![]() Harlan’s World is the planet on which the alien technology that forms the basis of the stacks was found. The Meth is one of a small group of Founders of the world and it some becomes clear that there is killer on the loose knocking off all the Founders one by one. ![]() He’s still hunting for his long lost love Quellcrist Falconer and finds himself back on Harlan’s World to be a bodyguard for a Meth who is killed before Kovacs even climbs out of the pod in his house. Kovacs seems less reflective than his previous incarnation – perhaps because his sister issues were put to bed in Season 1. Anthony Mackie brings some attitude to the role and pulls off some of the rather awful dialogue with slightly more aplomb than Kinnaman but a whole different level of shouting. Season 2 of the show sees Kovacs return in a new elite combat sleeve which looks uncannily like Falcon from the Marvel films. His performance is the most human of all and makes an interesting counterpoint to Kinnaman’s rendition of Kovacs’ singular will. Poe runs an Edgar Allen Poe themed hotel called ‘The Raven’ and with him the writers are able to explore sci-fi’s favourite theme – what it is to be human. Among the strong supporting cast I was most impressed by Chris Conner’s performance as the AI Poe. Like Blade Runner, show does not paint a pretty picture for the future of women in society – unless they are from the Meth class and it touches on themes of sexual violence in a very direct manner – indeed again this is at the heart of this many layered story. Events in his past come back in monumental ways toward the show’s climax and I found it to be a very satisfying collection of well thought out episodes. Kovacs is haunted by his past – both in the form of the ‘ghost’ of his ex-comrade in arms rebel leader Quellcrist Falconer played by Renée Elise Goldsberry and memories of his sister played by Dichen Lachman (who was one of the few cast members I recognised having seen her previously in Dollhouse). It seems a minor point but it is quite a fundamental part of the plotting – both the concept and the fact that the law was blocked by the Meths. There was talk of a law being introduced to allow the stacks of murdered people to be ‘spun up’ even if they had said they didn’t want that to happen for religious reasons. The show is set up rather like Doctor Who in that anyone can potentially play the lead. I’d generously call his performance enigmatic and in fact I preferred this version than Anthony Mackie’s version in Season 2. The original Kovacs is played rather woodenly by Will Yun Lee and the resleeved version, who is the main star of the show is played by Joel Kinnaman (who was in the reboot of Robocop). Real death would involve having his spinal implant called a ‘stack’ destroyed, but since the meth back themselves up regularly over some clever wireless system he is back on his feet in no time and asking questions about his apparent suicide and some hours of missing memory. ![]() In Season 1, Kovacs is on ice because of his former misdemeanours on Harlan’s World, woken after more than two centuries, he is ‘resleeved’ into the body of a disgraced police investigator to help a Meth (an elite class of super-rich people who are ostensibly immortal by virtue of hopping into new bodies whenever they feel like it) investigate his own ‘sleeve death’ (as opposed to real death or ‘RD’). ![]() Set in a dystopian future in which interstellar travel is achieved through the transfer of consciousnesses between bodies, it follows Takeshi Kovacs, a former elite soldier turned revolutionary (called an Envoy) turned private investigator. I’ll try and avoid major spoilers here, but some minor ones will happen below. Also conceptually there are elements of The Matrix and the Wachowski’s source code Ghost in the Shell. Morgan it has undergone some changes for TV and visually seems to owe a hell of a lot to Ridley Scott’s neo-noire interpretation of Philip K Dick’s work in Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. ![]() While Altered Carbonon Netflix is an adaptation of the 2002 cyberpunk novel by Richard K. ![]()
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