Clearly, fans of spooky technology have much to enjoy in this episode. On one side you’ve got the unfathomable sophisticated video game of unknown origin, and on the other a good old-fashioned scary radio transmission. The video game stuff, however, feels airless and stale, despite the gorgeous CGI vistas and bizarre body-horror moments. In a story where so many things are happening in the real world, it’s tough to get that worked up about the goings-on of a virtual one.
The “Do not answer” broadcast, on the other hand, fits into a long lineage of paranormal communications both on and off screen. It’s explicitly linked to the so-called “Wow signal,” the aforementioned anomaly detected by OSU, and it’s reminiscent of eerie phenomena like numbers stations, or staticky calls from disappearing planes above the mythic Bermuda Triangle. In movie terms, I couldn’t shake a flattering comparison to the dream broadcast from “Year One-Nine-Nine-Nine” in John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness.” But the horror trope of the final warning before the plunge is a nearly universal one, embodied by all the old men in slasher franchises who warn groups of oblivious teens not to travel to a masked killer’s stalking grounds. Perhaps a slasher on galactic scale is firing up his chain saw with Earth as his destination even now.
I reviewed the very good second episode of 3 Body Problem for the New York Times.
Tags: 3 body problem, new york times, reviews, TV, TV reviews