3 Body Problem: Game of Thrones Series Creators Turn to Dark, Conspiratorial ET Sci-Fi
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A-minus
Can the Game of Thrones team do it again?
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the duo behind Game of Thrones, have teamed with Alexander Woo, a producer and writer of another terrific streaming series True Blood, to create what might be the next great streaming obsession.
3 Body Problem is based on the book of the same name by one of China’s best-selling science fiction writers, Liu Cixin.
The eight-episode series is a multi-character, sci-fi, fantasy, tech-noir series that spans decades, realities, cutting edge technology, physics and contact with an alien race.
And it is good.
The story begins in 1966, during the Cultural Revolution in China. Student Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng) watches as her father, a physics professor, is beaten to death on stage in front of a crowd when he won’t renounce science to the satisfaction of his tormentors.
She herself is a brilliant scientist. And after years of doing physical labour, she is given the option to join a secret astrophysics project. There, she is ultimately told the project is sending messages into the universe, a yoo-hoo to whoever might receive the signals - sort of a more proactive SETI.
Flash forward to present day England and an intelligence officer/detective Da Shi (Benedict Wong), is investigating the mysterious suicides of a series of leading and mostly young scientists. The first, a brilliant theoretical physicist, appears to have been driven mad.
The next is Vera Ye at the Oxford University Particle Accelerator lab. That case brings Shi to a group of her friends that he and his boss Wade (Liam Cunningham) dub the Oxford Five.
They are: physics researcher Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), physicist-turned-snack-food-mogul Jack Rooney (John Bradley), brilliant nano-tech entrepreneur Auggie Salazar (Eiza González), Jin Cheng, (Jess Hong) a genius level theoretical physicist, and Will Downing (Alex Sharp), a physics teacher.
It is a rough time to be in the field, with projects failing around the world, and then this rash of suicides. The five are depressed.
Jin, who was closest to Vera, goes to visit and console her mother and see if she can understand what might have been going on with Vera. Sadly, she was the daughter of Ye Wenjie, (hereafter played by Rosalind Chao). The only thing that seemed unusual was that Vera had suddenly been hooked on a video game.
Ye gives Jin the equipment, a cool looking helmet that turns out to be an advanced VR device that whooshes Jin into an incredibly realistic landscape. Quickly, the game has her hooked, as another game (set in Tudor England) captures Rooney. Ultimately, they play the games as a pair.
While they’re gaming, another one of the Oxford 5, has a big and unsettling real world problem. As Auggie completes a successful test of her nano technology, she sees in her mind’s eye an electronic clock counting down from four days.
Soon, a mysterious young woman named Tatiana (Marlo Kelly), tells her she knows about the countdown and that it will only stop if she pulls the plug on her research. To prove she’s serious, Natasha says the night sky will soon ‘wink’ at her, which it does. Saul sees a threatening pattern in the flickering lights.
There are many more characters, whose stories weave in and out before we see how they all connect, including Jonathan Pryce, who shows up as a religious cult leader. Eventually, the storyline gives us a sense of what connects a VR game, a winking night sky and a choice made by Wenjie during the Cultural Revolution.
The plot shifts back and forth through the characters, but Da Shi ends up being our guide through it, played by the charismatic Wong as rumpled and chain smoking as a detective in a classic noir.
The cast is uniformly excellent. Fans of Game of Thrones will note the casting of Cunningham, who played Davos Seaworth, and Bradley who was Samwell Tarly.
As you might expect from the team behind Game of Thrones, and True Blood, the production values here are very high. The mood is at times playful, but most often dark and sinister.
There are many characters here, all well drawn, all compelling.
Conspiracies, mysterious cabals, VR games, religious cults, issues spanning modern history, and science. It is a lot, but the plotting is excellent and the series is challenging enough to make it interesting, but easy enough to follow if you only want to watch each episode once (I’m already on my second go round).
By the end, the question I was asking is, will there be another season? No word yet, but the creators are reportedly preparing Season Two. And 3 Body Problem is the first book of a trilogy so, it seems only fair to see where this all goes.
3 Body Problem. Created and written by David Benioff, D.B, Weiss, Alexander Woo. Starring Benedict Wong, Liam Cunningham, Jonathan Pryce, Jovan Adeppo, Rosalind Chao.
Streaming on Netflix March 21