"The Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Liu, the first book in a trilogy, is one of the most high profile pieces of science-fiction to have ever come out of China. There have been multiple attempts to adapt it. Tencent came out with a serialized, Chinese language television serial of the first book in 2023, and now Netflix has an English language adaptation created by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo. This is one of Netflix's most ambitious and expensive projects to date, following a group of scientists and their early encounters with an alien race.
The eight-episode "3 Body Problem" makes substantial changes to the source material, the biggest one being that it's changed the ethnicities of a good portion of the characters so they can be played by a diverse international cast. Nearly everyone was Chinese in the original, and fortunately three of the main characters still are - UK based detective Da Shi (Benedict Wong), physicist Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), and astrophysicist Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng in the past, Rosalind Chao in the present). Many of the characters - Jin, Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), Auggie Salazar (Eiza Gonzalez), Jack Rooney (John Bradley), and Will Downing (Alex Sharp) are a group of friends who used to be the students and mentees of a scientist who has recently killed herself. This is linked to a string of other suicides, which Da Shi is investigating on behalf of an intelligence agency, all possibly related to various scientific experiments going haywire across the globe.
I haven't read "The Three Body Problem," because it's the type of science fiction that is far too dry and technical for me. I had my doubts about a Netflix adaptation, not just because the material is so talky and theoretical, but also because the book is steeped in Chinese history and culture that nobody outside of China has much knowledge of. The Cultural Revolution plays a big part in the story, and to the credit of the show's creators, the very first scene shows Ye Wenjie's professor father being beaten to death by Red Guards, which influences all her choices going forward. However, inevitably, there is less emphasis on these parts of the story, and greater efforts made to humanize the major characters - there are added romances, everyone knows each other personally, and the aliens often communicate through a human avatar named Tatiana (Marlo Hass)
Overall, I think this approach works. There are some parts of the novel that simply don't translate well to screen, and some episodes that are much slower and duller than others. However, I was impressed at how well the show's creators managed to introduce and explore several challenging concepts. The flashbacks to Ye Wenjie in China condense a lot of information, but little impact is lost and the historical details are handled with care and tact. There's a virtual reality game featured in a few episodes that is realized extremely well, featuring a lot of expensive looking fantasy imagery. There's a subplot involving nanofiber research that pays off in a spectacular action scene in episode five. I was a little puzzled by Jovan Adepo being first billed in the cast when his character barely does anything in the first half of the series, but then he becomes a major focal point in the last two episodes. It's impossible to predict what will happen from one installment to the next, and I was never bored.
"3 Body Problem" is atypical for a science fiction television series. It reminds me of Apple's "Foundation," the way it's setting up future events that will pay off over hundreds and thousands of years, and manages to combine several different genres. However, this show strikes me as much better executed because it's only eight episodes long, and avoids filler and drawn out melodrama. I hope that we get the rest of the trilogy adapted sooner rather than later, and Netflix will be more willing to tackle similar projects in the future. I wasn't expecting much from "3 Body Problem," and it turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.
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