Jeff Tao

The decision to split the main character Prof Wang Miao into 5 characters is my main criticism. As a scientist myself, I thought the 5 friends were akin to junior graduate students than post docs or professors. Sure, the series may have tried to address stereotypes in science, but they’ve only achieved the loss of believable characters. When a scientist decides to dedicate their life to research, especially at an elite level, they sacrifice a lot of what makes them “normal”, relatable, or civilized. Although a series of episodes does not have enough screen time to match the pages of a book to develop characters, splitting Miao into 5 additional characters in an episodic series further prevents substantial character development. The split personalities dilutes the isolating experience of being an elite scientist happening upon a harrowing intergalactic phenomenon. Reading the book, I felt the madness of Prof Wang Miao build as he investigated the countdown in isolation, with his family thinking he had gone insane. The investigation Miao embarks on was clever, borrowing from tropes of a mad scientist that’s a little too into their own heads. The degradation of Miao’s mental state progresses with the story, and I always wondered whether he would be next in the line of suicidal renown scientists. I did not feel any suspense in the series because there was no character developed enough for me to care about (except for Ye Wenjie, who I thought was well presented). If the addition of characters was because of DEI, then I thought the book did well already. Ye Wenjie had been taken advantage of both as a woman and female scientist by the state and the men she encounters. She overcomes her oppression by using her scientific prowess to achieve her own goals at the peril of the state that left her in ashes. Ye Wenjie is already so badass, I found myself rooting for her at times over Prof Miao. She turns the world that the patriarchy had built upside down. The female protagonists are unwarranted to fulfill DEI when Ye Wenjie exemplifies so much already for women in science, especially at the loss of such a rich character in Prof Miao. The book was a masterpiece, so it’s understandable renditions of the book would feel flat. But the series seemed to try and force a “wow” out of me than evoke a genuine wonder. This is because of the removal of key experiments that were present in the book. Eg. When the universe “blinked”, the book illustrated this through a blip on a radar recording the cosmic microwave background. The series illustrated this same phenomenon as a faulty strobe lit night sky. The flashing sky lost all sense of isolation, secrecy, and most of all, science. That moment really took the science out of science fiction.