We Are Bugs in this thread for The Three-Body Problem 三体 and its various adaptations

awful, awful line readings throughout. are the overenunciated british accents for syndication? terrible "it is profound"/ DO U SEE? signposting. i mean, wow. shan't be bothering with ep2

yeah being unfamiliar with the books I feel this is pretty bad - that Heroes comment above is spot on.

I was briefly irritated by the light spoiler in recent comments but probably actually grateful in that it strengthens my resolve to watch something else

I agree there were some clunky bits in e1. A story like this doesn't need a corny clown devouring crisps and mugging for the camera.

But I try not to judge shows by the first episode. Often they've been adapted from a pilot designed to test ratings and full of wonky concessions. Gonna give it a couple more episodes to see if it smooths out.

Eh, it's just nice to watch a contemporary show that doesn't conjure an alternate dimension where climate change isn't happening without getting all afternoon special about it. This is keeping with the books which commence with the words,'Silent Spring'. Don't have to do as much pretending.

Showing a physicist been beaten to death and a leap forward in time to scientist suicides seems generally applicable. Maybe more revealing of a given commentator's preferred scale of 'otherness', in a story about literally aliens, to make it about China. Especially when the instigation of the alien thing is the belief we are no longer capable of solving our own problems. Like, why bring unfounded specificity to the 'we'? Recall around when books were first published (~2006) the Union of Concerned Scientists were writing papers to the second Bush Administration, or some official commentary in the Garnuat review (prominent Australian economist) that this could lead to extinction and ignoring it would make policy decisions delusional, or just the title of Ghosh's,'The Great Derangement'. Though, let's not get all academic about it, in lived experience, and only weeks ago, unprompted and regarding how it is harder to grow grapes when the weather is weird, the clerk at the local bottle shop asked me whether he should have kids. Fun chat.

So yay, there's some (often lacking) verisimilitude in a show set in 2024 with the occasional ambient news story about how cicadas are killing the crops, or a character arguing we should focus on our immediate problems while standing in from on an empty newsstand, and a character who isn't having children. Sure they've been televisionified but kinda digging the tone of the nominally gifted toiling in quiet despair. Like taking the cast of the West Wing, or Apollo 13, with their exhaustive competence, and updating it with 'but we hate it' which seems more keeping with the dynamic of many current working professionals.

Though, somewhat hilariously, the concept of perpetual surveillance hits different, and in layered irony, nearly two decades after publishing. In the novel it caused genuine dramatic consternation and now it's more, 'yeah we know, ohhh... you meant the aliens'.

kojima liked it, that’s good enough for me

I've just finished watching through eight episodes of "3 Body Problem." The original novel by Liu Cixin is depicted on a grand scale and in a unique style. With a slow-paced introduction, the ensemble drama spins a timeless story with intersecting characters. Abstract and… pic.twitter.com/RlZaKIoHyz

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) March 23, 2024

john bradley is not a good actor

(he was ok in GoT i guess) (i dont really like the in-game stuff either but unliek all u clowns i am not a gamer so)

The game aspect of the first novel was super-annoying too. I guess I understand the idea of aliens teaching humanity stuff by getting us to play video games, I just find it a very depressing statement about humanity.

they should use free jazz instead

"even now i would scythe him like wheat"

filing this away for future use after a struggle session goes awry

video game sections were far and away the highlights of the first novel for me (besides the chinese revolution chapters and the trisolaris bit at the end)

Yes, I really liked the video game bits of the book, far fetched and ridiculous as they often were

enjoying jonathan pryce remembering halfway through a sentence that he’s supposed to be american and then forgetting again by the time he starts the next one

john bradley is not a good actor

I'm only 2eps in but he's def the most irritating thing in the show so far. I'm enjoying this,but wondering if I should start on the books as well?

Tell you who is a good actor: Benedict Wong

The books are good. They're a fair undertaking though and you have to be prepared to do some mental stretching, not just intellectually but in your own credulity. I listened to the first two as audiobooks and they're a decent read

any time Benedict Wong is mentioned i think of him on the phone to his mum in 14 Storeys High.

"hi mum, it's me, your son. yes, the Chinese one..."

I feel terrible because while I thought I recognized Benedict Wong's face (and have probably seen him in other stuff), I was confusing him with the Korean actor Ma Dong-seok and thinking that his English (specifically, his English accent) was amazing.

This is Ma Dong-seok, ftr:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKbo-ZKdSqw

not sure if it's advancing age or world affairs that has made me more squeamish but my reaction to e5 is: jeesus

mid-ep e5, end of ep is goofy nolan shit, i can handle that

only on ep 2, it's gonna take a while. i love the headset, obv you could make something that shiny irl but it would reflect the crew so it's cg (to some extent) which makes it look more mysterious.

First thing I saw Wong in was IT Crowd's silly Countdown episode of all things, and I loved him in that.

I am vacillating so hard between loving this show and being infuriated by certain scenes and interactions. It's maddening

We dodged a bullet with this being a 2024 production instead of 2014 - karaoke guy in the first episode definitely would have been Russell Brand.

It's rattling along so well but the wheels are so wonky, you know?

So far anything to do with Auggie sucks. Anything to do with Saul sucks. Anything to do with bloke off Game Of Thrones can go suck a fuck. Any scene where they're all in the same room is atrociously-scripted UK TV drama drivel. And yet the rest is very fun and considered and watchy. I feel like I'm watching two different shows

xxxxp I too found ep 5 pretty full on - I kept watching despite the clunkiness, ep 5 is when it actually started to feel like something

to clarify - I kept watching past ep 1 despite the clunkiness (am on the record above as saying I was gonna give up lol)

Are there any Chinese productions that have ever done the equivalent of the cultural revolution scenes?
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/3-body-problem-opening-scene-netflix-china-us-conservatives-1235858922/

I don’t know the source material at all but I watched the whole series over the weekend. Extremely mixed bag. It kind of turns into a different show in the last few episodes, which is less interesting and wildly anticlimactic!

I’m not really clear how the aliens figured out how to communicate so easily, never mind become so omnipotent over a planet where they also lack basic understanding of humans’ characteristics. Like how is the video game so nuanced, yet they also don’t understand what fiction is?

i haven't been watching but i could hear maria watching it and whenever i did i thought she was watching an animated show. are the voices AI? they sound like it. or like everyone was in a different room when they were speaking to each other. but maybe they were. i was only listening.

me* when i learn aliens will be arriving in 400 years: take to the streets! time to riot!

*to be clear i am not french

e6 34.42 non-speaking-character-reading-dhlagren klaxon (the original huge-selling edn too)

(i wd likely have missed this tbh, except delany posted abt it on FB last night)

I love the drab charisma of Benedict Wong, he's a genuinely interesting actor with a unique kind of style and presence. It's rather unfortunate that just about everything I've ever watched him in is usually absolute crap (apart from him) tho!

haven't watched the show yet (will soon), but in the book, the video game is nuanced because it wasn't created by aliens, but as a recruitment tool by alien sympathizers, aka the earth-trisolaris organization, trying to win great minds to their cause.

ugh probably should have used spoiler tags there

again in the book, they communicate using "sophons," magic (there's a "scientific" explanation in the book, but really, they are magic) particles that can convey instantaneous messages across hundreds of lightyears (and can also do other things like cause hallucinations and cause faulty results in particle accelerators and thereby keeping humans from progressing their scientific thought and technology to a point where they could become a threat to the aliens)

these are xp to pwgp

VC, the sophons are explained in the show, but I feel like the video game is way under-explained. Like multiple people say the technology for the game is way too advanced, so how did the tech, or the know-how for the tech, make it to earth? And what is the point of the game?? It just seems like so much trouble to get a handful of people to understand that… aliens are coming. That’s the big takeaway.

i should prob watch the show before answering any more questions because idk hawk well the show gets everything across, but, re: the purpose of the game, it’s not meant merely to convey information, but to convey sympathy for the aliens, and their plight. the e.t.o. is in constant communication with the trisolarans, possible that they have technical know-how that is within human technological grasp, but not yet unlocked by human engineers.

*how well

Halfway through the second episode, this is making no impression at all.

my own fauklt i went in with zero knowledge, i quite enjoyed the first ep…only to discover it’s also about a goddamn virtual reality video game unnnhhhhhggghh rmde

this better not suck is all i can say lol

Eh the VR is a p small part of the wider story, tbf.

iirc, the whole virtual reality thing is more of a plotline in a wider story rather than being what the story is all about.
That said, I can see the showrunners milking it for all its worth, partly for shock and awe, but also to stop the show being entirely about Auggie glaring at her friends for being into Star Wars and Jack scarfing down crisps

oh, what Trayce said

as a non-gamer i feel they went in the wrong direction shock-and-awe-wise

https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1443640/capsule_616x353.jpg

i did continue. it's like a cross between a holby city xmas special and an animé where the dialogue has been carelessly/hurriedly translated. if i think "it's for kids" it's OK. nice to see ade edmondson. with reece shearsmith & gattiss also showing up i'm hoping the aliens when they show up in season 2 are played by vic & bob. "eranu". matt berry as a sophon "who the f*ck are these pricks?" pointing at the could-not-care-less-about-the young physicists

i'm not sure how i quite feel about these comedy actor cameos, much as i love a lot of these peeps, it feels a bit unnecessary

tbh there's a fvckton of not putting the work in and hoping that stunt casting will rescue it

They are surplus to requirements, i'll concede.

I didn't recognise ade edmondson when he popped up, and when the I№9 guys appeared I was a bit thrown because I was suddenly expecting something funny to happen (I know they're both a bit "beyond" comedy now, but still). I get why sometimes the showrunners have to include some celeb-casting, a bit like when Ed Sheeran rocked up and sang a song in Game Of Thrones - it's a commmercial concession to get people to watch it.

But for the rest of us, it's cynical and unnecessary, and jibes with how I imagined a show like this to be. 3BP (the book) manages to be comically absurd in so many ways without fully acknowledging this: There's bananas stuff happening all the way through and yet it's delivered in the weighty raiment of a hard sci-fi novel with the shadow of the Chinese cultural revolution running through it. Without wanting to conflate media from two very different countries, it reminds me a little of Hideo Kojima's work in the way these bizarre, often highly ridiculous concepts are told as straight-faced as possible.

I realise I've been dunking on this show a lot ITT. I really really like a lot of it, I promise! It's one of my favourite franchises I've come across in the last few years and I've found myself dreaming about it the last couple of nights. It's just the aforementioned "Holby City"-ness of it is hard to shake off.

I do wonder how “to know something is to communicate it” jibes with “I am a pacifist lucky nobody else here on this planet got your message”.

I sped through the Netflix series and wasn't nearly as reactionary about it as I was expecting. I still prefer the Chinese version though and it's offbeat bizarreness... I wanted Earth to win in that one, whereas in the Netflix version I'm Team Trisolarian. The Physics Friends are easily the worst and most unconvincing on-screen scientists since that Uwe Boll tried to convince us that Christian Slater and Tara Reid were scientists.

BTW, if you're following someone and want to be inconspicuous it's probably not a good idea to use Dhalgren as a prop. You would attract less attention if you wore an astrobright yellow t-shirt with block letters spelling out "I heart killing scientists"

https://qc-ckb.s3.amazonaws.com/ilx/3body_dhalgren.jpg

idk I thought the physics friends reminded me of someone I know who is roughly in that age cohort and... an astrophysicist

I don't mind the actors they cast or the way they act (do we want to see realistic scientists?), but just give them more to do than hang out at a beach

I am also Team Trisolarian though

Renewed!
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/3-body-problem-renewed-season-2-netflix-1235888162/

maybe it's because i read the books, but it's such a claustrophobic series, like things are happening in vacuum with the same group of characters - which is strange for a book where the sheer scale of things is one of the good things about it. we get what, one scene with crowds outside plus occasional tv news in the background?

I have just recalled which other alien race in popular culture had no concept of individuals lying to one another, even for the sake of telling fictional stories

and now I've totally forgotten what I was on about in that last post!

so, I'm reading the books, but because they're from my local library and reserved by everyone it's taken nearly a year between reading the first one and the second one, which I've just started.

does anyone remember whether THAT ship scene was in the first book? i can't remember whether I read it or just watched it. i would think I'd remember reading it... but my memory is crap these days.

yeah it was part of the climax of the first book but it didn’t dive into the perspective of anyone on board

ah thanks.

oh btw I was probably thinking of Galaxy Quest lol

S2 and S3 of the Netflix version finally got the green light after a year, but because they're filming back-to-back, we may not see S2 until 2027 or 2028! It is honestly insane the time between seasons for stuff nowadays. I thought momentum played a part in a show's popularity but maybe Netflix has determined it doesn't

Especially seeing as these stories are kind of intricate. Same as Severance, I'm going ti have to go back and rewatch it again by the time the next season lands

nice i can def read death’s end by then

I might have reached death by then

have to say, I'm having a fantastic time reading The Dark Forest (second in the trilogy)

if I like these should I read any of his others?

Wade, I have recently found out, turns up in the third book. In fact so much stuff in the show is taken from the third one!!

― your mom goes to limgrave (dog latin), Friday, April 12, 2024 1:29 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah this threw me a bit - finally get to see one of the main TV characters show up for about 3 sentences in the 3rd book, ha. I'm on the final slog of the 3rd book and it's been tough going at times to keep my interest.