Game of Thrones showrunner discusses the bleakness of his new show, 3 Body Problem

3 Body Problem is a new sci-fi show premiering next week on Netflix. It's adapted from a series of sci-fi novels by Cixin Liu called Remembrance of Earth's Past, about (go no further if you wish to avoid SPOILERS) how humanity deals with an existential threat posed by an extraterrestrial race of aliens on its way to invade the planet Earth. We have to wait generations before they get here. How would humanity react in the meantime? Would they pull together or pull themselves apart?

3 Body Problem is being produced by Alexander Woo, David Benioff and Dan Weiss; Benioff and Weiss were the showrunners on HBO's Game of Thrones, a show that took a rather bleak look at what we would do in the face of an existential threat. Did the Seven Kingdoms immediately come together to fight back the threat of the White Walkers? No, they squabbled and fought amongst themselves to the point where humanity was almost overrun. It sounds like 3 Body Problem will return to that theme.

“We did a lot of planning even before we started writing. We spent so much time talking about the show during the pandemic,” Benioff said during a recent press roundtable, according to Gizmodo. “The books represent a fairly optimistic view, I think, of how humanity might come together in the face of an existential threat. Covid...was certainly a threat, and I wouldn’t say it showed humanity coming together in any meaningful way. In fact, it probably showed us splitting apart even more, and it definitely informed our writing of it.”

"Because if you think about if [humanity found out it might be doomed], is everyone going to suddenly, like, link arms and say, ‘We’re off to fight [against this]’? Or some people are going to say, ‘I don’t believe that. That’s a conspiracy. This is the U.S. government is doing this, or Elon Musk has been planning this’? There’s going to be a whole bunch of bizarre theories out there, and we probably won’t see humanity come together in any meaningful way. So yeah, the worth of humanity is a really good question."

In the story of 3 Body Problem, some people do openly wonder if humanity is even worth saving from the impending extraterrestrial menace. “At one point in the show, I think [Jovan Adepo’s character] Saul says, ‘If we stop having so many kids, the species will die out, and we don’t have to worry about this [impending doom] in 400 years.’ It seems like a fairly reasonable argument, like I kind of understood where he was coming from.”

So you have a bleak sci-fi show to look forward to when the first season of 3 Body Problem drops on Netflix next Thursday, March 21. Having watched some of the episodes early, I think the show does a good job of exploring these themes while still maintaining a sense of movement and watchability. I'm curious to see how people react to the show.

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