‘3 Body Problem’ Episode 7 Recap: Brain Drain

Season 1, Episode 7: ‘Only Advance’

Wanted: One intelligent human brain. Dying donors preferred. Serious consideration of whether or not aliens should just go ahead and take over a plus. Must survive 300 nuclear explosions in outer space. Estimated travel time: 200 years. Return transportation not provided. Full human bodies not allowed.

This is the tempting offer at the center of the penultimate episode of the first season of “3 Body Problem.” Reuniting the “Game of Thrones” team of the director Jeremy Podeswa and the writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, it is another low-key affair compared to the mounting menace and chaos of the first five episodes. Granted, it is about a scheme to remove Will’s brain, freeze it, and blast it into space at unprecedented speeds so it can be intercepted and studied by the San-Ti. Will’s doubts about the project, says boss Thomas Wade, are what make him so valuable: If he were a true believer in the fight to the death against the aliens, they might simply let him drift past.

Some people’s doubts are stronger than others’. Though she designs the nanofiber sail required to accelerate the probe through space, she walks away from it all when the idea of sacrificing Will as a glorified space monkey is brought to the table. She also takes her nanofibers off the market and out of the realm of exclusivity permanently, by uploading all the data she has on them to the internet and making them accessible to everyone for free.

The problem is that compared to a Cyclopean eye in the sky or a boat getting sliced to pieces by an invisible web out of Stephen King’s “The Mist,” none of this is all that interesting. From the very first episode, it was apparent that ideas and images, not compelling characters and a novel plot, were the strength of “3 Body Problem.” Leaning into the characters makes the whole thing lopsided.

Look at Wade, for example. At first just a gray eminence working behind the scenes while Clarence pounded the pavement, he gradually grew in prominence, reaching a fun spy-movie throwback sweet spot last episode. Now, however, it feels like Benioff and Weiss have overshot the mark with him into cliché.

There’s only so much even an actor like Liam Cunningham can do with dialogue like “The Doomsday Express just pulled into the station — you can all queue up behind me” or “The future’s not as far as it used to be.” The man is talking about having himself cryogenically frozen like a C.G.I. chimpanzee and revived annually so he can personally oversee humanity’s defenses for 400 years. He’s a bit too “a Jerry Bruckheimer production” to fit in with the show’s more psychologically realistic characters, i.e. all the rest of them.