S01.E02: Red Coast

[AnimeMania]

Auggie's countdown jeopardizes her nanotech work. Jin becomes engrossed in an otherworldly VR game. Ye Wenjie follows through on a radical idea.

Premiere Date: March 21, 2024    Netflix    

[Anela]

Wow. So, Vera’s mother was responsible for this? 
I wonder what all of the scientists have been working on. If they stop their work, they survive the countdown.  Or they take their own lives. 

[PurpleTentacle]

Well that was an incomplete summary of the Fermi Paradox.

Part of the fermi paradox is that even at sub light speeds, given a few million years, a species should be able to colonise the whole galaxy. That is an important part, because a species just sitting on one rock in one solar system, you'd never find.

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"Our signal is too weak."

What? How is that your conclusion? You've only been transmitting for "a few years". The closest star system to us is 4,34 light years away, meaning a radio signal would need 4,34 years to reach it. So that's basically the only system it could have reached so far. So you conclude "well either the galaxy is empty or our signal is too weak, because there is nobody in that one star system!"?! WTF?!

Also emplifying the signal through the sun would change nothing about the time it takes. Yes if that worked (can't speak to that) it would be more likely for somebody to pick it up, but that could still take tens of thousands of years.

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Well @Helena Dax here are the titties (and dicks and ass) you thought were coming in the first episode. Dumb and Dumber never disappoint (in this regard).

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Yeah 1977 would be way too early for an answer to the radio signal chinese mom sent (I'm not good with names). Because of the reason I described above.

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"repent!" "repent?"" repent!" "no repent!"

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Well I can see where she was coming from, sending that message, but it can always be worse. What if conquering means not just wiping out humanity, but also all life on earth? I don't think that's what the american, you have a crush on, would want.

[Helena Dax]

10 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

 

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Well @Helena Dax here are the titties (and dicks and ass) you thought were coming in the first episode. Dumb and Dumber never disappoint (in this regard).

 

Lol, yes, I spoke too soon! 🤣🤣

Anyway, I loved the episode, and although Yen Wenjie took a big risk, I can understand the feelings behind her decision. And wow, her scene with the other girl, the one that killed her father! That was great.

[shrewd.buddha]

On 3/22/2024 at 2:34 AM, PurpleTentacle said:

Well that was an incomplete summary of the Fermi Paradox.

The "science" is a bit weak.  I have heard the same about the source material. 
You'd think PHD scientists could not help themselves from investigating how that little head mask could manufacture an immersive VR world - but no..

Young Yen Wenjie (?) seems to have a completely different personality than older Yen Wenjie.  Can't blame her for thinking aliens could run things better than the government she was enduring at the time. 

It continues to be slightly intriguing and slightly slow.  The Oxford grads who "love each other like family" is a bit much, but I suppose that was designed to make us care. 

Edited March 23 by shrewd.buddha

[Paloma]

Well, I might be out now that a big part of the action seems to be video games or VR with silly characters and dialogue (though I do like the little girl). Maybe I'm just not the right demographic for this show, even though I enjoy stories about alien contact.

1 hour ago, shrewd.buddha said:

The Oxford grads who "love each other like family" is a bit much, but I suppose that was designed to make us care. 

I can believe that people who were close in college could stay close over the next decade, but their characters are not developed or interesting enough to make me care. I still can't remember all their names, including the one who looks like Angelina Jolie and seems to have only one expression (pouty). 

1 hour ago, shrewd.buddha said:

Young Yen Wenjie (?) seems to have a completely different personality than older Yen Wenjie.  Can't blame her for thinking aliens could run things better than the government she was enduring at the time. 

She is the most interesting character to me, despite not having much to say (so far) in the present.  

My husband is interested enough to keep watching, so I will probably watch another episode with him. But if they don't tie together the VR with real life pretty quickly, I will find something else to do.

[shrewd.buddha]

Would it have been too on-the-nose if the "Oxford 5" grad guy was dying from lung cancer instead of pancreatic cancer? 
All the cool kids smoke on this show.  (At least the edgy, hard-driven  ones do)

Edited March 23 by shrewd.buddha

[marinw]

I haven't read the books, but I'm digging this. I usually don't like video games within shows for the same reason I don't like Holodeck Star Trek Episodes, it’s reality twice removed. But I'm finding the game evocative. I like how the setting changes according to who is playing (Tudorish Europe or some dessert Asian setting). The extreme change of seasons felt very Game of Thrones. Winter is coming!

Edited March 23 by marinw

[Rickster]

4 hours ago, shrewd.buddha said:

Would it have been too on-the-nose if the "Oxford 5" grad guy was dying from lung cancer instead of pancreatic cancer? 
All the cool kids smoke on this show.  (At least the edgy, hard-driven  ones do)

Yeah, I thought the amount of smoking on this show kinda weird. Maybe the producers got a subsidy from the tobacco industry. 😉

[PurpleTentacle]

1 hour ago, Rickster said:

Yeah, I thought the amount of smoking on this show kinda weird. Maybe the producers got a subsidy from the tobacco industry. 😉

Smoking is still pretty big in china, or at least was a few years ago. So I just assume in the books everybody smokes like a chimney.

[iMonrey]

The ending to this was pretty intriguing, but otherwise, I don't find people standing around drawing on chalkboards while speaking Chinese particularly gripping television. I don't care for the VR games either, it feels like a silly distraction. 

On 3/22/2024 at 12:31 PM, Helena Dax said:

Anyway, I loved the episode, and although Yen Wenjie took a big risk, I can understand the feelings behind her decision.

How did nobody notice the giant satellite dish turning in the direction of the sun during the transmission test?

On 3/23/2024 at 8:16 AM, Paloma said:

I can believe that people who were close in college could stay close over the next decade, but their characters are not developed or interesting enough to make me care. I still can't remember all their names, including the one who looks like Angelina Jolie and seems to have only one expression (pouty). 

Yeah I'm on the same page. Don't know their names, except for Yen Wenjie, which I don't know how to pronounce. And the flashbacks to young Yen Wenjie in China really annoy me. The only characters I'm sort of interested in are the ones played by Liam Cunningham and John Bradley, and that's only because I know them from Game of Thrones.

[Tachi Rocinante]

Cool - so part of this is based on the Wow! signal picked up by Ohio State's Big Ear in 1977. Go Bucks.

But one thing I don't understand - wasn't the point of the transmissions to respond to a signal they received in the 1960s? Isn't that why she contacted the scientist in California?

It seems that "Stability" vs. "Chaos" is a reference to what it could be like in a 3-body system.  The players of the game apparently need to progress though it in order to solve or better predict how the bodies will behave for their society to experience any sort of prosperity.

[aghst]

China in the ‘60s was minimally industrialized I believe.  They would need help from the West to build factories, learn to manufacture at scale, which wouldn’t occur until like the late ‘80s or early ‘90s.

So it seems unlikely that they had an advanced SETI project, so shortly after they purged all the intellectuals, any that they suspected would believe in Western ideas, including science.

Let’s say Ye Wenjie turned out to be a world class scientist and engineer.  Even with blueprints from the aliens, they wouldn’t be able to fabricate those HMDs nor  make the skies blink nor make an assassin who is human not appear on video cameras.  Sure maybe an AI-like device to photoshop every frame of a video, in real time, maybe.

Or make Auggie see the countdown based on her shutting down her project.  They could see what she was doing at all times and know about her research to consider her work a threat?

These sci fi devices make for striking images and scenes.  But something humans, even those in communications with an advanced alien species, can pull off in the current time?  Not plausible.

[Morrigan2575]

Oh it's getting interesting.  I have no idea of the source material but, I'm curious with everything going on. We apparently have Aliens possibly coming to invade. Scientists being placed in a stop progress or die scenario.

I'm curious as to the VR game, they changed the setting and interaction based on the players ancestry but, the little girl stayed the same. I am assuming that the little girl is also the adult guardian/npc pushing the gamers along.

 

[Ottis]

On 3/28/2024 at 8:01 AM, Tachi Rocinante said:

Cool - so part of this is based on the Wow! signal picked up by Ohio State's Big Ear in 1977. Go Bucks.

But one thing I don't understand - wasn't the point of the transmissions to respond to a signal they received in the 1960s? Isn't that why she contacted the scientist in California?

It seems that "Stability" vs. "Chaos" is a reference to what it could be like in a 3-body system.  The players of the game apparently need to progress though it in order to solve or better predict how the bodies will behave for their society to experience any sort of prosperity.

Yes, it definitely feels like we have factions who are either for or against aliens arriving, and the game is someone’s attempt to see if humans can solve a problem related to being able to stop it. A bit like Ender’s Game.

Choosing to help aliens conquer your planet because you have had a bad life is so millennial. I didn’t know this was a book, but I can see how it would appeal to that audience. As would the silly Oxford chain smokers, who need to get their heads out of their asses.

The suicides puzzle me. Are the scientists all similarly weak enough so that instead of trying to fight what they think is coming, they give up in despair? Very dramatic, and again, very millennial. A big departure from decades of sci-fi that focuses on the hero scientist trying to save the world. I hope there is some other reason for the suicides.

Love the visuals in the video game world, and the parallels between it and real life on the show. And I like the investigating officer, who doesn’t give an F. He’s doing his job. 

 

[lucindabelle]

I’m waaay more into it now that it’s about the game. Then again I like the holodeck and enjoy fantasy. To me episode 2 was far more enjoyable than episode 1 with so many scenes with subtitled Chinese and my trying to figure out what decade we’re in. Also the game allows for a little humor. 

[PurpleTentacle]

On 4/7/2024 at 1:01 PM, Ottis said:

Choosing to help aliens conquer your planet because you have had a bad life is so millennial. I didn’t know this was a book, but I can see how it would appeal to that audience. As would the silly Oxford chain smokers, who need to get their heads out of their asses.

And complaining about millennials, even when it has nothing to do with millennials, is so very Boomer. ;p

On 4/7/2024 at 1:01 PM, Ottis said:

The suicides puzzle me. Are the scientists all similarly weak enough so that instead of trying to fight what they think is coming, they give up in despair? Very dramatic, and again, very millennial. A big departure from decades of sci-fi that focuses on the hero scientist trying to save the world. I hope there is some other reason for the suicides.

Spoiler

It's puzzling because they are actually being murdered.

[Anela]

The author of the book is 60 years old.  Not a millennial.