[ad_1]
Early in “3 Body Problem,” the new Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s acclaimed science-fiction trilogy, intelligent life from another corner of the universe decides that a spectacle is required to get humanity’s attention. On a cloudless night, the stars brighten, then flicker on and off, as if a kid were playing with a light switch, transmitting a series of numbers. Two physicists—one high and thus mesmerized, the other terrified—watch the phenomenon from a Gothic courtyard in Oxford, England. The next day, the stoner, Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), chalks the experience up to an elaborate hoax; the rest of the world also saw the stars twinkle in code, but the celestial blinks went undetected by Earth’s most powerful telescopes. The otherworldly signal may have been a message just for Saul’s companion, a nanomaterials researcher named Auggie Salazar (Eiza González) who’s had a glowing countdown emblazoned across her field of vision for days. The digits in the sky match the ones she now sees every time she opens her eyes.
Even before the aliens enter the picture, the universe of “3 Body Problem” is an expansive one, jumping between chronologies, continents, and realities. The series—from the “Game of Thrones” showrunners, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, who share creator credits here with Alexander Woo—first attempts to ground viewers with a more conventional mystery. A string of suicides among élite scientists from across the globe catches the attention of Clarence Shi (Benedict Wong), an investigator for a mysterious intelligence agency. One of those deaths, that of a physics professor named Vera, prompts a reunion of her protégés, a group of five thirtysomethings which includes Saul and Auggie. Many of the deceased were plagued by the same hallucinatory countdowns: a deadline by which to halt their research, or else. From there, the narrative unspools with delightful unpredictability—sometimes linearly, sometimes exponentially. Clarence surveils the Oxford Five, the most promising of whom, Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), receives from Vera’s grieving mother (Rosalind Chao) a futuristic, Oculus Rift-style helmet that virtually transports her to another realm. In this alternate universe, which for Jin appears as a version of imperial China, the mercurial gravitational forces of a trio of suns render survival impossible. Solving the “three-body problem” that lends the show its title is the only way to progress in this game—but, as Jin (and by extension Clarence) discovers, there’s more at stake than merely reaching the next level. The test was devised by the beings behind the starry display, an extraterrestrial species in search of a more habitable planet, as a means of making their plight known to human players—and of sniffing out the geniuses who might aid or impede their planned colonization of Earth.
The present-day story of the Oxford Five is juxtaposed with that of a young woman named Ye Wenjie (a phenomenal Zine Tseng), whom we see come of age during China’s Cultural Revolution, and whose physicist father was killed as part of the C.C.P.’s anti-intellectual purge. Wenjie is a brilliant scientist in her own right, albeit one who’s forced to tread carefully in a fraught political landscape. Her troubles are exacerbated by Mao’s brutal development projects, which she fears will do lasting damage to the environment—a concern shared by an American activist named Mike Evans (played as a young man by Ben Schnetzer and as an elderly one by Jonathan Pryce, that master of wild-eyed conviction). Their shared disillusionment has far-reaching implications, particularly after Wenjie decides that it might be time for someone else—maybe even anyone else—to take Homo sapiens’s place at the top of the proverbial food chain.
“3 Body Problem” belongs to an all too rare breed: mainstream entertainment that leads its viewers down bracingly original speculative corridors. The scenario the show ultimately posits bears little resemblance to traditional sci-fi fare; the aliens are coming, but not for another four hundred years, putting humanity on notice for an encounter—and possibly a war—that’s many lifetimes away. This time span is as much a curse as a blessing. Forget the science for a second; what kind of political will—totalitarian or otherwise—is required to keep centuries of preparation on track? How do we get the über-rich to contribute to a new space race in a way that also flatters their egos? And what resources does it take to accelerate scientific discovery to a breakneck pace?
These intellectual stimulants are balanced with the old-fashioned kind—namely, dramatic set pieces and alarmingly inventive forms of body horror. The doomed souls in Jin’s game adapt to the heat of three suns by “dehydrating” their bodies, shrivelling into sheets that are as flat and rollable as sushi mats. In the real world, Auggie’s nanofibres are deployed as weapons to surreal and devastating effect, slicing through flesh and bone as if they were soft-boiled eggs. But the series also has genuine heart. The Oxford gang is rounded out by Will Downing (Alex Sharp), a softie long smitten with Jin, and his best friend Jack Rooney (John Bradley), a pragmatist who made millions selling snacks, uninterested in scrapping with the set another character calls the “Nobel laureates and jealous fucks who think they should be.” The specificity of these friendships—the lens through which we come to understand the human stakes of intergalactic contact—is one of the show’s great strengths.
After eight seasons of “Game of Thrones,” Benioff and Weiss have become savants of the two-person scene, lending relationships a lived-in quality through quiet intimacies and observational humor. The showrunners take considerable liberties with their source material, transposing most of the action from China to the U.K. and imbuing characters with new depth. The result, though still sprawling, isn’t as unwieldy as the eighteen-million-year time line of Liu’s novels. The ultra-sleek (and evidently expensive) production design gives us all the shine and awe we could want, but there’s a perpetual reminder of mammalian grubbiness, too. Clarence, whose perennial bedhead rivals that of Boris Johnson, functions as a much needed Everyman among the improbably hot and accomplished ensemble. Burdened by the knowledge of his relative ordinariness and by a bratty adult son with a weakness for get-rich-quick schemes, Clarence tackles the search for answers with a weary, trying-his-best quality that makes him more akin to the seven billion of us who aren’t world-saving brainiacs—yet no less worthy of salvation.
Like the White Walkers of “Game of Thrones”—a frostbitten zombie horde whose inexorable approach posed an existential threat to the show’s human schemers, whether or not they believed it was coming—the aliens in “3 Body Problem” also offer an unexpectedly potent metaphor for the looming perils of climate change. Once the danger of the invaders’ advance becomes clear, the U.N. Secretary-General (CCH Pounder) insists that “we owe it to our descendants to fight for them.” Inevitably, dissidents and skeptics remain. Some respond with indifference to a cataclysm that’s still light-years away. Others see messianic potential in the new life-forms, assuming that their greater technological capabilities must be accompanied by greater enlightenment. Social movements, mass panic, and religious fervor proliferate. But the show’s fanciful premise allows us to consider patterns of behavior that might otherwise feel dangerously familiar in 2024 from a safe remove. The in-universe fixation with the arrivals from outer space is explained by someone who already knows that he won’t live to see them: “It’s much more fun to imagine a future ‘War of the Worlds’ than it is to muck around with our current problems.” His reasoning might well apply to those watching, too. ♦
[ad_2]
Source link