No doubt that if you watch Netflix you have heard about this new mind-blowing sci-fi show 3 Body Problem. It has been getting a ton of press lately and NetFlix is really pushing it as the next great show. It's produced by the makers of Game of Thrones, so immediately it had may attention. It even stars Samwell Tarley, Sir Davos the Onion Knight, and The High Sceptor actors. Anyway, I gave it a shot.
Spoiler alert: It starts off interestingly enough….a Chinese physicist makes contact with aliens in the 1960s. The alien says stop broadcasting or we will get you. The scientist continues and today now it hits the fan. The aliens are from a planet that is in chaos and have to find elsewhere to live. They are able to communicate with Earth through a helmet video game and have established a supercomputer device that can control and watch everything happening on Earth. However, the catch is the aliens won't arrive for 400 years. Everyone on Earth is in panic mode now trying to figure out what is going on, is this real, and what to do defend the planet.
It's all pretty nonsense. The reviews have all been positive, pushing it as some intellectually advanced program and if you don't like it that means you don't understand the physics behind it. To me, it's another lame attempt to be smart and edgy, with a cast of moody, smarmy 20-something super-intellectuals who mostly mope about, whine, and generally act entitled and lazy.
One scene that is particularly absurd, disturbing, and just unnecessary is when they destroy a tanker ship that has been outfitted as a floating city for a community of people who follow the alien orders and have direct contact with the aliens. They decide they need to access the ship to get data on alien contact. They decide they don't want to board the ship or send in a military unit because there are thousands of civilian men, women and children living on the ship and there could be bloodshed. So, the plan then is to use a new nanotechnology than can slice through any material. They set up basically a giant cheese slicer in the Panama Canal to cut the ship as it pass through. And it works perfectly….slices the ship into hundreds of thin strips, and horrifically murders every man, woman, and child on board as well as leaves a massive wreckage in the canal. Miraculously, they find the storage device in this mess and the story continues as if nothing happened. No moral, politial, or ethical ramifications for murdering thousands in plain view and shredding an oiltanker in the Panama Canal. the story just goes on to the next scene. This is where the show lost me.
Anyway, I watched all 8 episodes hoping it would get better, but it doesn't. Mostly just ridiculous situations answered with overly convenient solutions that bare to semblance to reality (like launching a frozen human brain at the approaching alien armada and hoping to intercept them in about 100 years….). Yeah, it's sci-fi….but this show so far is just nonsensical.
Huge disappointment from the GoT folks.
