My Strategy would be to lie to the aliens. They seem to struggle with lies. Lie #1: Tell them we have thought of an annihilation technology. They know we evolve faster, they are afraid of the speed of our evolution, and so there's good reason they to think they would believe the lie. Lie #2: Tell them we have found a way to make our solar system an unstable 3 planet system. So if you win the war, you will only inherit the same problems. Lie #3: Bounce a signal off another solar system so that it too "reveals" itself to them. So when they get scared at lie #1 and lie #2, they have a planet to turn to, and head in another direction. Apparently one person is enough to convince them to come. It also seems like if we had meetings on other planets, they could not listen in to those meetings. So the brain we have in space is basically a weapon. Send more brains out there.
As for the show itself. I liked the concept. The quantum influence was quite interesting and believable. The physics breakdown interesting. The dehydration fun. The mystery good. Thought they needed to simmer on some of the ideas longer, such at the quantum entanglement, the 3 planet problem, and the possibility that God might somehow be the reason why physics were breaking down and the universe winked. There could have been a lot of misdirection and more character development. The show moved too quickly in the beginning and then slowed down emotionally toward the end. I think I would have reversed that. All said, I am interested see how it unfolds. That's a win. But the delivery was little staggered. I stepped out for a snack, came back, and suddenly everyone was aware we were being invaded. It was so fast I missed it and had to rewind.
Finished watching this over the weekend. Overall I really enjoyed it and I hope they finish the series out, but I haven't seen anything yet to indicate they've greenlit further seasons, which is frustrating. I haven't read the books, but if they opt to never finish the series I'll probably pick them up because now I'm invested. I really enjoyed Jin, Will, Jack and Saul. Auggie was more take her or leave her, but all those characters really grew on me and the resulting drama in the last few episodes really hit me hard as a result. I'll spoiler the rest of my discussion in case anyone is in this thread and not seen it yet: Spoiler My biggest peeve is how they created these sophon computers and made them damn near omnipotent (despite the show's best efforts to try and sort of hand wave some limitations to them). They can only be in two places at once but somehow made most of the world think the stars were blinking? They can get into the system of a plane carrying, apparently, one of the most important leaders in the world and easily cause it to crash if they want, but the best plan for killing Saul (whom the aliens apparently think is really critical) is to convince regular humans to learn to use a sniper rifle and shoot him from far away. Feels like with the capabilities they demonstrated of the sophons that they could have easily killed anyone if they really wanted, or driven them totally mad. The technology and science stuff was fun, the nanofiber ship scene was brutal and well done, I felt, even if it did seem like weird overkill in the moment. They probably could have done that in a way that was less devastating to everyone and everything on that ship. But cinematically it was cool. The aliens are kind of mind boggling. I have no idea their real intentions (which I guess is kind of the point). Seems like if they really meant to just annihilate us, they could have disrupted our technology and our science without really making themselves known to our race at all. So maybe there's some truth to them wanting to preserve some part of humanity? It's also really unclear how the San-Ti human faction operates. For most of the show they made it look like they were centered on this big ship sailing the globe. We see that one dude monitoring all the VR headsets. But then that ship gets obliterated by nanofibers, and then later we see that Tatiana gets a VR headset...manufactured by someone? Did they have another cell set up somewhere? Or did enough time pass that they rebuilt and it just isn't clear yet? People seem to love the books, so I'm hoping the story fills in some of these seeming plot holes in reasonable ways. But overall I have enjoyed it, so even if they don't I can suspend my disbelief.
It gets pretty wild if they continue the series..... The series is probably a top 5 favorite of mine and is more about ideas than character driven. Spoiler In the books the sophons are a bit less powerful. For example, when "the universe winks" in the books it is via the telescopes the astronomers are looking through. The concept of Wallfacers vs Sophons was really interesting.
I actually really liked the idea of Wallfacers, but it seemed a bit odd to me to have 3 of them. Couldn't they potentially be interfering with each other's plans but never sharing with anyone what they are doing? I guess you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket but having more than one creates other risks.
cosmic microwave background radiation, pretty sick because only two places in the country would have even been able to detect the changes. The ship bothered me as well. If the idea is to recover and object, turning the ship into rubble seems like the worst idea ever.
sophons don't have the power to down a plane. Don't confuse screwing with accelerator data with fcking with electronic/computer systems. The sophons fcked with the accelerator data because they themselves were being recorded as the data. fwiw: The book goes into detail about all the other options available (including neutron bomb, nerve gas, special ops, etc), and all the generals in the battle command room shot down each idea, one by one. The problem posed to them was that it takes only seconds for an aware member of the crew to destroy the data on the ship, so any solution has to not only disable all crew members but be a surprise attack throughout the process of disabling all crew members. The question about what happens if a fiber cuts through the data disc is also discussed. Bottomline: I find all the questions, and plots holes, mentioned in this thread are just a limitation of the show creators. Either the plot holes are due to the show adding things not in the book, or they failed to provide the book's explanation. Lui Cixin thought through everything ppl are asking about and gave sufficient sci-fi explanations, imso. That's why he won the Hugo!! I think Season 1 went too fast, with only about 6 episodes devoted to Book 1. Roughly two episodes were Book 2.
I enjoyed the series, but it did start to drag during the last few episodes -- some of the characters had some cringy moral code moments particularly the nano string hottie. I absolutely loved the diversity though -- they even snuck in an Asian gay bro which was awesome. 7.5/ 10 A new season is confirmed as well.
