Altered Carbon: a genre mashup futuristic noir mystery set in a society with the technology to switch bodies.
Altered Carbon
US Release Date: February 2, 2018
Writers: Nevin Densham, Leata Kalogridis, and Richard Morgan
Creator: Laeta Kalogridis
Production Company: Netflix
Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Will Yun Lee, Dichen Lachman, Martha Higareda, Renee Goldsberry, Ato Essandoh, and James Purefoy.
What You Should Know:
I recommend watching the original Blade Runner and to have a passing familiarity with the Matrix films before watching Altered Carbon.
What You’ll Find Out (Spoiler Free):
The premise of the show involves a futuristic society with the technology to place a mind into a new body by discs inserted into the base of the skull referred to as stacks. The wealthy also have clones of their own bodies into which their stacks may be replaced and people can also trade bodies or sleeves as the show calls them, to look however they want to or in order to pose or live as other people.
In the first episode, we discover that a wealthy businessman, a member of the planetary elite, may have committed suicide. He doesn’t believe he would try to kill himself so seeks to hire a private investigator to solve the possible murder.
I would compare the series to the noir aspects of Blade Runner combined with the technological aspects of the Matrix films. The plot focuses on a society which allows people to transfer consciousness to other bodies, virtual realities, and into androids. The show also examines how self-identity would change as a result of this technology as identifying a person’s stack would be a more conclusive characterization than the sleeve they wore making aspects of phenotypical presenting racial and gender identity secondary to the consciousness within.
The series examines the ethics and morality of the ability to body transfer, clone, and recover someone who has died and placed them into a new body even at times against their religious beliefs. It also questions what would happen if humans could achieve immortality in this manner, what they would do with that power, and how society would change given a class of immortal wealthy. If a person had the power to survive indefinitely with a new body would their respect for all bodies and their connection to their own humanity devolve as they have the ability to transcend corporeality via electronic transference? The author of the series suggests this devolution would be the case and demonstrates how the wealthy immortals would presumably behave and adapt given their unlimited power and longevity.
The author and series creator makes references to the elite being a pantheon of gods. It is referenced several times as the wealthy live in a literal Olympus above the clouds either in giant skyscrapers or flying ships. Keep your eyes peeled for the internalized religious conflict of the morality of our current day religions conflicting with the elite who have power akin to actual gods. If they are to be considered gods among men who would be the Titans to their pantheonic deification? Pieces of famous artwork are shown throughout and sometimes provide literal commentary and clues as to what is occurring with the characters.
The secondary religious aspect involves a focus on what it means to have a soul and retain your humanity. I would refresh myself with the original Blade Runner examination of the concept of whether an android has a soul in order to expound the logic of Altered Carbon. The show attempts to determine whether our soul can be summed up in an electronic transference or if our humanist aspects are lost in a process of protracted consciousness transfers making the long-lived immortals in effect soulless beings.
Essentially the show examines whether we should favor technological advancement at the expense of morality and concludes that morality must be considered and enforced to balance the intricacies of advancing technology. The episodes are violent and at times out of immediate chronological order, however, the timing makes more sense as the series progresses eventually explaining the plot holes that the viewer may have had questions about in the beginning. It is a seasonal storyline format and inconclusive episodically. I would recommend binging rather than watching the episodes one at a time.
Spoiler included summary:
In order to solve the murder/suicide mystery that is the foundational plot element of Altered Carbon Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) follows clues and interrogates witnesses to discover what and who lead to the death of his employer’s expired sleeve. While on the search for the truth the answers found are not necessarily what the employer wants to hear and considering the power of the elite, a truthful response to the initial investigation may not be wise to report for the safety and continued well being of the lower caste characters.
The team of protagonists Kovacs has assembled fabricates a murder storyline to appease the titan that is Kawahara (Dichen Lachman) and simultaneously satisfying Kovacs initial employer Bancroft (Jame Purefoy). In order to protect themselves and prevent retaliation from Kawahara, Kovacs and his team create a story involving the betrayal of Bancroft by his longtime ambitious lower caste attorney Prescott (Tamara Taylor). The alleged betrayal by Prescott satisfies all of the needs of the wealthy elite characters by providing the Bancrofts with a lower class fall-woman for the murder and denying Bancroft has any self-destructive impulses while also satisfying Kawahara by providing a cover up for the crime that her actions had incepted.
However, as with the film Clue, the true reveal of the murder plot will come later in the final episodes resulting in the lowers classes obtaining a satisfying comeuppance against the two high powered elites.
Police Detective Ortega (Martha Higareda), unsatisfied with Kovac’s fabricated solution to the murder mystery, continues her own independent investigation into the crime. Her path leads to the discovery of Kawahara’s clone supply and exposes Kawahara’s once-secret existence. In retaliation, Kawahara eliminates Ortega’s family with finality and without mercy. Finality in this show means that a character’s stack data has been completely destroyed ensuring final death as opposed to sleeve death from which a stack could transfer the original host’s consciousness as stored data. I would say final death equates to murder in the first degree in this reality while sleeve death is still criminal it would be more akin to negligent homicide. Therefore, as a result of Ortega’s inquisitiveness, her entire family is murdered by Kawahara in final death as punishment for challenging a titan.
As a result of the Ortega family massacre, the Kovac team decide they are no longer satisfied with letting the upper-class characters get away with their crimes. They decide to forego personal safety and risk everything to take down the elites and eventually succeed by exposing Kawahara and the Bancrofts for their various crimes.
We finally discover conclusively that Kawahara instigated Bancroft to snuff out a hired prostitute on her brothel ship in order to cause Bancroft to commit suicide. Kawahara was assisted with drugging Bancroft by his wife (Kristin Lehman). His wife having the power to administer chemicals subdermally upon contact with another sleeve’s skin, drugs Bancroft to a point where his inhibitions are lowered sufficiently that he destroys a prostitute’s stack causing a final death. Final death being this future’s most reprehensible violent crime and more extreme than the death of just a sleeve which is a replaceable and seemingly disposable commodity.
In an excellent sequence of action-packed violence, Kawahara is literally taken down by Kovacs and team with a few casualties on the Kovacs team but almost complete destruction of Kawahara’s staff and property. It is a satisfying conclusion to the series after the show sufficiently establishes how cruel and loathsome Kawahara can be in her dealings with those she feels are beneath her. After eliminating the threat of Kawahara and her blackmail motivated snuff factory, the remaining protagonists are free to confront the Bancrofts.
First Kovacs exposes Bancroft as the self-loathing unconstrained and uncivil monster that he has become with respect to his treatment of prostitutes and he is arrested for the final death of a prostitute. The exposition of the crime also redeems the falsely accused Prescott who also assists in the condemnation of Mrs. Bancroft as having been complicit in her husband’s murder and the murder of the prostitute. Thus arrested and escorted from their Olympus-like mansion the empire falls to their son, Isaac whose name is of course biblically relevant to the Bancroft family dynamic.
The thematic message of the series is personified by Quillcrist Falconer played by Renee Goldsberry. We discover over the course of the series that she is the technologic creator of the stack technology which she developed in order to explore the galaxy. Her technology instead became a weapon by which soldiers were transported, minds were overwritten against their sleeve’s wills, and wealthy elites became immoral immortals creating their own rule of law.
She is the series’ Christ (Quill – writer of sleeves; crist – on the naming nose again) figure acting selflessly for the sins of humanity in order to redeem their souls. She decides that humanity needs to lose its idolatry caste of ruling god citizens by limiting stack life to a set period of years. Needless to say, the bulk of humanity disagrees with Quillcrist’s moral condemnation of the use of her technology and the ruling class adjudge her and her followers to be terrorists as they threaten the continued use of immortal creating stack technology.
Kawahara betrays Quillcrist’s team of militant freedom fighters to the intergalactic faceless police force which favors the continued control of humanity by the few immeasurably wealthy immortal elites. Kawahara thereafter acquires power herself in a style she was familiarized within her youth as a member of the Yakuza and becomes one of the first and preeminent yet clandestine members of the elite class. Kawahara is older than even the Bancrofts making her a figurative Titan to their Gods. She also personally destroys Quillcrist Falconer in a Judas level betrayal while allegedly secreting Falconer’s stack somewhere hidden and unbeknownst to Kovacs. The series ends with the resolution of the murder mystery Bancroft plotline but leaves open the whereabouts of the Falconer stack allowing for a possible second season plot outline where one can assume Kovacs and the remaining protagonists with seek out Falconer’s stack and possibly attempt to effectuate her call to arms to limit the years each stack can operate to prevent amoral immortals as exemplified by the three villains of the season.
Rating: 8/10
Final Thought: The series attempts to accomplish a lot within its 10 episode allotted time frame. It mostly succeeds, but I would have preferred more overall development and hope that there is a second season to better explore the concepts developed in the first season. It’s a good presentation of a few typical sci-fi topics presented with hyper-violence and no small degree of nudity.
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