3 Body Problem: eps:1
Warning Spoilers: Can Benioff and Weiss ever be forgiven for the hamfisted handling of the Game of Thrones final series? They have been given a second chance in Netflix's 3 body problem. This time though they have a complete novel to work off of, so hopefully they can't mess it up.
Judging by the first episode, Countdown, they may have pulled it off. The BBC and Variety called it unadaptable, and the first episode jumps around so many times that you may question if it's worth sticking around for. It is.
Benioff and Weiss bring back some of the old Games of Thrones crew, John Bradley (Samwell Tarley), Liam Cunnigham (Davos) and Jonathan Pryce make a welcome return to our screens.
We have Marvel (Benedict Wong) Alumni, his British accent almost as unnerving as his full head of hair. And Star Treks; Rosalind Chao,( Keiko). A smorgasbord of sci-fi and fantasy royalty then. The 3BP is aiming for the big times.
Eiza González plays Auggie Salazar. With her distracting big pouty lips, she is the least looking physicist you'll meet. She is being afflicted by the same vision several other physicists have suffered from. Which has resulted in their gruesome deaths. And by gruesome I mean se7en gruesome. Think eyes being gouged out.
These physicists have been seeing visions of a count down which has been driving them insane. This has also coincided with particle accelerators going wild across the world. Don't bother trying to understand what's going on with them, just that they are going fuzzy. Jess Hong plays Jin Cheng, another particle physicist, who is especially concerned.
Jin and Auggie get the call that one of their group of friends Vera, ( yes another particle physicist. Let's just assume everyone is a physicist until we are told they are not), has committed suicide in the Oxford particle accelerator. I assume jumping into whatever she jumped into can't be good for the workings of a particle accelerator.
These first scenes in London 2024, have a Dr Who hokeyness about them. Wong's detective Da Shi finds a dead scientist who has written a countdown with blood on the walls of his house, to Auggies visions seeing the countdown randomly appearing.
It's the splitting of the scenes with 1960s China, especially toward the end that lifts the show and heightens the tension.
The show begins in this period, with a communist rally taking place.
Hundreds of revolutionaries make up a baying crowd as teachers and professors are brought out, forced to renounce their beliefs.
A young Ye Wenjie watches on distraught as her professor father is brought to the stage, hand-tied, wearing a dunce's hat. Unlike the previous soul, Wenjie's father refuses to renounce his beliefs in physics. Even after his wife is brought on stage to reject his heretic science. He is beaten to death by the fanatics as Wenjie watches on helplessly.
Wenjie is transferred to a camp where she has to carry out hard labour.
There she is witness to the destruction of a beautiful forest, as the trees are cut down in the shadow of a mysterious radar.
She meets a boy who gives her a book written in English, something banned by the communists. They gradually fall in love, but it's short-lived as her book is found. Unwilling to give up the boy who gave her the book, she is sent to an even more harsh prison.
At the prison, she is given a choice, to sign a statement giving up other scientists as collaborators with her father, or face criminal proceedings.
She refuses to comply and the annoyed interrogator pours cold water over her already weak body and tiny bed
To her surprise she finds herself being transferred to the radar, where she is met by two guards. She is given the option, as a brilliant scientist in herself, to come and work in the building and never leave, or to go back. She willingly and without hesitation says she'll go inside.
Excelling rapidly she is given the opportunity to conduct an experiment with the radar. A signal is sent out which also causes all the birds in the area to go crazy and drop dead. She meets with the two men in charge who are going to reveal the real experiments that are happening in the building, but she quickly starts to deduce it herself.
This is where scenes quickly split rapidly with the future. Auggie has been told by a stranger that they know what her visions are, and in order for them to stop, and we assume, her to survive she needs to give up all her research. She is also given a cereal box Morse code toy and told to go outside at midnight, where she will see the universe blinking.
Jin meanwhile is at Vera's house visiting Vera's mother, who is revealed to be an elderly Wenjie.
Wenjie gives Jin a shiny helmet-like game that she says her daughter was playing continuously before her death.
When Jin puts the helmet on at home she is transported into a virtual reality world. The special effects for this scene are particularly bad, complete with a VR skeleton coming to life and terrifying Jin to snap the helmet off.
Maybe the money was spent in the next scene as Auggie and Saul ( her ex and a physicist who worked with Vera at the hydrogen collider), go outside just before midnight to look up at the stars. In 1960 Wenjie is sitting with her bosses figuring out that the radar isn't a weapon but is sending a signal, when she asks to whom they reply “To anyone who will listen.” As the clock strikes 12, all the stars in the sky brighten, illuminating the sky. Auggies can't believe what she is seeing and asks if Saul can see it too. He can the whole of the world can, as the night sky starts to pulsate on and off in a pattern.
In London, Da Shi runs up to the top of his office building to meet Thomas Cunnigham, who reveals“This is what we are fighting against”.
At the University, Saul is using the cereal toy and works out the pulsing of the night sky, on and off, as a pattern of numbers. A countdown which matches exactly the countdown Auggie is seeing in her vision.
The episode ends here, leaving us on a cliffhanger. The girl who gave Auggie the code-breaking toy, and told her to look at the sky, seemed to be some religious nut job, but was she related to the Chinese communists who were trying to break the scientist down at the very beginning?
Did elderly Wenjie know what the metal helmet did when she gave it to Jin? We know now that Wenjie is an accomplished scientist. She was acting like she didn't know anything about the helmet, but it seems unlikely.
Why was Jonathan Pryce, playing an oil tycoon Mike Evans, at Wenji's daughter's funeral?
What organization do Thomas Wade and Da Shi work for it suggests they are not one of the official police organisations.
Also do the Chinese in 1960 know that their signals are going into the future, and what are they sending them for?
And finally, will John Bradley ever stop eating?
Benioff and Weiss showed with the first few series of Games of Thrones, what they can do with great source material, and despite a mixed start to this episode, it ends with a bang. With recognisable names and an intriguing non-linear plot adding tension and intrigue, episode one is promising. But when the questions that we want to answer are revealed, most shows become boring. It will be interesting if it can hold our attention to the end.
