Did ‘Game of Thrones’ Creators Redeem Themselves With ‘3 Body Problem?’ (POLL)

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for 3 Body Problem.]

If you watched Game of Thrones and participated in its social media discourse, you’ve likely seen the unfinished horse drawing meme. The back half of the horse is a gorgeously rendered, realistic depiction. The drawing gets less and less detailed as you look across the image. The Game of Thrones season numbers are shown above it to reflect the deterioration of detail across the eight seasons, culminating in a final season and series finale that not only fans couldn’t believe, but also left the show’s stars gobsmacked.

This detail downturn was in part because Game of Thrones ran out of book material by the end of Season 5. The creators of the Emmy-winning HBO drama, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, have tackled another heavily detailed novel in their first show since Game of Thrones ended, 3 Body Problem. Have they redeemed themselves with this new complicated and heady book-to-screen adaptation?

Netflix‘s 3 Body Problem is created, showrun, and written by Weiss, Benioff, and Alexander Woo. In it, a young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across space and time into the present day. When the laws of nature inexplicably unravel before their eyes, a close-knit group of brilliant scientists join forces with an unorthodox detective to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history.

The trio of creators were tasked with taking Liu Cixin’s high-concept sci-fi tale and making it fit into one eight-episode season of television. Naturally, some tweaks to the source material had to be made to meet this goal. The biggest change was turning the focus onto a tight-knit group of scientists created for the series—played by Jess Hong, Eiza Gonzalez, John Bradley, Jovan Adepo, and Alex Sharp—each of them haunted by a force bigger than themselves, whether that force be a threat from an impending alien invasion or the natural forces of Earth like terminal cancer.

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One scientist, Vera Ye (Vedette Lim), connects them all. Her suicide triggers a snowball of events that makes them get involved in the attempt to save humanity from the San-Ti, an alien population headed for Earth. It will take them 400 years to get there, but the aliens are sowing chaos on Earth in the meantime with the help of a small sect of religious extremists who believe the San-Ti to be the saviors of the human race. Their goal is to “break” humanity’s science, making it so their technology can’t progress, which will in turn make the planet easier to conquer in the distant future.

Some viewers may watch 3 Body Problem and have a thought similar to some of its characters: If the aliens won’t arrive for 400 years, is this really a threat? A similar question was asked about the White Walkers in Game of Thrones. Winter, as they always said, was coming. But not everyone in Westeros believed they would see the longest Summer end in their lifetimes. Weiss and Benioff proved themselves more than capable of making viewers care about an existential threat that wouldn’t come to roost until years later.

Having watched 3 Body Problem, I’d say they succeeded in applying that same skill to this sci-fi epic. I enjoyed the slow burn of each episode as I learned how Young Ye Winjie’s (Zine Tseng) choice in 1960s Communist China was revealed to define the events of the present day. Seeing Jin (Hong) and Jack (Bradley) play the video game was captivating, and finding out its connection to the overall plot was a satisfying reveal. And that “Judgment Day” episode on the Panama Canal is an early contender for one of the year’s most gruesome and destructive scenes that I can’t look away from. The opening scene was also a tough but enthralling watch.

Despite the fact that all eight episodes dropped at once, 3 Body Problem is best watched slowly. The cast thinks so, too. But what do you think? Have the creators of Game of Thrones redeemed themselves with this solid adaptation of a high-concept sci-fi novel? Was their attention to detail in this series up to scruff with your standards? Let us know in the poll below.

3 Body Problem, Season 1 Available now, Netflix