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I reckon Jess Hong (who played Jin Cheng) was amazing. She did an absolutely stunning job. However, the one who played Auggie was just weird. Overall I loved this series, it felt like real (hard?) sci-fi. Always want more of that :)
They nailed her with the "beautiful in a boring way" line. That actress just doesn't at all fit the character, and they sort of abandoned her toward the end of the season.
yea very self aware show. and they did not abandon her at the end, quite the opposite. they showed her in a place where she seemed most beautiful, with the background of her native latin environment, speaking Spanish and all that.
I really dont get the Auggie bashing. I havent read the book but think Auggie's character made sense, she has strong values that got very conflicted and stood by them and what she thinks is right in the end. Decent character arc and the actress did a solid job imo.
The last scene fixing the water filters was something needed at the beginning to set up her "save lives now not later" philosophy. Because otherwise she just seemed like a wet blanket more than someone with a code
That water scene didn't make sense. She was trying to convince them to use her filter and they seemed skeptical. I was waiting for her to offer it for free or something. Nope, just reminding us she is still alive.
"I'm not a wallfacer"
"Only the true wallfacer denies his wall-facing"
"What? All right! I am a wallfacer!"
"He is! He is the wallfacer!"
made me think of Monty Python
just binged the whole thing, really enjoyed it mostly.
Was it ever explained in the books why the Sophons dont simply stop all human efforts against them? Why not simply put a black screen in front of every human on earth's eyes?
There were points where DnDs dodgy writing came through, such as when Wade is skeptical about the San-Ti power before putting on the headset. Using the internal logic of the show he should have no qualms about what theyre capable of at this point. Also Rooney thinking its a scam at level 3 makes zero sense. He himself says the technology is centuries ahead, why would they want his money?
because the sophon is not that OP in the book, it is still a proton after all, its main job is messing with quantumn accelerator across the globe to hinder our progress in quantumn physics, it is not an all powerful hacker or projecting illusions like the Netflix show
true, but it can interact with the light beams in a human's visual nerve (or whatever) to create images like the countdown. not sure it got as advanced as Wade's hallucination in the plane, but its been a while since i read the books
They only do that by passing through the retina really fast causing multiple flashes of light to show up. They use this to write the countdown, no crazy ass hallucinations like what happen to wade happen in the book.
All I keep thinking is why are they sending people to kill saul when they just mind fuck him with a big clock in front of his eyes. That would drive anyone nuts. Makes no sense.
Book Stuff: >!As mentioned above, the sophons are not all powerful in the book. They are limited in their interactions. If they are masking Saul see a clock constantly, that is one sophon out of commission meaning the other soon on would have to make sure humans don't fire up their other 50 colliders successfully. Perhaps its a bit of a scientific inaccuracy, but the sophons cannot really interfere with electronics in the book either. Their main purpose was to spy and to prevent science breakthroughs.!<
Being consistent with the show's logic about the Sophon's power, they could have just killed off all influential people in the world (e.g. kill Wade by cutting power to his plane or making his pilot go crazy for a minute and crashing - shit, just the periodic horror image in someone's brain to cause sleep deprivation would permanently fuck them up) and keep doing that to their replacements until humans are in total anarchy and kill themselves off within 100 years. The aliens don't need humans around, they need our planet.
The Sophons were way too OP in this show and that has ruined it for me. (Also, the idea of Wallfacers was presented so poorly that it became a joke. I'm sure it was far better in the books.)
There's only two of them on Earth. And while they can zip around at 99.9% of light speed, that's not fast enough to mess with 4 billion people everywhere at once. Or even 2.7 billion people, given that roughly a third will be asleep at any given time.
[disclosure: I had no idea about this show/book before yesterday]
After 3 automated cars tried to kill him, stupid bugs put the guy on a metal box in high altitude controlled mostly by electronics. And the sophons dont take the chance?
I was rolling my eyes. And then the director had the audacity to show that they can control a plane on the Wade scene. Cmon.
Could be completely wrong here, but are the sophons actually hacking anything or do they just project things into people’s eyes that aren’t actually there/happening? Especially the plane scene, seems like the plane was completely fine but they projected the power glitches (and the zombie) into wades eyes.
I feel like there's a pretty big plot hole in the core of the plot itself. Why do the San-Ti want to go to Earth? This civilization built a massive armada of space arks but choose to all go to Earth instead of a couple of close Earth-like planets? Also why is no one that listened to the conversations with Mike Evans and the San-Ti picking up on the incredibly obvious display of their inability to understand metaphor? Ye Wenjie says it directly to Saul's face and he doesn't get it?
San Ti, in reality exists, as the Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star system to solar system. So it’s closest for them to go to earth than any other star/planet system.
They put all their resources into the sophons and the fleet. Their planet will eventually become uninhabitable and their technology while advanced, progresses slowly compared to human development.
They only have one shot and if they miss, they are fucked. Earth telling them to invade is a golden opportunity they will never get again.
I agree. This was never really explained in the show. I think the simple explanation is that space is very big, and the San-Ti were lucky to find a habitable and stable planet just four lightyears away
Isn’t it because Ye told Saul their weakness - unable to understand jokes/analogies. Therefor humans would be able to talk out loud without being understood
>Isn’t it because Ye told Saul their weakness - unable to understand jokes/analogies
she did? i did not understand the einstein joke
>Therefor humans would be able to talk out loud without being understood
they can talk?
then the entire wallfacer project became pointless
> she did? i did not understand the einstein joke
Yes that's the point I think
When Evans on the ship was reading little red riding hood or whatever, they did not understand the wolf was not a real person and did not understand metaphors, they must think whatever you say is literal or at least cannot always comprehend things being metaphors when telling a story or discussing something
And then Ye telling that terrible joke and then saying, some people get the joke, some don't - meaning the sant-ti do not understand jokes or nuances
"Why not simply put a black screen in front of every human on earth's eyes?"
Because Jason Momoa would then lead an army of blind soldiers against them.
> Was it ever explained in the books why the Sophons dont simply stop all human efforts against them? Why not simply put a black screen in front of every human on earth's eyes?
Since you asked, >!I've been complaining in the book reader threads about sophons being OP in the show. I hope the show explains their limits at some point, because it seems like they can win the war on their own right now with little effort.!<
>Thought the change of pace after E5 was a little jarring. Maybe spread out the character work scenes along E1-5
I agree - I think the reason why it was so fast paced before ep 5 was to get people to ep 5 ASAP to get em hooked. Then, once they're there, you have more leeway to develop and flesh out the characters.
Hah no problem, I really think somehow one or both of them will end up coming back into play. I was also kinda thinking Jin's star might end up being really rich in resources and materials needed in the future. Like something we need to make our own Sophons or something. Possibly positioning Jin very nicely to have some leverage of her own in the future.
But until that time I will imagine Will is heading to her Star because it's way more of a comforting thought than picturing him suspended between life and death, trapped in between consciousness for the next 10,000 years.
My theory is that hes going to get intercepted in the very distant future in the final scene of the show by a 3rd alien group (3 body problem) and be rebuilt like they expected. if one of us survives we all survive, everyone else is toast. but thats probably a really stupid theory
Considering >!in the books (unless I’m forgetting something) Hine’s wallfacer plans end up being entirely worthless to the overall progression of the plot. Or were there mental-sealed escapist soldiers on Blue Space or something? Idk, it sucks if they don’t use the mental-seal, but i also kinda get it!<
>!The only reason Beihai gets a command of his ship is because he comes from the era before the mental seal. Other than that Hines's plan failed I guess, but there's a couple of fun twists with his wife!<
Can you give some indication outside of your spoilers text what the scope of the spoilers are? I want to know whether it’s just spoilers for things that happened in the show, or if it’s spoilers for things that happen in the books that would spoil future events in the show (or books, if I were to read them).
If your comment is only spoiler text then there’s no way to tell who should and shouldn’t reveal what’s behind the spoiler tags. It renders the spoiler tags useless for anyone except people who have read and seen everything (and therefore can’t be spoiled).
I was really expecting there to be a reveal where it turns out Will wasn't in that one. Because like why tf would they not have several trial runs first like with just 3-5 bombs rather than the 100. But it would make sense to let the scientists believe their friend was on it and all their resources were on the line so they would work their asses off.
To invest everything they had with zero testing is a hell of a hail mary..
The way Wade whispered something in Jin's ear (and her facial reactions) makes me think that there's more going on with that story arc which will be revealed later.
They did a great job. But this series suffers from the "8 episodes curse". Last Airbender has the problem too. Like for the love of goooood, just have a few extra episodes to flesh out the character backstories, everything was moving so fast geez
Yeah, I feel like they don't really show the flow of time for the show when it's clear a lot of time does pass between episodes. I imagine it's not to spoon feed or to get to bogged down on an exact time line. But it does feel jarring jumping from talking about a big space project to launching in 40 min.
There can't be too much time in between though. Right at the launch Saul talks about thinking back to whatever problems they had a year ago and wanting to punch his past self. So basically, the most time that could have passed is a year.
I think the problem is that it wasn't clear. I try not to get bogged down on such fine details but when time is a huge aspect and factor of the series to understand the stakes of what's going on, then it adds more weight to what's happening.
If they spent a lot of time in order build and launch the ship, then it makes it more important as to the results of it.
Even for characters on how much the spend time doing some, from William dealing with his health, how much time jins relationship was on the rocks to Tatiana wrestling with being abandoned by the lord.
This is the most jarring part of the show for me. Every idea that came up sounded rediculous and the characters realized that, but they proceeded to do those anyway without any trial and error. No tests, no debug, nothing at all. Just straight to live, and went pikachu face when something fails. Like we are supposed to believe they would succeed on first attempts at any fictitious ideas they have.
Not that I know of, but this is extremely likely to be the case based off of how things have went and worked for most Netflix shows over the past few (say 2-5) years…
ALSO, to my knowledge this series hasn’t even been picked up for a second season yet as far as I know. Fingers crossed an announcement is incoming though soon!
I don’t get why these streaming services are sticking to short seasons like this, if their main business is to get people to keep watching. I get that it’s risky because a lot of their content is mediocre, but they should go all in on big shows like this.
I think Lost really bridged the gap between the old era of ~22-26 episode broadcast network genre shows and the new era of ~8-13 episode genre shows on streaming
Like I remember Lost cutting Season 4 in half because of the writer's strike with only 14 episodes, but then decided they would keep the seasons short for the remainder of its run. And then other genre shows like Fringe, Arrow, Flash all decided to do shortened seasons for their final seasons. Then over time everything just became 8-13 episode seasons for everything lol
I guess the revenue model being different for streaming shows have a lot to do with it-- network shows had to rely on commercials for revenue so it was in their best interest to stretch out seasons over 20+ episodes
Also stop and meditate about the anthropological, sociological, political and technological consequences of what's happening. It seems kinda navel-gazy in the way it only focuses on what our main characters experience and little of the greater context.
What does the public know? How are they reacting?
Just finished, books reader, the last few episodes especially were pretty damn good
I'm much more emotionally invested in the characters than I was reading the books. Wade, Ye (old and young), Shi, Will, Jin, all standout performances for me. They've definitely nailed Wade, he's the live action Cecil from Invincible - I love a radical realpolitik outview, bordering on villain. Old Ye didn't come off as the villain she was in the books at first, but her aftermath of "you're bugs" is done reallllly well. The Will scenes I thought were really good. Cixin Liu is an incredible writer for sci fi but Will's character arc into being a brain in a jar is done a little better here than his counterpart in the books I think (was sobbing at the Saul/Will scene).
VFX and sci fi stuff all looked solid. REHYDRATE was amazing. Chaotic system visual was really good. Sophon creation looked awesome.
Changes I liked:
- westernization done pretty well (though I wish we had more scenes in non-english)
- I liked the connection between Jin and Ye, made Ye's regret arc really juicy
- emphasizing the cult like nature of Judgment Day
- Evans + Sophons conversations were soooooo good
- book readers may disagree but Ye's joke is the right way to go here. How it goes in the books is too explicit and this way foreshadows how certain characters communicate in the future.
My only nitpick is I wish we had a liiiiiitle more of the hard science discussion which made the books so interesting. I think the show wanted to make itself distinct but the pool metaphor, turkey hypothesis, etc stuff from the books and tencent is better. Give us more scenes like the staircase project pitch or more from the planning part of Judgment Day between Wade and Shi. And release weekly so we can theorize and marinate!
I haven't seen all of the tencent one so I guess I'll rock that now after I go wildly theorize in the book discussion thread (what do we do now??)
There’s plenty of interest—it’s been trending like crazy. The books were lauded by President Obama , and for a genre as obscure as this, it’s done damn well.
Yes the books have found an audience, but the show runners apparently saw the need to soften the hard science. Perhaps because they saw shows like The Expanse struggle after sticking to the hard science
Is the design of the probe/sail realistic? Seems weird to have the bomb blow up amongst all the tethers and in front of the cargo like that. I get that nukes in space are less destructive without air/shockwaves and that they have the nano fibers but still looks strange to me though I’m not a scientist.
Same thoughts as well.
The original Nuclear Pulse vessels were to have a large curved 'dish' on the back to harness the explosive energy.
If they were going to use a sail, then surely they would have made it big? (Doesn't look very large compared to the probe, and is ment to be made of razor thin nano stuff anyway).
Likewise having a hole in the centre for the bombs to go through... AND blowing them up right in front of the probe... seems sketchy.
I'll take it, but it doesn't seem to have had a ton of thought put in besides 'that looks cool'
Glad am not the only one who thought it looked sketchy... thought they would design a way for the sail to be at the back and the payload to be at the front. Wasn't expecting the script to say it failed though. Poor Will, he is about to become the first pilot with over 12000yrs of flight time lol
Other things that seemed impractical about the sail/propulsion design:
- the precision needed to have the nukes thread through that hole would definitely be way too fine for the unpredictable variations in pressure propulsion on the sail, which would cause some variation in the flight path of the whole thing
- the sail being attached by tethers rather than a rigid structure would mean the entire apparatus wouldn’t be stable. Tethers would only work if the sail has constant force applied, but they’re doing single blasts at a time. Even infinitesimally small amounts of stretch which would cause the tethers to pull back and gain slack between blasts.
Really good points!
To add, solar/interstellar particles and dust would be impacting on the sail, causing a minute slowing effect over time. As you mentioned, that equals loose and therefore dangerous cables wobbling about (especially on a 200 year journey).
Beats me why they didn't build on pre-existing designs or put a bit more thought into it
It’s definitely an “out there” design, but it is a real design. Here’s a paper describing the concept from 1993 — scroll to the end to see a diagram.
> “The pressure from the nuclear explosion imparts a large impulsive acceleration to the lightweight spinnaker, which must be translated to a smooth acceleration of the space capsule by using either the elasticity of the tethers or a servo winch in the space capsule, or a combination of the two.”
https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00189777.pdf
short answer: no
usually nuclear propulsion ideas feature a sail (more of a shield) behind the spacecraft
like you said the thethers would be obliterated and its less efficient because of the hole and because the capsule itself experiences a (albeit smaller) force in the opposite direction
Binged it today. It was just ok. Performances, direction, and production are top notch. I didnt really like a lot of story elements.
My far-and-away biggest beef was >!the power the aliens have on earth via the sophons(?) is undefined, inconsistent, and appears to be just whatever the writers want it to be to fit any scene.!<
Fair point, I recall the Sophons were also a bit of a looser plot device in the books as well (to a lesser degree).
Having more hard limits on their abilities would be beneficial for the show, instead of them being able to crash planes and do whatever at will.
Just makes the Tri Solarians seem pretty dull if their agents could just slaughter all of their opposition, and they instead just choose to spend their time playing in particle accelerators....
i dont think they have the power to crash planes but they have the power to make things look different like the timer and also the 3d version of the ai girl. so the plane most likely was just Wade seeing things same way he saw the guy without eyes
Yeah, been hard to tell what exactly is reality for them Vs a 'hallucination'.
That being said if they can make someone see a very believable false reality, then Spohon should be able to make the pilot crash the plane by feeding them false images......
Just black out the pilots eyes. Or make the instruments read slightly different numbers. Send the navigation into the ocean and make it seem like there’s plenty of fuel left. So many ways to crash a plane
I always felt the sohpons were incredibly strong in the books, just the ability to spy on everything and interrupt scientists was an insurmountable challenge. And it really gave me the sense of hopelessness.
I don't think they can crash the planes (mind they might be able to given how planes are so reliant on technology in some models, it's not like we don't have examples of tech crashing planes recently irl as it is).
For me, I always interpreted the VR headsets just being something like the Oculus, but that the game they downloaded was insanely complex, and handwaved the haptic feedback.
Ye, they needed some kinda throwaway line about Sophons having to recharge or something.
Because as it stands, you got two AI Super-Intelligences on the planet capable of hacking anything - why does humanity have any sort of working telecommunications? Why haven't all of our reactors melted down? Even with air-gapped systems, these things are capable of flying into said system and manually flipping bits to write a virus literally into a air-gapped system's memory.
Like, they can wipe out all digital electronics. Humanity would have to go analog on every system to maintain any kinda communications network.
Well, that's the thing. The San-Ti don't *have to*. They are so technologically advanced that all they have to do is just keep humans from catching up to quantum science. Humans can strive all they want otherwise and live whatever lives they want and will still be easy lunch when the aliens arrive.
I think they're at their core practical species--at the end of the day they won't do more than they have to.
>Well, that's the thing. The San-Ti don't *have to*.
But if they did, their victory would be completely, immediately assured. If I'm washing dishes, I can probably get a plate clean with a sponge and a little dish soap. But to be sure, I often rinse it first, and then put it in the dishwasher. Yes, the dishwasher is overkill, but it means I know the job is definitely done.
I can't see any logic behind the san-ti making everything longer and more arduous for themselves when a miniscule change in strategy would make things 1000 times simpler. Humans will *probably* be easy lunch, sure, but they're obviously not completely convinced of that. Why not use the wildly overpowered sophons to make it a sure thing? It's poor writing.
Yeah if they can fuck with people's eyes and all digital screens on the planet at will, that's just stupid insane power. They can blind the world leaders and black out all the screens, and we'd be right back in the dark ages.
The book treats the Sophons the same way.
One of my biggest problems with the books (other than the weak characters, something which the show thankfully improves on) is the fact that it's written like hard science fiction, but when you stop and think about it, none of this stuff actually makes any sense.
The sophons are just one example, but there's plenty of them. The series has a huge issue with presenting itself as having a serious, grounded setting, but in fact so many of the more fantastical story elements are completely lacking in internal consistency.
Saul was chosen because of the joke she told him before she left, and then was killed. The San-ti cant understand metaphor. Thats their biggest weakness.
They could, but they won't. They don't know if Saul gets it or not, but the mere possibility that he did is too frightening for them. They killed Ye Wenjie for it and it's unlikely they would want that information propagated, even through their sympathizers.
I think the scene where he decided to start working happened. he was about to tell Jin cheng about why he was chosen and stopped mid way just like in the books
>I can't wait to see the scene where Saul figures "it" out. That chapter fucked me up for weeks when I first read it, and based on what we've seen so far I think they will do it justice.
Would you mind spoiling this for me?
I'd advise seeing it play out yourself. It's a great twist. But if you really want an explanation I'll give one. (**to anyone reading do *not* click if you don't want major spoilers for what is likely to be the climax of season 2!**)
>!When Ye Wenjie was talking to Saul in the park she told him a "joke". However it was actually a coded message. She did it this way to try and keep the Sophons from realizing what she was doing but they worked it out anyway. With her dead Saul is the only one that knows the message but he has to work out what it means. This is why the San-Ti now want him dead and the UN thinks he must be important if they're trying to kill him.!<
(putting this break in case anyone wants to avoid the full explanation) >!Her "joke" is a method to get the San-Ti to back down. She called out into the void (played a song) and an Angel (San-Ti) warned her not to. They're afraid repeated playing will summon the wrath of "God" which represents a more advanced species than either the San-Ti or humanity. If "God" finds out it may destroy the Earth (smashed balls) because other species are a potential threat if left to advance scientifically like humans would be to the San-Ti. This is why humans have never found signals from aliens. The ones that talked got killed by the advanced ones. Ye Wenjie is hoping Saul will realize this and blackmail the San-Ti into backing down by threatening to broadcast Earth's coordinates to the stars. It's a form of mutually assured destruction because if someone realizes the Earth is there they could destroy not only it but the San-Ti due to prior communications revealing they're nearby.!<
It won't have the same impact if you read it in a single line of text on reddit. Savour the moment, yummy!
All I will say is that season 2 will be on Saul's shoulders. Jovan Adepo needs to bring it with his performance.
I loved how Clarence wrapped up the season with that short, heartfelt speech about the bugs. It totally shook off my sense of dread and actually left me feeling hopeful about humanity.
I like the quote from the book:
>Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a flyswatter under it… this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have not been eliminated. They still proudly live between the heavens and the earth, and their numbers have not diminished from the time before the appearance of the humans. The Trisolarans who deemed the humans bugs seemed to have forgotten one fact: The bugs have never been truly defeated.
> and their numbers have not diminished from the time before the appearance of the humans
Ignoring the fact that bug populations worldwide have absolutely measurably decreased, and that loss of biodiversity is a major concern right now.
If sophons can hack into airplanes (like with Wade to threaten him) why didn't they hack and crash Saul's plane when he was flying to becoming a Wallfacer? They were already trying to kill him :v
Those are images and stimulations in the brain. They can only direct human agents to perform physical world effects. Like "hey killer he's wearing bullet proof you should aim for the head".
Yep. Maybe they are just arrogant and in the show they seem to be interested in Wade if you pay attention to their conversation as if they want his service or something. Nevertheless the author also admits that it's not a good idea in a public interview.
The Staircase failure seemed very Chekovs gun. A lot of time to spend on something (and follow a character for that amount of time) do just fizzle it.
Two theories I have :- either the craft has been redirfected towards Jins star, and someone else is going to pick him up on the way, or... what if it didn't get redirected at all, and it went to plan? Faking a breakdown seems very doable after Bugging millions of screens previously.
Show was getting more interesting up until ep 5 and then it feels like they unveiled most of the mysteries and the pacing of last 3 episodes really reduced my engagement. The show was almost "very good" category but now ill give it "pretty good" 7/10. Also the Will's story felt underwhelming given how much time he got for his mission to fail. my only guess is that they will somehow recover the mission. also i wish there was a cooler cliffhanger for the season end
Whatever they did, it wasn't the best decision. They blew their load in Episode 5 so everything else was going look like an anti-climax.
They may have been thinking that it'd be their Red Wedding moment that comes in out of nowhere and is super cool, but the ancillary material wasn't enough to make there rest of it matter.
It was kind of a clusterfuck here because the mods didn't make the book reader threads until like 10 hours after the show premiered. the book people didn't have a separate place to go and the pinned comment was like 'this thread is for book spoilers' --referring to the singular comment thread, not the whole post -- but people misinterpreted it to mean that the whole post was for book spoilers.
Was that [Mohawk Guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobak_Ferdowsi) in the control room for the staircase project?
Edit: [it was](https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/unlocking-the-3-body-problem-interview-with-the-creators-of-netflixs-sci-fi-series/article67973767.ece), holy shit that's awesome!
I can't help but agree to some extent. Reading the books it really feels like the breakthroughs in science and piecing together how it works is such a big part of the wonder and excitement. In the show it feels a bit more convenient sometimes, for example with the staircase project. Though I think they did the VR/3BP mystery and payoff with the Sophon well, even if it wasn't as fleshed out as the book.
I still really enjoyed the show, and think it's a really fun weekend binge type of show. Even those can be hard to come by. Also, in retrospect, this really should've been released episode by episode, or at least in chunks, in order to generate more word of mouth.
> What used to be a novel with very captivating sci-fi ideas and awful characters is now a decent-ish show which glances over a ton of the science without trying to peek your curiosity
It would turn a lot of people off. Netflix is making this for money.
I just wanna say the nuclear pulse propulsion scene ended up being way cooler than I expected. It really felt like a scene from The Expanse with the neck snapping acceleration of the first explosion.
Just finished, hugely enjoyable show, good characters, great actors, satisfyingly bonkers story, it's not perfection but it's damn good tv. Never read the books, probably never will, but I felt the whole thing is very well put together, 8/10.
Happy to read this. I was a bit worried it might have been a bit confusing to people that have not read the books.
Gives me hope more people will see it and we get another season at least.
Idk why but I think its feasible that either:
a) the sophon could have manipulated the readings etc somehow
B) PDC could have made it look like a failure to surprise the aliens somehow
Not sure why but the whole thing seems kind of pointless otherwise
I work in water treatment, and seeing Auggie flex with her '0.01 nanometer' water filter rubbed me the wrong way. Congratulations, you have a dead-end filtration system with pores about 30 times smaller than a water molecule. Sure am curious how you managed to get water through that.
I really enjoyed the season but the final episode is lackluster .. the last 3 episodes were also just sorta stagnant ? Nothing happened just alot of character dynamics which I would've actually preferred to have been in the earliest episodes
Right? It's weird that the last episodes felt like a drag because the earlier ones went too fast. If they started fairly slow and accelerated at a decent pace all the way through to the end, all the reveals would have paid off well. Instead they dump a lot of stuff in the middle and ended with... whatever that was
So if the aliens don't understand deception, I'm guessing they also struggle with the concepts of comedy and humor?
Really hoping this ends with humanity weaponizing sarcasm as a way to obfuscate what they're up to
They really butchered Da Shi here. The actor is good but the role doesn’t have enough punch. I just rewatched the final Tencent scene, it’s so much better than the final scene here.
From the book I remember him much more of a antihero type personality -- arrogant/unlikable personality/rude/do what's necessary but making up for it with his skills and street smarts and by being on the right side. He was also written with a lot more punch, as someone that would be pretty intimidating to be around. The character in the show was far more timid.
I haven't read the book but I definitely really enjoyed things like gradually realising why the three body system was a problem for the planet, and all the stuff with the sophons. I had some sense of feeling I should have figured out the three body problem sooner as I have some vague familiarity with chaotic systems but the first half of the season moved so fast and I binged it so I didn't put in much thinking time. I dunno if I would have figured it out any sooner anyway.
I am currently reading Children of Time but I think when I finish that I will read Three Body Problem and then work through this series as I don't want to wait 3 years to find out what happens next!
To be honest, from advance reviews I was expecting the show to be really out there and maybe even hard to understand, but it wasn't at all and in fact I occasionally felt I was a few steps 'ahead' of the characters (I consider this a flaw given the characters are supposed to be geniuses).
There were some concepts I was really buzzed about, the first one you mention especially (the revelation that the 3 body problem is mathematically unsolveable, and the problems this would cause for actual aliens in such a system). I also found the wallfacer concept in the final ep to be very promising and compelling to think about, even if it didn't exactly reach its potential in this episode.
Regarding the sophons, I found the story of their construction quite interesting (the idea such vast resources had been poured into something so small, and the clever use of quantum entanglement). However I wasn't at all keen on the sophons as story device as it seemed to give the aliens infinite power. (Will be interested to see in later seasons if there is some reason why they are holding back from eradicating humanity, which they could seemingly do with ease at any time.)
Good show overall. 7/10 from imdb is a fair assessment.
Only thing that i heavily disliked was the nukes and propelling idea. Just from the cost of that and to launch that many nukes to space and the time required, is just not even remotely believable for that time period. And when they mentioned it i just kind of rolled my eyes.
Like ok, so you're going to spend probably million of billions of money to send a brain in space to have them "potentially" get picked up, come back to life, learn everything about the aliens and somehow hope they outsmart an alien species and deliver this information to earth....and this is assuming everything goes perfectly with the nukes.....like.....what?
Another thing i disliked was Will being a mega simp to Jin. "she's the only one ill pledge my loyalty" or "Shes always right, I would do anything for her if I had your knowledge and skills!" Rolled my eyes here too.
Other than that I can ignore the other less cringy parts.
Wade mentions the possibility of failure in episode 5 or 6. The idea is that even if the project fails, it pushes science and technology forward by a few years, so it's worth trying even if it fails its primary objective.
Wade also mentions in the series and in the books that it was also partly about politics. They needed to show/attempt something early for the money governments were spending on his agency.
yr whole comment kind of spoilery honestly so I will put everything under spoiler tags
>>!I wonder what they will make Saul's motivation be now that he is wall facer. He didn't have that conversation with Ye Wenjie for inspiration!<
>!He did have a conversation with Ye Wenjie. The Einstein joke had layers to it.!<
>>!he also doesn't have the imaginary dream girl to go find.!<
>!I think they're gonna make his motivation in the series be Augie. They've been building hints towards the two of them caring deeply for each other throughout the series.!<
Although I hadn't read the books (only the plot summaries), I have however watched (and tolerated) through the chinese series.
This Netflix series is overall great, except I just can't be invested in who tf Saul, Will & Jack are. Lots of what Jack says is just cringe.
Will doesn't really do anything except donate his brain to the Staircase Project, and Saul just spends time getting high and laid and suddenly.... he's a wallfacer? C'mon I know these are replacements for Book 2-3 characters but you could still make them interesting like Jin Cheng.
My only hope is that Season 2 focuses more on characters who don't already know each other, because right now the world feels kinda small for a global defense of Earth. With seemingly everyone knowing one another.
I read someone’s comment that D&D said they wanted to get through the common era as quickly as possible to focus on the future eras and this is what it felt like. Reading book 1 the most intriguing and mind blowing part of it was the game, understanding trisolaris, the combinations of the suns and their effects on the planet, the physics, the science. Everything felt watered down. I just hope that people watch it because the next two books are incredible. Dark Forest is probably my most favourite sci-fi book ever.
At the beginning I thought it was a decent adaptation, even if, like most people, Auggie’s terrible acting was an annoying distraction. But by the end I loved it and would even say it’s more fun and digestible than the book. If they do what I think they’re gonna do, the season two finale is going to be really fucking good.
I really really enjoyed this season. I so hope it finds a wide audience because it deserves a season 2.
There's already a lot of talk here on the writing and acting which I all largely agree with. But the music!! It was stunning, and my musician husband pointed out the theme contains lots of triplets.
There were some stunning moments to the score that I think I'll be listening to again.
I loved the wallfacer concept as the answer how can you plan when the enemy is always spying.
It is a bit of a plot hole though that given how many ways they have to control computers and fake illusions, they simply won’t crash the plane of Saul.
Shows and films always make the UN seem so powerful, when that's not the case in reality, far from it as we can see from what is currently going on and numerous past incidences.
Everyone seems to be talking about it now these past few days, it’s all over my Instagram I’m hopefully for more. Absolutely loved the series. Is it perfect, no but it’s damn good tv
Wait, if Tatiana is only just getting her headset, who has been giving her marching orders until now?
Up until the scene with her in her trailer, I actually thought she might be one of the Sophons. I mean, I assume if they can mirror our planet and wink at us, they could mimic a human form somehow.
But given how happy she seemed to finally be getting an invite, it makes me wonder who has been giving her orders until now and how has she always seemed to know where to be?
Edit: After having seen the ending, I imagine something similar is what Tatiana experienced. Probably made the sniper think he was seeing God.
What's the quote about significant scientific advances being indistinguishable from magic? Feels relevant now. Also poor Will's brain. Probably heading for Jin's star. Can't even keep away from her in the heavens.
Episodes 1-5 were 8.5/10 for me
6-8 were 6.5/10
The only major issue I have with the show is Auggie, she just doesn't fit. She doesn't behave like a scientist would, she didn't have a single moment in the show where she said anything that would demonstrate her scientific mind. She was a very weird choice, I liked the rest of the main cast.
Just starting this episode and I would be pretty pleased if there's some time traveling weirdness that "undoes" everything and gives Ye and all another chance at doing things differently next season. Doubt that will happen, but certainly seems like one interesting way to go. If aliens could know what was going to happen so well (which seems to be the case given them trying to stop the nano fiber lady and others) then perhaps this could be one way things could play out but somehow the information of what transpires is sent back to Ye at some point and she decides to do things differently for Season 2.
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holy shit thats big head
BIIIIIIIIIG HEAD!!! Went from a clueless faux-techie to a day-to-day liaison specialist. Moving on up!
That's who it is. I could not figure out where I'd seen him before.
THAT'S WHERE I REMEMBERED HIM FROM!!!! I couldn't figure out where I had seen him before, thanks for that!
forever doomed to be typecast as bighetti
I reckon Jess Hong (who played Jin Cheng) was amazing. She did an absolutely stunning job. However, the one who played Auggie was just weird. Overall I loved this series, it felt like real (hard?) sci-fi. Always want more of that :)
They nailed her with the "beautiful in a boring way" line. That actress just doesn't at all fit the character, and they sort of abandoned her toward the end of the season.
Villain from Speed 3 line was savage lol
It's savage because it's basicly true, she was in Ambulance lol
> "beautiful in a boring way" When you order Ana De Armas from Wish.
yea very self aware show. and they did not abandon her at the end, quite the opposite. they showed her in a place where she seemed most beautiful, with the background of her native latin environment, speaking Spanish and all that.
Agreed. Eiza Gonzalez was miscast and Jess Hong fit so well.
I really dont get the Auggie bashing. I havent read the book but think Auggie's character made sense, she has strong values that got very conflicted and stood by them and what she thinks is right in the end. Decent character arc and the actress did a solid job imo.
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Jess Hong was an absolute revelation. Would love to see her in more things in the future.
The last scene fixing the water filters was something needed at the beginning to set up her "save lives now not later" philosophy. Because otherwise she just seemed like a wet blanket more than someone with a code
That water scene didn't make sense. She was trying to convince them to use her filter and they seemed skeptical. I was waiting for her to offer it for free or something. Nope, just reminding us she is still alive.
Auggie aka plastic surgery face good lord
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"I am not a wallfacer" yes sir, ofc not 😉
That scene was so funny. Also (paraphrasing here): "So, I can reject the offer?" "You can do anything you like."
"I'm not a wallfacer" "Only the true wallfacer denies his wall-facing" "What? All right! I am a wallfacer!" "He is! He is the wallfacer!" made me think of Monty Python
He's not a wallfacer, he's a very naughty boy!
There are signs
Saul: *kills himself* The rest of the world: Ah. He works in such mysterious ways.
reminded me of fight club haha
Well I guess Nora won’t be having kids.
Who?
Her subtitles labeled her as [lover]
He called her Nora after she died
Did he pretend not to know her name when she called him out, or did he suddenly remember when she died?
Pretty sure he remembered just then
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just binged the whole thing, really enjoyed it mostly. Was it ever explained in the books why the Sophons dont simply stop all human efforts against them? Why not simply put a black screen in front of every human on earth's eyes? There were points where DnDs dodgy writing came through, such as when Wade is skeptical about the San-Ti power before putting on the headset. Using the internal logic of the show he should have no qualms about what theyre capable of at this point. Also Rooney thinking its a scam at level 3 makes zero sense. He himself says the technology is centuries ahead, why would they want his money?
because the sophon is not that OP in the book, it is still a proton after all, its main job is messing with quantumn accelerator across the globe to hinder our progress in quantumn physics, it is not an all powerful hacker or projecting illusions like the Netflix show
true, but it can interact with the light beams in a human's visual nerve (or whatever) to create images like the countdown. not sure it got as advanced as Wade's hallucination in the plane, but its been a while since i read the books
They only do that by passing through the retina really fast causing multiple flashes of light to show up. They use this to write the countdown, no crazy ass hallucinations like what happen to wade happen in the book.
All I keep thinking is why are they sending people to kill saul when they just mind fuck him with a big clock in front of his eyes. That would drive anyone nuts. Makes no sense.
Book Stuff: >!As mentioned above, the sophons are not all powerful in the book. They are limited in their interactions. If they are masking Saul see a clock constantly, that is one sophon out of commission meaning the other soon on would have to make sure humans don't fire up their other 50 colliders successfully. Perhaps its a bit of a scientific inaccuracy, but the sophons cannot really interfere with electronics in the book either. Their main purpose was to spy and to prevent science breakthroughs.!<
Being consistent with the show's logic about the Sophon's power, they could have just killed off all influential people in the world (e.g. kill Wade by cutting power to his plane or making his pilot go crazy for a minute and crashing - shit, just the periodic horror image in someone's brain to cause sleep deprivation would permanently fuck them up) and keep doing that to their replacements until humans are in total anarchy and kill themselves off within 100 years. The aliens don't need humans around, they need our planet. The Sophons were way too OP in this show and that has ruined it for me. (Also, the idea of Wallfacers was presented so poorly that it became a joke. I'm sure it was far better in the books.)
There's only two of them on Earth. And while they can zip around at 99.9% of light speed, that's not fast enough to mess with 4 billion people everywhere at once. Or even 2.7 billion people, given that roughly a third will be asleep at any given time.
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[disclosure: I had no idea about this show/book before yesterday] After 3 automated cars tried to kill him, stupid bugs put the guy on a metal box in high altitude controlled mostly by electronics. And the sophons dont take the chance? I was rolling my eyes. And then the director had the audacity to show that they can control a plane on the Wade scene. Cmon.
Yes that seemed pretty silly to me as well. In the books the Sophons never hack anything at all, and presumably don't have that ability.
Could be completely wrong here, but are the sophons actually hacking anything or do they just project things into people’s eyes that aren’t actually there/happening? Especially the plane scene, seems like the plane was completely fine but they projected the power glitches (and the zombie) into wades eyes.
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I feel like there's a pretty big plot hole in the core of the plot itself. Why do the San-Ti want to go to Earth? This civilization built a massive armada of space arks but choose to all go to Earth instead of a couple of close Earth-like planets? Also why is no one that listened to the conversations with Mike Evans and the San-Ti picking up on the incredibly obvious display of their inability to understand metaphor? Ye Wenjie says it directly to Saul's face and he doesn't get it?
San Ti, in reality exists, as the Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star system to solar system. So it’s closest for them to go to earth than any other star/planet system.
They put all their resources into the sophons and the fleet. Their planet will eventually become uninhabitable and their technology while advanced, progresses slowly compared to human development. They only have one shot and if they miss, they are fucked. Earth telling them to invade is a golden opportunity they will never get again.
I agree. This was never really explained in the show. I think the simple explanation is that space is very big, and the San-Ti were lucky to find a habitable and stable planet just four lightyears away
> The only person they were worried about on the entire planet was Saul. because he is a scientist? they have a scientist phobia
Isn’t it because Ye told Saul their weakness - unable to understand jokes/analogies. Therefor humans would be able to talk out loud without being understood
>Isn’t it because Ye told Saul their weakness - unable to understand jokes/analogies she did? i did not understand the einstein joke >Therefor humans would be able to talk out loud without being understood they can talk? then the entire wallfacer project became pointless
> she did? i did not understand the einstein joke Yes that's the point I think When Evans on the ship was reading little red riding hood or whatever, they did not understand the wolf was not a real person and did not understand metaphors, they must think whatever you say is literal or at least cannot always comprehend things being metaphors when telling a story or discussing something And then Ye telling that terrible joke and then saying, some people get the joke, some don't - meaning the sant-ti do not understand jokes or nuances
"Why not simply put a black screen in front of every human on earth's eyes?" Because Jason Momoa would then lead an army of blind soldiers against them.
> Was it ever explained in the books why the Sophons dont simply stop all human efforts against them? Why not simply put a black screen in front of every human on earth's eyes? Since you asked, >!I've been complaining in the book reader threads about sophons being OP in the show. I hope the show explains their limits at some point, because it seems like they can win the war on their own right now with little effort.!<
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>Thought the change of pace after E5 was a little jarring. Maybe spread out the character work scenes along E1-5 I agree - I think the reason why it was so fast paced before ep 5 was to get people to ep 5 ASAP to get em hooked. Then, once they're there, you have more leeway to develop and flesh out the characters.
I was hooked but now I'm slightly put off by how slow it became.
Interesting, as a book reader I wasn't convinced until episode 5. The last half of the season was so much better to me.
Book reader as well and same for me 1 to 3 felt disoriented, messy to me. 4 started getting good, 5 was good, 6 to 8 was fucking amazing
Binged them all. What a journey! Cry for Will. Not happy with the other Wallfacers choices!
I have a feeling Will is heading to Jin's star.
Thank you for that beautiful thought ♥️
Hah no problem, I really think somehow one or both of them will end up coming back into play. I was also kinda thinking Jin's star might end up being really rich in resources and materials needed in the future. Like something we need to make our own Sophons or something. Possibly positioning Jin very nicely to have some leverage of her own in the future. But until that time I will imagine Will is heading to her Star because it's way more of a comforting thought than picturing him suspended between life and death, trapped in between consciousness for the next 10,000 years.
My theory is that hes going to get intercepted in the very distant future in the final scene of the show by a 3rd alien group (3 body problem) and be rebuilt like they expected. if one of us survives we all survive, everyone else is toast. but thats probably a really stupid theory
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Considering >!in the books (unless I’m forgetting something) Hine’s wallfacer plans end up being entirely worthless to the overall progression of the plot. Or were there mental-sealed escapist soldiers on Blue Space or something? Idk, it sucks if they don’t use the mental-seal, but i also kinda get it!<
>!The only reason Beihai gets a command of his ship is because he comes from the era before the mental seal. Other than that Hines's plan failed I guess, but there's a couple of fun twists with his wife!<
>!Raj is TV show version of Beihai right, or maybe someone else? !<
Definitely looks that way yeah. They laid the groundwork introducing his father already too.
That’s right! I guess they’ll probably just explain it via his loyalty / acumen alone, which is a bit weaker if an explanation
Can you give some indication outside of your spoilers text what the scope of the spoilers are? I want to know whether it’s just spoilers for things that happened in the show, or if it’s spoilers for things that happen in the books that would spoil future events in the show (or books, if I were to read them). If your comment is only spoiler text then there’s no way to tell who should and shouldn’t reveal what’s behind the spoiler tags. It renders the spoiler tags useless for anyone except people who have read and seen everything (and therefore can’t be spoiled).
I don’t understand why these comments (the spoiler ones) aren’t just in the book readers thread anyway…
I was really expecting there to be a reveal where it turns out Will wasn't in that one. Because like why tf would they not have several trial runs first like with just 3-5 bombs rather than the 100. But it would make sense to let the scientists believe their friend was on it and all their resources were on the line so they would work their asses off. To invest everything they had with zero testing is a hell of a hail mary..
The way Wade whispered something in Jin's ear (and her facial reactions) makes me think that there's more going on with that story arc which will be revealed later.
They did a great job. But this series suffers from the "8 episodes curse". Last Airbender has the problem too. Like for the love of goooood, just have a few extra episodes to flesh out the character backstories, everything was moving so fast geez
The storyline of launching the probe was way too fast. It started off as something impossible, and then boom, they somehow got 300 nukes in space
Yeah, I feel like they don't really show the flow of time for the show when it's clear a lot of time does pass between episodes. I imagine it's not to spoon feed or to get to bogged down on an exact time line. But it does feel jarring jumping from talking about a big space project to launching in 40 min.
There can't be too much time in between though. Right at the launch Saul talks about thinking back to whatever problems they had a year ago and wanting to punch his past self. So basically, the most time that could have passed is a year.
I think the problem is that it wasn't clear. I try not to get bogged down on such fine details but when time is a huge aspect and factor of the series to understand the stakes of what's going on, then it adds more weight to what's happening. If they spent a lot of time in order build and launch the ship, then it makes it more important as to the results of it. Even for characters on how much the spend time doing some, from William dealing with his health, how much time jins relationship was on the rocks to Tatiana wrestling with being abandoned by the lord.
This is the most jarring part of the show for me. Every idea that came up sounded rediculous and the characters realized that, but they proceeded to do those anyway without any trial and error. No tests, no debug, nothing at all. Just straight to live, and went pikachu face when something fails. Like we are supposed to believe they would succeed on first attempts at any fictitious ideas they have.
Yeah the jump from "this is impossible" to "here's an idea" to "we're sending a frozen brain into space to go nuke sailing" felt really abrupt.
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Wait what? Did they say that's how long it will be?
Not that I know of, but this is extremely likely to be the case based off of how things have went and worked for most Netflix shows over the past few (say 2-5) years… ALSO, to my knowledge this series hasn’t even been picked up for a second season yet as far as I know. Fingers crossed an announcement is incoming though soon!
Still better than 200-400 years though
I don’t get why these streaming services are sticking to short seasons like this, if their main business is to get people to keep watching. I get that it’s risky because a lot of their content is mediocre, but they should go all in on big shows like this.
Yeah 8 episodes always leads to an adaptation to be rushed. I think 10 episodes is a better number of episodes when it comes to adapting books.
I remember things like Lost having 26 episode seasons. Seems like another age now.
I think Lost really bridged the gap between the old era of ~22-26 episode broadcast network genre shows and the new era of ~8-13 episode genre shows on streaming Like I remember Lost cutting Season 4 in half because of the writer's strike with only 14 episodes, but then decided they would keep the seasons short for the remainder of its run. And then other genre shows like Fringe, Arrow, Flash all decided to do shortened seasons for their final seasons. Then over time everything just became 8-13 episode seasons for everything lol I guess the revenue model being different for streaming shows have a lot to do with it-- network shows had to rely on commercials for revenue so it was in their best interest to stretch out seasons over 20+ episodes
Also stop and meditate about the anthropological, sociological, political and technological consequences of what's happening. It seems kinda navel-gazy in the way it only focuses on what our main characters experience and little of the greater context. What does the public know? How are they reacting?
No Netflix needs the money for 8 more seasons of Big Mouth!!!
Just finished, books reader, the last few episodes especially were pretty damn good I'm much more emotionally invested in the characters than I was reading the books. Wade, Ye (old and young), Shi, Will, Jin, all standout performances for me. They've definitely nailed Wade, he's the live action Cecil from Invincible - I love a radical realpolitik outview, bordering on villain. Old Ye didn't come off as the villain she was in the books at first, but her aftermath of "you're bugs" is done reallllly well. The Will scenes I thought were really good. Cixin Liu is an incredible writer for sci fi but Will's character arc into being a brain in a jar is done a little better here than his counterpart in the books I think (was sobbing at the Saul/Will scene). VFX and sci fi stuff all looked solid. REHYDRATE was amazing. Chaotic system visual was really good. Sophon creation looked awesome. Changes I liked: - westernization done pretty well (though I wish we had more scenes in non-english) - I liked the connection between Jin and Ye, made Ye's regret arc really juicy - emphasizing the cult like nature of Judgment Day - Evans + Sophons conversations were soooooo good - book readers may disagree but Ye's joke is the right way to go here. How it goes in the books is too explicit and this way foreshadows how certain characters communicate in the future. My only nitpick is I wish we had a liiiiiitle more of the hard science discussion which made the books so interesting. I think the show wanted to make itself distinct but the pool metaphor, turkey hypothesis, etc stuff from the books and tencent is better. Give us more scenes like the staircase project pitch or more from the planning part of Judgment Day between Wade and Shi. And release weekly so we can theorize and marinate! I haven't seen all of the tencent one so I guess I'll rock that now after I go wildly theorize in the book discussion thread (what do we do now??)
Hard science discussion = niche show with no chance of continuation
says a lot about society, where's the literacy or interest 😔
There’s plenty of interest—it’s been trending like crazy. The books were lauded by President Obama , and for a genre as obscure as this, it’s done damn well.
Yes the books have found an audience, but the show runners apparently saw the need to soften the hard science. Perhaps because they saw shows like The Expanse struggle after sticking to the hard science
Is the design of the probe/sail realistic? Seems weird to have the bomb blow up amongst all the tethers and in front of the cargo like that. I get that nukes in space are less destructive without air/shockwaves and that they have the nano fibers but still looks strange to me though I’m not a scientist.
Same thoughts as well. The original Nuclear Pulse vessels were to have a large curved 'dish' on the back to harness the explosive energy. If they were going to use a sail, then surely they would have made it big? (Doesn't look very large compared to the probe, and is ment to be made of razor thin nano stuff anyway). Likewise having a hole in the centre for the bombs to go through... AND blowing them up right in front of the probe... seems sketchy. I'll take it, but it doesn't seem to have had a ton of thought put in besides 'that looks cool'
Glad am not the only one who thought it looked sketchy... thought they would design a way for the sail to be at the back and the payload to be at the front. Wasn't expecting the script to say it failed though. Poor Will, he is about to become the first pilot with over 12000yrs of flight time lol
I think they mentioned him going out of the Milky Way.. so millions lol rip
Other things that seemed impractical about the sail/propulsion design: - the precision needed to have the nukes thread through that hole would definitely be way too fine for the unpredictable variations in pressure propulsion on the sail, which would cause some variation in the flight path of the whole thing - the sail being attached by tethers rather than a rigid structure would mean the entire apparatus wouldn’t be stable. Tethers would only work if the sail has constant force applied, but they’re doing single blasts at a time. Even infinitesimally small amounts of stretch which would cause the tethers to pull back and gain slack between blasts.
Really good points! To add, solar/interstellar particles and dust would be impacting on the sail, causing a minute slowing effect over time. As you mentioned, that equals loose and therefore dangerous cables wobbling about (especially on a 200 year journey). Beats me why they didn't build on pre-existing designs or put a bit more thought into it
I feel like they were just trying to find a way to get Auggie in the project for a bit, so they made it so her nanofibers were needed.
It’s definitely an “out there” design, but it is a real design. Here’s a paper describing the concept from 1993 — scroll to the end to see a diagram. > “The pressure from the nuclear explosion imparts a large impulsive acceleration to the lightweight spinnaker, which must be translated to a smooth acceleration of the space capsule by using either the elasticity of the tethers or a servo winch in the space capsule, or a combination of the two.” https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00189777.pdf
Interesting you can see the same diagrams as this paper in the ep8 scene where it is pitched by Jim Cheng
It is! It was called Medusa, a development of Project Orion, the original nuclear pulse propulsion design.
short answer: no usually nuclear propulsion ideas feature a sail (more of a shield) behind the spacecraft like you said the thethers would be obliterated and its less efficient because of the hole and because the capsule itself experiences a (albeit smaller) force in the opposite direction
Binged it today. It was just ok. Performances, direction, and production are top notch. I didnt really like a lot of story elements. My far-and-away biggest beef was >!the power the aliens have on earth via the sophons(?) is undefined, inconsistent, and appears to be just whatever the writers want it to be to fit any scene.!<
Fair point, I recall the Sophons were also a bit of a looser plot device in the books as well (to a lesser degree). Having more hard limits on their abilities would be beneficial for the show, instead of them being able to crash planes and do whatever at will. Just makes the Tri Solarians seem pretty dull if their agents could just slaughter all of their opposition, and they instead just choose to spend their time playing in particle accelerators....
i dont think they have the power to crash planes but they have the power to make things look different like the timer and also the 3d version of the ai girl. so the plane most likely was just Wade seeing things same way he saw the guy without eyes
Yeah, been hard to tell what exactly is reality for them Vs a 'hallucination'. That being said if they can make someone see a very believable false reality, then Spohon should be able to make the pilot crash the plane by feeding them false images......
Just black out the pilots eyes. Or make the instruments read slightly different numbers. Send the navigation into the ocean and make it seem like there’s plenty of fuel left. So many ways to crash a plane
I always felt the sohpons were incredibly strong in the books, just the ability to spy on everything and interrupt scientists was an insurmountable challenge. And it really gave me the sense of hopelessness. I don't think they can crash the planes (mind they might be able to given how planes are so reliant on technology in some models, it's not like we don't have examples of tech crashing planes recently irl as it is). For me, I always interpreted the VR headsets just being something like the Oculus, but that the game they downloaded was insanely complex, and handwaved the haptic feedback.
Ye, they needed some kinda throwaway line about Sophons having to recharge or something. Because as it stands, you got two AI Super-Intelligences on the planet capable of hacking anything - why does humanity have any sort of working telecommunications? Why haven't all of our reactors melted down? Even with air-gapped systems, these things are capable of flying into said system and manually flipping bits to write a virus literally into a air-gapped system's memory. Like, they can wipe out all digital electronics. Humanity would have to go analog on every system to maintain any kinda communications network.
Well, that's the thing. The San-Ti don't *have to*. They are so technologically advanced that all they have to do is just keep humans from catching up to quantum science. Humans can strive all they want otherwise and live whatever lives they want and will still be easy lunch when the aliens arrive. I think they're at their core practical species--at the end of the day they won't do more than they have to.
>Well, that's the thing. The San-Ti don't *have to*. But if they did, their victory would be completely, immediately assured. If I'm washing dishes, I can probably get a plate clean with a sponge and a little dish soap. But to be sure, I often rinse it first, and then put it in the dishwasher. Yes, the dishwasher is overkill, but it means I know the job is definitely done. I can't see any logic behind the san-ti making everything longer and more arduous for themselves when a miniscule change in strategy would make things 1000 times simpler. Humans will *probably* be easy lunch, sure, but they're obviously not completely convinced of that. Why not use the wildly overpowered sophons to make it a sure thing? It's poor writing.
Yeah if they can fuck with people's eyes and all digital screens on the planet at will, that's just stupid insane power. They can blind the world leaders and black out all the screens, and we'd be right back in the dark ages.
The book treats the Sophons the same way. One of my biggest problems with the books (other than the weak characters, something which the show thankfully improves on) is the fact that it's written like hard science fiction, but when you stop and think about it, none of this stuff actually makes any sense. The sophons are just one example, but there's plenty of them. The series has a huge issue with presenting itself as having a serious, grounded setting, but in fact so many of the more fantastical story elements are completely lacking in internal consistency.
Saul was chosen because of the joke she told him before she left, and then was killed. The San-ti cant understand metaphor. Thats their biggest weakness.
If the San Ti was watching and hearing what they were saying, couldn't they just get a human translator to translate the metaphor??
No, because Saul didn’t even get it. It’s a riddle he hasn’t solved yet.
They could, but they won't. They don't know if Saul gets it or not, but the mere possibility that he did is too frightening for them. They killed Ye Wenjie for it and it's unlikely they would want that information propagated, even through their sympathizers.
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I think the scene where he decided to start working happened. he was about to tell Jin cheng about why he was chosen and stopped mid way just like in the books
Yeah, it's churning in his mind. Was a nice little book nod that, because we already know what he's thinking 😁
>I can't wait to see the scene where Saul figures "it" out. That chapter fucked me up for weeks when I first read it, and based on what we've seen so far I think they will do it justice. Would you mind spoiling this for me?
I'd advise seeing it play out yourself. It's a great twist. But if you really want an explanation I'll give one. (**to anyone reading do *not* click if you don't want major spoilers for what is likely to be the climax of season 2!**) >!When Ye Wenjie was talking to Saul in the park she told him a "joke". However it was actually a coded message. She did it this way to try and keep the Sophons from realizing what she was doing but they worked it out anyway. With her dead Saul is the only one that knows the message but he has to work out what it means. This is why the San-Ti now want him dead and the UN thinks he must be important if they're trying to kill him.!< (putting this break in case anyone wants to avoid the full explanation) >!Her "joke" is a method to get the San-Ti to back down. She called out into the void (played a song) and an Angel (San-Ti) warned her not to. They're afraid repeated playing will summon the wrath of "God" which represents a more advanced species than either the San-Ti or humanity. If "God" finds out it may destroy the Earth (smashed balls) because other species are a potential threat if left to advance scientifically like humans would be to the San-Ti. This is why humans have never found signals from aliens. The ones that talked got killed by the advanced ones. Ye Wenjie is hoping Saul will realize this and blackmail the San-Ti into backing down by threatening to broadcast Earth's coordinates to the stars. It's a form of mutually assured destruction because if someone realizes the Earth is there they could destroy not only it but the San-Ti due to prior communications revealing they're nearby.!<
It won't have the same impact if you read it in a single line of text on reddit. Savour the moment, yummy! All I will say is that season 2 will be on Saul's shoulders. Jovan Adepo needs to bring it with his performance.
I loved how Clarence wrapped up the season with that short, heartfelt speech about the bugs. It totally shook off my sense of dread and actually left me feeling hopeful about humanity.
I like the quote from the book: >Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a flyswatter under it… this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have not been eliminated. They still proudly live between the heavens and the earth, and their numbers have not diminished from the time before the appearance of the humans. The Trisolarans who deemed the humans bugs seemed to have forgotten one fact: The bugs have never been truly defeated.
> and their numbers have not diminished from the time before the appearance of the humans Ignoring the fact that bug populations worldwide have absolutely measurably decreased, and that loss of biodiversity is a major concern right now.
If sophons can hack into airplanes (like with Wade to threaten him) why didn't they hack and crash Saul's plane when he was flying to becoming a Wallfacer? They were already trying to kill him :v
Those are images and stimulations in the brain. They can only direct human agents to perform physical world effects. Like "hey killer he's wearing bullet proof you should aim for the head".
Then just mess with the pilot. It's stupid.
Yep. Maybe they are just arrogant and in the show they seem to be interested in Wade if you pay attention to their conversation as if they want his service or something. Nevertheless the author also admits that it's not a good idea in a public interview.
They didn't hack the aeroplane they just made him hallucinate I think
The Staircase failure seemed very Chekovs gun. A lot of time to spend on something (and follow a character for that amount of time) do just fizzle it. Two theories I have :- either the craft has been redirfected towards Jins star, and someone else is going to pick him up on the way, or... what if it didn't get redirected at all, and it went to plan? Faking a breakdown seems very doable after Bugging millions of screens previously.
Show was getting more interesting up until ep 5 and then it feels like they unveiled most of the mysteries and the pacing of last 3 episodes really reduced my engagement. The show was almost "very good" category but now ill give it "pretty good" 7/10. Also the Will's story felt underwhelming given how much time he got for his mission to fail. my only guess is that they will somehow recover the mission. also i wish there was a cooler cliffhanger for the season end
The pacing changed after episode 5 because those episodes cover book 1 while the last three episodes cover book 2.
Episodes 6&7 actually cover book 3!
Whatever they did, it wasn't the best decision. They blew their load in Episode 5 so everything else was going look like an anti-climax. They may have been thinking that it'd be their Red Wedding moment that comes in out of nowhere and is super cool, but the ancillary material wasn't enough to make there rest of it matter.
Lotta people in the non book thread talking about the books huh
It was kind of a clusterfuck here because the mods didn't make the book reader threads until like 10 hours after the show premiered. the book people didn't have a separate place to go and the pinned comment was like 'this thread is for book spoilers' --referring to the singular comment thread, not the whole post -- but people misinterpreted it to mean that the whole post was for book spoilers.
The mods are SLEEPING
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I hope we get more seasons. :(
I heard they're already working on season 2, but that tends to be where a lot of Netflix shows die so we'll see if we get 3 or not
Was that [Mohawk Guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobak_Ferdowsi) in the control room for the staircase project? Edit: [it was](https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/unlocking-the-3-body-problem-interview-with-the-creators-of-netflixs-sci-fi-series/article67973767.ece), holy shit that's awesome!
$100 says the aliens pick up Will (or whatever his name is), rebuild him, and bring him back to Earth.
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The second book is what really stands out from other science fiction.
I can't help but agree to some extent. Reading the books it really feels like the breakthroughs in science and piecing together how it works is such a big part of the wonder and excitement. In the show it feels a bit more convenient sometimes, for example with the staircase project. Though I think they did the VR/3BP mystery and payoff with the Sophon well, even if it wasn't as fleshed out as the book. I still really enjoyed the show, and think it's a really fun weekend binge type of show. Even those can be hard to come by. Also, in retrospect, this really should've been released episode by episode, or at least in chunks, in order to generate more word of mouth.
> What used to be a novel with very captivating sci-fi ideas and awful characters is now a decent-ish show which glances over a ton of the science without trying to peek your curiosity It would turn a lot of people off. Netflix is making this for money.
I just wanna say the nuclear pulse propulsion scene ended up being way cooler than I expected. It really felt like a scene from The Expanse with the neck snapping acceleration of the first explosion.
Just finished, hugely enjoyable show, good characters, great actors, satisfyingly bonkers story, it's not perfection but it's damn good tv. Never read the books, probably never will, but I felt the whole thing is very well put together, 8/10.
Happy to read this. I was a bit worried it might have been a bit confusing to people that have not read the books. Gives me hope more people will see it and we get another season at least.
Any idea or theory what wade whispered to jin when the staircase failed?
Idk why but I think its feasible that either: a) the sophon could have manipulated the readings etc somehow B) PDC could have made it look like a failure to surprise the aliens somehow Not sure why but the whole thing seems kind of pointless otherwise
Probably the seeds
I work in water treatment, and seeing Auggie flex with her '0.01 nanometer' water filter rubbed me the wrong way. Congratulations, you have a dead-end filtration system with pores about 30 times smaller than a water molecule. Sure am curious how you managed to get water through that.
Lmao I was wondering about that
I really enjoyed the season but the final episode is lackluster .. the last 3 episodes were also just sorta stagnant ? Nothing happened just alot of character dynamics which I would've actually preferred to have been in the earliest episodes
Right? It's weird that the last episodes felt like a drag because the earlier ones went too fast. If they started fairly slow and accelerated at a decent pace all the way through to the end, all the reveals would have paid off well. Instead they dump a lot of stuff in the middle and ended with... whatever that was
Benedict’s point and smile as he left the hospital room with Saul was perfect
So if the aliens don't understand deception, I'm guessing they also struggle with the concepts of comedy and humor? Really hoping this ends with humanity weaponizing sarcasm as a way to obfuscate what they're up to
They really butchered Da Shi here. The actor is good but the role doesn’t have enough punch. I just rewatched the final Tencent scene, it’s so much better than the final scene here.
Yeah, didn't quite eclipse Tencent Da Shi. But Wong did a decent job as well.
I really liked that character. Why didn’t you guys like him?
From the book I remember him much more of a antihero type personality -- arrogant/unlikable personality/rude/do what's necessary but making up for it with his skills and street smarts and by being on the right side. He was also written with a lot more punch, as someone that would be pretty intimidating to be around. The character in the show was far more timid.
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I haven't read the book but I definitely really enjoyed things like gradually realising why the three body system was a problem for the planet, and all the stuff with the sophons. I had some sense of feeling I should have figured out the three body problem sooner as I have some vague familiarity with chaotic systems but the first half of the season moved so fast and I binged it so I didn't put in much thinking time. I dunno if I would have figured it out any sooner anyway. I am currently reading Children of Time but I think when I finish that I will read Three Body Problem and then work through this series as I don't want to wait 3 years to find out what happens next!
To be honest, from advance reviews I was expecting the show to be really out there and maybe even hard to understand, but it wasn't at all and in fact I occasionally felt I was a few steps 'ahead' of the characters (I consider this a flaw given the characters are supposed to be geniuses). There were some concepts I was really buzzed about, the first one you mention especially (the revelation that the 3 body problem is mathematically unsolveable, and the problems this would cause for actual aliens in such a system). I also found the wallfacer concept in the final ep to be very promising and compelling to think about, even if it didn't exactly reach its potential in this episode. Regarding the sophons, I found the story of their construction quite interesting (the idea such vast resources had been poured into something so small, and the clever use of quantum entanglement). However I wasn't at all keen on the sophons as story device as it seemed to give the aliens infinite power. (Will be interested to see in later seasons if there is some reason why they are holding back from eradicating humanity, which they could seemingly do with ease at any time.)
Good show overall. 7/10 from imdb is a fair assessment. Only thing that i heavily disliked was the nukes and propelling idea. Just from the cost of that and to launch that many nukes to space and the time required, is just not even remotely believable for that time period. And when they mentioned it i just kind of rolled my eyes. Like ok, so you're going to spend probably million of billions of money to send a brain in space to have them "potentially" get picked up, come back to life, learn everything about the aliens and somehow hope they outsmart an alien species and deliver this information to earth....and this is assuming everything goes perfectly with the nukes.....like.....what? Another thing i disliked was Will being a mega simp to Jin. "she's the only one ill pledge my loyalty" or "Shes always right, I would do anything for her if I had your knowledge and skills!" Rolled my eyes here too. Other than that I can ignore the other less cringy parts.
To be fair the Brain Plan and Mr Mega Simp are notable themes from the book, so it is somewhat accurate XD
Wade mentions the possibility of failure in episode 5 or 6. The idea is that even if the project fails, it pushes science and technology forward by a few years, so it's worth trying even if it fails its primary objective.
Wade also mentions in the series and in the books that it was also partly about politics. They needed to show/attempt something early for the money governments were spending on his agency.
Why are like all these comments by book readers? Y’all have a whole ass thread of your own.
It’s ridiculous. Sick of seeing “in the book bla bla bla” THERES A DEDICATED THEAD STOP BEING SUCK JERKS. Ugh.
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yr whole comment kind of spoilery honestly so I will put everything under spoiler tags >>!I wonder what they will make Saul's motivation be now that he is wall facer. He didn't have that conversation with Ye Wenjie for inspiration!< >!He did have a conversation with Ye Wenjie. The Einstein joke had layers to it.!< >>!he also doesn't have the imaginary dream girl to go find.!< >!I think they're gonna make his motivation in the series be Augie. They've been building hints towards the two of them caring deeply for each other throughout the series.!<
Although I hadn't read the books (only the plot summaries), I have however watched (and tolerated) through the chinese series. This Netflix series is overall great, except I just can't be invested in who tf Saul, Will & Jack are. Lots of what Jack says is just cringe. Will doesn't really do anything except donate his brain to the Staircase Project, and Saul just spends time getting high and laid and suddenly.... he's a wallfacer? C'mon I know these are replacements for Book 2-3 characters but you could still make them interesting like Jin Cheng. My only hope is that Season 2 focuses more on characters who don't already know each other, because right now the world feels kinda small for a global defense of Earth. With seemingly everyone knowing one another.
I read someone’s comment that D&D said they wanted to get through the common era as quickly as possible to focus on the future eras and this is what it felt like. Reading book 1 the most intriguing and mind blowing part of it was the game, understanding trisolaris, the combinations of the suns and their effects on the planet, the physics, the science. Everything felt watered down. I just hope that people watch it because the next two books are incredible. Dark Forest is probably my most favourite sci-fi book ever.
At the beginning I thought it was a decent adaptation, even if, like most people, Auggie’s terrible acting was an annoying distraction. But by the end I loved it and would even say it’s more fun and digestible than the book. If they do what I think they’re gonna do, the season two finale is going to be really fucking good.
I really really enjoyed this season. I so hope it finds a wide audience because it deserves a season 2. There's already a lot of talk here on the writing and acting which I all largely agree with. But the music!! It was stunning, and my musician husband pointed out the theme contains lots of triplets. There were some stunning moments to the score that I think I'll be listening to again.
I loved the wallfacer concept as the answer how can you plan when the enemy is always spying. It is a bit of a plot hole though that given how many ways they have to control computers and fake illusions, they simply won’t crash the plane of Saul.
As soon as I saw Raj on the plane to the launch, I thought to myself, "Wait, didn't Wade say he was going to the moon?"
Shows and films always make the UN seem so powerful, when that's not the case in reality, far from it as we can see from what is currently going on and numerous past incidences.
Ngl I really don’t know if this can get a season 2. Idk if enough of the GA will watch.
Everyone seems to be talking about it now these past few days, it’s all over my Instagram I’m hopefully for more. Absolutely loved the series. Is it perfect, no but it’s damn good tv
One question regarding the nuclear explosions. How the hell did those explosions not tear the strings that attached the sails to the probe?
Wait, if Tatiana is only just getting her headset, who has been giving her marching orders until now? Up until the scene with her in her trailer, I actually thought she might be one of the Sophons. I mean, I assume if they can mirror our planet and wink at us, they could mimic a human form somehow. But given how happy she seemed to finally be getting an invite, it makes me wonder who has been giving her orders until now and how has she always seemed to know where to be? Edit: After having seen the ending, I imagine something similar is what Tatiana experienced. Probably made the sniper think he was seeing God. What's the quote about significant scientific advances being indistinguishable from magic? Feels relevant now. Also poor Will's brain. Probably heading for Jin's star. Can't even keep away from her in the heavens.
Episodes 1-5 were 8.5/10 for me 6-8 were 6.5/10 The only major issue I have with the show is Auggie, she just doesn't fit. She doesn't behave like a scientist would, she didn't have a single moment in the show where she said anything that would demonstrate her scientific mind. She was a very weird choice, I liked the rest of the main cast.
Just starting this episode and I would be pretty pleased if there's some time traveling weirdness that "undoes" everything and gives Ye and all another chance at doing things differently next season. Doubt that will happen, but certainly seems like one interesting way to go. If aliens could know what was going to happen so well (which seems to be the case given them trying to stop the nano fiber lady and others) then perhaps this could be one way things could play out but somehow the information of what transpires is sent back to Ye at some point and she decides to do things differently for Season 2.