Netflix’s 3 Body Problem Features The Most Grotesque TV Violence Since Game Of Thrones

The scenes of dehydration and rehydration in “3 Body Problem” are disturbing, detailed, and darkly funny. They’re initially introduced with little explanation, as a young girl calmly lays out in what seems to be the baking sun and slowly decompresses into a blob of tissue like an air mattress with a leak. That girl’s squelchy flesh bundle is carried around until she can be rehydrated, at which point she’s flopped into a pool where she emerges as if from a short nap. Seriously, the pee-recycling suits from “Dune” have nothing on this weird science.

Eventually, the game players learn that this is how the aliens known as the San-Ti survive their planet’s frequent ice ages, heating periods, and gravity changes, but it’s just one of several gross scientific tidbits on display in the show. Season 1’s climax revolves largely around the cryogenic freezing (and eventual planned thawing) of a live human head sent into space at faster-than-light speed, and while the show doesn’t actually show the decapitation, we do see plenty of violence earlier on during the show’s tone-setting opening sequence. 

That time around, upsetting things weren’t happening in the name of science, but in opposition to it, as a scholarly man is beaten to death in the midst of China’s Cultural Revolution. We see blow after blow landed against the blood-covered man, who refuses to fight back. It’s this traumatizing incident that leads his daughter, who witnessed the execution, to welcome conquering aliens to Earth with welcome arms. This show may have little in common with “Game of Thrones,” but the relentlessness of violent scenes certainly feels like the Benioff and Weiss we know.