The sixth episode of the Chinese science fiction series The Three-Body Problem, is now available to watch for free on Tencent’s YouTube channel. The episode premiered on Chinese broadcast television and was unlocked for free viewing the same day, as a way to make the show more accessible to a wider audience. However, this episode was considered to be disappointing due to its lack of forward motion in the story and censorship of a key story point. The episode felt like a recap of the previous five episodes in which the character, Shi Qiang, explains the past events to his boss General Chang. The censorship of a key story point, Ye Wen Jie’s father’s persecution during the Cultural Revolution, was whitewashed and watered down from the original version in the book, which ends up diluting Ye Wen Jie’s character in the show. The censorship was a bad taste in the mouth and sparked debates and speculations over whether the change was imposed on the production or if it was self-censored. Despite the censorship, the show is still worth looking at as a major piece of culture and as a milestone in several ways: Liu Cixin’s book is the most significant Science Fiction novel since Frank Herbert’s Dune and put Chinese Science Fiction on the world map, and the TV series is the first major Science Fiction television series to come from China.
The Three-Body Problem: Disappointing Episode 6
