Problems with the San-Ti's goals and motivations in the show. Stuff just isn't lining up in my head. (Spoilers, obviously)
I'll start off by saying that I do intend to dig into the books in the near future, so "the books do it better" is a perfectly acceptable answer in this case.
I'm on my 2nd viewing of the Netflix show, and suddenly a bunch of the San-Ti's actions and timelines aren't making sense.
Our introduction to the San-Ti is the lone "pacifist" who warns Ye Wenjie that if she responds to the message, the rest of the San-Ti will receive it and conquer Earth. Flash forward 50 years, and now the San-Ti are on the way, but they think that they are going to be welcomed and accepted on Earth? That is, until they learn the fundamental concept of "untruth" from a fairy tale, and then decide that humans are too untrustworthy to live alongside. Except that they had already developed and deployed the sophons years before this, and had spent at least a couple of months by this time screwing with our scientific development. I can get sending them ahead of time to facilitate communication, but why screw up the particle accelerators and make a bunch of scientists off themselves for months, before they even knew we are capable of hiding our true thoughts or intentions?
I dunno, it feels like the San-Ti are either perfectly capable of lying themselves and just used the fairy tales as an excuse to finally drop the friendly neighbor act, or the show's timeline is kind of cherry picking events from the books in a haphazard way.