“3 Body Problem,” the sprawling and ambitious new sci-fi-ish geopolitical mystery drama Netflix series from “Game Of Thrones” creators David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo (“The Terror: Infamy,” “True Blood”), is difficult to describe in any kind of succinct form—perhaps your first clue about its overall problems. And indeed, there’s a fine line between complex and convoluted (and yes, some spoilers will eventually be broached).
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Blogging about the series after his Benioff and Weiss pals were announced as the creative team behind the adaptation, “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin once described it as “a very unusual book,” calling it a “unique blend of scientific and philosophical speculation, politics and history, conspiracy theory and cosmology, where kings and emperors from both western and Chinese history mingle in a dreamlike game world, while cops and physicists deal with global conspiracies, murders, and alien invasions in the real world.”
And if that sounds grand and impressive but overstuffed and maybe a little bit confusing, that’s because, well, it is. “3 Body Problem” has many threads, and some are seemingly so disconnected at first that the overall shape of the show is initially perplexing. Now, “3 Body Problem,” when it begins to gel and make sense around episode four or five or so, starts to become more engaging. Yet, it’s still slow to coalesce and fairly puzzling initially, which will likely weed out the casually curious viewer.
“3 Body Problem” spans decades and continents. The series begins in China in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, where a young astrophysics graduate, Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng), witnesses her father being beaten to death in front of an angry mob for teaching heretical Western science, refusing to denounce it and the theory of relativity.
The series then fast forwards to the present day, where Da Shi (Benedict Wong), a single-minded and unorthodox ex-intelligence officer, is investigating the increasingly alarming murders and suicides of some of the world’s leading scientists, a chilling portend that begins to disturb the upper echelons of international law enforcement agencies, including his blunt and foul-tempered intelligence superior Wade (Liam Cunningham).
Some kind of impenetrable event has shattered the belief systems of scientists. “Science is broken; all of the physics for the last 60 years was wrong,” one of the gutted physicists, Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), tries to explain through knotty exposition, trying to clarify how the world’s leading particle accelerators are generating results that “make no sense.” No sooner than he speaks these words, and his research lab shuts down for good, his mentor Vera Ye (Vera Ye) jumps to her death, seemingly having lost all faith in everything in everything she’s dedicated her life to.
Her death is the catalyst that unites a group of genius friends known as the Oxford Five. They include the aforementioned never-realized-full-potential physics research assistant Durand, nanotech trailblazer Augustina “Auggie” Salazar (Eiza González), sixth-form physics teacher Will Downing (Alex Sharp), soon grappling with a cancer diagnosis, brilliant theoretical physicist Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), and the wayward Jack Rooney (‘GOT’ alumnus John Bradley), an obnoxious multi-millionaire entrepreneur who has leveraged his physics degree to build a snacking brand empire (and some of the interpersonal drams within here are grounding amid the heady sci-fi stuff, but ultimately rather melodramatic, trite, and Bradley, meant to be comic relief mostly grates).
Back in the ’60s, Ye Wenjie, the young scientist who stood helpless in horror as her father was killed, is eventually enlisted into a secret Chinese initiative to use high-powered radio waves to damage spy satellites, though the scope of their communication aims is much grander than she realizes.
Getting further into the turgid weeds is a fool’s errand; suffice it to say, in the present, the laws of science seem to unravel before all of humanity’s eyes—which raises a global alarm and anxiety, especially within the scientific community—the Oxford five being to make earth-shattering discoveries and in the past, a fateful decision is made by the disillusioned Ye Wenjie, that will ripple across time and eventually create an existential threat that endangers the entire planet.
“3 Body Problem” is also largely impossible to further elucidate without spoilers. So yes, you’ve been warned, and go no further if you want to preserve all the secrets.
In short, in 1960s China, Ye Wenjie—also played by an older version of herself in the present by Rosalind Chao—makes first contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization inviting them to Earth despite a warning about their ill-omened intentions. The ramifications of this event don’t emerge until decades later when passionate environmentalist turned billionaire oil tycoon Mike Evans (Sir Jonathan Pryce) surfaces as the leader of a mysterious organization—and the devoted cult of the aliens— that acts as a conduit for the interstellar outsiders, known as the San Ti, and their various manipulations, which include targeting Earth’s best scientists.
If you can register the migraine rising behind my eyes as I type these words, you’re likely not alone. One can only imagine how viewers will tolerate this byzantine thriller at first (and I haven’t even gotten into the mysterious WTF? virtual reality headsets the aliens use to learn more about the quickly intrigued scientists and the AI Avatar within).
The series suffers from the “mystery box” idea popularized by J.J. Abrams, which keeps viewers in the dark, peppered with intriguing clues. That technique worked on “Lost” and excels in movies where the wait to find out the truth is only one act away. But in an elaborate series where slight hints are dangled out over several episodes before it all starts to make sense, the method of withholding information can be tedious and frustrating (“3 Body Problem” also co-stars Marlo Kelly, Sea Shimooka, Saamer Usmani, Eve Ridley and more).
Directed by filmmakers like Derek Tsang and Andrew Stanton, Minkie Spiro, and “Game Of Thrones” alumni like Jeremy Podeswa, “3 Body Problem” is handsomely made and looks expensive. But one has to wonder if the filmmakers also needed the creators on speed dial during their production to keep everything straight (timeline charts and graphs were undoubtedly employed).
Once “3 Body Problem” has finally revealed itself, uniting the Oxford Five and Wade’s intelligence agency in a joint global task force effort to prepare, plan, and defend against the impending San-Ti extraterrestrial invasion (which will take centuries but is coming) and the deceits being pulled by the alien’s worshipping human cult to advance their offensive, the series finally starts to captivate.
But it’s so late in the game that’s likely only critics under obligations to watch the entire thing, and die-hard Weiss and Benioff fans who will sit through the entire labyrinth of plot and schemes (I even had to rewatch some of the early episodes so it all made sense). “3 Body Problem” makes the critical miscalculation of keeping the audience in the dark for too long with too little compelling payoff along the way; the series essentially overestimates its own intrigue and audience patience.
“In nature, nothing exists alone,“ American biologist Rachel Carson wrote in 1962, a phrase often quoted in the series. Carson’s words emphasized the interconnectedness of everything and the cause and effect of all actions and consequences, including what could cause our possible extinction. In “3 Body Problem,” our possible extermination boils down to one fateful error in judgment from a person disheartened with our collective lack of humanity. It’s a potent thought and idea, not dissimilar to the existential man-made threat of global warming. Still, the expansive spectacle of the “3 Body Problem” and the awe it occasionally produces is often hindered by its inherently middling human melodramas and tortuous plotting. “3 Body Problem” clearly leaves the door open for more, but other than the Netflix execs who have already invested a fortune in its success, it’s a wonder who exactly will be dying for more. [C]
