Rating (3 out of 5)

Rating tv series is hard. This isn’t only because it takes 10 to 20 hours to watch a complete but also because you can’t really give a good review until you have seen all the episodes. It took me a while with Altered Carbon to make my way through all the episodes, but automatically, this gets a 3 because I wanted to see how it ended.

So Altered Carbon is the story set in the future where people can save the brains to a device and then be re-sleeved, which is having this device put into another body or clone. The concept of this technology is interesting in itself, and the series does a good job of showing how the technology is used and some of the moral and religious issues with the technology.

One part I really enjoyed, and when the detective who harasses our hero at the start of the movie, brings her grandmother back. I guess you can rent a body if you have enough money, she doesn’t, but they had a body in the morgue, and she used that body. What made it interesting, was the body was a 6 5″ tattooed biker dude. First that guy did a good job pretending to be a Mexican grandmother.

I like the main character Kovacs and learning about his past, with the Protectorate and and Envoys. Kovacs is rebel who has been on ice for a couple of hundred years, and his stack (a device with all your memories and thoughts), is put into a body of an ex-policeman. He has been resurrected by a rich person to solve the crime of his murder. All very strange I know, but it is a science fiction show, so just go with it.

He works on solving the crime. Each step, he makes a new connection or friend. For example, at first he needs a place to stay, so he finds an AI hotel. This is a hotel that is totally run by Artificial Intelligence. With each lead, it expands the team a bit, which is supposed to be one of the Envoy’s talents, get locals to help.

Spoiler: He eventually discovers his sister is still alive (she made a copy of herself before the rebel camp was defeated). She has become nuts, and just wants her brother back at the expense of everyone else. They battle each other on her floating sex ship, and he kills her permanently (he destroyed her back up memories and her existing stack), and Kovacs is able to solve all the mysteries at once.

The show ends as he leaves to search for the backup of his first love Quell. From what I have read on the internet there are 2 more books of this trilogy, so there could be additional seasons.

Why a 3 versus a 4 or 5. Pacing was a bit slow. I wanted to see how it ended, but it wasn’t like I wanted to binge it all in one day to get to the end. It labored through parts, and at times seemed to jump around a bit. I don’t believe in 1/2 scores, so on this show I rounded down.

Also, we wrapped everything up all of a sudden in the last 10 minutes of the movie. Solved the murder and source of Lizzie’s death. There were a couple of times like that, were things just happened to resolve the story….. it didn’t flow as smoothly as it could.

Now if you are not a science fiction fan, this will be a 2 star for you. If you like seeing lots of naked people -1 or +1 depending on which side of the fence your on.