Science Fiction

3 Body Problem – The Stars Our Destination

  • Title: 3 Body Problem – The Stars Our Destination
  • IMDb: link

3 Body Problem - The Stars Our Destination

“The Stars Our Destination” is primarily a transitionary episode featuring the characters dealing with the fallout of the aliens’ eye in the sky message. For most of the characters that means getting drunk and ignoring the situation. In Will’s (Alex Sharp) case that means struggling with a romantic gesture. Challenged by Wade (Liam Cunningham), Jin (Jess Hong) comes up with a complicated plan which will largely take over the series in the remaining episodes, but if she has any hope of making her plan work, she’ll need Auggie (Eiza González). 

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Fallout – The End

  • Title: Fallout – The End
  • IMDb: link

Fallout - The End

Adapted from the post-apocalyptic video game series, the opening episode of Fallout gives us the end of the world and then what comes next. After a brief introduction to the world before nuclear annihilation, we jump to the late 23rd Century to spend most of the episode with Lucy (Ella Purnell), the daughter of Vault 33’s Overseer Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan), and her life within 50s-style fallout shelter. While keeping specifics to a minimum, we know that the vaults were constructed to continue humanity’s survival (although we get allusions that there were more nefarious purposes as well).

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3 Body Problem – Our Lord / Judgment Day

  • Title: 3 Body Problem – Our Lord / Judgment Day
  • IMDb: link | link

3 Body Problem - Judgment Day

After lots of set up and dragging its feet a little bit over the first three episodes, events finally turn at the halfway point of the series with “Our Lord” by revealing the connection between Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao) and Mike Evans (Jonathan Pryce) and the secret society preparing for their alien saviors from outer space. It’s here we we also see the continuing attempts of Evans to explain human society to San-Ti whose question about the the fairy tale he reads to them leads to a fundamental misunderstanding between the aliens and their prophet on Earth, changing everything. 

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3 Body Problem – Red Coast / Destroyer of Worlds

  • Title: 3 Body Problem – Red Coast / Destroyer of Worlds
  • IMDb: link | link

3 Body Problem - Red Coast / Destroyer of Worlds

The second and third episodes of the series begin fitting the pieces together. We learn that in China Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng) is the one responsible for contact with alien life and an invitation that the world now must contend with. In the present, we see much more of the video game with Jack (John Bradley) and Jin (Jess Hong) both playing, first separately and then together, to solve the problem that gives the show its name. That problem ties directly to an impending alien arrival and it’s in the solving of the game, and an invitation given to the pair of them, that the show also incorporates the mysterious woman (Marlo Kelly) who doesn’t take kindly to one of the pair turning her down.

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3 Body Problem – Countdown

  • Title: 3 Body Problem – Countdown
  • IMDb: link

3 Body Problem - Countdown

The opening episode of 3 Body Problem introduces us to a world where the laws of science appear to be broken (although this is more told to use, over and over again, that properly shown or explained). Along with the unexplained phenomena of all particle colliders malfunctioning, the suicide rate in scientists, physicists in particular, has skyrocketed. Many are being haunted by a ticking clock which only they can see. And, somehow, what is currently happening appears to have something to do with secret experiments in China during the 1960s. Rosalind Chao and Zine Tseng both star as Chinese scientist Ye Wenjie in the present and the turbulent past, who is the character most likely to have answers for what’s happening.

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