plot stuff or weird bits that add to the mystery. But too often we get our own dreary world and a couple characters that are frankly not very interesting for a large percentage of their screen time.
The three bodies above are not the problem in this regard. All three are interesting on their own, periodically surprising, and generally do things that propel the plot forward. The two bodies below are the problem.
These guys…. They make no sense. Both are ostensibly brilliant scientists, like several of the characters. But UNlike the other brilliant scientist characters, they show no apparent interest in solving any of the big issues at hand. Instead, they…hang out. They are meant (I think) to represent the micro, personal human side of things, while the macro, big-plot side of things goes on all around them. Despite being brilliant scientists, they seem rather disinterested in world-changing sciency-events and treat them more as inconveniences to their micro drama playing out. The micro-drama leads to something for each of them by the last ep (one of which you can see coming, the other of which is so out of the blue to be nonsensical), but it tested my patience.
Maybe I’ve become (more) heartless in my advanced years, or maybe the grand, macro stuff is just so interesting that I didn’t want breaks from it, but I just did not care about those characters. And even knowing where they wind up, I still don’t care.
Second problem was the violence/gore. I’m ok with violence usually. I took little issue with the violence-porn that was GoT. But here, it’s not in service of the plot, and it doesn’t help to deepen our sense of the world, because we already live in the world this story is set in. Westeros was fantasy. If a white walker ripped someone’s spine out, well, that tells us about a creature we didn’t know much about. It gives us a little more info about the world. In 3BP, we know the world already. There’s no reason we need to see gory violence vividly portrayed.
And I keep comparing it to GoT because seeing this same level of violence-porn here makes me think that this is somehow the “brand” of the 2 guys who directed both properties. And that is disappointing.
Another aspect of their “brand” that I like, though, is that, much as in GoT, characters that appear to be main characters can die. That creates a sense of real stakes, which I like. However, I will admit that in 3BP, I was irritated about which characters got killed off. And maybe that’s the point of their choices. I won’t say anything else on this topic so as to avoid spoilers.
Last irksome thing is all the smoking. So. Many. People. Smoke. It’s distracting. If it were just one or two characters, ok. But it’s many characters, and many of them are hyper-intelligent people. Which is not me saying “Only stupid people smoke” (although…), it’s just a trait that doesn’t fit with their characters. And it’s not subtle. There are several instances of the trite, “You’re not supposed to smoke in here,” and the character glares and does it anyway. Because they’re rule-breakers! They do what they want! Icono-smokers!
It’s hackneyed, and the writers are better than that. It sticks out so much that it made me think for a while that this must be an alternate world to ours. But it doesn’t seem to be posited as such. It’s so heavy-handed that I’ve concluded it must be part of some anti-smoking-law jihad the creators are on.
But these things, all in all, are worth putting up with because this is some real science fiction that asks big questions, pulls no punches, and is made by thinking adults for thinking adults. Which we do not get enough of. 8/10