It’s like someone asked ChatGPT to turn the book into a dumb anglo sitcom.
-Every character is emotionally immature, spiteful, and sassy. None of the ‘friends’ act like friends. None of the characters talk like real people. They’re constantly insulting or hitting each other. It’s just embarrassing. The actors have nothing to work with.
-All the major twists/reveals are shown in the first two episodes. No suspense, no build-up, no pay-off. Rushed is an understatement.
-Single characters from the book have been unnecessarily split into multiple new characters adding nothing to the story.
-The story is a cosmic horror but comedy and romance have been forced in for no reason whatsoever except as filler, which is even more mind-boggling because they’ve essentially rushed all of the good stuff in the book to make room for unfunny jokes.
-Apparently they could barely afford any sets and extras, so scenes and locations that are supposed to be bristling with sights and people just feel oddly empty. Even the special effects feel muted. The budget is just weirdly limited, and the show looks much cheaper than the Tencent series.
-Almost all of the science (which is the interesting stuff) has been gutted from this science fiction.
I hate anglo slop. Where is the kino. Tencent pls adapt The Dark Forest.
As I understand it, this is the plot of the books too, with humanity reverse-engineering Trisolaran technology and building a stockpile of weapons to ensure Mutually Assured Destruction.
It all turns out to be utterly pointless and everyone dies miserably having achieved nothing, since the author apparently doesn’t understand how MAD, nuclear deterennce, and second-strike weapons work. The deterrence in tbp fails because the retaliation system has a single point of failure with no second strike ability. The entirety of modern nuclear deterrence is designed around making sure that the situation that happens in tbp doesn’t happen.
Or maybe the author contrived a scenario to explore what would happen if MAD thinking failed? As a cautionary tale on an over-reliance of that strategy in the face of a technologically superior opponent?
I dunno just spitballing here haven’t finished book 2.
In the books the deterrence (broadcasting our location so some powerful alien civilization will blow us both up) does have second strike capability though.
book spoiler
One of the ships that fled the doomsday battle ultimately uses its radio to send the MAD broadcast, leading to the Trisolarans fleeing Earth and a third civilization sending a magic superweapon at the solar system.
I see that I have been unfair to Mr. Liu. Thank you for correcting me.