First Impressions – 3 Body Problem

Third time’s the charm, or something like that. Anyway, I’m going to be trying something a little different today. This is the first instalment of a series I’m going to call ‘First Impressions’, where I will talk about the first episode of a given TV series. Only the first episode, mind you. Now the name makes sense. Hardly the wittiest, but being devoid of wit isn’t a crime.

Time to get stuck in. 3 Body Problem was recommended to me by a close friend, in the kind of enthusiastic way that you know it’s really worth a watch, not just the ‘oh yeah, this is kind of good’ way. They’re very different. I’m veering off course very early today, but I digress.

3 Body Problem is a sci-fi series which is based off a Chinese novel published in 2006. I knew next to nothing about this before starting the first episode, and as of writing this I’ve only seen the first two episodes, so no chance for spoilers here! It’s got a very strong cast, including Benedict Wong, Eliza Gonzalez and John Bradley, and was created in part by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss of Game of Thrones fame (infamy?). This may ring alarm bells for those with a short memory, but please remember how good the first few seasons of that show were. This is when they had the source material to work from, which is the same with this show. Also involved is Alexander Woo, who was a writer for True Blood and some other TV series over the last few years.

The opening scene is one of my favourite cliches of any kind of story-telling. A scene that is seemingly unrelated to the rest of the show based on our expectations, but will clearly have strong thematic or narrative significance later on. This seems specific, but the best example I can think of recently is The Last of Us, where the opening scene depicts an old television interview with a scientist who highlights the danger of a fungus that can infect the nervous system. We’re thrown into the middle of a Maoist struggle session, with no context as to what that is or what’s going on. We see academics beaten in front of a braying crowd by members of the military, academics who might question the established order. These struggle sessions formed part of China’s cultural revolution in the late sixties into the seventies, and were credited with helping Mao tighten his stranglehold on the hearts and minds of the Chinese people.

This, essentially, lays the foundation for the series, which revolves around the daughter of one of the murdered academics, as well as a group of academics who are brought together by the death of a friend and mentor. We are also introduced to Benedict Wong’s detective character, investigating unusual circumstances surrounding various deaths across England, and the world. The series splits its time between China following the death of Ye Wenjie’s father, and modern day England, primarily following the characters of Jin Cheng (who discovers an unusual helmet) and Auggie Salazar (whose vision is plagued with a visual countdown to zero). It’s always interesting seeing how a series reveals information to us across different narratives, and I’m intrigued to see how this develops to. You have to be so careful with what you hint at and what you show as not to ruin the surprise. This series so far is most akin to a detective story, where it establishes all of these mysteries that we will obviously delve into as each episode continues.

I really enjoyed this episode because it does such an effective job at hooking you in. This is perhaps the most essential role of an opening episode of a series, along with setting up the core narrative and characters that we will follow throughout. Intrigue is thrown at us in almost a breakneck pace, with each of the first few scenes demanding that we continue watching by giving us something to ponder, to think about, to query. I find it incredibly hard to get hooked in to TV series, to the point where I don’t think I’ve watched a new one this year even, but this has really grabbed me. I can’t wait to see where it goes.