Before we delve into wild sci-fi concepts, like using the power of the sun to fuel alien screams, or how a private sector anti-vaccine billionaire links events in Maoist China to a series of scientist deaths in the present, We need to address the Oxford Five, as the group of brilliant friends at the center of 3 Body problem represent different sides of the main character in The three body problem, The original novel by Liu Cixin. Basically, for its propulsive series adaptation, it is as if 3P body Showrunners and writers David Benioff, DB Weiss, and Alexander Woo placed Liu’s Wang Miao into Auggie’s super-sharp, super-strong nanofiber machine and pided him into parts. Thus, Eiza González’s character represents that part of Wang, the brilliant nanotechnology innovator, while Jess Hong’s Jin Cheng expresses his obsession with a video game that seems so real it hurts. Jovan Adepo’s brilliant stoner Saul Durand plays Wang as a skeptic. And instead of just Wang, all of the Oxford Five know the genius former Red Coast Base physicist, Ye Wenjie, because in the present his daughter Vera was his professor at Oxford. Benioff, Weiss, and Woo have built a compelling central cast out of the motivations that previously drove a single character. Damn, he’s almost like him game of Thrones and True Blood Veterans have done this TV thing at a high level before.
But back to Inner Mongolia, where Zine Tseng is a force of nature as the younger version of Ye Wenji. It’s Wenji who discovers how to harness the power of the sun to effectively send messages across the vast reaches of space, though that doesn’t stop his male superior from trying to take credit. And while the official commissar rejects the proposal to merge science with a celestial body so closely associated with Chairman Mao: “Have you thought about the political symbolism of such an experiment?!” – Wenji does it anyway, because he is smarter than everyone in the Red Coast Base. And also, what has Mao’s Cultural Revolution brought you? The routine of life under state control and the flogging death of his father. Tang Hongjing (Lan Xiya) was the Red Guard teenager who actually dealt the killing blow to Ye Zhetai. In the Mongolian labor camp, when a bitter Tang expresses no remorse for the act – “Even now, he would reap him as if he were wheat” – Wenji’s disillusionment only grows.
In the present, Auggie cancels his nanotechnology research, despite the remarkable promise of his successful demonstration. And just as the mysterious woman assured him in 3 Body problem In episode 1 (“Countdown”), the number sequence that permeates Auggie’s vision immediately disappears. He also meets up with Da Ching, who gives her and us the download of Mike Evans (Jonathan Pryce), the guy we last saw leaving Vera Ye’s funeral in a fancy corporate helicopter. Evans, a private oil magnate who is rarely seen in public, is also a rabid anti-vaxxer and conspirator. Someone with his kind of power and influence could certainly erase evidence of the mystery woman from surveillance footage, to increase the likelihood that Auggie will be perceived as crazy for shutting down her lucrative nanotech company.
Jin comes back in. When the game’s gleaming gold helmet calls to her, she is drawn even deeper into the impossible realness of it. Jin’s game mission? “She solves the riddle of this world,” the Earl of the West (Tom Wu) tells him. A world of competing “chaotic” and “stable” eras, where the decisions the player makes determine the fate of a civilization. As a theoretical physicist, Jin is intrigued by the challenges the game presents. But her curiosity turns to repulsion when the Count’s young follower (Eve Ridley) – “You can call her Follower” – becomes caught in the advancing rays of the planet’s scorching sun and quickly subjects her physical being to “dehydration.” . This aspect of Liu Cixin’s novel always felt like one of his toughest adaptation challenges, but the Benioff-Weiss-Woo think tank pulls it off on the small screen with a rich visual aesthetic that verges on surreal horror. .
Now officially obsessed with both the helmet and the game, Jin shows it to Jack, whose introductory session is interrupted when he is killed by a female swordswoman. “You were not invited.” Until invited, that is. When the Oxford-educated physicist and snack startup millionaire returns to his bachelor pad, he discovers a personalized gold helmet waiting for him. For Jack, the game features him dressed in an Old English costume, with a castle structure that matches his heritage, and instead of the Earl of the West, he meets Sir Thomas More (Kevin Eldon). But the challenge remains the same. He solves the puzzle, advances levels. When Jin re-enters the game, he realizes that the Count’s solution to the planet’s volatility is not based on scientific fact but on prophecy and pination, the Yo Ching of Chinese history. Jin does not intervene, and Emperor Zhou (Russell Yuen) enthusiastically calls on his people, stacked like canvas husks in coastal storage centers, to enter a new phase of prosperity.
However, the Count’s numbers were off, and the naked, cheerful citizens who emerge from hydration are quickly destroyed in an extinction-level event. As the swordswoman informs him, Jin has established something important. For the game world to prosper, scientists must prevail over mystics. “At level two, you must use science to save the next civilization.”
In 1977, Mike Evans (played as a younger man by Ben Schnetzer) lived in Mongolia, a handsome hermit rich kid with a Johnny Appleseed complex. When Ye Wenjie meets him at her hut in a clearing, she is trying to save the lives of endangered birds by reforesting the area one tree at a time, an effort that speaks to her on a philosophical level. And that same year, Wenjie also receives a message from another world. “I’m warning you: don’t answer. If you answer, we will go. Your world will be conquered.” But what does Wenjie really think of the world? Where humanity has devastated its resources and political violence suppresses rational thought and destroys innocent lives? Wenjie decides to ignore the meaning embedded in the alien text. She does it anyway, just as she did with her first message in 1966. “Come. We cannot save ourselves. I will help you conquer this world.”
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is a freelance writer and editor living in Chicago. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
