Martin Ahlgren (‘3 Body Problem’ cinematographer) on sci-fi series becoming ‘compelling television’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“They’re phenomenal writers and ‘ideas’ people,” declares “3 Body Problem” cinematographer Martin Ahlgren about the three showrunners spearheading the ambitious sci-fi blockbuster. For our recent webchat, Ahlgren (who just received his third career Emmy nomination to date) adds, “To me what was interesting, because I was a big fan of the books, is that they were able to take the concepts of that book which I think are so wild and really interesting, and incorporate them in a in a TV series format and make it compelling with the characters that that are built around it. I think that’s what’s going to make for compelling television.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
SEE Exclusive Video Interview: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo (‘3 Body Problem’ creators)
“3 Body Problem” scored six Emmy nominations this year; for Best Drama Series and for the show’s editing, cinematography, main title design, sound mixing and sound editing. The series was co-created by multiple Emmy-winning “Game of Thrones” duo David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, who serve as co-creators and producers with writer/producer Alexander Woo (“True Blood”), based on the Hugo Award-winning novel “The Three-Body Problem” by Chinese author Liu Cixin, the first in Liu’s “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy. Benioff, Weiss and Woo co-wrote the pilot episode together, titled “Countdown,” which takes place in both 1960s China and modern-day England, where astrophysicists try to uncover and expose what is ultimately revealed as an existential threat to humanity from a distant and more advanced alien civilization known as the San-ti. The sci-fi drama’s international cast includes Rosalind Chao, Jess Hong, Benedict Wong, Jovan Adepo, Eiza Gonzalez, Alex Sharp, Sea Shimooka, Marlo Kelly and “Game of Thrones” alums Jonathan Pryce, John Bradley and Liam Cunningham.
Ahlgren is nominated for the Netflix show’s fifth episode (the pivotal action-packed “Judgment Day”), in which chief planetary defense strategist Thomas Wade (Cunningham) enlists Dr. Auggie Salazar (Gonzalez) and a Royal Navy team to ambush the fortress-like Judgment Day ship that is scheduled to cruise through the Panama Canal in order to retrieve enemy intel. The team deploy Auggie’s (literally) cutting-edge nanofiber technology to horizontally slice through the ship, killing everyone aboard, including Mike Evans (Pryce), the wealthy leader of the shady Earth-Trisolaris Organization. Their mission leads to Wade and Dr. Jin Cheng (Hong) discovering the San-Ti’s true mission; to cripple Earth’s scientific advancement, preventing humans from technologically surpassing them by the time of their arrival in a few centuries’ time. Shortly after, all electronic devices around the world display the message “YOU ARE BUGS,” with the San-Ti’s advanced proton-sized super-computer “sophon” enveloping the Earth, revealing the existence and power of the San-Ti to the world, ending with evangelical San-Ti collaborator Tatiana (Kelly) joyously staring out at the looming eye with tears in her eyes. It’s a narratively dense and visually and sonically ambitious instalment in the show’s freshman season, accounting for all four of the show’s episode-specific nominations.
“She’s an amazing actress,” Ahlgren says about Kelly’s memorable moment at the end of the episode. “It was pretty spot on right away. But I think also what’s interesting and why the writers did a good job with ending that whole sequence with that is that it points to the divisions within humanity that are also there. I think it’s part of what makes this interesting as a science-fiction story. It’s about aliens invading Earth, and we’ve seen that a million time. But one of the things that makes it unusual is that it’s going to take them 400 years to get to Earth,” he explains. “That means that humanity has 400 years to figure out what the response is going to be. And the reality is, as I’m sure everyone can easily imagine, humanity doesn’t necessarily come together as one and gloriously unite against the common enemy. Instead, Earth fractures, big countries might feel like they’re better off alone. And then you have people that are even willing to collaborate with the enemy, because they see another kind of advantage to that. So I think there’s a lot of interesting things potentially going forward in future seasons about this kind of political landscape that’s part of the whole world that’s in this series.”
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