5 ms·

The show is mostly _fun_, but I definitely wouldn't call it a _great_ or well-made show, apart from the visuals. Too much clunky dialogue and half-baked subplot

by gipp 9y ago

The show is mostly _fun_, but I definitely wouldn't call it a _great_ or well-made show, apart from the visuals. Too much clunky dialogue and half-baked subplots. In particular, there's a certain traumatized daughter whose plot never makes sense at any turn. The show seems to expect us to already know and have a major emotional investment in a character who we've never seen speak and who seems to have almost no tangible relationship to anything else happening in the show. Plus the way other characters react to what's going on with her is completely nonsensical. The show has plenty of issues but that one in particular really bothered me for some reason.

rbaud 9y ago
In the book, which I'd recommend if you enjoyed the concepts surrounding digitized consciousness, the subplot with the traumatized daughter serves to introduce a pretty pivotal character/plot point.
gooseus 9y ago
Yes, I agree... character development was very weak for pretty much everyone but Tak and Ortega, and even they were pretty shaky. I put this show in the camp good concepts, good visuals, decent fights, but the characters are just along for whatever ride the writers want to take them on. Also, the plot had my eyes rolling a little too often for my taste. Much of the future tech ended up being a hammer that could force the story through any hole they wanted while other elements didn't make sense to exist in the way they were portrayed. The Raven AI was cool, but their weak excuse for how those constructs were neglected and not used everywhere didn't make any sense given his role as the story played out.
Joeri 9y ago
Personally, I really liked altered carbon. The acting was good, the sets great, and the story intriguing. The show doesn’t go out of its way to surprise you like GoT, but it had enough mysteries and twists to keep things interesting. The only lesser part for me wasn’t the story but the technology. I’m ok with unexplained advanced tech, but it has to make sense. Why are the only things run by advanced better-than-human AI’s hotels and brothels? Why is it so trivial to transfer minds between bodies but so difficult to make a simple backup? Why are prosthetic replacement arms so powerful they can crush metal, and why if that tech is available don’t the special ops use bodies which are all-prosthetic? Too many things didn’t make sense.
- viperscape 9y ago
  The last two bother me especially. Only thing I can think of is that bodies are expendable and for police that means good second skins, they get first or second dibs. No need for cyborg parts when blasters kick so much butt. The stack backup reasoning is lame, "too expensive" is not really defining, and if a stack can be transferred to another stack, having two with one in a strongbox seems logical. You possibly lose memories then, but live on. It seems to come down mostly to money and socioeconomic disparity. At one point someone says, fixing a broken leg is too expensive. That's ridiculous
- philipkglass 9y ago
  I re-read the book a few weeks ago in anticipation of the series. The inconsistencies that you notice are real and present in the source material. I didn't notice them so much the first time I read the book 10+ years ago. The relentless action was fresh the first time around and helped paper over weaknesses in the logic of the world. Also I've apparently become less able to overlook internal inconsistencies with time. The vast majority of SF uses technologies as cool set props for minor variations on familiar kinds of stories and social dynamics. Star Trek was/is terrible about this too. It's hard for a creator to model the higher-order effects that would be introduced from (e.g.) starships, teleporters, AI, or what-have-you. Do that hard work too well and most of the audience won't be able to understand what's going on without lengthy infodumps. The only current show I can think of that tries to show how technologies could drastically change societies is Black Mirror. Almost everything else is "familiar social dynamics, Amazing Gizmos are just props for the adventure." The proportion of internally consistent works is somewhat higher in written SF, but I'd say over half still follows the Amazing Gizmos Somehow Leave Society Basically Familiar template.
  - carapace 9y ago
    (Oh man, Star Trek... Artificial gravity that no one ever talks about. Gravity control would be a total game-changer. Also, One day I realized, how does the Klingon disintegrator ray stop at the soles of the boots? It never disintegrates the floor.)
evo_9 9y ago
Laughably bad, actually, esp. if you cut your teeth growing up on Neuromancer, Snowcrash, etc. I honestly thought it was written by a teenager, the scene with the Ai's playing poker was when it went off the cliff for me. Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams, however, is worthwhile and a nice bookend to the new season of Black Mirror.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  I've only seen about 20 minutes of the first episode and couldn't enjoy it. I'd like to at least finish the first episode before I make judge for myself whether this one's worth my time (though I'm gonna first watch The Man in the High Castle). Generally though as a rule of thumb: Nice CGI doesn't make up for a terrible story, but a good story can make up for the lack of good CGI. E.g. I did not find the story good in the follow-ups of The Matrix. I fully underline your statement regarding PKD's Electric Dreams as well as all the Black Mirror seasons. Furthermore, let us not forget that several other of PKD's works have seen a movie adaptations. I can recommend Total Recall (both; watch older first), Blade Runner (both; watch older first), A Scanner Darkly (if you can stand the art style; personally, I loved it), Minority Report, and The Adjustment Bureau (Screamers was OKish). There are series adaptations as well. Check Wikipedia for all the adaptations [1] I'm not aware of any motion picture adaptations of Stephenson's or Gibson's works. Although I just found out via Wikipedia that the game Netrunner [2] is a derivative work of the Sprawl trilogy, and also The Matrix heavily "drawn" from the Sprawl trilogy as well [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_by_Philip_K._Dick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_b... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android:_Netrunner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android:_Netrunner [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Literary_and_cultural_significance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Literary_and_cultu...
  - BerislavLopac 9y ago
    > I'm not aware of any motion picture adaptations of Stephenson's or Gibson's works. Well, for what it's worth, there is Johnny Mnemonic, which wasn't very well received although I personally liked it. Another short story set in the Sprawl, New Rose Hotel, was also adapted to a film (I haven't seen it), and many other works, including Neuromancer, have been in various stages of development for a while. More details at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Film_adaptations,_screenplays,_and_appearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Film_adaptation...
darksim905 9y ago
What needs to make sense of her plot, exactly? She (or her sleeve?) was damaged or had an issue to the extent that all that was left was her stack. It was fascinated to me to see a AI help bring a human back as an individual & use methods it thought would help someone the best.

by gipp 9y ago

rbaud 9y ago

In the book, which I'd recommend if you enjoyed the concepts surrounding digitized consciousness, the subplot with the traumatized daughter serves to introduce a pretty pivotal character/plot point.

gooseus 9y ago

Yes, I agree... character development was very weak for pretty much everyone but Tak and Ortega, and even they were pretty shaky. I put this show in the camp good concepts, good visuals, decent fights, but the characters are just along for whatever ride the writers want to take them on. Also, the plot had my eyes rolling a little too often for my taste. Much of the future tech ended up being a hammer that could force the story through any hole they wanted while other elements didn't make sense to exist in the way they were portrayed. The Raven AI was cool, but their weak excuse for how those constructs were neglected and not used everywhere didn't make any sense given his role as the story played out.

Joeri 9y ago

Personally, I really liked altered carbon. The acting was good, the sets great, and the story intriguing. The show doesn’t go out of its way to surprise you like GoT, but it had enough mysteries and twists to keep things interesting. The only lesser part for me wasn’t the story but the technology. I’m ok with unexplained advanced tech, but it has to make sense. Why are the only things run by advanced better-than-human AI’s hotels and brothels? Why is it so trivial to transfer minds between bodies but so difficult to make a simple backup? Why are prosthetic replacement arms so powerful they can crush metal, and why if that tech is available don’t the special ops use bodies which are all-prosthetic? Too many things didn’t make sense.

viperscape 9y ago
The last two bother me especially. Only thing I can think of is that bodies are expendable and for police that means good second skins, they get first or second dibs. No need for cyborg parts when blasters kick so much butt. The stack backup reasoning is lame, "too expensive" is not really defining, and if a stack can be transferred to another stack, having two with one in a strongbox seems logical. You possibly lose memories then, but live on. It seems to come down mostly to money and socioeconomic disparity. At one point someone says, fixing a broken leg is too expensive. That's ridiculous
philipkglass 9y ago
I re-read the book a few weeks ago in anticipation of the series. The inconsistencies that you notice are real and present in the source material. I didn't notice them so much the first time I read the book 10+ years ago. The relentless action was fresh the first time around and helped paper over weaknesses in the logic of the world. Also I've apparently become less able to overlook internal inconsistencies with time. The vast majority of SF uses technologies as cool set props for minor variations on familiar kinds of stories and social dynamics. Star Trek was/is terrible about this too. It's hard for a creator to model the higher-order effects that would be introduced from (e.g.) starships, teleporters, AI, or what-have-you. Do that hard work too well and most of the audience won't be able to understand what's going on without lengthy infodumps. The only current show I can think of that tries to show how technologies could drastically change societies is Black Mirror. Almost everything else is "familiar social dynamics, Amazing Gizmos are just props for the adventure." The proportion of internally consistent works is somewhat higher in written SF, but I'd say over half still follows the Amazing Gizmos Somehow Leave Society Basically Familiar template.
- carapace 9y ago
  (Oh man, Star Trek... Artificial gravity that no one ever talks about. Gravity control would be a total game-changer. Also, One day I realized, how does the Klingon disintegrator ray stop at the soles of the boots? It never disintegrates the floor.)

evo_9 9y ago

Laughably bad, actually, esp. if you cut your teeth growing up on Neuromancer, Snowcrash, etc. I honestly thought it was written by a teenager, the scene with the Ai's playing poker was when it went off the cliff for me. Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams, however, is worthwhile and a nice bookend to the new season of Black Mirror.

Fnoord 9y ago
I've only seen about 20 minutes of the first episode and couldn't enjoy it. I'd like to at least finish the first episode before I make judge for myself whether this one's worth my time (though I'm gonna first watch The Man in the High Castle). Generally though as a rule of thumb: Nice CGI doesn't make up for a terrible story, but a good story can make up for the lack of good CGI. E.g. I did not find the story good in the follow-ups of The Matrix. I fully underline your statement regarding PKD's Electric Dreams as well as all the Black Mirror seasons. Furthermore, let us not forget that several other of PKD's works have seen a movie adaptations. I can recommend Total Recall (both; watch older first), Blade Runner (both; watch older first), A Scanner Darkly (if you can stand the art style; personally, I loved it), Minority Report, and The Adjustment Bureau (Screamers was OKish). There are series adaptations as well. Check Wikipedia for all the adaptations [1] I'm not aware of any motion picture adaptations of Stephenson's or Gibson's works. Although I just found out via Wikipedia that the game Netrunner [2] is a derivative work of the Sprawl trilogy, and also The Matrix heavily "drawn" from the Sprawl trilogy as well [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_by_Philip_K._Dick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_b... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android:_Netrunner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android:_Netrunner [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Literary_and_cultural_significance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Literary_and_cultu...
- BerislavLopac 9y ago
  > I'm not aware of any motion picture adaptations of Stephenson's or Gibson's works. Well, for what it's worth, there is Johnny Mnemonic, which wasn't very well received although I personally liked it. Another short story set in the Sprawl, New Rose Hotel, was also adapted to a film (I haven't seen it), and many other works, including Neuromancer, have been in various stages of development for a while. More details at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Film_adaptations,_screenplays,_and_appearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Film_adaptation...

darksim905 9y ago

What needs to make sense of her plot, exactly? She (or her sleeve?) was damaged or had an issue to the extent that all that was left was her stack. It was fascinated to me to see a AI help bring a human back as an individual & use methods it thought would help someone the best.