3 Body Problem - Netflix

[llewop]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

dxg said:

Absolutely. Nothing has surpassed Foundation. Even though it apparently takes similar liberties with it's source books as 3BP does, it's underlying logic is sound and the characters are and both flawed and compelling.

That's all you can really ask for really

I have read (and own, on paperback) all the Foundation books actually written by Asimov (but not the continuation books after his death) and all the Robots books he penned too.

Sadly not been able to watch the Foundation TV show as it is not on a service that I have access to. I think it was Apple?

Edited to add: I didn't deliberately eschew the non-Asimov books. I read the post-Herbert Dune books. Just that I never got round to buying them and I moved away from the town where I had an amazing secondhand bookshop.

(Moss Books in Cheltenham if anyone is interested)

Edited by Clockwork Cupcake on Saturday 6th April 22:10

I have a problem with the series Foundation as it does appear only share the title, initial concept and a few character names with the Asimov books; which I love and have read many times. I suppose the problem is the books don't lend themselves to even a modern movie-standard-miniseries as other than the 'ghost' of HS, all the characters have short spans in the story. So I've not tried to see it (yet).

I'm about 3-4 episodes into this and although the title grates a bit as it is the wrong problem, sticking with it as apparently some filming done at 'our' place so trying to catch a glimpse of how they use it.

[Shaoxter]

The first half of the episodes were excellent I thought, the Apple vision pro scenes looked amazing in HDR on my shiny new OLED TV

Fell off a cliff afterwards and I lost interest, didn't like any of the remaining main characters.

[Lucas Ayde]

llewop said:

I have a problem with the series Foundation as it does appear only share the title, initial concept and a few character names with the Asimov books; which I love and have read many times. I suppose the problem is the books don't lend themselves to even a modern movie-standard-miniseries as other than the 'ghost' of HS, all the characters have short spans in the story. So I've not tried to see it (yet).

I'm about 3-4 episodes into this and although the title grates a bit as it is the wrong problem, sticking with it as apparently some filming done at 'our' place so trying to catch a glimpse of how they use it.

Yeah, Foundation was a real letdown.

I don't mind a few changes to the source books but they just went way off and did their own 'inspired by the characters and plot of the Foundation series' type thing. The first few episodes were very decent until they really started to diverge. Super high production quality too - what a waste.

In the case of 3BP, I don't mind that they have adapted it quite a bit. IMO the source material was full of great ideas and concepts but rather dryly and boringly written. It was a real slog. The problem is that the adaptation is pretty boring in itself and the characters although better than the original, are pretty unrelatable. It's a 'near miss' IMO.

[dxg]

I guess I should read the books.

Although I do think the TV series is great.

Esp. now that the fallibility of the three brothers empire has been established and the real power base determined to be elsewhere.

[tangerine_sedge]

I just finished watching this and really enjoyed it, although it was definitely a series of two halves, each half was interesting in its own way.

Sure, there were plot holes, but I thought it moved along at a decent pace and always had something new to distract you. The plot details don't really matter as it is fundamentally just there as scaffolding to explore ideas about the size and timescales of space and space travel, and to dabble in the Science vs Faith debate which are the aspects I enjoyed the most.

I've not read the book(s) so cannot comment on the overall story arc, but I'm not sure that series 2 (if it's made) will be quite as entertaining as unless there's a huge change, we will basically be watching humanity discover new science over hundreds of years whilst we wait for the aliens to arrive (unless they just jump to the alien arrival and bin off all the current characters). Personally I'd be satisified if it just ended here, with the knowledge that whatever happens the 'bugs' will survive.

[dundarach]

Shaoxter said:

The first half of the episodes were excellent I thought, the Apple vision pro scenes looked amazing in HDR on my shiny new OLED TV

Fell off a cliff afterwards and I lost interest, didn't like any of the remaining main characters.

That's exactly what happened to me.

Enjoyed the first 4, skipped through the last four and watched about 10 minutes of them in total.

Quickly became another pointless series.

[wombleh]

Thought was OK, will watch the next series. I think the books were on Kindle unlimited a few years ago? Had same view of them really, nowt spectacular but enjoyable enough. Not sure was worth Netflix chucking vast sums at.

Putting nukes in space would be fairly easy with ballistic missiles and we're not short on those.

[coldel]

wombleh said:

Thought was OK, will watch the next series. I think the books were on Kindle unlimited a few years ago? Had same view of them really, nowt spectacular but enjoyable enough. Not sure was worth Netflix chucking vast sums at.

Putting nukes in space would be fairly easy with ballistic missiles and we're not short on those.

The issue is not launching ballistic missiles its how to keep them all lined up and in position. I mean they had 300 of them in a line, as the spacecraft accelerated it would be travelling at faster speeds requiring the distances to be literally huge, they would have to be hundreds of thousands of miles apart by the last 50 or so as the spacecraft would be going so fast. How long would it take a standard ballistic missile to get the last 50 out in to space? How far would it need to travel? 0.01% the speed of light is around 65,000,000mph so around a million miles per minute, imagine the last 50 bombs would have to be at least half a million miles apart to work which would be incremental. so the most outerlying bomb would be tens of millions of miles from earth - all done in less than a month

[wombleh]

TBH the thing I found strangest, was that it got past the Chinese censors in the first place!

[Slothly]

dxg said:

I guess I should read the books.

Although I do think the TV series is great.

Esp. now that the fallibility of the three brothers empire has been established and the real power base determined to be elsewhere.

Agreed.

I thought Foundation TV series was really good and just got better in season 2. But if I'd read the much loved books I might have felt very differently.

As for 3 Body Problem, again I haven't read the books. Thought it was OK but not great, most characters particularly being hard to warm to. Related, the coastguard cottages at Cuckmere, Seven Sisters where they stayed by the sea in eps 5 & 6 had an open gardens this weekend. Very cool to have a cup of tea and chunk of chocolate cake admiring the view from the same decking.

[franki68]

Slothly said:

Agreed.

I thought Foundation TV series was really good and just got better in season 2. But if I'd read the much loved books I might have felt very differently.

As for 3 Body Problem, again I haven't read the books. Thought it was OK but not great, most characters particularly being hard to warm to. Related, the coastguard cottages at Cuckmere, Seven Sisters where they stayed by the sea in eps 5 & 6 had an open gardens this weekend. Very cool to have a cup of tea and chunk of chocolate cake admiring the view from the same decking.

I enjoyed foundation and read the books. However the books were read around 40 years ago so I couldn’t honestly remember much about them .

[roadie]

I finished watching through this recently. I generally enjoyed it and thought that it explored some really interesting areas. However, I felt that the ending to this series was weak as it didn't provide any conclusion to the story. Hopefully, more seasons are produced to cover all the books.

[Mr.Chips]

We really enjoyed this. The GOT link was clear in the production and it was all the better for it. We loved the episode involving the ship going through the canal. I might be interested in reading the books, although I’m not sure how closely the TV series is related to it.

[marcosgt]

Mr.Chips said:

We really enjoyed this. The GOT link was clear in the production and it was all the better for it. We loved the episode involving the ship going through the canal. I might be interested in reading the books, although I’m not sure how closely the TV series is related to it.

I'm afraid the nanofibres destroying the ship is where it all started to fall to bits (no pun intended) for me.

They were worried a missile may destroy what they wanted to capture, but slicing and dicing the ship and everyone in it posed no risk of that?

Then they were quibbling about sending some seeds into space with the brain, but they put a huge electro-hydraulic door on the capsule, rather than simply weld it closed.

It felt like huge chunks of the plot had been discarded - Jonathon Pryce's character didn't really do much and then he was dead, for example - Surely there was more to that than chatting to the aliens a bit in the original book?

I understand that a large book is difficult to completely cover in a film or TV series, but then it's usually better to discard whole plotlines altogether, rather than skim over them to leave people wondering why they were even mentioned.

Too many 'You what?' moments for me - I enjoyed the concept, but the delivery left me disappointed.

M

Edited by marcosgt on Thursday 9th May 12:27