Countdown

I am recognizing most of the story elements, but where the Chinese show took 30 episodes to tell this complicated story, The Netflix producers are trying to ultra compress it.

The Chinese version had me actually caring about the few characters that it focused upon. This one, instead of focusing on just three basic characters there are several.

The story of Ye Wenjie, and this is the only character where they did not change the gender, nationality, or name of, is told in this first episode, and it matches what we knew from the Chinese show. Of course, Netflix added some extracurricular romance, which did not happen in the original. In the original story, Ye Wenjie was a woman totally unmoved by romantic interests. Originally a victim of the Chinese state and then one of their main operators. The Chinese version shows how she changed from the 60s to the early 2000's.

The other major difference is that the Chinese show was a period piece, occurring during the early 2000's, just prior to the onset of the first iPhones and other personal digital gadgetry. Nokia phones were still popular. This version of the story is completely contemporary, and so everybody is using iPhones instead of pre-Intel MacBooks, in my opinion this damages the story. That was one of the things that made the Chinese show unique is that they replicated how digital was in the early 2000s. This show, destroys that effect. They should have kept to the original period.

One of the other things we recognize is the character played by Benedict Wong, who is the cigarette chomping' cop "Da Shi": In the Chinese, This was "Shi Qiang" played by Hewei Yu.

And then the character of "Wang Miao" Has been deleted and transplanted into "Auggie Salazar" (Elza González)- she is the one that sees the countdown, and is approached by somebody named Tatania, who is supposed to be an analog of the character "Shen Yufei" - who initially appears to be speaking about "God" but in fact, they are talking about "the Lord" or, "Lord". Which I suppose you would have to watch this series in the original Chinese or read the novel to find out what that actually means. And it is not a religious reference, it is something insidious.

What has not been mentioned yet is the organization called "The Frontier Of Science" which Tatania/Shen Yufei and another character named "Pan Han" (whose analog has not yet appeared in this series) appeared to control.

I have only gotten halfway through the first episode, but I recognize these highly compressed story elements and characters based upon the original. What made the Chinese version endearing to me was that everything focused upon a small group of people... in this one, they had to hire a lot of the Game of Thrones stable of actors, and so the story has been shuffled across a deck of about 10 Game of Thrones actors.

Visually, this is done very well, but I don't like this supercompression of the story. The original Chinese Show took place across 30 episodes, and all of that information is crammed into only eight here, but that is the way that TV shows are made on Netflix or America these days. Nobody in America makes a TV show that has 26 episodes per season anymore. It went down from 26 to 16 to 13 and then to 10 and now 8 and 6. Only CW shows, sometimes still have 22 episodes per season.

It's just not enough time to tell a compelling story, 6 one-hour episodes? 8 one-hour episodes? Especially a story as complicated as "three body problem", a hugo award winning book.

And between the Chinese and American shows, these are only the first seasons, there are more books in this story. Which makes me very interested to see how the Chinese television industry does it, and how Netflix will respond...

It's no secret that David Benioff and D. B. Weiss' next project has been both highly anticipated and met with a lot of skepticism after how they ended "Game of Thrones." In the end, that show's downfall doesn't seem to be entirely their fault, but mostly because of the direction that the story was going that simply didn't work, so I was looking forward to seeing what they would be doing when adapting a big sci-fi novel instead. And while the first episode doesn't necessarily give us a lot, it does set the stage for an epic journey that has a very solid starting point.

At first, this show seems like it's definitely taking a pseudo-realistic approach to its subject matter, bringing in real-life events to enforce its narrative. Benioff and Weiss have often signaled that they have an interest in history (just look at "The Confederacy"...), so it doesn't come as a surprise. However, the opening sequence's impact on the larger show will have to come later. And maybe it's just the skeptic in me, but they're dealing with some big things in this that it feels like they're doing what they did with "Thrones," and that does leave me a little worried. However, looking at this episode for what is in it, there's a lot of good in this. The cast is already doing some good work, starting us off with a big emotional episode. None of them are sticking out properly, but it will be interesting to see where they all go. They are already setting up certain stakes for the characters, which may be why the character played by Benedict Wong is already shaping up to have the most interesting story. It also seems like the show is playing around with time, and I don't know if this will lead to a twist down the line, but if it does, I have a pretty good idea what it will be. The ending left us off with a lot of promise, and I'm actually kinda excited to see where they go from here, and hoping that the writing is good enough to bring us home satisfied.

"Countdown" starts off this new project with a lot of potential, although the skepticism is still there because of how they finished "Game of Thrones." However, on this episode alone, the bar seems to be set pretty high and the cast seems excellent and up to the task of bringing this mind-bending story to life.

In a word, intriguing.

Interesting that we have to see a world based in science fact that moves into science fiction. Bravo on world building Messers Benihoff and Weiss, good to see that you learnt your lesson from the, frankly, criminal ending to Game of Thrones.

I won't go through the plot, I will let others do that. But I will say that it is well made, well written and the time jumps are effective because all parts of the story are important and relevant.

Nice to see a depiction of the horrors of the cultural revolution in China that murdered and tortured millions. The parallels of todays woke mind virus are not lost on me.

In the Netflix series, the book's protagonist's actions are divided among several characters, which makes better use of the excellent actors in the ensemble cast. There is less exposition or interior monologues because the characters share information with one another. The plotting is now more focused and, I believe, more entertaining than the plodding 30-episode Chinese version (freely available with subtitles on YouTube, complete with Chinese advertisements for tomato soup and apparently a dating app).

The first episode of "The Three Body Problem" opens with "struggle session", humiliating an honest Chinese professor. This scene should be watched by those who think that there has been anything admirable about Maoism.

Overall a decent adaptation, excellent job on the parts they chose to stay close to the source. It is nearly verbatim from the book. I understand the decision to change some of the characters, my issue is the dialog, I don't know anyone who literally drops profanity every other word. These are supposed to be the geniuses of our time? I don't know Marines who talk like that.

Some of the structure of the story is different, I'm interested to see how it works. Honestly it seemed like their last show fell apart when they no longer had the source material to use, probably a brilliant move by GRR to not tie himself to it.