Spoilers 3 Body Problem

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Just watched it. Overall was enjoyable, I did like how the story kept shifting the focus amongst the main characters, so it really felt like "they're" story rather they the story of a single protagonist.

I do like the concept of a 400 year "cold war" where we know a big fight is coming up, it will be interesting to see if future seasons time skip ahead or if it will all take place in the current day. I also thought the idea of a race that feels they have to wipe us out because we are liers is a cool premise, and one that makes sense. Realistically any society that doesn't have conscious deception would not do well coexisting with a duplicitous one....way too easily to manipulate. The "super proton super computer" was really neat.

That said, I of course have my nit picks and critiques.

• It is implied the aliens do not lie, and don't even have fictional stories. And yet....they helped make a VR video game in which people take on alternate names and personas, even creating civilizations that fit old earth aesthetics. So....plenty of deception there. And they learn our use of metaphor (calling us bugs near the end), so clearly they are capable of learning aspects of fantasy association. Probably one of the biggest holes to me.
• The aliens learned we can lie through a conversation with Evans. However, the man has been talking with them for decades (and since a few months ago basically communicating for hours a day). Heck he has even read to them another children's story. Yet THAT is when they learn we can't lie? That was either just a trumped up reason for the aliens to dump us, or the show just wanting to show the audience that while willing to drop the "realism" card.
• The Wallfacer concept is both interesting and incredibly stupid. Sure trying to make plans without the aliens knowing is a monumental task, but 3 little old humans (that are publicly announced), they should be hunted every second of every day for the rest of their lives. And the second they die, all of their plans die with them.
  • Further, any plan of the kind of scope that would be needed to beat the aliens is likely going to show itself once they start implementing. The aliens can see anything on earth and are highly intelligent, it wouldn't be hard to start figuring out our plans once those plans are set in motion.
  • My gut is telling me its a feint, that the 3 wallfacers are meant to be decoys for the actual leaders.
• The biggest "hole" in teh story....so why don't the aliens just win? They have already displayed an incredible ability to control our technology, and can even alter our sensory inputs. Hell within the day of Saul getting announced, they tried to kill him in a car accident and had a sniper almost kill him. And that's a few hours of work. Why not destroy the internet, take over every communication network. Create electrical surges across the grid, hack into the CDC and have one of the big plagues get released. If their goal is really annihilation....just start annihilating. Throw crisis after crisis after crisis at us. Every key leader should have 40 assassination attempts a day, not hard at all when you can adjust every computer system in the planet in fractions of a second. And this problem should only get worse as our tech advances, and we become more dependent on computers. From what we have seen of the alien's capabilities at the moment, there really should not be anyway for us to win.
  • This hole is so large to me I actually wonder if the aliens really want to win? Is the ultimate goal what the original founder actually wanted, are the aliens just providing a threat to get us to come together and progress? That its just a feint meant to unite us rather than an actual invasion?

Good nit picks and critiques.
I was wondering about the lies, too. But one thing the aliens said that if they communicate, the communication is "total". Maybe when they play games or tells stories, the knowledge of the narrator that this is just a story or game is also communicated. But their communication with humans didn't work like that, and they only then realized that they couldn't actually tell what was a story, what a lie, and what was real. They all took it for real, and realized they were helpless against that.
Also I think fun stuff like reading fairy tales to aliens has only become possible very recently with their quantum-entangled sophons. The back and forth interval was basically 4 years (or 8 years for the round-trip), so they probably communicated a lot less and were more focused on essentials and facts.

I think while the proton computer is a neat idea, it's limitation are unclear. They mention they can maybe run so many concurrent experiments to overwhelm the capability of them to manipulate all. Maybe their ability to really hunt down the wallfacers is limited by that, too. Sure, they can convince people to join them, but they can't actually make all machines fail all the time, and even persistent sabotage could fail.
They only dimmed the stars for a moment, and put that mirror shield up for a limited amount of time.

But their goal is not annihilation. They might want to get rid of humans, but they must do so in a way that preserves the planet in a usuable state (for them, climate change might be something to deal with but global thermonuceal suicide would still suck.) Stringing the humans along and hoping their wallfacers don't actually come up with something that works might be still their safest bet.

But for the fun of it, further nitpicks.

The idea of the sophons seems to based on two ideas:

• There are more than 3 dimensions of space.
• Quantum Entanglement can be used to communicate information.

The first is basically something that became popular with string theory, that kinda only worked with 10 or 26 dimensions. But unfortunately, so far it offered no testable predictions and instead has too many variables that you can tweaked to explain away if any predictions ever not come to pass, to make predictions for even more difficult to achieve scenarios. Overall it is bad at giving falsifiable predictions. It's mathematically interesting (and has some uses in other areas apparently), but probably not describing our world. Of course, you could always invent reasons why there might be more dimensions.
But even with that, it is still difficult to explain how a proton could do anything the sophon does. Definitely the fi part of sci-fi here.

Quantum Entanglement cannot be used to communicate information. If you measure result A on yur side, you know the other side would get result B, but you don't know before you measure on one side, and the only way to tell the other side that they'll get A or B is to send a singal to that side - which still isn't faster than light, unless you already had an FTL signal, in which case, why bother with quantum entanglement, just use that other signal.
The author is of course in great company - Mass Effect also had a quantum entanglement communication device.

 

[Stalker0]

Another oddity in the show. Consider the show is called "the 3 body problem"....the whole 3 bodies thing has very little to actually do with the plot of the show. It could have been any catastrophe and the story wouldn’t have changed

Good nit picks and critiques.
I was wondering about the lies, too. But one thing the aliens said that if they communicate, the communication is "total". Maybe when they play games or tells stories, the knowledge of the narrator that this is just a story or game is also communicated. But their communication with humans didn't work like that, and they only then realized that they couldn't actually tell what was a story, what a lie, and what was real. They all took it for real, and realized they were helpless against that.
Also I think fun stuff like reading fairy tales to aliens has only become possible very recently with their quantum-entangled sophons. The back and forth interval was basically 4 years (or 8 years for the round-trip), so they probably communicated a lot less and were more focused on essentials and facts.

I think while the proton computer is a neat idea, it's limitation are unclear. They mention they can maybe run so many concurrent experiments to overwhelm the capability of them to manipulate all. Maybe their ability to really hunt down the wallfacers is limited by that, too. Sure, they can convince people to join them, but they can't actually make all machines fail all the time, and even persistent sabotage could fail.
They only dimmed the stars for a moment, and put that mirror shield up for a limited amount of time.

But their goal is not annihilation. They might want to get rid of humans, but they must do so in a way that preserves the planet in a usuable state (for them, climate change might be something to deal with but global thermonuceal suicide would still suck.) Stringing the humans along and hoping their wallfacers don't actually come up with something that works might be still their safest bet.

But for the fun of it, further nitpicks.

The idea of the sophons seems to based on two ideas:

• There are more than 3 dimensions of space.
• Quantum Entanglement can be used to communicate information.

The first is basically something that became popular with string theory, that kinda only worked with 10 or 26 dimensions. But unfortunately, so far it offered no testable predictions and instead has too many variables that you can tweaked to explain away if any predictions ever not come to pass, to make predictions for even more difficult to achieve scenarios. Overall it is bad at giving falsifiable predictions. It's mathematically interesting (and has some uses in other areas apparently), but probably not describing our world. Of course, you could always invent reasons why there might be more dimensions.
But even with that, it is still difficult to explain how a proton could do anything the sophon does. Definitely the fi part of sci-fi here.

Quantum Entanglement cannot be used to communicate information. If you measure result A on yur side, you know the other side would get result B, but you don't know before you measure on one side, and the only way to tell the other side that they'll get A or B is to send a singal to that side - which still isn't faster than light, unless you already had an FTL signal, in which case, why bother with quantum entanglement, just use that other signal.
The author is of course in great company - Mass Effect also had a quantum entanglement communication device.

I could buy your first theory if when the people entered the game they were immediately told “this is a simulation in which you will play blah blah blah”. But they are not, in fact figuring out what is going on is a key part of the game. The communication is never “total”

Onto your nitpicks, ultimately we can accept that our knowledge of physics is incomplete, and so if aliens come around and go “um…yeah you totally can communicate FTL using quantum entanglement, you just first need to do XYZ”…that’s not crazy. Same with more dimensions, we don’t have evidence for their existence but maybe one day we will.

So I never mind that aliens are able to bend the laws of physics in sci fi to a point. For me the break is when we learn of a property in the story and then it’s not properly used. The aliens cannot lie…fine. But they also use simulated worlds with made up characters, and can understand and use metaphor…um huh? Aliens can control our systems using super protons…fine. But the aliens then don’t immediately use them to stop their main enemies…huh?

 

[briggart]

It is implied the aliens do not lie, and don't even have fictional stories. And yet....they helped make a VR video game in which people take on alternate names and personas, even creating civilizations that fit old earth aesthetics. So....plenty of deception there. And they learn our use of metaphor (calling us bugs near the end), so clearly they are capable of learning aspects of fantasy association. Probably one of the biggest holes to me.

Yep, this doesn't make sense on so many levels... I mean, the aliens entire plan is based on lying: they get sophons to falsify experimental data, create illusory images in the retina, etc. all with the goal of getting scientists to believe their understanding of the universe is wrong and it is pointless to pursue science.

But more importantly, if they are actually unable to distinguish fact from fiction, how on Alpha Centauri did they ever thought about invading Earth in the first place? Do they think they can take on the Avengers? The Fantastic Four? How many times did Galactus have his a@@ kicked all the way back to the Magellanic Clouds? Who these guys think they are?

It's been a while since I read the book, but I think this is an original take in the TV show. There are few points in which the show improved on the novel, but this is not one of those.

 

[Dire Bare]

Yep, this doesn't make sense on so many levels... I mean, the aliens entire plan is based on lying: they get sophons to falsify experimental data, create illusory images in the retina, etc. all with the goal of getting scientists to believe their understanding of the universe is wrong and it is pointless to pursue science.

But more importantly, if they are actually unable to distinguish fact from fiction, how on Alpha Centauri did they ever thought about invading Earth in the first place? Do they think they can take on the Avengers? The Fantastic Four? How many times did Galactus have his a@@ kicked all the way back to the Magellanic Clouds? Who these guys think they are?

It's been a while since I read the book, but I think this is an original take in the TV show. There are few points in which the show improved on the novel, but this is not one of those.

The aliens are not lying. They are not falsifying data, they are rendering the data useless. The illusions are not false or lies, they are designed to frighten and intimidate.

The aliens don't fully understand fiction or stories, sure . . . but that doesn't mean they believe all stories represent reality.

 

[Stalker0]

The illusions are not false or lies, they are designed to frighten and intimidate.

Which is exactly what children stories are for. But they didn't take it as a teaching aid to frighten and intimidate, its just a lie.

Which again is really weird in context of the VR game.


Now you might could say its not falsification PER SAY, its falsification with the desire to do harm. Take the Big Bad Wolf, its not that the creature is pretending to be something its not (I think the aliens get that as again they have the VR games and such), but the idea that someone would lie specifically to harm another person that is so shocking to them. If that's the case the show didn't showcase that clearly, but I could buy that as an answer.

 

[briggart]

The aliens are not lying. They are not falsifying data, they are rendering the data useless. The illusions are not false or lies, they are designed to frighten and intimidate.

The aliens don't fully understand fiction or stories, sure . . . but that doesn't mean they believe all stories represent reality.

That was not the impression I got. When Evans explained the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood was lying, they asked to speak with the wolf*. We don't get the full context of the scene, so maybe in this specific case Evans had not clarified beforehand that was he was reading was not an account of real facts. But even in that case, when he does explain that it is indeed a story, and the nature of stories, the aliens conclude that the "story is a lie about a lier". So given that apparently the aliens have just learned that humans can lie, and that stories should not be taken literally, which they equate to lying, I don't see how until that moment they had not taken at face value any information they acquired from Earth.

I do not dislike the basic premise of an alien species that does not lie and once they realise that humans instead can, they decide humans are too dangerous to be allowed to live. But I think that revelation should have happened much earlier in the internal timeline of the show.

*Another nitpicking: in the same scene, Evans refers to his enemy as "pests", and the aliens counter that pests are animals, while Evans enemies are humans. So the aliens have at least a basic understanding of Earth's ecology, interpret what they are told literally, but they are distressed at the mention of a talking wolf only when they realise the wolf is lying?

 

[aco175]

It is nice to see that the season 1 was not the whole story. I thought it ended rather silly and liked things up to that point.

 

[MNblockhead]

Loved it. I do have lots of questions .

Does it follow the book and if so after 8 episodes where are we (quarter or halfway through?)
Without spoiling the bad aliens can do so much and yet they can’t???

I think it’s one of the better made miniseries out there. Special effects in 1 of the episodes was far superior to a lot of the Disney tv stuff and the acting has been great. Not many sci-fi shows get emotional tug. Netflix once again for me has a true hit

I really feel Netflix is my go to for streaming. I go months without watching Hulu (except shogun) prime (invincible) Disney (bad batch). I haven’t watched Apple in months.

Huge fan of the book. One of the few books that I didn't want to see in film, but I couldn't help myself and with much trepidation I gave it a chance.

I was pleasantly surprised. I loved the first season and hope they finish the trilogy. I do worry about how they'll handle the far future portions. It will be very expensive to make it look right.

Spoiler: Not really a spoiler but in case some people want NO idea of what will be covered in future seasons.

And while there will be some characters who will remain in it for continuity, so many of the main characters will be gone. They did a great job with casting for the first season and I hope that continues with new characters for future seasons.

In terms of changes. First, the cultural revolution era scenes were not where the book started in the original version released in China. That was because the Chinese publisher didn't want that to draw too much attention from government censors. When translated into English, they rearranged it back to how it was first written, which I think works better for the story.

The only thing that I missed from the books was other than the cultural revolution era scenes, they cut out the modern scenes in China. Shi Qiang (史强), "Da Shi" (played brilliantly by Benedict Wong in the Netflix show) is a Beijing cop in the books. In the TV series, the modern period of the story starts and stays mostly in England. I admit that this works very well for the show, keeping the main plot, and making it jump around less, which might feel more frenetic in a TV show than when reading the book. But it is a Chinese book, written by a Chinese author and I feel that the Netflix show loses some of that cultural flavor.

I highly recommend reading the book even if you have seen the show already, but going on and reading the 2nd and 3rd book of the trilogy before the next seasons come out. Even though the books are great reads, much of the joy is the mystery and suspense, so reading it after watching the show isn't going to be the same, in my opinion. But then again, I'm the type that will close my eyes and cover my ears during previews of movies I'm excited about, because I hate spoilers.

Speaking of spoilers, I'll put the potentially very light spoiler in spoiler quotes to discuss something I hope they don't do in future seasons.

Spoiler: Very light potential spoiler for future seasons.

I'll be disappointed if future seasons continue to take the story out of China. I want to see future China as depicted in the books.

 

[payn]