The creators of Netflix 3 body problem I know that a lot depends on their adaptation. The fact is that the books on which the adaptation is based are a popular science fiction series that is popular all over the world. It is science fiction that is not only exhilarating but also wondrous and often considered unadaptable. In addition, two-thirds of the showrunning team comes here game of Thronesanother big-budget TV epic that left a bad taste in people’s mouths.
This means that many people will be skeptical about watching it 3 body problem on Netflix. But as you watch, the showrunners (Alexander Woo, David Benioff, and DB Weiss) want to keep one thing in mind: watch Episode 2 before you decide. This is the moment that the entire season – and indeed the entire core of the show – revolves around.
They thought it was a beat they could get to a little faster. The group discussed making it a two-hour pilot before ultimately deciding that wasn’t the right way to go. “When we broke down what actually needed to happen, there are too many events; There’s no way you can do this in an hour,” Benioff told Polygon.
Without giving anything away, the end of the second episode is one of the key moments of the entire series, and one that slows the book down a bit. But it is a moment that is crucial to understanding how the Three Body Problem series (and the 3 body problem Series) reflects on the conflict at the center.
[Ed. note: The rest of this post contains spoilers for the first two episodes of 3 Body Problem, and does so by going into details of the book.]
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Photo: Ed Miller/Netflix
If you’re familiar with the book (or just curious about what the series is building up to in its first two episodes), the final scene of Ye During the Cultural Revolution won’t surprise you. Then she receives the aliens’ correspondence and decides on her own to invite them to Earth. She composes a message and (as the book says) “without hesitation” presses the send button.
“It’s this button,” says DB Weiss. “For us […] it leads to this moment. Everything is building up to this moment. And it just felt like it always seemed to be the right thing to do.”
The goal wasn’t to make her feel like a “mustache-twirling villain” who wants to destroy the universe just for fun. As The three-body problem makes it clear that this is a decision that changes intergalactic history.
It’s a choice that balances the vast possibilities of the infinite cosmos with the decidedly punishing limitations of Earth – a sentiment that author Cixin Liu wrote about in the afterword to the American edition of The three-body problem. “As I looked at this tiny, sliding star [Dongfanghong I, the first artificial satellite China ever launched], my heart was filled with indescribable curiosity and longing. And just as deeply as these feelings, the feeling of hunger is burned into my memory.”
While the three showrunners always knew they wanted to make the story more global in the adaptation, they also all agreed that Ye’s story needed to anchor the whole thing so that the changes broaden the story’s perspective. Which ultimately meant that their early days remained relatively unchanged.
“It works so beautifully in the books, and everything just superficially serves to make you understand a decision that would otherwise be inexplicable,” says Woo. “Someone inviting an alien civilization to take over your planet seems like this: Why would anyone do that?? But hopefully – you feel that way in the books, and hopefully you feel that way in the show – you get it. If I were in that position I would have done the same thing.”
It’s a feeling that at least some of the crew members could identify with. Benioff said at a press round: “We did a survey on set while we were filming the crew’s season. […] About half of the crew said: Yes, I would call in the aliens to fix this mess or just wipe everything out.”
3 body problem is now streaming in full on Netflix.
