bangobango said:

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Maybe it's not the reseeving so much as the sleeve you're in getting killed? I agree that they said that about Dimi but it did not appear to bother anybody else, so it's an inconsistency in the series.

That being said, I thought this was a great show. Those saying it's a rehashed concept, please let me know what you are referring to so I can check it out. I thought it was incredibly original and thought provoking concept. I love all the subtle ways they showed how this technology would affect us, starting with the cheapening of "sleeve death."

Though the sister was the weak link in the cast. Wish they would've left the envoy training more of a mystery. I think all these movies and books lose some of their mystique when they over explain the backstory.

The Wei clinic episode is one of my favorite episodes of television ever. So satisfying to watch him blast his way out of their in full on don't **** with me mode.

Other gripe - killed off a lot of the cast that I liked. Kind of depressing ending. Looks like main actor won't be back. Really like that guy and am surprised his career hasn't taken off more the last few years (He was in Robocop remake and did a great job in that, too).

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Kinnaman's been in some big stuff - The Killing, House of Cards, Suicide Squad

zgood10 said:

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bangobango said:

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Maybe it's not the reseeving so much as the sleeve you're in getting killed? I agree that they said that about Dimi but it did not appear to bother anybody else, so it's an inconsistency in the series.

That being said, I thought this was a great show. Those saying it's a rehashed concept, please let me know what you are referring to so I can check it out. I thought it was incredibly original and thought provoking concept. I love all the subtle ways they showed how this technology would affect us, starting with the cheapening of "sleeve death."

Though the sister was the weak link in the cast. Wish they would've left the envoy training more of a mystery. I think all these movies and books lose some of their mystique when they over explain the backstory.

The Wei clinic episode is one of my favorite episodes of television ever. So satisfying to watch him blast his way out of their in full on don't **** with me mode.

Other gripe - killed off a lot of the cast that I liked. Kind of depressing ending. Looks like main actor won't be back. Really like that guy and am surprised his career hasn't taken off more the last few years (He was in Robocop remake and did a great job in that, too).

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Kinnaman's been in some big stuff - The Killing, House of Cards, Suicide Squad

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Yeah, but I mean him being the lead in some big budget action movies.

2 episodes in... good golly they like to show people naked!!!

I think I'm going to read this book. Really liked the series and I didn't think the sister actress was as bad as everyone else seems to think.

Would love to see a season 2. Pretty creepy and thought provoking sci-fi.

I think when people say it's a rehashed concept they must be talking about the socio-economic part, because while I'm not as into sci-fi as I used to be, the resleeving aspect (which is really what the show is exploring) seems new to me. I guess that's the vector into a cheapening of human life and individuality, which is a pretty constant theme.

Also, I completely agree with you that sci-fi and fantasy are better without tons of backstory. It feels like there are a lot of people these days who want everything to be the Silmarrillion. If done correctly, it takes seconds to establish a character to the point that we understand his or her motivations. That said, I don't mind learning more about the envoys and who they are, I think there will be a payoff in later seasons.

third coast.. said:

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Somehow y'all managed to make a thread about one of the coolest new shows boring and annoying.

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Welcome to the Entertainment board...

Just finished. Really liked it. I didn't love the sister as the villain, but you've got to remember that her backstory was being raised by the yakuza. Also the fight at the end was a little overdone, but I loved that the dual sleeving had great benefits and a terrible consequence.

Not to ruin it for people who don't like details , but a couple physics questions for people who read the book....

The stacks go into infants?

People can't travel faster than light, so they cast planet to planet, but how did the colonize all the planets in the first place?

Do the books go into the Elder stuff more?

Also, the concept of "spinning up" was really confusing to me. How is it different than resleeving? At first I figured it was just VR from a damaged stack, but grandma was spun up right?

And the religious coding makes it impossible to spin up and resleeve, or it's just a DNR that the police respect?

Seems like similar terminology that almost means the same thing. Spinning up might mean activating and sleeving a stack that has been dormant whereas resleeving is just moving a stack from body to body.

To out in BCP/DR terms

spining up is a restoring to a cold standby after a catastrophic failure.

Resleving is just failing over to the other node in a cluster.

Coding someone as religious prohibits a restore from tape.

Just finished episode 8 last night.

I was paying attention when he looks through the telescope and trying to hang on every word. But I don't think I understood the motive for Bancroft to kill himself. Do they explain it later?

yes

dummble said:

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Just finished episode 8 last night.

I was paying attention when he looks through the telescope and trying to hang on every word. But I don't think I understood the motive for Bancroft to kill himself. Do they explain it later?

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Just keep watching.

TCTTS said:

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I get all that. But as I said, even omitting those issiues, I just didn't think it was a very good show. Felt like something I've seen a dozen times before.

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Just gonna say, I generally have somewhat similar takes on a lot of movies/shows as you, but I don't really know what you've seen that is like this after one episode. If I had to guess, you had preconceived notions coming in to this.

third coast.. said:

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Did I miss how the meths didn't have the resleeve issue that dimi did? Was it just money that bought them the better technology?

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They said dimi's was because he was dual-jacked or whatever the term was. In 2 bodies at once, and did it illegally which I took to mean not as safe as the Meths would be able to do it if they wanted to.

I also remember them mentioning the envoys go through training to not get disoriented as badly as a regular joe.

I finally binge watched this series on my flight back home from Paris over the weekend, and I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the development of the characters, especially Tak, Elliot, Poe, and the rest of his rag tag gang. As mentioned before, I think they could have selected a better actress to play Tak's sister, Rei.

A few questions though:

• Did they ever explain how Lueng (sp?) was able to become invisible?
• Is Quell really alive, or was that a last ditch effort by Rei to not have Tak kill her?
• Not a question really, but more of a comment: I wouldn't have mind to have seen a few scenes on what activities "Clone Tak" participated on "Pleasure Island"...

What really surprised me was the various humorous scenes that played out throughout the show. I was very entertained.

NC2001 said:

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• Did they ever explain how Lueng (sp?) was able to become invisible? a computer 'hack' that just erases his physical presence on camera feeds. He's not actually invisible.
• Is Quell really alive, or was that a last ditch effort by Rei to not have Tak kill her? i mean, it's possible Rei was lying but there's no reason to think she wasn't telling the truth.
• Not a question really, but more of a comment: I wouldn't have mind to have seen a few scenes on what activities "Clone Tak" participated on "Pleasure Island"...the greatest activity of all....2 girls. at the same time. niiiiiiiiiice.

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Just finished, some thoughts:

I didn't really like Quell or anything with the Envoys. She didn't seem like a great actress, or perhaps some of her lines were just bad. And I have to say, "We are Envoys, and we take what is given" is possibly the lamest catchphrase I've ever heard. Not sure if it's meant to sound cool but most of her speeches seemed really weak.

That said, interesting show overall. Liked that it wrapped up so thoroughly. If this is all I see of the show, I won't be going "and what was the deal with ___?" like I was with Dark, which had no resolution whatsoever and requires a season 2. Production value was really impressive, for the most part.

This echoes one of my complaints and a complaint I have with a lot of these types of shows. You do NOT have to show us all the backstory. In fact, it is usually a LOT cooler when you don't, especially when you have a morally ambiguous bad ass who you can tell has lived through a lot. I wish they would have done what I thought they would do when the show started, and that's jump around to different parts of Kovatch's life after he had become an envoy and after the envoys were wiped out. Show him running different heists or taking different jobs in different sleeves.

Our imagination can fill in the origin story a lot better than anything they could pigeon hole in to just one episode.

I didn't mind the backstory while I was watching it, although the backstory episode was probably the weakest. Looking back I have to agree that it didn't make a bit of sense.

So The envoys are introduced as terrorist/freedom fighters, and the actions of the CTAC guys sure make I look like the envoys are on the right side. Ok fine. Oppressive central government, badass rebels. Standard Sci fi stuff. But what exactly were the envoys fighting for, and how was this rebellion so impactful that 250 years later everyone still knew what an envoy was (and had whole museum exhibits dedicated to the rebellion) ?

Also, while I assume they were all on one planet in a cave because they had suffered a string of defeats and were down to thier last few fighters, we are never told that.

Still, I'm sure they are fighting for freedom or something. Then it turns out the whole point is that thier leader wants to download a Logan's Run virus into everyone's stack and murder billions of people.

I think I'm kind of with the sister here. Yes Quell is right about the Mets taking over, but her solution isn't very noble. Plus to make the timelines work she would have to be 400 years old herself.

It seems like the show wanted to give more info about why Tak felt/acted the way he did rather than anything about the envoys.

Finished it up last night. Scatter-shooting:

*Thought it was very good, but maybe needed a few more episodes to expand on some of the character histories. Pacing was fine, so not sure they could/should have cut anything out. But Reileen as the bad "titan of industry" just wasn't quite believable enough for me since we didn't get enough of her Kovacs in the early days to really see how that mental instability was created. They showed when they were kids the reliance on one another, and they showed as envoys-in-training their strained relationship -- but that whole time period when Reileen was with the yakuza as a child I think should have been shown to really give us a better idea of the mental break she had to make to survive.

*Ditto the love story between Kovacs and the envoy leader. I'm certainly not one that wants to dwell on a love story in a sci-fi action series, but I didn't feel this strong loss when the two of them were separated. That needed a little more fleshing out (pun intended).

*All of you bash Reileen's acting, but Ortega's was still worse. It got better from the first few episodes, but she comes off like she's reading a script in most of her scenes. But... easy on the eyes and her fight scenes were pretty believable.

Loved the tech and how they didn't hit you over the head with it. The Cloverfield Paradox at every turn was shoving the magno-putty in your face. Literally scene after scene of it being used. Yeah, it's neat. We get it. Altered Carbon kind of dangled the tech but didn't just dumb it down it for you.

*Loved the overall story. People who cannot die becoming bored was a believable cause of the whole mess.

*While the mystery was wrapped up well and made sense, I think a little more time could have been spent hinting at the whole thing. It made sense that article 653 passing was part of the mystery, but I just didn't see that being a crucial part of the story until the reveal at the end.

*We toed the line of a deus ex machina at the end with Lizzie coming in to kick ass and save the day (in a scene very reminiscent of another heavily-praised-under-the-radar-we-are-never-getting-a-season-2-sci-fi-series), but I guess we were somewhat spared in that the scene could have existed with or without Lizzie. It would have been just as believable if CybOrtega, the police chief, Vernon and his man-wife took down the troops as it was adding Lizzie into the mix.

*Poe was great. Wish he had some more Edgar Allan quotes sprinkled in. I only caught one or two.

*Loved the Leung character (with his "Are you a believer?" that I have no doubt was inspired by Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Cure"), but didn't really like how they changed him into this sniveling little ***** when he was about to die. Either have him at peace with death or believing up until the last minute that his god Reileen would save him.

*I'm a sucker for good lyrical music songs/covers over significant/pivotal action/drama scenes and this show did not disappoint. PJ Harvey... White Zombie... Johnny Cash... Just great selections.



'Dark' still my pick for best Netflix series so far this year, but this is a close second. Former is more character-development heavy, the latter more action, but both revolve heavily around the morality questions that science/tech create.

Just started it tonight so far it's phenomenal

When Reileen is in Ortega's body, that is easily her best acting in the show. She picked up Dichen's mannerisms very easily

Quote:

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in a scene very reminiscent of another heavily-praised-under-the-radar-we-are-never-getting-a-season-2-sci-fi-series

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Help me out?

swimmerbabe11 said:

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Quote:

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in a scene very reminiscent of another heavily-praised-under-the-radar-we-are-never-getting-a-season-2-sci-fi-series

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Help me out?

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Must be Firefly and the character River.

We need Poe in the second season somehow.

Since he was an AI it should be pretty easy to bring him back.

I really liked the show, but I'm not sure it needs another season. I'll watch it though

We binge watched over Spring Break. Made me want to revisit the books, which I read a long time ago. Overall I enjoyed it. But I wish the sound engineering for the dialog was better. It seemed muddy to me, more than needed for the atmospherics.

For those disturbed by Quell's goal and Rei's being bad, the point was that being a Meth is corrosive and makes humans more evil. Which is why Quell wanted to limit the human lifespan. Rei and the Bancrofts are just examples of the moral cost of effective immortality.

There are probably some intentional parallels to the Bible, but Richard K Morgan is politically very lefty per his Wikipedia entry, so there's a component of "kill the rich" ideology here.

The needlecasting/resleeving gives this the potential to be like Dr. Who in that it's theoretically able to keep going indefinitely with different actors playing the lead. Contract dispute? New sleeve!

One thing about the books vs the series: in the books the Envoys were the interstellar troops for the Protectorate, not some local rebel group. It would have made more sense to portray them as a group of mutineers who were sick of the dirty work they did for the Protectorate on behalf of the Meth elites. That would make the decision of all of the group to join Quell on the suicide mission make more sense.

This has become one of my all time favorite shows. I was looking for a cyberpunk type of show and this was perfect!

I've gone back and re-watched the first 6 episodes and everything makes much more sense now. There was so many pieces I missed the first watch. I loved the grittiness (sp?) of the city when they were walking around from place to place. Poe was my favorite character. There were some parts I felt could have been better but overall I would recommend this show to anyone looking for not only an excellent sci-fi show but an overall great show.

Any other good shows/movies in this genre (cyberpunk)?

Not a show, but if you liked this I would watch the Netflix original movie: Mute

It's aight...