For those that don't know about it here's a quick description: The series takes place over 350 years in the future, in the year 2384. In the future, a person's consciousness is contained in a "memory stack," a storage device surgically inserted into the vertebrae at the back of the neck. Physical bodies are now considered "sleeves", mere disposable vessels. Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), a political operative with mercenary skills, wakes up 250 years after his "sleeve" is "terminated," and he is given the choice to either spend the rest of time in prison for his crimes, or to help solve the murder of one of the wealthiest men in the settled worlds (James Purefoy). Takeshi was the sole surviving soldier of those defeated in an uprising against the new world order 250 years prior.
Going forward FYI, I have not read the books. This is all 100% new to me.
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Spoiler Free Opinions: I liked it quite a bit, my girlfriend enjoyed parts but found it hard to find a character she really could get attached to.
I quite like the main character, although we both noted that that he seems rather inconsistent at times.
We both enjoyed the dark humour but I think I laughed a fair bit more than she did. Laugh I did though.
For some reason as I read various articles/reviews I see many comparisons to Bladerunner. Apples and oranges to me, don't get the comparison. If you're going to go that simplistic you can compare it with most any science fiction out today. Just an easy wall to tack the target on and go from there. I don't respect the viewpoint/comparisons therein. For starters one is a 2hr film... the other isn't. Bleh. Wash my hands of the whole narrow-viewed notion.
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Mild overall spoilers below for more info on the show without major spoilers ↓
The show, as mentioned in the description, has a core plot device in the form of a "stack". An alien-metal disk placed in your upper spinal column at age 1. It records what is essentially you, making you immortal so long as that stack survives. You can be downloaded into different bodies.
The show tackles a quandary I found quite interesting. There is a fight between the danger of immortal tyrants taking over everything, or placing a firm death-date in the stack. 100 years. No further. The main character is generally found to be on the side of a real death, against these immortal tyrants. (Albeit in a different form I won't go into here.) The nominal antagonist in the show is pro-immortality...
I found myself split neatly down the centre. I ideologically believe immortality is by far the better of the options. If I could live forever, I would. However I empathize with the main characters plight... Kudos to the show for getting me to think about it.
The show is cinematic; it is also brutal, quite gory at parts. The gore is done well. Maybe a bit too well at parts. My girl couldn't watch some scenes. There are quite a few character deaths throughout the show as well. Fair warning. Also a lot of nudity. (Martha Higareda is pretty damn attractive.)
Gonna have to rewatch for all the juicy foreshadow I sadly wasn't able to pick up on. Been watching it haphazardly with my girlfriend or alt-tabbed waiting for something to load. Honestly didn't pay the show enough attention at first and am regretting it.
Both me and my girl expected the katana wielding hooded ninjalady that saves Kovacs and Kristin in the ring was going to be Falconer. Didn't expect it to be the sister, and then didn't subsequently expect the sister to be cray-cray.
I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaally understood where she was coming from up until an exact point. A point where I turned to my girl and went, "she made sense up until that sentence". I can absolutely understand her betraying her brothers "cult" friends trying to make everyone in the galaxy die without consent. Not saying it's good or right, but understandable. Pragmatic. She had depth for a few episodes. But then the "we need a villain" kicks in and she starts mowing down or threatening all his friends. It was unfortunate, her character was a beautiful shade of grey that gets blotted out in base villainy black.
I liked Poe, the actor, the dog-loyalty jokes. He did a good job.
I was rather less interested in the daughter, felt odd. Tied in as a tertiary storyline. But... if you were to remove her entirely from the story how badly would the story be effected? IMHO, not really at all.(So far) What does that mean? That unless she's put in there for a future reason, which granted is entirely plausible, she didn't really need the airtime then. I never felt her character progressing the story forwards. Even when she saves the day at the end it could've just been tuned differently. I am assuming this was a rough adaptation that didn't quite mesh as well on TV as it did in the books. To be honest though, I doubt I'll read em. So this is sort of my baseline in judgement of quality. That storyline, lacked.
On Falconer and the Envoys, despite not sharing their misguided ideology I loved the flashbacks. The episode that spends a considerable portion of time set in the past with Will Yun Lee were informative and engaging. I hope things move forward there.
Aliens. I am a sucker for baking the "elder" element into the setting and some foreshadowing that it'll likely impact plot later on. The archaeology find near the end of the last episode was a fun bit of realism.
I liked seeing James Purefoy on the screen, since his approach to Mark Antony in HBO's Rome I've been a quiet fan. His character had a bit of a one-dimensional feeling for much of the time. I felt he did some justice to it. Particularly at the end when he realizes he and his wife have finished each-other, the only ones who could've.
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Ultimately I'd say it's worth trying if you enjoy sci-fi/dystopian. Not all of it makes perfect sense but then again no science fiction show really can when taking place that far in the future. There are enough significant small details, foreshadowing, and moral quandaries to keep me happy. Might do the same for you.
Welp, I quite agree with all your points but my sense of the Blade Runner comparisons are the setting and visuals, (and maybe a slight bit of philosophical pondering) nothing more.
I liked Rei up until the villainous reveal too. Once she admitted to offing those he loved and saying she never cared for their mom, it was done. She needed to go permanently. Purefoy was mostly a joy to watch as was Kinnamon. I hope to see him return and Kovacs' original sleeve return for the next season. Hated Ortega from start to near finish where she got a lot less tryhard and cheesy. Poe was the coolest AI character I've seen in a long time. The previews seemed as if Joseph Gordon-Levitt was cast as that's a character right up his alley. The gratuitous nudity was practically softcore porn. Sheesh, I've never seen so much bush in one show. Not even GoT is that over the top. The guy from Get Out was awesome and made for a nice foil to Takeshi and even more hilarious was his wife having the sleeve of a middle aged caucasian guy. Gotta hand it to nearly the entire cast with the performances (needed moar Luke Evans) when portraying other characters in different sleeves. Aside from much of the plot direction taking a slight dive with Evil Sis I thought it was great. Not quite THE best new Netflix show to me (Frontier's taken that spot) but its up the among the best adult sci fi you'll see.
It was decent, but really felt more like a high budget sci-fi channel series than something HBO would turn out. Some pretty bad casting choices and wayward plot writing. Kinnaman was solid, but what in the fuck were they thinking with Ortega and Miriam Bancroft? The side plots were uninteresting as well. Great visuals, not great narrative.
I thought it was pretty good, not as cool as the Expanse mind you, but pretty good for a sci-fi show to watch in your spare time.
Gotta say though, I was rather surprised at how "mature" this show was. Like the OP said, even HBO didn't show that much nudity in things like GOT, especially over the course of only ten episodes; and not just a random nipple here and there, but full frontal for both the ladies and the gents.
As a setting, it was interesting but as a fan of the P&P RPG game Eclipse Phase I was constantly being pulled out of the narrative with all the commonalities between them. Cordial stacks, re-sleaveing, farcasting (needlecasting), duplicating egos (granted it's called forking in EP, but same idea), etc. Not sure which work came first, but really you can almost view the setting of Altered Carbon as a pre-Fall version of Transhumanity in Eclipse Phase.
All in all, it was fun to watch but I didn't really get any overarching theme out of it; the constant nods to EP might have distracted me though; which I suppose is a good thing in and of itself. I wasn't constantly being beaten over the head with notions of how technology is evil, or conversely, that one needs to embrace change or be labeled a luddite; a nice change of pace from some other, more recent sci-fi works I seen.
The more I learn about these aliens, the more I come to understand what drives them, the more I hate them. I hate them for what they are and for what they may one day become. I hate them not because they hate us, but because they are incapable of good, honest human hatred. -Inquisitor Agmar
Human, your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater. - Harbinger
It was decent, but really felt more like a high budget sci-fi channel series than something HBO would turn out. Some pretty bad casting choices and wayward plot writing. Kinnaman was solid, but what in the fuck were they thinking with Ortega and Miriam Bancroft? The side plots were uninteresting as well. Great visuals, not great narrative.
Disagree with so mucH here. This show is leagues better than the dreck on HBO. The casting was good, the writing actually nuanced enough to deal with some of the weightier ideas involved with the stack and sleeve, and the world building was some of the best in recent sci fi. It teetered on revelling too much in biolence and nudity, but unlike the horrid Game of Thrones, it remembered to tie if back into the themes of the show.
Its biggest asser though was that it (and its source material) offered some interesting and soeculative science fiction that was not afraid to dream big ir play with the philosophical quandaries brought on by the technology. Most popular sci fi is too worried about being grounded and treating itself as some drama with technological dressing. That is poor sci fi. Thankfully this show understood what sci fi actually is.
Looking forward to more: 8/10. I thought I’d hate it given how contempirary Netflix and premium shows tend to be dark and gritty garbage. This actually dealt with difficult concepts and displayed deft writing. Kudos.
I quite enjoyed it. Hope they keep up the good work, only thing I am worried about is the cast changing drastically from one season to the next. I quite liked Ortega, Kinneman was alright, but I preferred Will Yun Lee. Expanse is still my favorite, but this isn't that far behind. It was a pleasant surprise.
and the world building was some of the best in recent sci fi.
Definitely agree here. I love worldbuilding and have spent far too much time in my life doing it. I appreciate it in my entertainment. (Require some modicum of it actually.)
It teetered on revelling too much in biolence and nudity, but unlike the horrid Game of Thrones, it remembered to tie if back into the themes of the show.
They used nudity quite well, specifically...↓ (Big S1 Spoiler)
Near the end when the sister takes over Ortega. From the moment she showed up it was pretty obvious she was in there. I forget the exact line but when Sister-Ortega is in the bathtub and gets out she says something along the lines of, "I can see why you picked this body, it's... nice." Higareda did a good job there turning something otherwise gratuitous into something, er, disconcerting I'll say...
Its biggest asser though was that it (and its source material) offered some interesting and soeculative science fiction that was not afraid to dream big ir play with the philosophical quandaries brought on by the technology. Most popular sci fi is too worried about being grounded and treating itself as some drama with technological dressing. That is poor sci fi. Thankfully this show understood what sci fi actually is.
Ditto as well, to quote myself, "Not all of it makes perfect sense but then again no science fiction show really can when taking place that far in the future." One writer writing the books can't think of everything the future entails, but he did a good job of it. Then porting it to series format usually would make it worse. (No clue if it is or not) but it's still better done than most I've seen. He took his larger elements and broke them down into details. It's the devil in those that I love.
Looking forward to more: 8/10.
My vote as well, room for improvement but damn I am glad I gave it a shot.
I quite enjoyed it. Hope they keep up the good work, only thing I am worried about is the cast changing drastically from one season to the next. I quite liked Ortega, Kinneman was alright, but I preferred Will Yun Lee. Expanse is still my favorite, but this isn't that far behind. It was a pleasant surprise.
Missed this, I agree with the cast change worries.
I was saying to my girl it's an interesting writing tool that may have helped sell the series to have a revolving cast playing the same character. Any casting issues that might effect continuity/immersion can be quickly written in differently. I doubt the book writer had that in mind when writing the book but the people that adapted it likely hooked onto that tidbit.
I've enjoyed the notion but it's execution has been both great and at times rather bad. Specifically between the characterization of "present day" Kovacs(Kinnaman) and past Kovacs(Yun Lee).
The past Kovacs (They have him listed as "Stronghold Kovacs" on IMDB) plays someone significantly more mature than current Kovacs. I like that the current one has a very "fuck it" attitude I can get behind; he's funny, has a dry sense of humour, it's great. Stronghold Kovacs on the other hand feels like an older version, not a younger one. Or at least this is as close as I can get to describing the difference between the two actors portraying the same character; also the lines they have written for em. I liked both quite a bit but for different reasons. (drastically different speaking from the point of them playing the same guy.)
Awesome show. I'm not going to say as good as Westworld, but it could go there. I've only streamed the first three episodes, so I'll wait before I say much more.
This real world tech reminded me a little of the show: I'm especially intrigued by Poe and his AI cohorts.
Awesome show. I'm not going to say as good as Westworld
God that show is amazing. Fantastic mindfuckery. Again a similar plot device that makes things easy for the writers. When you can body-swap or have people playing "not-people" it makes things significantly easier.
653 – A proposition that would allow murder victims to be spun up so they can testify against their killers, even if they have Neo-C coding.
Aerium – A city in the sky, where Meths live.
Construct – A virtual environment.
CTAC – Colonial Tactical Assault Corp. A Protectorate force who needlecast into many different sleeves on many different worlds.
DHF – Digital Human Freight. The code that makes up a person’s consciousness – usually stored on a stack.
Dipper – A hacker, specializing in hacking DHF code and stealing memories.
Elders – An extinct alien race.
Envoy – An elite rebel soldier with heightened intuition, senses and reflexes.
Grounders – People who live on the ground, as opposed to the Meths who inhabit Aerium.
Meth – Someone who has achieved immortality by amassing clones and back-ups of their mind. Named after the Biblical figure Methusaleh, who was said to have lived for 969 years.
Multi-sleeve – To have one’s DHF in multiple bodies at once. This is illegal.
Needlecast – To transfer DHF code remotely from one body to another.
Neo-C – Neo-Catholicism. A religion that holds the belief that humans should not be brought back to life after death.
Neo-C coding – Religious coding in a person’s DHF that indicates they do not consent to be placed in a new body upon death. Effectively a “Do Not Resuscitate” order.
Organic damage – Damage to a sleeve, which is viewed more like property damage than real harm.
Portable 3D Bio Organic Printer – A machine for printing clones.
Protectorate – The military force of the UN, which maintains order across all the Settled Worlds.
Psychosurgery – A method of repairing DHF that has been damaged by emotional trauma.
Real death – The destruction of a stack, resulting in the obliteration of a person’s consciousness.
Reaper – A drug that can be used in small doses to lower body temperature and dampen emotion, or in high doses to kill.
Resleeving – Putting a stack in a new sleeve.
Settled Worlds – Human-inhabited planets
Simulspace – Virtual reality.
Sleeve – A body.
Sleeve death – When a body is killed, but the stack survives.
Songspire – An alien tree with hanging blue ornaments – a relic of the Elders. No one really knows what they are, but they’re pretty and they make nice sounds.
Spin up – Temporarily put a stack into a new sleeve – for the purposes of questioning, or just to spend time with the person.
Stack – A disk upon which a person’s consciousness is stored. Implanted in everyone when they are a year old.
Stronghold – The home base of the Envoys.
Synthetic sleeve – A silicone-based body that looks perfectly human, but can be enhanced with different abilities.
Post by Teabaggin Krogan on Feb 10, 2018 23:45:02 GMT
Only at episode 2 now but I like the concept of the show and the world and futuristic aspects of it are done well. However I'm lowkey not content with some of the acting and the editing. The transitions between some of the scenes are kinda jarring, lonely police lady is rather bad at acting, characters start fist fighting in the middle of shootouts etc. Also disappointed that they use pretty much the same guns over 250 years. It would've been cool to see some District 9 style weapons and effects.
Overall with good writing this could be a really fantastic show though. I also love their ads;
Just started watching, a couple of episodes in. Mostly positive impressions so far. Maybe that's because I like dystopian themes. I'm still trying to find an "in" character wise, you know empathy, defined personality, understanding etc. Given their environment, culture and the nature of their existence, their use of multiple bodies as pawns could this be a deliberate dehumanisation of their characters to reflect this reality which makes them unsympathetic, cold and unrelatable? or is it poor execution by the actors and writers?. I really don't know one way or another at this point, it's really too early for me to say.
Minor frustration, I don't know about anybody else but I sometimes find it hard to follow the dialogue as it seems at some points the actors are mumbling. It's not just one actor in particular it seems that it effects them all, a technical audio issue perhaps?, I've seen a few complaints about this elsewhere. That's a relatively minor issue if somewhat annoying one but overall I do find the series interesting.
Post by Chenowl Blanc on Feb 28, 2018 15:21:11 GMT
I finished the season yesterday, and I really enjoyed it. It's atmospheric (and yeah, purely based on how the show looks I totally get the Blade-Runner vibe), the different elements of the story are well woven into one another, without being either too obvious from the start or too complex to follow, and the soundtrack is simply awesome (it featured one of my favorite composers Dmitri Shostakovich, so no surprise there). I really liked how many of the futuristic concepts are not explained by lengthy dialogue, but rather introduced in a "practical" kind of way. Closely connected to this, they did a good job in making this world quite detailled without shoving those details into your face too much, e.g. things like a 7-year-old victim of a car accident coming back as a 40+ woman because her parents only get one free sleeve for their child and can't afford an upgrade, or how the Brooklyn Bridge becomes useless because everyone uses flying cars, hence it's just used as additional housing space.
In terms of acting, I was not really convinced by some of the cast. That police lady was annoying more than anything, and for my taste, Rei was just too simplistic in her strange obsession with her brother. Other than that, I quite enjoyed the cynical main character Tak, the poetic and empathic AI Poe (he did the best acting job imo) and his hotel in general and Mr. Sidekick Vernon.
It's one of the rare occasions where I can see that there would be enough interesting material for a second season, as many things (like more details about the ancients, how societies off-world look like nowadays, if there is still resistance against the Protectorate somewhere out there etc.) have not been elaborated in detail yet.
Also - what do these chiming trees do? I wanna know and I wanna have one in my garden please, thank you.
wan·gry/ wæŋ·ɡrɪ / adj. "feeling or showing anger or irritability due to lack of wine"
Post by Qui-Gon GlenN7 on Feb 28, 2018 15:36:56 GMT
8/10, Ortega is the Female Biotic Geth I have been looking for, her body sails all my ships.
Kovacs character has definitely evolved from the Stronghold days (and the hints of his earlier incarnations as well). In some ways he has devolved, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing... A theme of the show is that not all advancement is good.
All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.
I was discussing this show with a friend of mine who had just finished the season and in looking back, the main villain's evil plan didn't make any sense to me.
Maybe I'm misremembering things, or I didn't quite catch all the finer points of the situation, but Rei's plan of using blackmail to force the religious coding through the UN in order to use it as a means of keeping her sex workers from exposing her smut services just seemed counter-intuitive compared with what we saw earlier in the season.
When Kovak and Ortega are at the party there is a literal fight to the death scheduled between a man and wife and no-one (save Kovak) bats an eye. Even Ortaga as a police officer can't do anything legally since both fighters agreed to the match and are licensed fighters. So if it's perfectly legal for people to murder each other; provided they get re-sleaved, then why is Rei going about with this convoluted plan to keep her smut trade hidden?
Wouldn't it be far easier to just have her "employees" sign a contract allowing them to be killed/tortured with a new body for their trouble, as well as include an NDA about her clients? I mean the workers already assume that they will be re-sleaved after they are killed anyway, so whats with all the cloak and dagger stuff?
The more I learn about these aliens, the more I come to understand what drives them, the more I hate them. I hate them for what they are and for what they may one day become. I hate them not because they hate us, but because they are incapable of good, honest human hatred. -Inquisitor Agmar
Human, your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater. - Harbinger
Post by Treacherous J Slither on Feb 28, 2018 16:35:03 GMT
I liked it for the most part but what I really had a problem with was how the asain actors for Takeshi got shafted.
They deviated from the book and the lore of the series itself in order to keep the white actor as Takeshi. Even in VR Takeshi was white which is straight up bullshit. Whitewashed bullshit.
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I liked the series quite a bit. Loads of symbolism, interesting scfi and psychological themes...as others said, there is a lot of nudity, but I thought those scenes were generally really beautifully shot.
Granted I haven't read the book it was based on, so I can't say how the adaptation compares--I heard some things were changed.
I would say this is not one you want to binge watch in one sitting, or while doing something else...take your time each episode, because they have a lot going on. The story can get a bit convoluted at times.
I've enjoyed the notion but it's execution has been both great and at times rather bad. Specifically between the characterization of "present day" Kovacs(Kinnaman) and past Kovacs(Yun Lee).
The past Kovacs (They have him listed as "Stronghold Kovacs" on IMDB) plays someone significantly more mature than current Kovacs. I like that the current one has a very "fuck it" attitude I can get behind; he's funny, has a dry sense of humour, it's great. Stronghold Kovacs on the other hand feels like an older version, not a younger one. Or at least this is as close as I can get to describing the difference between the two actors portraying the same character; also the lines they have written for em. I liked both quite a bit but for different reasons. (drastically different speaking from the point of them playing the same guy.)
I view the characterisation change when it comes to past and present Kovacs;
Is that after the events of Stronghold and the loss of everyone/everything he cared about, he's borderline suicidal and prone to self-destructive behaviour. That's why he seems less mature than he was in the past, because he's really got nothing left to live for.
We saw this in the first episode, where after he was decanted, he proceeded to immediately get wasted on drugs after rejecting the job offer. He even openly admits to Ortega that he doesn't care if they ever spun him back up again, once they put him back on ice.
I've enjoyed the notion but it's execution has been both great and at times rather bad. Specifically between the characterization of "present day" Kovacs(Kinnaman) and past Kovacs(Yun Lee).
The past Kovacs (They have him listed as "Stronghold Kovacs" on IMDB) plays someone significantly more mature than current Kovacs. I like that the current one has a very "fuck it" attitude I can get behind; he's funny, has a dry sense of humour, it's great. Stronghold Kovacs on the other hand feels like an older version, not a younger one. Or at least this is as close as I can get to describing the difference between the two actors portraying the same character; also the lines they have written for em. I liked both quite a bit but for different reasons. (drastically different speaking from the point of them playing the same guy.)
I view the characterisation change when it comes to past and present Kovacs;
Is that after the events of Stronghold and the loss of everyone/everything he cared about, he's borderline suicidal and prone to self-destructive behaviour. That's why he seems less mature than he was in the past, because he's really got nothing left to live for.
We saw this in the first episode, where after he was decanted, he proceeded to immediately get wasted on drugs after rejecting the job offer. He even openly admits to Ortega that he doesn't care if they ever spun him back up again, once they put him back on ice.
i also think about the possibility of the sleeve itself altering the personality of a new stack as it's loaded into it/him/her/whatever. but, i also figured in kovacs case, his background also explained his personality shift too. or would it be a shifting personality?
Last Edit: Feb 28, 2018 23:53:57 GMT by invisibleman
Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away... -Hughes Mearns
i also think about the possibility of the sleeve itself altering the personality of a new stack as it's loaded into it/him/her/whatever. but, i also figured in kovacs case, his background also explained his personality shift too. or would it be a shifting personality?
Good point, we're told that people who get re-sleeved too often can go nuts (or if they double-sleeve), but they didn't really go into what would happen if a sleeve had some kind of neurological disorder and would that affect the person wearing it?
Case in point, I have mild Aspergers IRL, but if I were to jump into another sleeve would this carry over with me or would I no longer have it? And if someone used my sleeve, would they being to manifest those traits or would they be no different?
Since the brain itself isn't being transferred, only the consciousness, I'd presume that any neurological/personality disorders would probably remain with the sleeve, much as any physical condition would remain (such as having poor eyesight, etc)
Still, this does raise some ethical questions when it comes to how mental health in this universe is handled, especially when it comes to legal matters. A lawyer arguing for diminished responsibility or the insanity defense would be far harder to prove, if all traces of the defendant's psychological problems are removed by resleeving them?