The Three-Body Problem (Netflix)

[Christopher]

All done. This was quite good, and really very faithful to the books -- the concepts may be rearranged, characters renamed, but nearly all of it is from the books. And I do mean books, since it turns out that the main characters and their arcs are an amalgam of characters and plot elements from all three novels at once, contrary to my assumption that it was only adapting the first book. Here's an article that explains the connections, though it has some errors (like calling Auggie French):

https://mashable.com/article/3-body-problem-book-vs-show

It kind of makes sense, since the books aren't in straight chronological order and a significant portion of Death's End happens concurrently with The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest. The show is just presenting all three in roughly chronological order, as well as creating relationships between unrelated characters from different books in order to create a stronger sense of connection among the various parallel storylines.

Interesting that the Chinese TV adaptation takes 30 episodes to cover the first book, while this takes only 8 episodes to cover the first book and significant portions of the other two.

 

[gweeps]

Going to start this soon. Have heard great things.

 

[Starkers]

Just finished watching this. I haven't read the books but have to say I really enjoyed this. Wasn't sure the first couple of episodes because it was a slow burn but once it kicked into gear I thought it was very good. I've always liked Wong and Cunningham as actors and neither disappointed here, and I think Jess Hong is great.

Will's story

Spoiler

broke my heart and I'm really hoping that Wade's whisper to Jin at the end means we haven't seen the end of Will.

Nice to see Rosalind Chao and Ye's motivations made sense throughout given what she'd been through. I'm presuming the joke

Spoiler

she told Saul relates to a plan to beat the San-Ti, or avoid a fight altogether, and the reason Saul's been appointed as a Wallfacer.

I love the epic scope and it is a very different kind of alien invasion story to what I've seen before.

I would agree that it seemed a trifle ridiculous that after decades of talking to Mike Evans the San-Ti have only just realised that humans lie/tell stories.

 

[Christopher]

Nice to see Rosalind Chao and Ye's motivations made sense throughout given what she'd been through. I'm presuming the joke

Spoiler

she told Saul relates to a plan to beat the San-Ti, or avoid a fight altogether, and the reason Saul's been appointed as a Wallfacer.

I think it does, given what I know about the ideas in the second novel (which I didn't finish reading but spoiled myself about).

Spoiler: The novels, and probably the show

The driving idea of The Dark Forest is the rather cynical notion that different civilizations will always annihilate each other, so the only way to survive is to stay hidden -- so the Wallfacer stops the San-Ti by threatening to broadcast their location to the galaxy so more advanced species will conquer them, which is enough to bring them to the table and negotiate peace. Ye's joke seems to be a metaphor for that -- don't let God hear you or you'll get smacked down. It parallels a different hint that Ye gave to the Wallfacer in the novel, IIRC.

 

[theenglish]

I finished the season and I really enjoyed it overall. I'm glad I read the first novel ahead of time, because it is basically a detective story and watching the series first would have taken the enjoyment out of it for me. I still don't like the group of scientists standing in for a single character whom I really missed in the show. I also didn't particular enjoy the acting of some of the main cast. I still standby that the first five episodes are practically a different story from the novel and can't make a judgment on the rest because I haven't seen them.

On its own, I think the series stands well on its own, but you have to take it as its own thing. Adaptations that work best for me are those that are reasonably faithful to the source material while making adaptations for the new medium. That said, I am a big fan of Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and appreciate them both as separate works--I consider Blade Runner to be inspired by the novel rather than adapting it. There are also works that remain true to the details of the source material, but miss capturing the "essence" of the original story. Coppola's Great Gatsby, for example, is slavish in its attention to detail but lacks the heart of what makes the novel so wonderful.

I think in the end, 3BP does its own thing and does it very well.

 

[Christopher]

I still don't like the group of scientists standing in for a single character whom I really missed in the show.
...
I still standby that the first five episodes are practically a different story from the novel and can't make a judgment on the rest because I haven't seen them.

As explained in the Mashable article I linked to in post #106, pretty much every major plot point and character thread is from one of the three novels; they're just all happening together instead of separately. The overall sequence of events is almost identical to the present-day (and past) portion of the trilogy's story arc, just told in chronological order when the books told them out of sequence. The only significant change is that the unrelated lead characters from three different books were changed into a group of friends to give a sense of unity to their parallel plots, and several different authority figures in the books were amalgamated into Liam Cunningham's character.

 

[theenglish]

Thanks--you already established your thoughts on this and I got them the first time. I still don't agree and will not agree with you on this.

 

[Christopher]

Thanks--you already established your thoughts on this and I got them the first time. I still don't agree and will not agree with you on this.

It's not about me. I linked to the article -- read it for yourself. I didn't write that article. It's not my opinion. This is not a personal debate, it's a matter of the objective facts of the case. The reason the show plays out differently from the first book is because it's based on all three books at once. The article documents that. All I'm doing is directing you to it.

 

[theenglish]

Actually it is about you--I glanced at the article but will not be reading it until after I've read the second book in the series. Stories are as much about character, themes, motifs, and setting as about a string of plot points. The journey from point A to point B is what makes a story-- A and B alone are not a story. Many writers don't even plan their plot before writing the story but allow the plot to develop as they write because through the drafting process they learn about the world they are creating and the characters within it.

I can write down an outline of a story with, let's say 8 major points that need to connect and a background structure for my world (in this case alien species), hand that outline to three different writers and get back three completely different stories--and that is what the first five episodes of this series were like. The script writers took the "outline" of the series and wrote their own thing. An amalgamation of characters is exactly what doing something like that might seem like.

I didn't say the series was bad; in fact, it is really good.

 

[Rich Watson]

Just realised no Season 2 announcement yet. Netflix are usually quicker to either cancel or confirm.

 

[theenglish]

Just realised no Season 2 announcement yet. Netflix are usually quicker to either cancel or confirm.

If it is cancelled, I accept full responsibility.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Renewed for - at least - a second season https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/3-body-problem-renewed-season-2-netflix-1236004233/

 

[theenglish]

Renewed for - at least - a second season https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/3-body-problem-renewed-season-2-netflix-1236004233/

The article says the order is for additional episodes--it appears unknown how many episodes this will be, just that the story will be told to its "conclusion", whatever that means. This could be anywhere from 3 to 4 episodes to provide some sort of resolution to the series or it could mean a full four seasons.

 

[Christopher]

The article says the order is for additional episodes--it appears unknown how many episodes this will be, just that the story will be told to its "conclusion", whatever that mean. This could be anywhere from 3 to 4 episodes to provide some sort of resolution to the series or it could mean a full four seasons.

There's still a lot of the trilogy left to cover. Season 1 covered basically the entirety of The Three-Body Problem, the early chapters of The Dark Forest, and the first of the five main "Era" sections of Death's End, the one taking place contemporaneously with the first two books. So they've still got the majority of Books 2 & 3 left. Chronologically, the rest of TDF would be next, with the "Deterrence Era" section of DE following it, and it looks like those are closely enough linked narratively that they might constitute a second season, which would leave the rest of DE for a third season, if they want to tackle material taking place that far in the future.

 

[Rich Watson]

Yeah, they're definitely trying to make it unclear.

I've always thought the third book was unfilmable anyway, so they might just go for their own version of an ending.

 

[Captaindemotion]

they might just go for their own version of an ending.

Oh god…

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

There is no traditional "happy ending" in the books - it's very hard SF. I can't see studio execs going with that.

 

[Christopher]

Well, they've been remarkably faithful to the books so far -- they changed character names and nationalities, created a friendship among unrelated book characters to tie their threads together, and composited Liam Cunningham's character out of multiple separate authority figures in the trilogy, but the actual plot points and character arcs all come directly from the books and take place in approximately chronological order, though not the original narrative order. In short, they haven't yet invented any major plot elements out of whole cloth, just adapted elements from the trilogy in a way that's more unified on a character level. And as I recall, Benioff & Cooper got a lot of heat for diverging from GRRM in Game of Thrones. So they might at least try to stay as close to the remaining books as they can, or at least to reinterpret the broad strokes of their storyline in a more relatable way.

Certainly the whole angle of developing cryogenics is meant to allow the same characters to stay in the game over a storyline spanning centuries, the same way the Foundation TV series uses cryogenics, cloning, and AI. Although that's another element taken directly from the trilogy, specifically The Dark Forest. But it strongly suggests they do have plans to advance the storyline centuries into the future.

 

[Christopher]

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the showrunners confirm they'll be able to adapt the whole trilogy:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t...enewal-netflix-number-of-episodes-1235905532/

While the trio didn’t reveal the exact number of episodes in their new deal, they emphasized it was for “seasons” — plural — and that the number of hours aligns with their original plan to adapt author Liu Cixin’s two remaining novels in his Hugo-winning trilogy.

“We knew going into this how many hours we need to tell the rest of the story because we’ve got a roadmap through to the end,” Weiss told The Hollywood Reporter. “And we have what we need to get to the end as intended from when we started.”

However, they say they expect it'll take them three years to finish writing the rest, so don't expect season 2 anytime soon.

 

[FPAlpha]

Well, they've been remarkably faithful to the books so far -- they changed character names and nationalities, created a friendship among unrelated book characters to tie their threads together, and composited Liam Cunningham's character out of multiple separate authority figures in the trilogy, but the actual plot points and character arcs all come directly from the books and take place in approximately chronological order, though not the original narrative order. In short, they haven't yet invented any major plot elements out of whole cloth, just adapted elements from the trilogy in a way that's more unified on a character level. And as I recall, Benioff & Cooper got a lot of heat for diverging from GRRM in Game of Thrones. So they might at least try to stay as close to the remaining books as they can, or at least to reinterpret the broad strokes of their storyline in a more relatable way.

Certainly the whole angle of developing cryogenics is meant to allow the same characters to stay in the game over a storyline spanning centuries, the same way the Foundation TV series uses cryogenics, cloning, and AI. Although that's another element taken directly from the trilogy, specifically The Dark Forest. But it strongly suggests they do have plans to advance the storyline centuries into the future.

To be fair after season 6 they were forced to write GoT on their own and only had the broad story points from GRRM, prior to that they had the books to adapt and did a great job of it by also cutting some elements and condensing others as you do when you adapt literature to a different medium ( something book fans of anything will apparently never understand fully). The only thing i could criticize is that it seemed to me they ran out of energy to do full 10 episode seasons and just wanted to cross the finish line as the production became a juggernaut at this point, almost like coordinating an army during wartime but that's just my impression not based on any factual evidence.

With this they have a complete literary basis and the question was just if Netflix was confident enough to stick by the original plan and give them the time to develop their story in the necessary amount of seasons/episodes. Apparently that's the case now so i'm glad as i really like the story and i really need to find the time to read the novels as i have spoiled myself somewhat through YT and know broad elements that left me very impressed.

I don't expect season 2 by at least very late 2025, maybe even 2026 depending if they write the whole thing in one go and then start shooting non stop or if they go season by season.

Since they stated the had a roadmap planned out in advance ( which apparently took them 4 years in advance) writing should go a little bit quicker but i am no pro in that regard so i'm just hoping it is as i assume.