I am recognizing most of the story elements, but where the Chinese show took 30 episodes to tell this complicated story, The Netflix producers are trying to ultra compress it.
The Chinese version had me actually caring about the few characters that it focused upon. This one, instead of focusing on just three basic characters there are several.
The story of Ye Wenjie, and this is the only character where they did not change the gender, nationality, or name of, is told in this first episode, and it matches what we knew from the Chinese show. Of course, Netflix added some extracurricular romance, which did not happen in the original. In the original story, Ye Wenjie was a woman totally unmoved by romantic interests. Originally a victim of the Chinese state and then one of their main operators. The Chinese version shows how she changed from the 60s to the early 2000's.
The other major difference is that the Chinese show was a period piece, occurring during the early 2000's, just prior to the onset of the first iPhones and other personal digital gadgetry. Nokia phones were still popular. This version of the story is completely contemporary, and so everybody is using iPhones instead of pre-Intel MacBooks, in my opinion this damages the story. That was one of the things that made the Chinese show unique is that they replicated how digital was in the early 2000s. This show, destroys that effect. They should have kept to the original period.
One of the other things we recognize is the character played by Benedict Wong, who is the cigarette chomping' cop "Da Shi": In the Chinese, This was "Shi Qiang" played by Hewei Yu.
And then the character of "Wang Miao" Has been deleted and transplanted into "Auggie Salazar" (Elza González)- she is the one that sees the countdown, and is approached by somebody named Tatania, who is supposed to be an analog of the character "Shen Yufei" - who initially appears to be speaking about "God" but in fact, they are talking about "the Lord" or, "Lord". Which I suppose you would have to watch this series in the original Chinese or read the novel to find out what that actually means. And it is not a religious reference, it is something insidious.
What has not been mentioned yet is the organization called "The Frontier Of Science" which Tatania/Shen Yufei and another character named "Pan Han" (whose analog has not yet appeared in this series) appeared to control.
I have only gotten halfway through the first episode, but I recognize these highly compressed story elements and characters based upon the original. What made the Chinese version endearing to me was that everything focused upon a small group of people... in this one, they had to hire a lot of the Game of Thrones stable of actors, and so the story has been shuffled across a deck of about 10 Game of Thrones actors.
Visually, this is done very well, but I don't like this supercompression of the story. The original Chinese Show took place across 30 episodes, and all of that information is crammed into only eight here, but that is the way that TV shows are made on Netflix or America these days. Nobody in America makes a TV show that has 26 episodes per season anymore. It went down from 26 to 16 to 13 and then to 10 and now 8 and 6. Only CW shows, sometimes still have 22 episodes per season.
It's just not enough time to tell a compelling story, 6 one-hour episodes? 8 one-hour episodes? Especially a story as complicated as "three body problem", a hugo award winning book.
And between the Chinese and American shows, these are only the first seasons, there are more books in this story. Which makes me very interested to see how the Chinese television industry does it, and how Netflix will respond...
The Chinese version had me actually caring about the few characters that it focused upon. This one, instead of focusing on just three basic characters there are several.
The story of Ye Wenjie, and this is the only character where they did not change the gender, nationality, or name of, is told in this first episode, and it matches what we knew from the Chinese show. Of course, Netflix added some extracurricular romance, which did not happen in the original. In the original story, Ye Wenjie was a woman totally unmoved by romantic interests. Originally a victim of the Chinese state and then one of their main operators. The Chinese version shows how she changed from the 60s to the early 2000's.
The other major difference is that the Chinese show was a period piece, occurring during the early 2000's, just prior to the onset of the first iPhones and other personal digital gadgetry. Nokia phones were still popular. This version of the story is completely contemporary, and so everybody is using iPhones instead of pre-Intel MacBooks, in my opinion this damages the story. That was one of the things that made the Chinese show unique is that they replicated how digital was in the early 2000s. This show, destroys that effect. They should have kept to the original period.
One of the other things we recognize is the character played by Benedict Wong, who is the cigarette chomping' cop "Da Shi": In the Chinese, This was "Shi Qiang" played by Hewei Yu.
And then the character of "Wang Miao" Has been deleted and transplanted into "Auggie Salazar" (Elza González)- she is the one that sees the countdown, and is approached by somebody named Tatania, who is supposed to be an analog of the character "Shen Yufei" - who initially appears to be speaking about "God" but in fact, they are talking about "the Lord" or, "Lord". Which I suppose you would have to watch this series in the original Chinese or read the novel to find out what that actually means. And it is not a religious reference, it is something insidious.
What has not been mentioned yet is the organization called "The Frontier Of Science" which Tatania/Shen Yufei and another character named "Pan Han" (whose analog has not yet appeared in this series) appeared to control.
I have only gotten halfway through the first episode, but I recognize these highly compressed story elements and characters based upon the original. What made the Chinese version endearing to me was that everything focused upon a small group of people... in this one, they had to hire a lot of the Game of Thrones stable of actors, and so the story has been shuffled across a deck of about 10 Game of Thrones actors.
Visually, this is done very well, but I don't like this supercompression of the story. The original Chinese Show took place across 30 episodes, and all of that information is crammed into only eight here, but that is the way that TV shows are made on Netflix or America these days. Nobody in America makes a TV show that has 26 episodes per season anymore. It went down from 26 to 16 to 13 and then to 10 and now 8 and 6. Only CW shows, sometimes still have 22 episodes per season.
It's just not enough time to tell a compelling story, 6 one-hour episodes? 8 one-hour episodes? Especially a story as complicated as "three body problem", a hugo award winning book.
And between the Chinese and American shows, these are only the first seasons, there are more books in this story. Which makes me very interested to see how the Chinese television industry does it, and how Netflix will respond...