Tom:
Well, I’ve just
finished this, and really enjoyed it. I loved the first season of
Altered Carbon; I love the dark futuristic setting, I love
the depiction of social dystopia, and the noiry feel. It’s still a
load of nonsense, obviously — visions of the future involving
humanoid AIs scampering about and people fighting each other in VR
‘constructs’ is starting to look as dated today as Asimov’s
predicted future of androids driving forklifts. But it’s great fun.
Angus:
I was a real
fan of Season One, prompting me to rush out and buy the books (which
I have yet to read). The rampant dystopian setting is one that
really appeals to me, and is great as inspiration for games and
stories of my own.
Yana:
I absolutely
loved the first season! It was well directed, beautifully shot, and
the narrative was revealed in a very well-calculated way so that it
never felt like anything was missing. As much as it pains me to say
it, the second season was missing just the right elements to make me
feel like the essence of the show had been left on ice together with
the Bancrofts. Like my partner said: “the second season feels like
low-budget Altered Carbon fan fiction with 200% more
emotional speeches and 0% envoy intuition”.
Tom:
One of the things
I loved about the first season was the grim depiction of rampant
inequality. Yes, there was lots of punching and shooting and people
with LEDs on their heads, but underneath all that there were some
chewy questions about what happens to us when you extend human life
ad infinitum — what that means for families, inheritance,
inequality, and so on. The first season’s inherently personal
mystery thriller format was also one of its strengths.
The second season dwells on these questions less, and is less thoughtful in general. The fundamental sci-fi ‘what if?’ that underpins the franchise is still there, and it’s still interesting, but it’s explored less.
Angus:
I was
interested in the idea of resleeving and effective immortality
through clone bodies. What is it like to be resleeved into the
‘wrong’ body? But I am guessing these are questions more effectively
dealt with in the books than in the TV series, though it does
attempt it in passing.
I was also intrigued by the glitches and degradation suffered by the AI character Poe, and his obvious distress at the idea of a reboot that might take his memories and thus destroy the core of what made him him. Interesting that the human character seemed to care little about his ‘friend’ or his obvious distress. Is that a throwback to a servile past when AI are little more than servants, toys and entertainment — less than human?
Yana:
I was hoping
that the exploration of social, economic, and political implications
of the cortical stack technology would continue in the second
season, but alas, the themes that gave me (and surely many other
viewers) opportunities to relate, reflect and engage, were absent.
The second season disrupted the multi-layer conversation about
things like the place of religion in the Altered Carbon
world, or the way individuals cope with being cross-sleeved against
their will, and replaced it with a love story with plenty of forced
interactions and a competition about who gets to save the day.
Tom:
I’d tentatively
suggest that the action scenes in Season Two might actually be
better than Season One. I really enjoyed the gunplay and martial
arts scenes; they reminded me of Equilibrium, with all the
silly batting people’s guns away at point blank.
Angus:
Ah yes, I love
a bit of Gun-Fu action. I am going to disagree with Tom though.
Season One was definitely better. Season Two was trying to offer
more but somehow didn’t manage to deliver. It could be that it
didn’t have the budget of the original. I felt the political history
of both Harlan’s World and the Kellist movement should have been
handled head on in Episode One, rather than left flopping about. I
mean it’s not like our protagonist is a stranger to this planet — he
grew up there, he lived there. So it’s not like you’re learning
alongside him as he discovers these things.
Tom:
There
were bits of good writing — especially in the later
episodes. “Why is it always ‘fix it, then die’ with you?” really
made me smile.
Angus:
There were
definitely some nicely-paced scenes. The choreography of the fight
scenes was really good too.
Tom:
Bringing
Quellcrist Falconer back as a main character was interesting. She
overshadows Takeshi Kovacs throughout; she thinks bigger, she’s more
dominant, and she has more agency. I quite liked that change in
dynamic.
Angus:
I have to admit
I rolled my eyes at the return of Quellcrist — it all felt a little
contrived. But then I have yet to read the book upon which the
series is based, so I have no idea how close to the original the
second season is.
What I really did like was the idea of physical memory — that a person is more than just a mind, or just a stack. This was touched on a little in Season One, but more so in Season Two when our hero inflicts an injury on himself to ‘remember’ who knifed him. I think this is likely one of the most interesting questions posed by Altered Carbon so far: are humans losing part of their humanity by treating their bodies as disposable assets, not just body swapping, but loss of the physical memories that augment the intellectual personality within the stack?
In fact the stack is just a copy of the mind, so it would be interesting to explore the difference between what is in the stack, and what is in the organic mind and body of the original.
Yana:
Ironically,
Poe’s character was the most human and relatable element of the
second season and also the one that redeems it.
Tom:
The second season
is a bit more epic in scope than the first and, in my view, the
weaker for it. There is a mystery here — a pretty good whodunnit, as
well as a whydunnit — but that falls away about 60% of the
way through the series to leave a standard race against time to save
the world. In lots of ways, the series feels more generic; the
showrunners play standard, tired TV tricks with us, of the “they’re
dead! Lol no they’re not” variety.
Angus:
I did a lot of
eye-rolling during the first few episodes. Oh look, the return of
Quellcrest, who should most definitely have been dead for the last
280 years. Oh, another AI hotel to shack up in, that looks like an
exact replica of the first (thanks to Poe’s nanotech). Oh look — I’m
not just going to execute you, Mr. Bond, I am going to make a slow
spectacle of it so that you can escape… Yawn!
Tom:
I also agree
that the budget for Season Two seemed smaller than for One. It
didn’t feel as panoramic, in a way — I didn’t feel the city was as
spectacular, and most of the scenes seemed to be filmed in a handful
of interior locations, or woodland. This isn’t a criticism as much
as an observation. But one of the things I enjoyed most about Season
One was the juxtaposition between the opulence and splendour of the
homes of the rich above the clouds, and the cyberpunk neon slums of
the city below. I don’t think Season Two had an equivalent to that.
Yana:
The underlying
problem with the second season was the striking lack of that
attention to detail which had particularly impressed me in the first
season. This is where I believe most of the issues stem from. The
script failed to deliver intellectually stimulating lines even when
the narrative built up to moments that not only allowed, but even
required it. I was looking forward to seeing more of the amazing
camerawork, editing, and the stylistic choice of using implicit
audio-visual hints in order to ’show’ things without really showing
them. Unfortunately, there wasn’t thorough stylistic continuity into
the second season, and I ended up disappointed by the absence of
things like the trippy effects in VR and dramatic slow-motion
close-up shots that gave the combat scenes in Season One some
artistic value. Even if the budget for season Two was smaller, I
think that if more ingenuity had been involved in the technical
approach towards directing and shooting it, this would have
eliminated certain awkward moments of the ‘Power Rangers’-type
combat scenes.
For me the biggest downfall of this season was that Takeshi Kovacs somehow went from being a notorious, hilariously cynical, and weirdly relatable anti-hero to a good old glossy, boring, stoic protagonist. Joel Kinnaman’s Takeshi had a dark and twisted sense of humour, made use of his envoy intuition, carried around a small pink backpack that was either equipped with guns or copious amounts of drugs, and was addictively entertaining. Subjectively, the personality of Anthony Mackie’s Takeshi has been replaced by the ability to summon guns. This is not me saying that Mackie didn’t play the role well, but rather that his role wasn’t written well. The lack of continuity and quality writing also affect the performances of Will Jun Lee (Takeshi’s original sleeve) and Renée Elise Goldsberry (Quellcrist Falconer) who felt like they were different characters in Season One.
One thing hasn’t changed though: in both seasons Takeshi winds up double-sleeved, and one of them is always taking a shower.
Tom:
Season Two does
some interesting things — particularly focusing so heavily on
Quellcrist Falconer as a main character — but it feels
intellectually lightweight compared to the first, with none of the
thought experiments and explorations of what its sci-fi assumptions
could lead to. That said, I did enjoy it — it’s well-structured,
fun, well-paced, and entertaining.
Angus:
Yeah, Season
Two was definitely less intellectually challenging. I had hoped for
more on the Elders. I had expectations having read the back of the
Broken Angels book sleeve that I don’t think were met.
Yana:
“It’s all in
the details” says Kovacs while strolling across Bancroft’s gallery
in Season One. Too bad they forgot about that in Season Two.
