What TV Shows Are You Watching? The 9th Is - Excuse Me - A Damn Fine Cup Of Coffee

[Birdjaguar]

3 body Problem on Netflix.

Episode 1 was great. It is off to a good start. The show runners are telling the story of the book but have put their own spin on things. I enjoyed the books but I read them some years ago so many of the details are gone. Episode 1 though is moving along with the important strokes. Much like GOT, they will not be able to include everything. The actor carryover from GOT is amusing. I'll watch at least one more tonight.

 

[Takhisis]

I sense a discrepancy in opinions regarding this three-body problem.

 

[BenitoChavez]

That said, in the book those aliens are presented very strangely.

Well almost by definition aliens should be strange

But I get your meaning. I wondered how the show was going to represent them. It's honestly half of why I'm watching.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Episode 2 moves the story along nicely. Unlike GOT the action subtle and conversational.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well almost by definition aliens should be strange

But I get your meaning. I wondered how the show was going to represent them. It's honestly half of why I'm watching.

Imo in the book they are strangely non-alien. Like humans with a tag that reads "I am alien" ^^
And yes, their bodies aren't described at all, at least in the first book.

 

[lymond]

I caught the first epi of 3 Body last night. It was okay. I was intrigued most by the story of the Chinese lady and what was going on in the 60s than by the modern stuff. It throws a lot at ya, including characters. The "science" though worries me the most as I have a feeling it will never be explained, but rather more of a MacGuffin. Anyway, it was interesting enough to keep going.

(On a sidenote, I don't believe I knew that Benedict Wong was British)

I've subbed to PBS again via Amazon to get my Brit fix on as I was really jonesing for that and period pieces. I'm breezing through Miss Scarlet and the Duke, which is a nice mild detective show set in around the 1880s. I've quite enjoyed it. Also, a new season of Unforgotten is out, sans Nicola Walker , whose four-season character arc ended. Most of the old cast and a new actress/character that fills Walker's role. And I need to catch the last season of Sanditon.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I also watched the first ep of 3 Body Problem last night. Pretty good. I don't know if I understood any of it, but I don't know if I was meant to. Will keep watching.

I think I knew Wong was British, but this was definitely the first time I'd ever heard him speaking in his natural accent. (I see that he was in Dirty Pretty Things, 2002, which I rewatched sometime in the last 10 years. I don't remember him in it at all, though.)

 

[EvaDK]

I also watched the first ep of 3 Body Problem last night. Pretty good. I don't know if I understood any of it, but I don't know if I was meant to. Will keep watching.

I think I knew Wong was British, but this was definitely the first time I'd ever heard him speaking in his natural accent. (I see that he was in Dirty Pretty Things, 2002, which I rewatched sometime in the last 10 years. I don't remember him in it at all, though.)

He was in Danny Boyle's Sunshine before his MCU fame and also in the last episode of the British series Black Mirror S3, all with his natural British accent.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Stills of Wong in Dirty Pretty Things (2002). Looks like it was about 40 lbs ago. (Him and me, both. ) Still, he's not unrecognizable. I kind of want to watch this again, now that I'm thinking of it.

Spoiler :

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

3 body Problem on Netflix.

Episode 1 was great. It is off to a good start. The show runners are telling the story of the book but have put their own spin on things. I enjoyed the books but I read them some years ago so many of the details are gone. Episode 1 though is moving along with the important strokes. Much like GOT, they will not be able to include everything. The actor carryover from GOT is amusing. I'll watch at least one more tonight.

Starship Troopers was all the better for the director reading two chapters of the book and then throwing it against the wall. I suppose he imagined it splattering blood when it hit.
Want to know more? Y/N.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

The Brothers Sun
Judging by the first 3 episodes.. over the top, quite funny and a bit "choppy".

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'm through 5 now and it is all coming together nicely as a story and the story. Since I do not recall much detail from the three books, i have set that aside and am just enjoying the story they are presenting. Few movies do books full justice and the bigger and more complex the book source, the harder it is. but if the effort captures the essence of the books in an entertaining way, then it succeeds. GOT did that through 6 seasons and began to fail as soon as the books ran out. Peter Jackson's LotR did a nice job with his three movies. book experience and movie/show experience are so different that i see them as separate. Books that are written to be movies are a bit different though.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Episode 5 of 3 Body Problem was insane.

Spoiler :

The destruction of Judgment Day was some [fouled]-up [stuff]. I didn't really understand why they needed to do it in such bizarre fashion, but the visual was startling, and very impressively rendered.

'm not sure why we needed to see all those kids, though. That just seemed manipulative. A commentary on war, I guess, but the message seemed unclear. 'Killing kids is acceptable if the situation is dire enough'? 'This message brought to you by the IDF.' I was thinking about Melanie Lynskey in The Last of Us: "Kids die, Henry. They die all the time." Except in that case, it was clear that she was a [flipping] psycho (great performance by Lynskey, though, and delightfully against-type).

I feel like I need to watch the last 5 minutes again. I didn't really understand the explanation of the physics of it - I think she said it was called a 'sophon'? Google says that's not a real thing - but maybe I don't need to. The sophons made me think of the tv series Revolution (2012), in which all modern technology, anything that uses electricity, ceased to function all at once. It was one of those 'mystery box' shows inspired by Lost that only lasted one season. It wasn't terrible.

 

[Kyriakos]

Episode 5 of 3 Body Problem was insane.

Spoiler :

The destruction of Judgment Day was some [fouled]-up [stuff]. I didn't really understand why they needed to do it in such bizarre fashion, but the visual was startling, and very impressively rendered.

'm not sure why we needed to see all those kids, though. That just seemed manipulative. A commentary on war, I guess, but the message seemed unclear. 'Killing kids is acceptable if the situation is dire enough'? 'This message brought to you by the IDF.' I was thinking about Melanie Lynskey in The Last of Us: "Kids die, Henry. They die all the time." Except in that case, it was clear that she was a [flipping] psycho (great performance by Lynskey, though, and delightfully against-type).

I feel like I need to watch the last 5 minutes again. I didn't really understand the explanation of the physics of it - I think she said it was called a 'sophon'? Google says that's not a real thing - but maybe I don't need to. The sophons made me think of the tv series Revolution (2012), in which all modern technology, anything that uses electricity, ceased to function all at once. It was one of those 'mystery box' shows inspired by Lost that only lasted one season. It wasn't terrible.

If you didn't get what a sophon is, the show can't have presented the story in the book ^^ And you are already in the destruction of the ship only five eps in? Madness
A sophon is

Spoiler :

a device made by the aliens, molecular in size but practically a supercomputer.

It's a greek term, meaning "wise", neutral in gender.
Five eps in the chinese adaptation, iirc not even the numbers-vision was presented.

 

[EgonSpengler]

A sophon is

Spoiler :

a device made by the aliens, molecular in size but practically a supercomputer.

Yes, I understood that much.

Spoiler :

The San-Ti AI - which I see articles are calling 'Sophon', but I can't remember if it called itself that in the episode - went on like a 3-minute explanation of the thing that I didn't 100% follow. It's possible the reason I didn't 100% follow was because it didn't 100% make sense. Not having a strong education in real science, I'm not always sure when a sci-fi movie or tv series is taking liberties, or doing a little "wizards did it" hand-waving, or just not explaining something very well. Also, it then enveloped the entire Earth in some kind of mirrored shroud, which was a cool visual and very ominous, but I'm not sure I understood what it was doing. But maybe I'm not supposed to understand that, yet.

As for the speed it's going, I haven't read the book, so I don't know what's been cut or cut down, but it doesn't feel like a lot of stuff is missing. I did read somewhere that the showrunners are expecting the whole story to take "more than 2" seasons, if they get renewed.

 

[BenitoChavez]

Episode 5 of 3 Body Problem was insane.

Spoiler :

The destruction of Judgment Day was some [fouled]-up [stuff]. I didn't really understand why they needed to do it in such bizarre fashion, but the visual was startling, and very impressively rendered.

'm not sure why we needed to see all those kids, though. That just seemed manipulative. A commentary on war, I guess, but the message seemed unclear. 'Killing kids is acceptable if the situation is dire enough'? 'This message brought to you by the IDF.' I was thinking about Melanie Lynskey in The Last of Us: "Kids die, Henry. They die all the time." Except in that case, it was clear that she was a [flipping] psycho (great performance by Lynskey, though, and delightfully against-type).

I feel like I need to watch the last 5 minutes again. I didn't really understand the explanation of the physics of it - I think she said it was called a 'sophon'? Google says that's not a real thing - but maybe I don't need to. The sophons made me think of the tv series Revolution (2012), in which all modern technology, anything that uses electricity, ceased to function all at once. It was one of those 'mystery box' shows inspired by Lost that only lasted one season. It wasn't terrible.

Spoiler :

Regarding Judgment Day - They needed to get the records of alien communication off the ship but they needed to make sure nobody on the ship had the opportunity to erase the data before that happened. So they needed to neutralize/kill everyone on board while keeping the data intact. All the other methods were either too slow (boarding the ship, knockout gas through the vents, etc) or too destructive (missile strike). The show made the nanofiber wires seem far more destructive that how I was imagining it in the book. That little red box Mike Evans had could have easily been crushed.

Regarding Sophons:

Remembrance of Earth's Past - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sophons are created from eleven-dimensional protons dimensionally unfolded down to two-dimensional protons with Trisolaran particle accelerators. While in the two-dimensional form, they are embedded with circuitry to create a supercomputer. Once online, the embedded supercomputer could control the proton's dimensional level and could fold itself back into an eleven-dimensional proton. To be seen with the naked eye, the protons could unfold themselves down to a fourth-, fifth-, or sixth-dimensional form, becoming larger with each subsequent lower dimension without changing mass. They can visually record anything and thus their secondary purpose is to act as surveillance devices, beaming the information they gather back to another sophon instantaneously via quantum entanglement. Their primary purpose for their Trisolaran manufacturers is to disrupt Earth's particle accelerators, capable of straying into the paths of fired particles and scrambling the results of experiments before re-assembling, effectively blocking advancement of the science. Since they can move through three-dimensional space at the speed of light, a single sophon is capable of disrupting all of Earth's particle accelerators.

Trisolarans are the San-Ti by the way.

It's actually somewhat based on an unproven physics theory called String Theory. It says everything is made up of these really tiny strings that vibrate in 11 dimensions. Depending on how the strings vibrate it what we see as quarks (which make up protons and neutrons) and electrons. I've never heard of the 11 dimension thing being extended to protons, but hey why not. Also imaging 11 dimensions, don't try. It's really weird since we only experience 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension. But they just needed to get the math to work out right, and 11 dimensions did the trick.

The 'unfolding' the dimensions threw me for a loop the first time I read it. What made it easier was for me was to think of a cardboard box on the ground. From the perspective of a 2-D being on the ground, it's going to see the length and width of the box but not the height. But if a 3-D human comes along, cuts the box at the edges and unfolds everything on the ground, the 2-D being is going to see that the box increased dramatically in size. So if humans or the San-Ti were able to unfold a tiny 11-D proton into 3-D, it would become huge because of all the extra dimensions packed into it, which then allows us to manipulate it.

 

[Kyriakos]

^What was - in the book - strange is the view that they would be able to see something unfolded. Obviously you can't see anything in 1d, but also nothing in 2d (a drawing on a page, is picked up as 2d, but in reality it is still 3d just with too little height).

 

[EgonSpengler]

Spoiler :

Regarding Judgment Day - They needed to get the records of alien communication off the ship but they needed to make sure nobody on the ship had the opportunity to erase the data before that happened. So they needed to neutralize/kill everyone on board while keeping the data intact. All the other methods were either too slow (boarding the ship, knockout gas through the vents, etc) or too destructive (missile strike). The show made the nanofiber wires seem far more destructive that how I was imagining it in the book. That little red box Mike Evans had could have easily been crushed.

3 Body Problem, ep 5:

Spoiler :

The bolded part is why I thought the method for destroying the ship was odd. It was both slow and incredibly destructive, which they specifically said ruled out some other options. I believe there are chemical weapons irl that have no odor or taste and work very fast, especially if you have no compunction about killing everyone. Ricin, maybe? Anyway, while watching the episode, I assumed the writers came up with this bizarre method just because it looked cool and gross. It made me think of the scene at the beginning of Resident Evil where The Red Queen dices up the team of commandos with lasers. I thought maybe the sheer bizarreness of the attack could mean the people on the ship wouldn't even understand what was happening until it was too late. If that scene is out of the book, I wonder if the author came up with a better explanation for why they did it that way, or how it would work.

 

[Kyriakos]

In the book, the ship

Spoiler :

is attacked with very thin fiber and iirc there isn't any explosion. Stuff and people in the floor where the item to save is stored, get cut through, but supposedly nothing which would destroy the ship, so it just stops.

It wasn't particularly believable in the book either. But this doesn't mean one would assume this show presented it as it was there.

All that said, I wonder how they will present the alien communications. Because those, in the book, are certainly not believable. No one would send you their chronicles in the form of a short story with funny and bizarre moments.
Might as well had sent the Paper Menagerie (an actual short story by the same author ^^)

 

[Narz]

3 Body Problem
The book was Meh cubed. The first episode (of 8) was Meh.
It moves a lot faster than the novel, mercifully.

Lame moment #1. The book on the shelf with Science on the spine to remind us she was a sciencing before she died.
Excellent moment #1: Adrian Edmondson has entered the game. Beautiful People just keeps on giving!
Excellent moment #2: Civ 137 announced. (No mention of 1upt).

Gets better and better. Much better than Shogun!

Great cast, but Sea Shimooka looks ridiculously out of place.
Some nice "shout outs" to Ender's Game and Larry Niven's idea of monofilament wire.
8/10.

But what's it about?