When I started watching season 1 I thought it was interesting albeit a bit hammy in its execution. As the season progressed I started to get more into it and got used to the style of the show (for better or worse). The plot of Altered Carbon revolves around some absurd tech from the far too distant future and the show doesn't waste time trying to make sense of it and only explains how the technology works for the story. The primary tech is "stacks" which allow people a form of semi immortality where their minds are backed up to small devices in their necks. This allows them to chnaged "skins" (bodies) either because their current one dies or they just want a new one. Some people have lived for hundreds of years and the richest people can backup their stacks to the cloud to avoid "real death" from their stack being destroyed.
Within the context of the show we are just supposed to accept this as being something so far advanced from our current technology that it cant be exlained and as such they can make whatever technology they need to move the story along. One of the most evident problems with this is the lack of consistency, while they have this ridiculously advanced mind preserving technology, the rest of the world is a stylised mix of far less impressive technology.
The main reason the show gets away with it at all is because the story is predominantly a mystery. The technology forms the backdrop and acts as a McGuffin in very aspects. For the most part, we are told what can and can't happen with the tech at whichever point the story needs it to have a different attribute and the focus of the story is on the relationships between the characters.
By the end of season 1 I was quite invested in the show and looking forward to season 2 even though the nature of such a story would necessitate changes to the cast. When season 2 came I was eager to watch but quickly realised that the original was so convoluted that too much time had passed and I was struggling to remember what had happened in order to understand season 2s motivations. I kept watching and picked it up after a couple of episodes but wasn't really enjoying the new cast, characters, plot and even more ridiculous, inconsistent technology. season 1 wasn't deeply philosophical but it skirted around the deeper ramifications of this future world and had glimpses of insight. Season 2 is more of an action soap opera with the central characters having emotional conflicts broken up by style over substance action scenes where lots of people die.
I still have a couple more episodes to go and although Mackie is good, he isn't compelling (perhaps more a problem with script and direction) other characters seem out of place and unbelievable as highly trained killers. Between fights they walk around with the posture and presence of sheep herders and lose their characters within tech centred plot devices. The highlight for me has been Poe (Chris Conner) who has brought much more to the story than his unrelateable tech issues.
Review by Jacob PaintBlockedParent2020-03-04T17:12:19Z
When I started watching season 1 I thought it was interesting albeit a bit hammy in its execution. As the season progressed I started to get more into it and got used to the style of the show (for better or worse). The plot of Altered Carbon revolves around some absurd tech from the far too distant future and the show doesn't waste time trying to make sense of it and only explains how the technology works for the story. The primary tech is "stacks" which allow people a form of semi immortality where their minds are backed up to small devices in their necks. This allows them to chnaged "skins" (bodies) either because their current one dies or they just want a new one. Some people have lived for hundreds of years and the richest people can backup their stacks to the cloud to avoid "real death" from their stack being destroyed.
Within the context of the show we are just supposed to accept this as being something so far advanced from our current technology that it cant be exlained and as such they can make whatever technology they need to move the story along. One of the most evident problems with this is the lack of consistency, while they have this ridiculously advanced mind preserving technology, the rest of the world is a stylised mix of far less impressive technology.
The main reason the show gets away with it at all is because the story is predominantly a mystery. The technology forms the backdrop and acts as a McGuffin in very aspects. For the most part, we are told what can and can't happen with the tech at whichever point the story needs it to have a different attribute and the focus of the story is on the relationships between the characters.
By the end of season 1 I was quite invested in the show and looking forward to season 2 even though the nature of such a story would necessitate changes to the cast. When season 2 came I was eager to watch but quickly realised that the original was so convoluted that too much time had passed and I was struggling to remember what had happened in order to understand season 2s motivations. I kept watching and picked it up after a couple of episodes but wasn't really enjoying the new cast, characters, plot and even more ridiculous, inconsistent technology. season 1 wasn't deeply philosophical but it skirted around the deeper ramifications of this future world and had glimpses of insight. Season 2 is more of an action soap opera with the central characters having emotional conflicts broken up by style over substance action scenes where lots of people die.
I still have a couple more episodes to go and although Mackie is good, he isn't compelling (perhaps more a problem with script and direction) other characters seem out of place and unbelievable as highly trained killers. Between fights they walk around with the posture and presence of sheep herders and lose their characters within tech centred plot devices. The highlight for me has been Poe (Chris Conner) who has brought much more to the story than his unrelateable tech issues.
[insert conclusion here]