3 Body Problem - Netflix

[dxg]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

WrekinCrew said:

Is the nanofibre in the 2006 book?

Yes, it is.

WrekinCrew said:

If so the idea of a super-strong invisible molecular chain that cuts anything is hardly an original idea - Larry Niven used exactly the same thing ("Sinclair monofilament") way back in the '70s in various stories, and the idea may well predate that.

Exactly so.

I literally rolled my eyes and yawned when I got to that bit in the book. As I said, the book is pretty derivative.

The "riding the nuclear staircase" concept is a real thing! One of the first thoughts for long distance space travel. Except that the vessel would drop the bombs behind it rather than using ICBMs to get them set up in a staircase for the rocket to travel past - which didn't make any sense (how long would the ICBMs take to get to those locations (i.e. why do the journey twice?) - and how do they navigate without atmosphere...?)

Edited by dxg on Tuesday 2nd April 22:29

[Clockwork Cupcake]

dxg said:

The "riding the nuclear staircase" concept is a real thing! One of the first thoughts for long distance space travel. Except that the vessel would drop the bombs behind it rather than using ICBMs to get them set up in a staircase for the rocket to travel past - which didn't make any sense (how long would the ICBMs take to get to those locations (i.e. why do the journey twice?) - and how do they navigate without atmosphere...?)

Do a search for Project Orion and prepare to go down a rabbit hole.

Here is as good a place as any to begin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nucle...

Fun fact: Second shout-out for Larry Niven, as he had an Orion spacecraft in his Sci-Fi book "Footfall". Also, in rather a meta move, in that book he had NASA (or whoever) assemble a load of Sci-Fi writers to come up with ideas for countering the aliens.

Edited by Clockwork Cupcake on Tuesday 2nd April 22:39

[Tony Starks]

clive_candy said:

Had half an eye on this as others in the house have been watching it. Surprised one of the characters seems frequently to be shown smoking. Is it significant or is it simply promoting cigarettes in a way you can't anymore on terrestrial TV in the UK?

Seems to be the standard for netflix programming. And alot of.the time you can tell the actors don't actually smoke as they look uncomfortable holding it.

[rider73]

are we allowing spoilers?


So what about all that radiation of the 300+ bombs exploding affecting the little spaceship and its "cargo" - also what is powering said spaceship and its "cargo" for 300+ years - plus shielding from all sorts of unknown asteroids, meteors, not sure its easy as point and shoot - plus space is big , how are they navigating it to pass close to the fleet - they could miss by a few 100,000 miles easy...

timeframes ? how did they get all this setup in what seems like a matter of a month?? 300+ repurposed bombs launched and put in precise distance on a precise path + cryo tech untested on earth and then putting it in space + nanotech solar shield .....

i'm also thinking - the santi had already sent the super-computers to disrupt the CERN and various other science projects + the countdown eyes + killing people off they thought a threat - so they were already scared of us??, but then there was the conversation about Lies to The Lord? - like that had not come up in 40+ of talking, as well as monitoring us on a planetary scale? the people playing the games never lied in the game, they never detected in our brain, lies? so they suddenly want to wipe us out......... but despite the 2 huge computers that can encircle the planet they decide they are going to disrupt our science...again??? huh? and try and kill people with sniper bullets yet they can take over planes that they had only just flew on? couldnt they just turn off all or computers, send us back to the dark ages?

is the book like this or is it just the screenwriters of the netflix version just cutting corners to give us a concise drama?

[coldel]

rider73 said:

are we allowing spoilers?


Spoilers

is the book like this or is it just the screenwriters of the netflix version just cutting corners to give us a concise drama?

I guess with sci-fi you have to stretch the boundaries of sillyness to a degree, but I agree with you it was just so rankly unbelievable that it became a farcical programme which a 10 year old could have written.

Actually some deep space probes leaving our solar system can in theory go on forever with onboard solar batteries as far as I have read. So keeping powered isnt a problem and as space is so big the likelihood of hitting anything is very remote

But I totally agree that despite barely having enough tech to get back to the moon right now we suddenly managed to get 300 nukes into space without any one barely mentioning it, suddenly, they were all just there. Not only that but we exist in a 3 dimensions space, and the earth is always moving, once these things were up there, what was making sure they all stayed aligned and keeping up with earth which over the course of say a month would have travelled around 80 million km from the position is was in at the start of the month, How did these 300 bombs all continue to orbit the sun in a line along with the earth. This part was just SO SO lazy like suddenly we had the science and money to just pop this lot up there in less than a month.

But yes the biggest issue is that the aliens seemingly could take over anyone and anything, yet needed to take over people to assassinate leaders with sniper rifles. Why not just take over the person you want dead. Why not just use the all powerful control of machines to just ruin the world in less than a day, launch all the nukes, make all the microwave ovens explode, anything really. It seemed mental to give the aliens so much control then not actually use it in a way an 8 year old could work out how to win.

OK I get it, there is no story if that all happens, but dont set the story up with seemingly omnipotent aliens that then dont use their powers at all.

Daft, moronic and farcical.

[The OG Jester]

Really struggled to get 2 episodes in, the 1min trailer makes it look great but characters are so dull and unlikeable especially Samwell Tarly (can't see past his GoT character).

Some of the production values look great but the whole re-hydrating folk in this fake VR world is pretty bks. And very blasé attitude to the whole universe blinking, there would be total chaos if this happened for real but people just seem to think it's fine.

Oh and the woman that lights that girls ciggy and also drops off the headset but not captured on camera, fk right off!! No idea what that is about but it's like here is far too many little mysteries and plot arcs that the main storyline is a side show. For me anyway.

Not sure if I'll continue with it.

[coldel]

The OG Jester said:

Really struggled to get 2 episodes in, the 1min trailer makes it look great but characters are so dull and unlikeable especially Samwell Tarly (can't see past his GoT character).

Some of the production values look great but the whole re-hydrating folk in this fake VR world is pretty bks. And very blasé attitude to the whole universe blinking, there would be total chaos if this happened for real but people just seem to think it's fine.

Oh and the woman that lights that girls ciggy and also drops off the headset but not captured on camera, fk right off!! No idea what that is about but it's like here is far too many little mysteries and plot arcs that the main storyline is a side show. For me anyway.

Not sure if I'll continue with it.

To be honest, the first two episodes are probably the better ones. They set up a mystery that needs to be unravelled and the countdown clock is pretty edgy imagine seeing that. But after that it goes off on a ridiculous tangent of nonsensical story telling, making lots of stuff up that doesn't fit just to make a story work. If you thought episodes 1 and 2 were just unbelievable and nonsensical then I would say definitely stop now lol

[DanL]

coldel said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-687058...

Interesting news from China.

And agree with the above, the non sensical last few episodes killed what was already a pretty weak and poor plot.

How the hell did those eight episodes cost $160M?!

Watched it all. Wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known what was going to happen at the end.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

coldel said:

I guess with sci-fi you have to stretch the boundaries of sillyness to a degree, but I agree with you it was just so rankly unbelievable that it became a farcical programme which a 10 year old could have written.

Well, yes and no. As someone once said, the science part of Sci-Fi should be science and the fiction should be fiction. And once the science becomes fiction then you have Fi-Fi not Sci-Fi.

Obviously it's more complex than that as some of the Sci-Fi masters invented whole areas of science. But they did so in a consistent way that was at least believable and self-consistent.

But as a general concept the point stands.

edit: I am essentially agreeing with you, BTW

[coldel]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

coldel said:

I guess with sci-fi you have to stretch the boundaries of sillyness to a degree, but I agree with you it was just so rankly unbelievable that it became a farcical programme which a 10 year old could have written.

Well, yes and no. As someone once said, the science part of Sci-Fi should be science and the fiction should be fiction. And once the science becomes fiction then you have Fi-Fi not Sci-Fi.

Obviously it's more complex than that as some of the Sci-Fi masters invented whole areas of science. But they did so in a consistent way that was at least believable and self-consistent.

But as a general concept the point stands.

edit: I am essentially agreeing with you, BTW

I always took it as 'fictional science' but sci-fi sounds better than fi-sci

There is no real science in beaming people in star trek, the artificial gravity that just seems to 'exist' on the Enterprise so on and so forth but its done in a way that believeable as a sci-fi, something this programme did nothing to even attempt that.

[rider73]

whats really bizarre is that the first 5 eps pretty much, for me, were excellent, things pretty grounded in science, character building, world building, feeling like a good little slow burner, then as i said above the last 3 (6//7/8) just utterly flipped it on its head , where your getting 2 mins of dialogue / scenes explaining new tech beyond anything we have "but we have the greatest minds on it" cover-all....

i would have prefered 5 episodes building the spaceship across now to +10 years and 3 episodes at the start of someone sending/getting "the message"....

or - just give us a 20 episode series !

[carl_w]

coldel said:

Actually some deep space probes leaving our solar system can in theory go on forever with onboard solar batteries as far as I have read.

No chance, have you seen the size of the sun from the edge of the solar system? They use radioisotope thermoelectric generators.

[Silverage]

I "finished" this last night. What a strange ending. There must surely be another series planned?

[rider73]

Silverage said:

I "finished" this last night. What a strange ending. There must surely be another series planned?

from the interwebby, there is , but, apparently it was one of Netflix's most expensive productions to date, and, its felt that to do the books justice, it would need at least 3 seasons - so its a big commitment for netflix to commit to 3 - but its one of their most top rated shows internationally too....

[vixen1700]

DanL said:

How the hell did those eight episodes cost $160M?!

Until I got into doing stuff in film and telly, I never realised just how many people were involved and the huge costs of those people.

It's mind-blowing and that's before you get into things made from 2020-2023 with everybody involved having covid PCR tests sent off to the labs maybe the day before filming and on the day.

Camera, lighting, wardrobe, hair and make-up, continuity people, transportation, insurance, security, hire of locations, etc, etc.

The one two minute scene I was involved with took all day, involved hundreds of people, a lot of planning and involvement, and cost God only knows. Blink and you'd miss it!

[coldel]

vixen1700 said:

DanL said:

How the hell did those eight episodes cost $160M?!

Until I got into doing stuff in film and telly, I never realised just how many people were involved and the huge costs of those people.

It's mind-blowing and that's before you get into things made from 2020-2023 with everybody involved having covid PCR tests sent off to the labs maybe the day before filming and on the day.

Camera, lighting, wardrobe, hair and make-up, continuity people, transportation, insurance, security, hire of locations, etc, etc.

The one two minute scene I was involved with took all day, involved hundreds of people, a lot of planning and involvement, and cost God only knows. Blink and you'd miss it!

I can imagine, but watching this series I must agree why does this cost more than other series (or maybe 160m is the going rate?) as the actors looked low budget, no real special effects except the ship scene and locations mostly quite normal.

[vixen1700]

It probably is the going rate.

Just did a quick search on other 'big' things like Succession and The Crown and in 2019 they came in at $90m and $260m respectively.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/nov/...

[The OG Jester]

Got to Episode 5 last night out of morbid curiosity. The nanofibre / ship scene was pretty decent if pretty much unbelievable.

I'm still going to watch the rest to see how it goes from here. I mean aliens that are friendly but suddenly don't like us because of a children's story is up there with the best of the bat st crazy stories.

[budgie smuggler]

coldel said:

I can imagine, but watching this series I must agree why does this cost more than other series (or maybe 160m is the going rate?) as the actors looked low budget, no real special effects except the ship scene and locations mostly quite normal.

and all the 'vr' scenes?

[coldel]

budgie smuggler said:

coldel said:

I can imagine, but watching this series I must agree why does this cost more than other series (or maybe 160m is the going rate?) as the actors looked low budget, no real special effects except the ship scene and locations mostly quite normal.

and all the 'vr' scenes?

Im not entirely sure creating those basic VR scenes is a big deal nowadays? Happy to be proven wrong!