Before we get into wild sci-fi concepts like using the power of the sun to signal boost alien shout-outs, or how an anti-vax private sector billionaire links events in Maoist China to a rash of scientist deaths in the present, we need to address the Oxford Five, as the gaggle of brilliant pals at the center of 3 Body Problem represent different sides of the main character in The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin’s original novel. Basically, for their propulsive series adaptation, it’s like if 3 Bod P showrunners and writers David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo put Liu’s Wang Miao into Auggie’s super-sharp, super-strong nanofiber machine and cleaved him into parts. So Eiza González’s character represents that part of Wang, the brilliant nanotech innovator, while Jess Hong’s Jin Cheng manifests his obsession with a video game that feels so real it hurts. Jovan Adepo’s brilliant stoner Saul Durand is Wang as skeptic. And instead of just Wang, all of the Oxford Five are acquainted with genius former Red Coast Base physicist Ye Wenjie, because in the present her daughter Vera was their professor at Oxford. Benioff, Weiss, and Woo have built a compelling core cast out of the motivations that previously drove one single character. Damn, it’s almost like the Game of Thrones and True Blood veterans have done this whole TV thing at a high level before.

But let’s get back to Inner Mongolia, where Zine Tseng is a force of nature as the younger version of Ye Wenji. It’s Wenji who discovers how to harness the power of the sun to send messages effectively across the vast reaches of space, though that doesn’t stop her male superior from trying to take credit for it. And while the commissar officer shuts down the proposition of melding science to a heavenly body so closely associated with Chairman Mao – “Have you thought about the political symbolism of such an experiment?!” – Wenji does it anyway, because she’s smarter than everyone at Red Coast Base. And besides, what has Mao’s Cultural Revolution brought her? The grind of life under state control and the belt-whipping death of her father. Tang Hongjing (Lan Xiya) was the Red Guard teen who actually dealt Ye Zhetai’s death blow. At the Mongolian work camp, when an embittered Tang expresses zero remorse for the act – “Even now, I would scythe him like wheat” – Wenji’s disillusionment only grows. 

In the present, Auggie pulls the plug on her nanotech research, despite the remarkable promise of its successful demonstration. And just like the mystery woman assured her in 3 Body Problem Episode 1 (“Countdown”), the ticking numeric sequence that pervades Auggie’s vision immediately disappears. She also encounters Da Ching, who gives her and us the download on Mike Evans (Jonathan Pryce), the guy we last saw departing Vera Ye’s funeral in a sleek corporate chopper. A private wealth oil tycoon who’s rarely seen in public, Evans is also a rabid anti-vaxxer and conspiracist. Someone with his kind of power and influence could certainly scrub evidence of the mystery woman from surveillance footage, to increase the likelihood of Auggie being perceived as crazy for shutting down her lucrative nanotech company.

Jin is going back in. When the gleaming gold gaming helmet beckons, she’s further immersed in its impossible realism. Jin’s in-game quest? “Solve the riddle of this world,” the Count of the West (Tom Wu) tells her. A world of competing “chaotic” and “stable” eras, where choices the player makes determine a civilization’s fate. As a theoretical physicist, Jin is intrigued by the challenges the game presents. But her curiosity turns to revulsion when the Count’s young follower (Eve Ridley) – “You may call her Follower” – is caught up in the advancing beams of the planet’s blazing hot sun and quickly subjects her physical self to “dehydration.” This aspect of Liu Cixin’s novel always felt like one of its toughest adaptational challenges, but the Benioff-Weiss-Woo braintrust realizes it on the small screen with a rich visual aesthetic that approaches surrealist horror. 

Now officially obsessed with both helmet and game, Jin shows it to Jack, whose introductory session is cut short when he’s murdered by a swordswoman. “You were not invited.” Until he is invited, that is. When the Oxford-trained physicist and snackfood startup millionaire returns to his bro-y, bougie bachelor pad, he discovers a custom gold helmet waiting for him. For Jack, the game renders him in Old English dress, with a castle structure to match his heritage, and instead of the Count of the West, he meets Sir Thomas More (Kevin Eldon). But the challenge remains the same. Solve the riddle, advance the levels. When Jin re-enters the game, she realizes the Count’s solution to the planet’s volatility is based not on scientific fact but prophecy and divination, the I Ching of Chinese history. Jin does not intervene, and Emperor Zhou (Russell Yuen) excitedly makes the call for his people, stacked like canvas husks in coastal storage centers, to enter a new phase of prosperity. 

The Count’s numbers were off, though, and the naked, joyous citizens who emerge from hydration are quickly destroyed in an extinction-level event. As the swordswoman informs her, Jin has established something important. For the in-game world to thrive, scientists must prevail over mystics. “In level two, you must use science to save the next civilization.”

In 1977, Mike Evans (played as a younger man by Ben Schnetzer) was actually living in Mongolia, a handsome rich kid hermit with a Johnny Appleseed complex. When Ye Wenjie meets him at his hovel in the clear cut, he’s trying to save the lives of endangered birds by reforesting the area one tree at a time, an effort that speaks to her on a philosophical level. And in that same year, Wenjie is also the recipient of a message from another world. “I am warning you: do not answer. If you respond, we will come. Your world will be conquered.” What does Wenjie really think of the world, though? Where humanity has ravaged its resources, and political violence suppresses rational thought and destroys innocent lives? Wenjie decides to ignore the meaning embedded in the extra-terrestrial text. She does it anyway, just like she did with the first message in 1966. “Come. We cannot save ourselves. I will help you conquer this world.” 

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.