The Three-Body Problem (Netflix)

[Christopher]

But … why then do the whole spiel with the VR game where they tell humans about their existence and plan to come to Earth? Seems contraproductive if their plan is to halt human advancement.

Because they're not telling everyone, just the faction that they recruit as a fifth column to sabotage human progress from within. Invaders need local allies to unlock the door for them.

And I still can’t get over the fact that they want us to buy that in decades of talking to the aliens the concept of lying never came up. This is perhaps the single most unbelievable thing in the whole show and a total WTF moment when it happens.

Not the concept of lying so much as the concept of hiding their thoughts from each other. Their form of communication is directly brain-to-brain, essentially telepathic, so all their thoughts are constantly exposed to each other. So the idea of deceiving each other never occurred to them. It's literally impossible for them.

Also, are they really talking to the aliens all the time or just to the Sophon AI pretending to be the aliens?

In the book, the sophons are AIs that they've sent ahead as their proxies. The AIs can travel at relativistic speeds that the crewed ships cant, so they got here hundreds of years earlier and started laying the groundwork. At least in the show, it seems the San-Ti are being presented as a hive mind -- "If one survives, we all survive." Presumably the sophons are part of that shared consciousness.

 

[Michael]

Because they're not telling everyone, just the faction that they recruit as a fifth column to sabotage human progress from within. Invaders need local allies to unlock the door for them.

Ah, okay. I admit I totally forgot about the recruitment aspect. Although, the way it’s presented in the show makes it look like that plan backfired massively, considering it set in motion the very group of scientists now working on defeating them. Also, are we just supposed to accept it as a certainty that human progress will have outrun the aliens’ capabilities before they get there or did they somehow present a reason for why that would necessarily be so?

Not the concept of lying so much as the concept of hiding their thoughts from each other. Their form of communication is directly brain-to-brain, essentially telepathic, so all their thoughts are constantly exposed to each other. So the idea of deceiving each other never occurred to them. It's literally impossible for them.

Still, I find it tough to swallow that they only realize this after decades of communication and while being read a children’s story. I understand that in the books the communication between the aliens and their followers on Earth takes much much longer, and maybe that would have helped to make that realization seem less ludicrous (as an aside, I still don’t get why they abandoned the flashback framing device, because it would have helped to actually show how Evans started communicating with the aliens and build a cult around them). I find it hard to grasp that on the one hand we are supposed to accept them as so incredibly advanced and powerful that they built literal all-seeing AIs that can enter your perception and make you see everything they want, yet at the same time they never came across the concept of deception. I get that it’s supposed to be clever and make them seem totally alien, but it just strikes me as very unlikely.

By the way, you said something earlier in the thread that bothered you about the books (the pro-military slant of its politics and the way it seems to say authoritarian measures are justified in the name of protecting the Earth) and I always had that in the back of my mind while watching the show. I felt like they had a chance to make it more about humans questioning this (they hinted at it a bit with Auggie’s storyline), but ultimately the show seemed to embrace that as the natural progression. Did you have a problem with that aspect in the show too like you had with the books?

 

[Christopher]

By the way, you said something earlier in the thread that bothered you about the books (the pro-military slant of its politics and the way it seems to say authoritarian measures are justified in the name of protecting the Earth) and I always had that in the back of my mind while watching the show. I felt like they had a chance to make it more about humans questioning this (they hinted at it a bit with Auggie’s storyline), but ultimately the show seemed to embrace that as the natural progression. Did you have a problem with that aspect in the show too like you had with the books?

My problem was with the second book, and this season only adapts the first. And it wasn't so much objecting to the pro-military politics, just realizing that it was shaping up to be a really long military-SF novel and that's not a genre that interests me. That and my discomfort with the political stance were the reasons I gave up on The Dark Forest, but they were distinct reasons.

 

[Christopher]

I find it hard to grasp that on the one hand we are supposed to accept them as so incredibly advanced and powerful that they built literal all-seeing AIs that can enter your perception and make you see everything they want, yet at the same time they never came across the concept of deception. I get that it’s supposed to be clever and make them seem totally alien, but it just strikes me as very unlikely.

I've seen the scene in episode 4 now, and I think the key is their line to the effect of "Once communication has occurred, the intent is understood." Their communication is directly mind-to-mind and is always complete, so they can't comprehend telling someone an incomplete truth or a falsehood. But it follows that they can keep a secret simply by staying quiet, by not communicating. What they've done to mislead people has simply been to hide themselves, to keep their agents from being seen and their actions from being publicly known. They understand the avoidance of communication. But when they do communicate, it's always truthful and overt -- for instance, threatening people with a countdown in front of their eyes or letting the whole world see the stars blinking out.

Also, of course, they're using human intermediaries who are capable of deception. We've seen the shots of the guy watching the screens as the game is being played. The game is a human construct based on alien technology and information, hence its programmers were able to fictionalize its depiction of the San-Ti to make it comprehensible to human players. But the underlying story of the game is truthful. Its whole point was to communicate the truth about the San-Ti and their world -- in contrast to plenty of other stories about alien conquerors lying about their true intentions.

Incidentally, I like it that the show has chosen to keep the original Chinese name for them, San-Ti. I found the "Trisolaran" name in the novels to be awkward and corny, like something out of a 1930s pulp.

 

[Michael]

^ Some interesting thoughts and concepts, for sure. I do wonder, though, if the conscious decision to simply not speak in some instances (so basically “lie by omission”) is really so much different from the conscious decision to not speak one’s thoughts truthfully (or in another word: to lie).

Either way, I’m curious to see how you’ll assess the series after you’ve seen the whole season. The last episode felt rather anticlimactic to me. And even though I understand that some of that was probably by design, I felt it robbed me of any desire to watch another season of this.

 

[Christopher]

^ Some interesting thoughts and concepts, for sure. I do wonder, though, if the conscious decision to simply not speak in some instances (so basically “lie by omission”) is really so much different from the conscious decision to not speak one’s thoughts truthfully (or in another word: to lie).

To us, no, but the latter is literally not possible for them. The book explains that they communicate by direct exchange of electromagnetic waves between their brains. They don't have speech; they only have direct telepathy. Essentially they see directly into each other's brains. So "not to speak one's thoughts" is a contradiction in terms, the equivalent of saying "not to think one's thoughts." Their minds are open books to each other; as long as someone is sending to you, you can see everything they're thinking. It's like a card game where everyone has x-ray vision. You can't decide to hide something, because it's physically impossible to do so.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I keep wondering whether the overall story is actually an allegory about China and its relationship with the rest of the world. Are the San-Ti a representation of the British destabilising and weakening imperial China so that it could be more easily exploited? There is no opium, but the Sophons seem so powerful that there is no real need for an actual invasion fleet. But, I doubt it's meant as allegory - I think that's merely my projection.

 

[Christopher]

I keep wondering whether the overall story is actually an allegory about China and its relationship with the rest of the world. Are the San-Ti a representation of the British destabilising and weakening imperial China so that it could be more easily exploited? There is no opium, but the Sophons seem so powerful that there is no real need for an actual invasion fleet. But, I doubt it's meant as allegory - I think that's merely my projection.

Interesting thought. Even if Liu didn't have a specific polemic intent (at least the one you propose), he would still have been informed by China's history and experience.

Where the analogy breaks down, I think, is that for most of the Common Era, China was a much more advanced and powerful society than Europe. That's kind of why the Industrial Revolution happened in the first place, because Europe was comparatively backward and impoverished and its nations strove to innovate new transportation technologies so they could more easily obtain valuable goods and materials from Asia and new manufacturing technologies so they could compete with Chinese textiles, porcelain, etc. (China had the necessary knowledge and resources to industrialize 7 centuries before Europe did, but they didn't need to because they were already stable and prosperous at home and thus didn't have the incentive to expand.) So to China, Britain wasn't some vastly ancient alien power whose knowledge dwarfed theirs, but a young upstart trying to catch up and surpass their traditional dominance.

I was tempted to say that maybe the San-Ti were using the VR game as an "opiate" of sorts to undermine their target, but the game is more of a teaching/recruitment tool for their allies, so that analogy doesn't work.

 

[FreezeC77]

I watched it over the last couple days and thought it was pretty good, but the timeframe involved really sapped a lot of the worry about the fates of the characters in the grand scheme of things.

Although given the

Spoiler

hibernation/cryogenics stuff there's a chance some (and not just Wade) are there for the arrival or centuries later

The one kind of confusing thing to me is the very beginning when the "wow" message is received by China the alien communicates that they are a 'pacifist' and their species would come and annihilate/take over the planet so don't send anymore messages.

But then during the 'conversations' between the alien(lord) and Evans the alien talks about humans and their speech being a hinderance because the aliens know the thoughts/ideas immediately because of telepathy. It seems like a "dissident" in such a society would seem unlikely. Of course we don't know the extent of the telepathy/thought-sharing, but at the same time if those in the species are able to withhold thoughts from being shared then I would think the concept of 'deceit' already exists.

 

[Christopher]

But then during the 'conversations' between the alien(lord) and Evans the alien talks about humans and their speech being a hinderance because the aliens know the thoughts/ideas immediately because of telepathy. It seems like a "dissident" in such a society would seem unlikely. Of course we don't know the extent of the telepathy/thought-sharing, but at the same time if those in the species are able to withhold thoughts from being shared then I would think the concept of 'deceit' already exists.

Maybe they know what the dissident believes, but allow them to dissent because it's a minority view that doesn't disrupt their plans.

And as I said, I think the idea is that they understand concealing thoughts, but they don't understand communicating a falsehood, because for them, all communication is total. The only way not to expose their thoughts is to say nothing. So they could understand, say, the Big Bad Wolf hiding from Red Riding Hood so she didn't know he was there at all; but they couldn't comprehend the Wolf actively presenting himself to her as her grandmother.

Although I agree it's kind of a weird plot beat. If the dissident is able to communicate with Ye in Chinese, then the San-Ti must already have received their messages and deciphered them, so they already know there's a civilization on Earth. So the whole "don't answer" thing seems too late to matter.

 

[David cgc]

Although I agree it's kind of a weird plot beat. If the dissident is able to communicate with Ye in Chinese, then the San-Ti must already have received their messages and deciphered them, so they already know there's a civilization on Earth. So the whole "don't answer" thing seems too late to matter.

In the book, it was specified that a second message from Earth would let them triangulate the message's exact point of origin; having just recieved one message, all they had was the direction it came from, apparently within a margin of error wide enough to include more than one star.

(This thread is driving me a little nuts; I didn't have anyone to talk to about the novels when I read them, now I feel like I should watch the show just to know what has and hasn't been revealed yet and feel okay participating.)

 

[theenglish]

(This thread is driving me a little nuts; I didn't have anyone to talk to about the novels when I read them, now I feel like I should watch the show just to know what has and hasn't been revealed yet and feel okay participating.)

The series has an entirely different story in terms of characters, motivation, etc. that hits a lot of the major story pieces. It is as if an entirely different cast of characters is dealing with the same problem--a "what if" style story of sorts. It glosses over a lot of the novel so I am glad I read the book first as a huge element of that is that the first two thirds are set up largely as a detective story--an element which is all but missing in the series. I am only in episode 3 and we are already 2/3 of the way through the story.

I made the decision to read Cixin's book based on discussion here, so if you did post on this board, thanks for that even if I didn't reply at the time. There was one plot development that I found too contrived to give it a full five stars on YouTube, but overall one of the best Science Fiction books I've read.

What surprised me the most was how much Cixin was able to write about the Cultural Revolution and historical China. It was the first time I have read about Chinese historical events in a fiction work written by a Chinese author. Of course, there is a lot omitted and descriptions of events are carefully worded and it is one person's defiance of a patriotic order that sets everything in motion--but given all that it was a highly enjoyable book.

 

[Christopher]

In the book, it was specified that a second message from Earth would let them triangulate the message's exact point of origin; having just recieved one message, all they had was the direction it came from, apparently within a margin of error wide enough to include more than one star.

Oh, that's right. Been a while since I read the book. The show does gloss over a lot of the explanations, which I guess isn't surprising.

And according to Wikipedia's plot summary, it's not a matter of triangulation, but determination of the message's travel time, giving the distance to the target.

The series has an entirely different story in terms of characters, motivation, etc. that hits a lot of the major story pieces. It is as if an entirely different cast of characters is dealing with the same problem--a "what if" style story of sorts.

Well, not entirely different -- the characters in the past are the same, notably Ye and Evans, and some of the characters in the present are mostly the same as the book characters, notably Clarence Shi, who's basically Shi Qiang in a different context. (I knew Benedict Wong had to be playing Da Shi as soon as his casting was announced.)

 

[Christopher]

Some really impressive visual set pieces in episode 5, effectively bringing a couple of the book's most striking concepts to life. Although I wish the canal sequence hadn't been so deadly. Also,

Spoiler: A man, a plan, a canal...

wasn't the idea supposed to be to find a way to neutralize the ship's occupants without risking the destruction of the data they were looking for? Seems to me slicing the ship apart hugely increased the risk of destroying any computers or books aboard. I know the sequence was from the novel, but did it have the same purpose there?

Also, the more I see Benedict Wong as Da Shi, the more I want to see him star in a Columbo reboot.

 

[Commander Troi]

Benedict always impresses me. He can do no wong.

 

[Christopher]

Anyway, I thought it was amusing to see Liam Cunningham talking to Benedict Wong about Genghis Khan, given that Wong played Genghis's grandson Khubilai Khan in Netflix's Marco Polo. And hey, there was a reference to Khubilai and Shangdu/Xanadu in an earlier episode.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Benedict always impresses me. He can do no wong.

BD Wright

 

[Skipper]

Some really impressive visual set pieces in episode 5, effectively bringing a couple of the book's most striking concepts to life. Although I wish the canal sequence hadn't been so deadly. Also,

Spoiler: A man, a plan, a canal...

wasn't the idea supposed to be to find a way to neutralize the ship's occupants without risking the destruction of the data they were looking for? Seems to me slicing the ship apart hugely increased the risk of destroying any computers or books aboard. I know the sequence was from the novel, but did it have the same purpose there?

Yeah, this is probably the most frequent criticism I read on line about this scene: technically well done, but it doesn't make much sense.

Spoiler

Not only did they risk slicing the storage containing the data, but it could be crushed by the tons of material on the ship. They were also very "lucky" that the ship crashed ashore. What if she sank in the middle of the canal? Should they have searched underwater, blocking one of the most important trade routes on the planet?

It worked because the script said so, but it strains suspension of incredulity a lot

 

[theenglish]

Well, not entirely different -- the characters in the past are the same, notably Ye and Evans, and some of the characters in the present are mostly the same as the book characters, notably Clarence Shi, who's basically Shi Qiang in a different context. (I knew Benedict Wong had to be playing Da Shi as soon as his casting was announced.)

I would argue that Clarence is not the same character as Qiang. Evans and Ye, yes. However, the story itself is "almost" entirely different, but designed to hit the main plot points to move the story forward. And it omits a lot of details that allow the story to make sense. Certainly, one can extrapolate from the story that the Trisolarans are able to calculate the position of earth based on the time it took us to reply---which is not triangulation, just that we were the first star to respond. We received their message and replied immediately--and we are the only star system to be able to reply so quickly.

I may not be remembering this correctly, but the name Trisolarans is the name Earth people call them--it doesn't matter what language that is in.

Still, I do have to say that I have been enjoying the series because of its differences. It is fun seeing a different interpretation of the story. I just wish that some things had been explained a little more clearly--this series would have been a great opportunity to explain a number of scientific concepts in a way that would have been engaging for the viewer.

 

[Brainsucker]

I disappointed that they don't include the Chicken Coop analogy to this adaption. That Chicken Coop is my most favorite scene in 3 Body Problem