Stars: 3.5/5
“You either die the hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” This seems to be the controlling idea of the new Netflix original “Altered Carbon,” whether the writers actively pursued it or not.
If you like sex, violence, mystery and “hard” science fiction, you’ve met your match. Think “The Strain” to get an idea of how weird things are going to get, then let yourself fall down an even weirder rabbit hole.
The show takes place in a future built on alien technology that allows for eternal life as long as your “stack” isn’t damaged. A stack is a disk in the spine where the life and consciousness of the owner are stored. It is essentially a hard drive for the human mind, and can be backed up, copied and transferred between bodies at will.
The protagonist is Envoy Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnama). To pay for his crimes, Kovacs’ consciousness has been stored in the interim, and he is placed in a new body by a “Meth,” an ultra-rich immortal who wants his own murder solved with Kovacs’ abilities.
The other protagonist is Kristin Ortega (Martha Higareda), a cop with secrets who goes to great lengths to keep an eye on Kovacs. Her cases and Kovacs’ murder mystery are connected by a web of secrets. The biggest and most baffling? The cause of the death of Mary Lou Henchy (Lisa Chandler), the girl who couldn’t fly.
I wish I could say it gets less confusing. A hefty amount of worldbuilding finds its way into season one’s 10 hour-long episodes, and most of this world is only built moments before it becomes plot relevant. However, lovers of “hard” science fiction who tune in should be used to not getting to know immediately.
The plot itself is just as tangled as the world — not unlike the real world — taking disturbing twists and turns and often introducing interesting characters who receive much less screen time than they deserve. That’s the problem with the depths of “Altered Carbon’s” world – almost every character who elects to accept immortality could comfortably star in their own creepy spinoff, and I’d prefer watching them over enduring Kovacs’ baffling mysteries.
A whole other spinoff could be spawned from the followers of Neo-Catholicism, who elect to live a single life instead of having their consciousness placed in a different body after the death of their current body, or “birth sleeve.”
No one in the show says “body” except to refer to the corpses of those who have been “Real Death’d,” as in had their stacks destroyed or corrupted irreversibly. Once I made it deep into the show, the absence of the word became strangely upsetting.
More upsetting is the extreme violence of the show and in the case of the Meths, it meshes with sexuality. If you can’t deal with seeing that onscreen or having it frequently implied and described, go ahead and pass on this show. I watched a lot of women meet their grisly ends before it was all said and done.
The scenes are technically plot relevant but feel voyeuristic, while an expository monologue plays in the background. Violence is a given for these types of shows, and although there are some spectacular fight scenes, most of these moments didn’t need to be visually played out.
They definitely rank among my least favorite aspects of this Netflix original, along with the most obviously doomed relationship in dramatic history and a Meth woman who’s played up to be some sort of master seductress, yet lacks any interesting features.
It’s not all bad, though. My favorite details from “Altered Carbon” include Poe (Chris Conner), a lonely AI running a themed hotel who wishes for humanity, and the use of “The End” by Daughter as an illuminating end credits song for the first episode and the high contrast cyberpunk visuals. Honorable mention: Abboud (Waleed Zuaiter), my favorite character, who tried to be a positive force in the show.
Also of interest is Kovacs’ failed revolution, kindled and lost by Quell, his dead past lover. She would’ve really jived with the Neo-Catholics.
“Altered Carbon” is a wild science fiction show worthy of the noir title that had my head spinning through its whole run. I can’t say I liked it, but every step of the way I was desperate to know more about this strange future and its curious characters.
