Quell is CG because she is a force of destruction against evil, NG because the system deserves more than any other to be destroyed, LG because she uses her own system to oppose the status quo, and N because she will fuck you up if you get in her way regardless.
Ortega committed real life murder for vengeance. That is not upholding the system and that is miles away from Lawful Good.
Hard to have lawful good in a world where the law if hopelessly corrupted… Maybe Ortega’s mother?
I’m pretty sure she would have done anything at all to protect her daughter. CG at best.
The only character who could be considered LG in the series would be Ortega’s co worker who there to basically be her conscience(can’t remember his name).
That’s probably true. Oretega is very NG. She broke a lot of rules, but almost always did stuff for the right reason.
Yeah, that’s true, the first ritual sacrifice on the altar of sympathetic side characters. Really I get tired of this killing-routine sometimes.
While I enjoyed the series, I keep thinking about it and choices I disliked.
Having not read the book series, it’s hard for me to tell why they did it, but the whole Quell character is completely out of genre. This is very clearly a noir/hard-boiled story, with the requisite “the case was always personal” structure, everything being related to everything and the character being a loner in an uncaring world.
But, much as the new Blade Runner (which I also liked), this makes the detective a central, important character in the world. Part of the world´s mythos, so to speak. I don’t mind the detective being an exceptional warrior. That’s ok and makes him exceptional but not unique. The problem is the unique relationship between the detective and Quell, which is in herself an improbable character (the creator of the world as it is and its would be destroyer). That sort of heroic framework really does diminish the impact of the whole plot and moves the work from the intended noir genre to the first step of a hero’s journey. That is, from interesting to boringly conventional (to me).
Blade Runner did it because of the need to bring Deckard back and still have the story make any sense, and, most importantly, was clever enough to subvert the genre shift at the end so the story remained noir. it subverted the genre slightly, but felt more in control. Here I feel they didn’t care, while taking advantage of the structure, ultimately they betrayed the narrative framework that gives the tale its strength to start with, and the overall result suffers imho.
If the original book didn’t introduce Quell, then maybe the first book was a strict noir and the other books adopted a different genre? I don’t know, but definitely that part and the personal exceptionalism it implies was completely out of character with most of the series for me.
I wouldn’t put much thought into certain parts of the story, there are so many shallow elements. In example, the super rich enjoy themselves like young people who become famous overnight (football/rock stars), with activities revolving around sex, drugs and adrenaline rushes, a common cliche for the genre.
In a more realistic scenario, Meths would spend most of their time playing politics and avoiding scandals. Many of them would also be anti-authoritarian.
In the books, Quellcrist Falconer is a long dead philosopher revolutionary on Kovacs’ homeworld, and the only thing he has to do with Quellism is that he likes to quote her. Most of the rest of the galaxy has never even heard of her, and she definitely had nothing to do with the Envoy program - that was all the UN Protectorate, who used them as a tool of oppression.
Altered Carbon is a noir, the next book is kind of a Three Kings style military heist (/ tomb raid), and the final one is yet another genre, though I haven’t read it recently enough to take a stab at what exactly. Who knows what the show will end up doing.
Incidentally, Morgan’s long maintained that he was done with Kovacs, but said in an interview about the show that it’s kind of waking the character back up for him. So if we get more books, all the better! (As long as he doesn’t do an Arthur C. Clarke and base the new material on the adaptation instead of his own novel(s).
I’m at the eight episode by now, and by jove - You may think what you will of the story, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scifi show with this kind of quality production values. EVERYTHING just works, and looks incredible.
I’m curious whether its a great team, new technology, or money thrown at the show to make it look as good as it does.
Finished it. Wow, that ending seemed rushed, and more than a little confusing.
So they spiked his sister’s backups with the same virus she used to kill off all the Envoys 250 years earlier, meaning all her clones and backed up stack were now useless and death would be real death (assuming her stack was destroyed). The whole thing took a dump though when the sister proved she was beyond saving, and then Lizzie shows up by having Poe upload her consciousness to Head In The Clouds. But how the fuck does Lizzie magically transform the synthetic sleeve into looking like herself? That breaks all the known rules…and if it is possible to do that, why the hell isn’t everyone putting themselves into synthetic sleeves made to look like themselves or someone more attractive/younger? Whatever I guess.
The real confusion was the ending, with the Princess story. After all that, Takeshi learns that whats-her-face is still out there (albeit in stack form) somewhere, and decides to fuck over Ortega by leaving her and going to wander the universe in search of his real love. Meanwhile Ortega is left waiting for Elias to come back (now that he’s exonerated) but knowing that she really loves Takeshi (and loved him while he was in Elias’ body). Messed up! I also assume they “killed” the duplicate stack of Takeshi (the one that got to go off and have a nice time on fantasy island) and then used his sleeve to bring Elias back, but did they leave Takeshi in his Elias sleeve, or was he able to reconstruct his original body using the DNA information from the fight club? And poor Poe…I guess the Raven is closed for good now.
I very much enjoyed the series, especially the production values on the tech stuff and the city shots. Really beautiful in that Blade Runner sort of way. I liked the actors and the characters as well. Seems like it’s not really set up for a sequel though, at least not in Bay City or anywhere on Earth.
If they follow the general pacing of the books there’s a few decades in between each book. I’m sorta hoping they will get a different actor to play Takeshi each season.
They do show a synthetic changing face in an earlier episode. I think it was the fight club owner, but I’m not sure.
Yeah, he did it. He’s a full AI, though, like Poe. (right? Or do I misremember?)
You misremember; Carnage (aka Max Headroom) was using a synth sleeve. Kovacs makes some remark about him choosing to wear that face, out of all the options open to him.
I stand corrected! Thanks for clarifying.
The book handles the ending better:
In the book, Kovacs does not use a clone during the double sleeve, he uses a combat ready synthetic sleeve, which is the Kovacs that goes to Head in the Clouds. The authorities recover that stack after the HiTC final scene (which is also different in that HiTC is not destroyed) and both Kovacs’ stacks are put into virtual to decide which will be the surviving consciousness. His separation from Ortega is also covered in that, once in a new sleeve, their mutual attraction rapidly wanes due to a decent portion of that attraction being attached to Elias’ sleeve - pheromones, familiarity, etc, etc. Kovacs also does some things in the book that are stone fucking cold, which are at odds with Ortega’s D&D alignment, so they are never quite as close in the book as they are in the show, it being mostly physical.
Well that makes way more sense.
The show ending was terrible in this respect. Ortega just literally lost everything in her effort to help Kovacs, her whole family was killed, her partner/mentor was killed, her only other friend on the force was killed…all because of her relationship with Kovacs. Then he’s all “Well, I just got your boyfriend sprung from prison, so I guess I’ll just take off now and go search for the woman I really love…”. Damn…cold as ice.
I am bummed that, if there is a sequel, it’s unlikely Ortega will be back, as that actress is gorgeous and they sure weren’t shy about showing her off.
I didn’t really see it that way:
Ortega was just as invested in solving the Mary Lou case (and justifying/clearing Ryker) as Kovacs was with his stuff. In the end, it would have been weird for her to abandon her innocent, long-term partner for a guy she just met. Poor Mickey and Poe though.
Overall I loved the series, it’s as good as anything that Netflix has released so far (definitely better and more consistent than their Marvel shows.) Hopefully we’ll see another season.