Polygon spoke with those responsible for one of the show's most harrowing sequences
3 Body problems | Episode 5 Ship Destruction Scene Explained | Netflix
Additional reporting by Zosha Millman
Adapting Cixin Liu's scientifically dense novel The Three-Body Problem is no easy feat. The book is filled with page after page of detailed descriptions of scientific processes, from the impact three suns would have on a single planet to how a proton-sized supercomputer could simultaneously interfere with the results of every particle accelerator on Earth.
It's certainly a challenge for showrunners David Benioff, DB Weiss, and Alexander Woo, as they had to make tough decisions about which parts of the novel to show, which to tell, and which to simply gloss over. But it was also a particularly difficult job for the Netflix 3 Body Problem series' visual effects team, which was tasked with bringing to life many of the novel's most difficult concepts—communicating advanced scientific processes described in painstaking detail in the book, but of course slimmed down. down to its core visual elements for a television audience.
