3 Body Problem - Countdown to 3/21/24 - The Something Awful Forums

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bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

Considering they put a bit of books 2 and 3 into this season, I wonder how they will pace the rest of it.

General book spoilers and speculation about how they'd break up the remainder in to tv show seasons:
The remainder of the second book seems straightforwardly another season, although that would pretty much be only Luo and none of the other main characters they've spent time on this season. But they've already touched on everything else through the Common Era aside from the second half of book 2. Maybe they'll compress this into like half a season or just a couple episodes?

You could milk a whole season out of the Deterrence Era, maybe even spread it across two with ample cliffhanger opportunities in there.

So maybe a third season would be the latter part of the Deterrence Era plus the Broadcast Era, though I bet the fairy tales would just be one episode and decoding them part of another. Alternatively they could get all the way through the Broadcast Era in a second season if they keep moving at this pace.

Bunker Era would make for a decent self contained season alone, but I don't know if they'd stretch the Galaxy Era into a standalone fifth season. Or both are the 3rd and final season.

I hope they spread things out a bit but then doesn't Netflix tend to cancel shows after just a couple seasons?

bawfuls fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Mar 25, 2024

# ¿ Mar 25, 2024 04:06

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 14:28

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

Boris Galerkin posted:

All I can say so far is that it's too awfully loving convenient that all of the main cast are all friends and also happen to be the most important people alive. Like the world is too big for this to happen.

This feels like the result of the showrunners' need to establish a cast in the first season and carry largely the same characters all the way though the story. This is sorta similar to the problem tv had committing to the Foundation series adaptation, but so far it's handled better here.

They've set Saul up to be a character that will matter in the next season. That character wasn't in the first book but he's here so that the tv show can have all these major characters established in the first season and be friends, as a substitute for how thin they were in the books. Hence most of this season he's just sort of around being buddies with other main characters.

bawfuls fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Mar 25, 2024

# ¿ Mar 25, 2024 04:31

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

PostNouveau posted:

The book characters are even thinner than the show.

The show would have to completely cycle in a new cast every season if it followed the book, which is probably a bad idea. They're all shoved together because several of them will have a lot more to do later but need to be introduced now so there isn't some brand new character halfway through Season 2 who is now the most important person in the world despite not being in the story at all up till then. For example Thomas Wade is extremely important but doesn't show up until Book 3.

same is true for Cheng, who they sort of also made into a combination of the Book 3 Cheng character and a different Cheng from Book 1

# ¿ Mar 25, 2024 05:02

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

Mantle posted:

The enemy being capable of taking over total control over the driving system of an arbitrary vehicle

The target immediately getting into a jet and it flies perfectly safely

Those are all examples of this:

Tarnop posted:

I could tell this was made by the people who made Game of Thrones because, just like that show, this adaptation changes or introduces a bunch of stuff in a kind of thoughtless way and a lot of the changes undermine not just the themes but the basic plot. We've seen quite a few posts itt where people have asked "if they can do x, why not just do y" and the answer is almost always that X is something the show added or changed without thinking through the consequences.

basically D&D strike again

# ¿ Mar 25, 2024 20:56

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

BoldFace posted:

I thought the point of choosing him was because Ye Wenjie made a contact with him.

yes, more specifically because Ye Wenjie spoke to him in the cemetary that day, the Trisolarans are fearful of him. Because the Trisolarans fear him, the UN chose him to be a Wallfacer

# ¿ Mar 26, 2024 01:14

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

discoukulele posted:

He's where his book character is at at this point in the story. "Why tf did they pick this dude?" is a big plot point.

Ye Wenjie shared something important to him in the form of a joke during their last meeting. He doesn't realize that he's got a huge piece of the puzzle, but the San Ti figured it out by watching what Ye Wenjie studied before their meeting and putting the pieces together.

Didn't they have a more extended conversation in the books than what was depicted in the show? Like she tells him directly to study "cosmic sociology" and gives him a set of axioms to ponder.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2024 01:20

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

Ccs posted:

I feel like the series could have done a bit more to make Saul and that character Liam plays (they did say his name in the show but I can't remember it!) feel more relevant early on. You got Jin doing stuff, Portuguese girl doing stuff with nanofibers, Jack being involved with the video game, and then these two other guys who for 6/8ths of the series don't seem to have any importance to the bigger plot. Then you find out they're relevant which is either a cool "oh thats why we were seeing so much of them" or a "couldn't they have started to weave some of this in sooner?"

Another problem created by the adaptation not considering the consequences of their changes. Those characters don't show up in the first book at all and thus don't have anything going on for the first 5 episodes of this show. But they wanted all the main characters established early on so they put them in early despite not having anything for them to do.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2024 02:17

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

Zero VGS posted:

Oh I was criticizing Cunningham's character too. I feel like they wrote him in specifically to have one incorrigible British Geezer who gets to say slurs so they could contain the outrage to just him. He's way more over-the-top than any other character, but at least it's entertaining.

OK fine, but that's not conveyed to the audience at all, and the assassination attempt only happens after he's announced (they should have done it before if they wanted to show that the aliens have it in for him). Wallfacer ceremony rationalizing it as "working with the brightest minds" specifically is what my bf was reacting to, he has to trudge through bullshit recommendation letters like that. Saul calls himself a low-level researcher. He was probably getting $20/hr to pipette some stuff and has fuckall to show for it. Like IRL there would have been audible groans unless everyone in that whole room was aware of the secret reasoning.

the car crash happens before he's announced, the gun attempt is after. I agree it's not well communicated in the show

# ¿ Mar 26, 2024 04:20

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

PriorMarcus posted:

I can't remember if it happens in the book but the sky getting brighter and then flickering didn't help, as it meant the sky already looked fake before the event, so the entire thing lost any impact.

In the book it�s the Cosmic Microwave Background that flickers, not the entire night sky for everyone on earth

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 16:35

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

The fact that they put a significant chunk of book 2 and some of book 3 into the first season makes me think they're trying to wrap it up within 3 seasons at most.

If they really wanted to they could do the remainder of book 2 in just a few episodes and wrap the whole thing in two seasons.

bawfuls fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Mar 27, 2024

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 23:36

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

Tainen posted:

Even with all the future set up it is hard for me to imagine how they get from where they are now to the Doomsday Battle in 8 episodes, assuming that is the climax of a second season. The first book was easier to condense because the story is smaller but it gets exponentially more complex from here.

(book spoilers)do you mean the Droplet destruction in the second book? That could be the first episode of the next season. They should have shown Paul and Jin and Wade all going into hibernation at the end of this season though. But the next season could start with Paul waking up 200 years later to a triumphalist Earth that's unconcerned, only for the droplet scene to happen as the end of episode climax.

There's not much plot between that point and where this season ended. Pretty much the only remaining Crisis Era stuff they didn't show explicitly in season 1 was main characters going into hibernation

bawfuls fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Mar 27, 2024

# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 23:50

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

Yeah I did forget about those other bits, so I guess it's not one episode. I could see them compressing it a lot though, particularly since they dropped one wallfacer from the books and if they omit the cringe.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 00:21

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

They will also probably ditch the stuff about future people speaking a combination of English and Chinese since they moved the story the the UK already anyway

# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 01:57

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 14:28

bawfuls: Oct 28, 2009

DrHammond posted:

I forget, did the trilogy ever pick up what happened with Will's brain, or was it only the fanfic that went there?

Well whichever it was, as it was presented in the show, Wade was 100% correct, Trisolarians couldn't help but to pick up that juicy brainmeat.

yes it's a pretty important plot point in the 3rd book

# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 23:25

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