Got through this Netflix original before Lost in Space was available and checked it out on the recommendation of my friend Matthew, who has read the novels this is based upon. I was more surprised by the full-frontal nudity (both genders) than the violence, but it didn’t detour the plot much. Thankfully Carbon doesn’t have missionaries pushing this down my throat like the overrated Firefly…yet. The is a mash up of Blade Runner and William Gibson’s Cyberpunk stories, along with others.
The short version which makes Carbon part Blade Runner is the mystery protagonist Kovacs needs to solve, a weird murder, futuristic film noir. The Cyberpunk elements are how people’s memories are stored in a big chip called a stack so they transfer their entire “being” to other bodies, nicknamed sleeves. Hence, rich people can afford to have their bodies cloned, their stacks backed up in case of an accident and ta-dah, they can live forever. It’s only the poor and middle class (if any in this dystopia) who are limited to one lifetime. They’re not alone, a splinter-group within Christianity labelled Neo-Catholicism professes a belief that everyone is only entitled the life they receive from god. However, the UN is trying to pass a law allowing murder victims to have their stacks revived long enough to be witnesses to their own demise. As long as the stack wasn’t destroyed or damaged, they’ll function.
Where does Kovacs fit in this again? Two hundred and fifty years ago, he was part of a resistance movement called the Envoys. They gave the UN-based galactic government a hard time. His original body was killed but his stack was preserved and stored away until a very wealthy ‘meth’ (short for Methuselah, aka rich people that can afford to live forever) named Bancroft has him revived. Kovacs is put into someone else’s body, given unlimited access and money and promised a full pardon if he figures out how/why Bancroft died. Kovacs’ patron met his grisly fate before his daily backup making the investigation harder because Bancroft is incapable of remembering what happened within 24 hours of the critical event.
Along the way Kovacs gains allies, a police officer, the father of a murder victim and my personal favorite, Poe, an AI (yes, Artificial Intelligence) based within a hotel called The Raven. There’s also plenty of people trying to throw him off the trail, namely Bancroft’s wife of a couple centuries. Throughout the ten episodes, you’ll see flashbacks on how Kovacs became the person he is today, what his sister was like and how he was romantically involved with the leader of the Envoys. You’ll see even more Blade Runner influences in how dark, vulgar, rainy and poly-lingual San Francisco (now Bay City) has become. Fear not, when someone speaks in another language, there’s subtitles. I’m more amazed the recipients automatically know what is being said in Spanish, Arabic or Russian.
Carbon isn’t for the squeamish. The violence gets gruesome at times and on top of the full-frontal nudity, there’s a few incidents of people doing the horizontal mambo. On this last part, I tried to fast forward since these didn’t move the plot much beyond future blackmail attempts against somebody.
Another surprise regarding Carbon, there isn’t one recognizable cast member in the show. Matt Frewer of Max Headroom fame appears as a virtual pimp a couple times but beyond him, I didn’t recognize one actor or actress. Maybe this show will make somebody famous like one of the kids from Stranger Things appearing in It.
Do I recommend Carbon? Yes. Blade Runner and its sequel are movies I am fond of. This gives the vibe of those stories being given the mini-series treatment.
One of the biggest differences between the books and the show is that in the books, the Envoys weren’t rebels, they were the government’s “shock troops,” able to be sent to any planet, in any body and to topple governments within weeks. All the skills Kovacs had, he had because the government trained him to be that bad ass. He left the Envoys because he was disgusted by what they were doing to the people and the planets, and used his skills to get back at the government, in a way.