3 Body Problem
Entry updated 25 August 2025. Tagged: TV.
US tv series (2024-current). BLB, The Three Body Universe, T-Street, Plan B Entertainment, Primitive Streak. Created and mostly written by David Benioff, D B Weiss and Alexander Woo, based on Santi by Liu Cixin Cixin (May-December 2006 Kehuan Shijie; 2007; trans Ken Liu as The Three-Body Problem 2014) and its sequels. Various directors. Cast includes Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Rosalind Chao, Liam Cunningham, Eiza González, Jess Hong, Marlo Kelly, Jonathan Pryce Alex Sharp, Sea Shimooka, Zine Tseng, Saamer Usmani, Benedict Wong. Season One consists of eight episodes, ranging from 44 to 63 minutes. Colour.
The exceptional success of the early seasons of Game of Thrones (2011-2019) appears to have convinced Television executives that contemporary written sf and fantasy are a viable source of inspiration, without necessarily altering the source material beyond recognition. 3 Body Problem joins a group of series including The Expanse (2015-22), The Wheel of Time (2021-25) and Murderbot (2025-current), and though it changes many details and settings of the novels is notable for the seriousness with which is takes the tone and premise of the novels, and relative refusal to dumb down the science element.
This is actually the third adaptation, following two Mandarin-language series, the animated The Three-Body Problem in Minecraft (4 seasons, 2014-2020) and the live-action Three-Body (one season of 30 episodes, 2023). The very complicated plot transfers much of the action and characters from China to England, but starts from the same premise of Chinese scientist Ye Wenjie (Tseng) witnessing her father being killed during the Cultural Revolution, becoming an astrophysicist, and receiving messages from a Alien race warning her not to broadcast messages from Earth into space, as this will attract predatory species. In league with radical environmentalist Mike Evans (Pryce), who believes that extinction of humans is the only way to save the planet, she broadcasts anyway and waits for the aliens to arrive. These scenes, set in the 1960s and 1970s, are told in flashback across several episodes.
In the present, various Scientists, including Ye Wenjie's daughter Vera, are killing themselves, after being shown an impossibly advanced Virtual Reality headset. The series concentrates on a group of her students, including Auggie Salazer (González), who starts seeing a countdown which is not visible to anyone else. A mysterious visitor (later to be revealed be Tatiana (Kelly), who is working for the alien San-Ti in advance of their arrival on Earth) tells her to abandon her research into nanofibre technology if she wants the countdown to disappear, and demonstrates her power by seemingly causing the Stars to change their pattern in the sky.
From there, the series moves among the Earth-Trisolarans, those who work for the San-Ti, and who count Evans and Tatiana among their number; MI6 chief Thomas Wade (Cunningham), who mobilizes a Secret Intelligence Agency to prepare for the aliens' arrival; and the group of scientists who are trying to figure out what is going on. The San-Ti avatars use Sophons to send messages into people's vision, causing mass panic as Earth's people realize how powerless they will be against such superior Technology. Realizing that the only advantage Earth has is the time it will take for the San-Ti to get here, various dramatic proposals are put forth by Wade and his team, which now includes various of Vera's students. One of them, Will (Downing) is dying of cancer, and agrees to have his brain frozen and sent out on a probe to intercept the San-Ti, in the hope that they will recreate his body and he can find out more about them. However, the probe is blown off course and seems set to drift aimlessly into space. The series ends with the San-Ti avatar taunting Wade for his plan's failure, but with others insisting that human resilience will find a way.
Liu Cixin commented that the series made Earth's defence seem like the efforts of a group of acquaintances rather than a collective struggle of humanity, but that is an inevitability in a show which needs to create characters for the audience to identify with. Where it is least credible is when it perhaps comes too close to Secret Masters Paranoia in its depiction of the limitless resources available to Wade at a moment's notice. The transferral of much of the plot and characters from China to the West apparently caused some controversy in that country, and led to some accusations of racebending. Overall, however, this an honourable effort, with some memorable set pieces (especially a ship cut in half by nanowire [see Monomolecular Wire]), a lack of clear-cut Heroes or Villains, and a strong depiction of women in science. [CWa]
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