Stacks on Stacks: Altered Carbon Preview

Netflix has been heavily investing in its original content for years now, but the media giant hasn’t given its audience a big budget science fiction offering until now. Altered Carbon is based on the novel of the same name by Richard Morgan, published in 2002. A cross between cyberpunk elements straight out of Ghost in the Shell and traditional pulp detective fiction, the world of Altered Carbon is awash in sex, drugs and violence, set hundreds of years in the future. Humans have trekked out amongst the stars, setting up colonies on dozens of worlds. Simultaneously, humans have discovered the key to immortality—a device called a “stack” is installed into the spinal column and records all of the host’s thoughts and memories. Upon death, as long as the stack is not destroyed, it can be inserted into a new body, known as a “sleeve”. Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) is reborn. Photo credits Katie Yu/Netflix. The protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs (played with steely anguish by Joel Kinnaman) is an “envoy”, a special soldier trained and enhanced to make the most of the advantages of a downloadable consciousness. He can immerse himself almost instantly into any situation, learning the culture, language, strengths and weaknesses of the people around him. This is a useful skill set, as in his past life his consciousness was teleported from sleeve to sleeve across the galaxy to fight. When the viewer meets Kovacs though, he is reintegrating into a new sleeve in Riker’s prison on Earth. He is p…