Spoilers Altered Carbon Season 1

[Christopher]

Also one episode in. The "stack/sleeve" dynamic is sort of interesting, though nothing I haven't seen before in SF. John Varley was writing about uploaded minds and regular memory backups in the '70s. The futurism is very derivative; Blade Runner isn't cutting-edge anymore, and anything that emulates it just feels kind of parodic these days. (Note that I haven't seen the actual Blade Runner sequel yet, so I'm not including that.) The dropped hints about the "Elder Civilization" have me curious, but I don't know how much is going to be done with that element.

I'm also not a fan of amoral-killer protagonists, though Kinnaman is less bland than I expected.

One bit of futurism I like is the way people keep dropping into their native languages and are still understood -- presumably because their listeners have some kind of translation tech built in (maybe they're seeing subtitles on their corneal streams). I couldn't tell what language the tall, bearded cop was speaking, though.

 

[Christopher]

Episode 2 was more impressive in its concepts and execution. The glimpse into the AI community was interesting, and the representation of VR in Lizzie's memories was very imaginative, especially with the extreme fisheye lens effect. It's going to take some getting used to the fact that Lizzie is played by Hayley Law, who's one of the Pussycats (Valerie) on Riverdale. Though of course there are plenty of familiar faces here -- Ato Essandoh, Kristin Lehman, Hiro Kanagawa, Tamara Taylor, Tahmoh Penikett, etc.

The null-gravity fight scene in episode 3 takes place in a familiar Vancouver location, the Telus Studio Theatre at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in the University of British Columbia. It shows up a lot in SF productions; it's been the HQ of at least two groups of time travelers, in The 4400 and Legends of Tomorrow (where it was the Time Masters' HQ), and it was recently seen in FX's Legion as a classroom inside David Haller's mind. It looks like it's also been used as an underground fight club arena in some productions, so this episode is the overlap of those circles on the Venn diagram. Unfortunately, the "null-gravity" effects looked blatantly like stage wirework out of Peter Pan or something, though perhaps that was due to the limitations of the available space and equipment.

Another familiar and welcome face in episode 3 -- Clarissa is Anna Van Hooft, who was Princess Aura in Syfy's Flash Gordon.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

^ That fight scene did look cool. Probably the best thing I saw on the show.

I stopped midway through episode 4. Might look at it again later, but tonight I'll watch something else.

 

[Christopher]

I stopped midway through episode 4. Might look at it again later, but tonight I'll watch something else.

Episode 4 was my least favorite so far. I'm so sick of torture porn, and it makes no sense in this context. The writing fell into the same stupid trap of assuming that torture actually works as a form of interrogation -- that, given VR technology, they'd just build VR that simulated the same old torture techniques, which any competent interrogator will tell you are actually counterproductive to gaining reliable intelligence. Surely a civilization with such advanced neural technology would have figured out a better way to get information out of people. This was just gratuitous brutality.

Also, how stupid was that line from Ortega's mother about Abboud not worshipping the same God? How ignorant to you have to be of religion not to know that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the exact same God, just differing on which prophets and teachings they acknowledge?

 

[Zod]

I enjoyed this. They must be working with a very large budget. One episode in and I want to keep going.

The themes of immortality, wealth all mixed together. I was struck by the fact that this guy must have went in ice far into the future to begin with. That's an interesting twist on the usual sleep from the present day till whenever.

This actor reminds me of the actor from TNG- the episode where Riker goes to the Klingon ship and worfs brother comes to the enterprise. The klingon officer who Riker befriends looks like this guy. Maybe they are related?

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Three episodes in, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Major Blade Runner overtones, from the aesthetics to some of the basic themes, but with more sex, violence, and upper class analyzation.

I'm particularly interested in how life exists if you can buy yourself "pure" immortality as it related to the kind that slowly drives you insane with each new sleeve. I'm also curious about Kovacs' past, the conflict he thought in, and his motives (especially since he "doesn't care about anyone").

I'm loving the AI community, particularly Poe who is just the right amount of charismatic and eccentric. I hope we see plenty more of him.

I'm less interested in seeing how the rich continue to lord themselves over society, "we're above the law" (as one meth more or less puts it), and all of that. Yes, it's timely, yes, all of this makes, but that doesn't inherently make it interesting.

I'm definitely in for the long haul, but I'm still not quite sure what the show is going towards. A lot of balls in the air and not everything is clicking together just yet.

They tell you the odds of you liking it.

No, all that tells you is what other people think. I don't give to craps what a collection of people though of it or any other show or film. Individual reviews are much more reliable, even better when I can go to a source that I can consistently trust and understand their interpretation of such works and how that might relate to my own tastes, like A.V. Club and Vox. Taste is subjective, not quantitative.

 

[Christopher]

This actor reminds me of the actor from TNG- the episode where Riker goes to the Klingon ship and worfs brother comes to the enterprise. The klingon officer who Riker befriends looks like this guy. Maybe they are related?

Oh, you mean Brian Thompson. I didn't think of it before, but I can see/hear the resemblance now that you point it out. Thompson's a bit burlier, though, I think.

And the mention of the name "Riker" is more appropriate than you know...

I'm less interested in seeing how the rich continue to lord themselves over society, "we're above the law" (as one meth more or less puts it), and all of that. Yes, it's timely, yes, all of this makes, but that doesn't inherently make it interesting.

More like timeless. The rich have been acting like that pretty much since the dawn of civilization.

And it took me several episodes to figure out that "Meth" is short for "Methuselah." Ortega referenced Methuselah in the car in episode 1, but I didn't make the connection, because it's not stressed on that syllable.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Episode 4 was my least favorite so far. I'm so sick of torture porn, and it makes no sense in this context. The writing fell into the same stupid trap of assuming that torture actually works as a form of interrogation -- that, given VR technology, they'd just build VR that simulated the same old torture techniques, which any competent interrogator will tell you are actually counterproductive to gaining reliable intelligence. Surely a civilization with such advanced neural technology would have figured out a better way to get information out of people. This was just gratuitous brutality.

Yeah, I agree the gratuitous torture was way too much. I imagine this was sequence where one part of the novel that was deliberately omitted as mentioned in my post on first page. Perhaps the torture demonstrated here makes more sense in the written page than how it was presented here. The violence was shallow and graphic and left little effect other than disgust, but I imagine it could've been more subtle in the book, although that's just a guess based on what was talked about in the article I linked my post.

The torture porn aside, my bigger issue is with Kovacs massacring the WEI Clinic. Regardless of the work they did there, how are we as viewers suppose to remain sympathetic to Kovacs as a protagonist after that shit?

That said, I loved the other half of the episode. Lots of fun moments with Kristin, her family, and especially with her abuelita. Obviously, those scenes were used as much need levity to the torture porn, although I certainly wish they were used on their own.

More like timeless. The rich have been acting like that pretty much since the dawn of civilization.

Yeah, you're right, timeless is what I actually meant. Which is part of why I find it rather tiresome considering the show hasn't presented any new ideas here. Rich get richer, the rich gets better immortality, the rich gets bored with immortality. I hope the show does more with this set-up than that.

And it took me several episodes to figure out that "Meth" is short for "Methuselah." Ortega referenced Methuselah in the car in episode 1, but I didn't make the connection, because it's not stressed on that syllable.

I only picked it up because I went back and rewatched that scene with subtitles because I didn't completely catch what she said during that whole conversation.

 

[Q2UnME]

I’m 4 episodes in so far. I think that the premise is good, VFX are well done and the production value looks very expensive. I find some of the nudity a bit too gratuitous at times; same with the violence and torture porn. Seemed to me excessive and not needed to service the story. A little editing and really nothing would have been missed and the storyline wouldn’t have been effected. Anyway, I’m going to hang on and see where it goes.

Q2UnME

 

[Christopher]

I think the nudity fits the premise, as does the violence, torture porn aside. This is a world where bodies are seen as disposable commodities, something temporary and separate from your true identity. Thus, it makes sense that people would be less protective of their bodies, whether their modesty or their health. What would be considered assault or murder today is trivialized as "organic damage." Health care doesn't seem to have advanced that much, because keeping a body alive is no longer as great a priority as it once was. Given all that, a relaxed attitude toward nudity fits right in. Why be ashamed to let people see your body when you don't see it as an integral part of yourself?

I wouldn't object to the nudity in any case -- especially Martha Higareda's nudity, because she's spectacular -- but in this particular case, I think it actually works as part of the worldbuilding, and thus is not gratuitous. Although so far it does seem somewhat imbalanced in favor of the male gaze, with more full-frontal female nudity than male, and that's the one thing that feels gratuitous to me (my personal preferences aside).

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Finished the season. I largely enjoyed the show (aside from the excessive violence series wide and the torture porn of episode four) and it did a solid job exploring the themes it set up at the beginning. However, the last couple of episodes fell into fairly generic stuff as it unraveled all of the conspiracies and final agendas, and the conclusions were mostly predictable. I did enjoy the side stories with the Elliot family, even if it eventually meant for convenient tools for the ending.

In the end, I think I enjoyed the world setting and the "science" around it than I did the story itself, or even some of the characters (again, how am I suppose to be sympathetic of a protagonist who commits mass murder, even as a reaction to severe torture?). Kristin, the Elliot family, and Poe were certainly the most enjoyable and that was largely due to their performers. I would be interested in seeing the world again (or certainly something similar to it), but I could take the characters either way.

 

[Christopher]

Finished the season. I largely enjoyed the show (aside from the excessive violence series wide and the torture porn of episode four)

Yeah, I would've preferred it a bit less violent.

Spoiler: Episode 8 climax

I mean, one one level, getting to see a whole room full of completely naked Dichen Lachman clones was amazing (I honestly didn't expect her to do a nude scene, and she did it in spades), but the fact that they were all covered in blood and getting gunned down en masse made it rather less fun. Some people might get off on a fantasy like that, but is that really the target audience they want to go for?

While we're on the subject... After rewatching that scene, I think I can finally confirm that Lachman's hair color is her natural shade. But we saw that Reileen had black hair as a child, so it must be dyed in-story, and thus her clones should have black hair. Unless she gene-modded herself with lighter hair.

(again, how am I suppose to be sympathetic of a protagonist who commits mass murder, even as a reaction to severe torture?)

I think it helps a bit to see that he was made into a killer by the Protectorate. He explained in episode 7 how they altered him to nullify all the natural human restraints on violent action. So this isn't something he became by choice; he was tricked into it as a child, molded into it as he matured, etc. So he's as much a victim as anyone. And it helps that he does show some capacity for empathy, as if something that his past has deadened in him is reawakening. Think of Wolverine in X-Men -- his past involved being molded into a top assassin and berserker warrior ("I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do isn't very nice"), but we empathize because he tries to atone for that past and be a better person. Kovacs isn't quite to that stage yet, but he might be on the way.

 

[Christopher]

Okay, I've finished the season.

Spoiler

I'm disappointed that the show never actually addressed Kovacs's reaction to being placed in a white man's body. I read an interview with Laeta Kalogridis where she claimed they'd address the character's unhappiness with the effacing of his preferred Asian identity, but they never actually did so, except for having Rei suggest re-sleeving him in "something less gaijin." So it did ultimately come off as little more than the usual Hollywood whitewashing, just as I feared. Well, at least they surrounded the Obligatory White Male Lead with a really diverse cast otherwise.

And it looks like a second season, if any, would require a new lead actor to play Kovacs. They went through enough contrivances this season to justify keeping Kovacs and Ortega in their current sleeves rather than replacing them when they got critically injured. It would take a much more massive contrivance to justify putting Kovacs back in Ryker.

Of all the character deaths, the one that made me saddest was Poe. It also made me confused. I mean, if humans can back themselves up, why can't an AI?

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Yeah, the whitewashing bothered me for the reasons you mentioned. That's another problem with the show and hopefully it's something that's properly addressed if there's a second season.

As for Poe...

Spoiler

My take was he couldn't afford a back-up system. His hotel hadn't been used in 50 years and Leung completely destroyed Poe's system on site.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, the whitewashing bothered me for the reasons you mentioned. That's another problem with the show and hopefully it's something that's properly addressed if there's a second season.

The simplest way is just to cast an Asian actor in the lead role. Which is something that the industry finds a staggering number of excuses to avoid doing.

As for Poe...

Spoiler

My take was he couldn't afford a back-up system. His hotel hadn't been used in 50 years and Leung completely destroyed Poe's system on site.

Spoiler

But we saw that he could travel into the network to interact with the other AIs (an intriguing and sadly underdeveloped concept). So why couldn't he have backed up in the cloud? I mean, if he was a member of a union, wouldn't backup services be part of the medical plan, so to speak?

 

[matthunter]

Also, how stupid was that line from Ortega's mother about Abboud not worshipping the same God? How ignorant to you have to be of religion not to know that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the exact same God, just differing on which prophets and teachings they acknowledge?

Given that religious wars have been fought precisely BECAUSE some Christians, Jews and Muslims don't accept that premise, I'd say the depiction is fairly accurate for a fundamentalist character.

 

[Christopher]

Given that religious wars have been fought precisely BECAUSE some Christians, Jews and Muslims don't accept that premise, I'd say the depiction is fairly accurate for a fundamentalist character.

No, that's not true at all. Disagreeing over specifics of doctrine is not the same thing as disagreeing over the identity of God. I mean, Catholics and Protestants have fought wars against each other, and both groups have persecuted Christians that they considered heretics. Sunni and Shi'a Muslims have been in conflict with one another on and off for centuries. If anything, conflicts between believers in the same god are quite commonplace. I mean, you expect people from different religions to have alien beliefs and practices, but if someone claims to worship the same god as you but does it in a way you don't agree with, that's gonna hit a lot closer to home and be more likely to give offense.

Besides, one thing I learned in studying world history in college is that most so-called "religious wars" really just use religion as an excuse -- the real motives are economic, political, or territorial. European monarchs launched the Crusades to fill their coffers and win prestige; "taking back the Holy Land" was just their excuse for pillaging the wealth of a more prosperous society. By the same token, the Islamic State today is basically a crime syndicate that uses the facade of religious fundamentalism as an excuse to plunder and terrorize. In South Asia, Hindus and Muslims lived together as neighbors for centuries until the British Raj arbitrarily decided to partition the subcontinent into a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan, and it was that territorial schism, the enforced fragmentation and relocation of millions of former neighbors due to an arbitrary political decision, that created bloody conflict between previously friendly religious communities. The British Empire often generated artificial hostility between religious and ethnic communities in the regions it colonized in order to divide and conquer and weaken opposition to their political and economic stranglehold.

Anyway, even if Ortega's mother had been ignorant enough about Islam to claim she and Abboud worshipped different gods, surely he would've corrected her. The Qur'an is quite explicit that Muslims, Christians, and Jews are fellow "People of the Book," fellow Children of Abraham who share a god and a heritage, and that Christians and Jews must therefore be treated with respect and tolerance. (The modern hostility between the faiths in the Mideast is a betrayal of Islamic teachings and is the result of Eastern European anti-Semites importing their ideology in the early 20th century. And to a large extent it's political in origin, since the founding of Israel was seen by many in the Mideast as just one more act in the litany of European territorial impositions that had been going on since Napoleon invaded Egypt.) Also, given that Abboud and Mrs. Ortega are clearly long-time friends, it's implausible that her misapprehension wasn't corrected many years ago. It's a failure of basic research on the part of the writers.

 

[JD]

Yeah, the whitewashing bothered me for the reasons you mentioned. That's another problem with the show and hopefully it's something that's properly addressed if there's a second season.

I didn't see the spoiler, so I apologize if I'm misunderstanding, but if by whitewashing you're referring to Kovacs, I don't think this necessarily counts since the race change comes from the book. From what I've read online he ends up in several different sleeves, and at one point even ends up in a black male sleeve.

 

[Christopher]

I didn't see the spoiler, so I apologize if I'm misunderstanding, but if by whitewashing you're referring to Kovacs, I don't think this necessarily counts since the race change comes from the book.

Yes, but that's the problem. The book gets into his head and explores his distaste at being in a white sleeve, but the show utterly fails to address his reaction at all. So it fails to transcend feeling like just another excuse to cast a white lead actor.

From what I've read online he ends up in several different sleeves, and at one point even ends up in a black male sleeve.

No, I don't believe that happened. As far as I recall, we only saw Kovacs in sleeves played by Will Yun Lee, Byron Mann, and Joel Kinnaman, in chronological order; plus there's a virtual-reality scene where he disguises himself as someone else, but it's a white man. You must be thinking of something you read about a different character who does inhabit a significant number of different sleeves.

 

[JD]

Yes, but that's the problem. The book gets into his head and explores his distaste at being in a white sleeve, but the show utterly fails to address his reaction at all. So it fails to transcend feeling like just another excuse to cast a white lead actor.

OK, I guess I can see that then. I have to admit, I was a bit surprised they didn't address the race change in some way in the first couple episodes.

No, I don't believe that happened. As far as I recall, we only saw Kovacs in sleeves played by Will Yun Lee, Byron Mann, and Joel Kinnaman, in chronological order; plus there's a virtual-reality scene where he disguises himself as someone else, but it's a white man. You must be thinking of something you read about a different character who does inhabit a significant number of different sleeves.

Sorry, I got ahead of myself and forgot to double check myself before I posted. I actually was talking about the later books in the series the show is based on.